276. Teaching at its Best

New faculty often start their faculty roles without training in teaching. In this episode Linda Nilson and Todd Zakrajsek join us to talk about the evolving roles and expectations of faculty and explore the new edition of a classic teaching guide.

Now Director Emeritus, Linda was the Founding Director of the Office of Teaching Effectiveness and Innovation at Clemson University. Todd is an Associate Research Professor and Associate Director of the Faculty Development Fellowship in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Linda and Todd are each individually the authors of many superb books on teaching and learning and now have jointly authored a new edition of a classic guide for faculty.

Shownotes

  • Zakrajsek, T. and Nilson, L. B. (2023). Teaching at its best: A research-based resource for college instructors. 5th edition. Jossey-Bass.
  • Nilson, L. B., & Goodson, L. A. (2021). Online teaching at its best: Merging instructional design with teaching and learning research. John Wiley & Sons.
  • Nilson, Linda (2021). Infusing Critical Thinking Into Your Course: A Concrete, Practical Guide. Stylus.
  • McKeachie, W. J. (1978). Teaching tips: A guidebook for the beginning college teacher. DC Heath.
  • POD
  • Betts, K., Miller, M., Tokuhama-Espinosa, T., Shewokis, P., Anderson, A., Borja, C., Galoyan, T., Delaney, B., Eigenauer, J., & Dekker, S. (2019). International report: Neuromyths and evidence-based practices in higher education. Online Learning Consortium: Newburyport, MA.’
  • Padlet
  • Jamboard
  • Eric Mazur
  • Dan Levy
  • Teaching with Zoom – Dan Levy – Tea for Teaching podcast – May 26, 2021

Transcript

John: New faculty often start their faculty roles without training in teaching. In this episode we talk about the evolving roles and expectations of faculty and explore the new edition of a classic teaching guide.

[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 Linda Nilson and Todd Zakrajsek. Now Director Emeritus, Linda was the Founding Director of the Office of Teaching Effectiveness and Innovation at Clemson University. Todd is an Associate Research Professor and Associate Director of the Faculty Development Fellowship in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Linda and Todd are each individually the authors of many superb books on teaching and learning and now jointly have authored another superb book. Welcome back, Linda and Todd.

Linda: Thank you very much.

Todd: Really appreciate the opportunity to be here.

Rebecca: Today’s teas are: … Linda, are you drinking tea?

Linda: I’m drinking a tea called water. It’s rather dull, but I enjoy it.

Rebecca: It’s very pure.

Linda: Yes, very pure. Very pure.

Rebecca: How about you Todd?

Todd: Oh, I’ve got myself a Lemon Detox because I’ve spent most of my day getting all toxed and now I’m getting detoxed. [LAUGHTER] Wait a minute, that sounds bad. [LAUGHTER] But that will be all right. [LAUGHTER]

John: Especially at Family Medicine.

Todd: Well, we can fix it. [LAUGHTER] In general, life is good.

John: I am drinking pineapple green tea.

Rebecca: Oh, that’s a new one for you, John.

John: I’ve had it before, just not recently.

Rebecca: Okay. I’m back to the very old favorite, English afternoon. Because I stopped by the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching and grabbed a cup before I came.

John: And we are recording together in the same room, which has been a fairly rare occurrence for the last several years. We’ve invited you here to discuss your joint endeavor on the fifth edition of Teaching at its Best: a Research-Based Resource for College Instructors, that Linda originally developed and now you’ve collaborated on this new edition. How did the collaboration on this edition come about?

Linda: Well, let me talk about that. Because it was pretty much my idea. Jossie-Bass contacted me and said “let’s put out a fifth edition” and I said “let’s not.” [LAUGHTER] I was not in the mood to do it. I’ve been retired six and a half years now and I’m loving it. I mean, I’m really loving it. And while retired, I was still writing the second edition of Online Teaching at its Best. And then I was writing a book, Infusing Critical Thinking Into Your Course, and I guess I had had it. I mean, I wanted to really make a change and I wanted to get specifically into working at an animal shelter. So I was all occupied with that. So I thought I remember Wilbert J. McKeachie, when he was doing Teaching Tips that he came to a certain point after I don’t know how many editions that he brought other people on to really do the revision work. And so I decided I’m going to do that. So Jossey-Bass said “Okay, fine.” They wanted three names. Okay, I gave him three names, but my first choice was Todd Zakrajsek, because 1. I knew he’d finish it. [LAUGHTER] I knew he’d finish it fast. I knew he do a great job. He knows the literature like the back of his hand, I wouldn’t have a worry in the world. And guess what? Todd accepted. Hip hip hurray. I was so happy. I couldn’t tell you.

Todd: Well, this is great because I said no when they asked me. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: Like any smart person would, right? [LAUGHTER]

Todd: Well, I did end up doing it, of course. But the reason I said no was I knew that book very well and I know Linda very well. And I said, “There is no way. I don’t know anybody who can step in and pick this thing up. She knows so much about so much that it’s just not possible.” And they said, “But she really wants you to do this.” So I went back and forth a couple times and I finally decided to do it. And I will tell you, Linda, because I haven’t mentioned this to you. The first three chapters, I had to go back and redo those when I got done with it, because I was so scared of the first three chapters [LAUGHTER] that it was really rough. And then finally it’s like, okay, I hit my rhythm and I walked into it with impostor syndrome a little bit, and I finally caught my footing, but it’s a good book to start with.

Linda: Thank you. Thank you very much. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, I know, the plot thickens, right? It becomes more interesting as you go from chapter to chapter, right. And before you know it, there’s a happy ending after all.

Rebecca: So Linda, Teaching at its Best has been around for a long time with a first edition published in 1998. Can you talk a little bit about how that first edition came about?

Linda: Yes, that was…I can’t believe… 1998. That’s 25 years ago. It’s almost scary how time flies. But anyway, the actual seed of the book came about in about 1994… 95. But I need to give you some background because I had been writing TA training books since like, the late 1970s when I was first given the task of putting together a TA training program. So back then, I was putting out weekly mimeos,[LAUGHTER] remember mimeograph machines. Some of you don’t know, what is she talking about? But anyway, that was technology then. But anyway, smetl great, though… it really did. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: That’s the second time today someone has made a reference about the smell of those.

Linda: Yeah, oh yeah.

John: The dittos are what I remember having the stronger smell

Todd: The ditto did, yeah. yeah, and I’ll tell you before we move on, when I was a graduate student, we had a ditto machine. I just have to say this, Linda, because you liked the smell and all there.

Linda: Yeah, Yeah.

Todd: But they had a ditto machine. And below the ditto machine, I noticed that the floor tiles were kind of eaten away by the ditto fluid. [LAUGHTER] And then here’s the best part is that one day I was rooting around in the closet looking for something and I found the extra tiles in a box and the side of the box said “reinforced with long-lasting asbestos.” [LAUGHTER] So the ditto fluid was eating through asbestos lined tile, but that’s how strong that stuff is. So yeah, we all enjoyed the smell of that stuff back in the day..

Linda: Yeah, yeah. I guess it’s a good thing for all of us they invented something else, like copying machines. So anyway, so I started doing that at UCLA. And then that turned into like a booklet of sorts. And then I was at UC Riverside, and I was writing books there. And I sort of revised it every couple of years. And I was also writing these with my master teaching fellows. So we were doing that. And then I came to Vanderbilt, and I decided, well, I’m going to do this, pretty much on my own, I’ll get some help from my master teaching fellows. But anyway, it turned into an actual book. I mean, it turned into a happy monster. And I was very pleased with it. Well, along about 94-95, my husband recommended that I turn it into a regular book, and talk to a publisher about it. So anyway, I said, “Oh, great idea. Great idea and just sort of didn’t think about it much. Then in 1996, he died. And I thought, “Well, how am I going to pull myself through?” I bet it would be a great idea and a great tribute to him if I took Teaching at its Best, the Vanderbilt edition, and turned that into a general book. And I decided to do that and kept my mind off of bad things. And it turned into Teaching at its Best, the first edition. That’s why I dedicated the book to him, by the way, because it really was his inspiration that got me to do it. And so anyway, tribute to him. So that’s where the first edition came from. I mean, it really grew out of tragedy. But it’s been a comedy ever since, right? [LAUGHTER] So anyway, it’s been a wonderful thing.

John: And it’s been a great resource.

Rebecca: It’s interesting that it pulled you through, but then has pulled many teachers through. [LAUGHTER]

Linda: And I’ve gotten such feedback from faculty members who said, “I saved their lunch,” you know, if they were really in big trouble, and some of them said, “I was in big trouble with my teaching and you got me tenure.” Yeah, like, right. But anyway, the book helped a lot of people. And I guess maybe something in me when I first published this book said, “Gee it would really be great to be the next Wilbert McKeachie, right, which is a very pretentious thing to think. But then they wanted the second edition, I was thinking, “Hey, maybe I’m on the road to something.” And then there was a third, and then there was the fourth. And it didn’t get any easier to write the subsequent editions really, it was just a matter of keeping up with the literature. And so right now, I’m off into another corner of the world. So I just didn’t want to immerse myself in that again.

John: So that brings us to the question of what is new in the fifth edition?

Todd: Well, that’s my question. I’ve known Linda for the longest time. By the way, I do want to mention before we go on, I can’t remember, Linda, if it’s been that long ago, but it might have been the second edition. When at POD, I said, “You need to do a second edition of this book” …or second or third. But I was using the book. I mean, I learned so much from it. So for the new edition. Number one, of course, the research has been updated only because the research is always changing. And it had been a few years. So that’s number one. In terms of changing the book, though, we only have a leeway of about 10,000 words. Now, for those out there listening 10,000 words sounds like a lot of words until you’ve got a 200,000 word book, it was about 190. And they said, you can’t go over 200 Because the book just gets too big then. So it is 10,000 words longer than it was in fact, I think it’s 10,003 words longer. So it’s right in there. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: So you snuck an extra 3 words in.

Todd: It could have been a squeeze to put three words in there. And it’s always hilarious because when they say there’s just a few too many words I just start hyphenating things so yeah, it kind of all works. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, just any words at all. So you can do “can you” as just a hyphenated word. It works. [LAUGHTER]K So is that terminology, the terminology does change and I find this fascinating. One of the things I love to write about books is learning. I mean, Linda, the same thing what as we write, we read a ton of stuff. And as we read stuff, we learn stuff. So this one in particular, for example, is that I grew up with PBL as problem based learning. And I had done workshops on it, I had worked on everything else, but I hadn’t looked at it for quite a while. And in this particular book, as I started looking at PBL, I couldn’t find anything on problem based learning. And it was fascinating because I was doing some digging, and then I called Claire Major, who was an early person who had a grant on problem based learning and everything I ran into was about 2002, it just started to drop off a little bit, and there was some, but it started to tail off. And when I talked to Claire, she says, “Oh, yeah, I used to do quite a bit about that, it was back around 2002-2003.” And now, and the reason I’m saying this is, every time I saw the letters PBL, it was project based learning. And project based learning sounds a lot like problem based learning, but they’re different concepts. And so anyway, going through and finding some of the terminology, so it was consistent with what’s being done right now has changed. There is now a chapter on inclusive teaching, because over the last three or four years, we finally realized that there’s a whole lot of individuals who haven’t been successful in higher education, partly because of the way we teach. And so I’ve been making an argument for a few years now that teaching and learning, the classroom situation has always really been based for fast-talking, risk-taking extroverts. And we’ve suddenly realized that if you’re not a fast-talking, risk-taking extrovert, you may not get a chance to participate, classroom and other things. So I looked at some different things with inclusive teaching. There’s a whole another chapter on that. And then just the language throughout, we talk a little differently now, just even over the last three or four years than we did five, six years ago, I was pretty surprised by that. But there’s some pretty significant changes in language. So the book has a slightly different tone in language, and those are the biggest changes. Oh, I should say, before we move on, one of the biggest other changes, and I did this one, Linda put a section in there that said learning styles had changed significantly from the previous edition. And so she had pointed out that there was no longer a section on learning styles. And I put the learning styles right back in there, I told Linda and she gasped just a little bit. And then I explained that I put it back in there, and then said exactly how terrible it was to basically teach according to learning styles, because it’s the myth that will not die. So that’s back in there.

Linda: People love it. I know. [LAUGHTER]

John: We have that issue all the time, students come in believing in them and say, “Well, I can’t learn from reading because I’m a visual learner.” And I say “Well, fortunately, you use your eyes to read,” and then I’ll get them some citations.

Todd: Well, I’ll tell you, and before we move on, these are the types of things we learned. I couldn’t figure out why the thing is so hard to die. What is it that’s really doing this because other myths we’ve been able to debunk. And part of the reason is licensing exams, when you are in pre-service and you want to become a teacher, the exams you take to become a teacher, a large portion of those exams, have learning styles questions on there. So you have to answer about visual learners and auditory learners and kinesthetic. And so until we get those out of teacher education programs, we’re teaching teachers to believe this. So anyway, there you go. Public service announcement. Be careful about meshing. And if you don’t know what meshing is, look it up and then stop it. [LAUGHTER]

John: We have had guests on the podcast who mentioned learning styles, and then we edit them out and explain to them later why we edit out any reference to that. And I think most of them were in education, either as instructors, or they’ve been working as secondary teachers. It is a pretty pervasive myth. In fact, Michelle Miller and Kristen Betts, together with some other people, did a survey. And that was the most commonly believed myth about teaching and learning. It was done through OLC a few years back, about three or four years ago. Yep,

Todd: Yeah, I saw that survey. Yes, it’s pretty amazing. Michelle’s an amazing person.

Rebecca: The experience of the pandemic has had a fairly large impact on how our classes are taught. Can you talk a little bit, Todd, about how this is reflected in this new edition?

Todd: Things have changed pretty significantly because of the pandemic. There’s a couple things going on. Again, the inclusive teaching and learning, which I’ve already commented on, is really different now. And it’s interesting, because it goes back to the 1960s. We’ve known that, for instance, African Americans tend to flunk at twice the rate of Caucasians, in large machine-scored multiple choice exams. So we know it’s not the teaching, and we know it’s not the grades, it has to be something else. And it turns out that it was you put students into groups and those differences start to disappear. So I mean, even more so the last couple of years, it’s a lot of engaged learning, active learning. I’m still going to pitch my stuff that I’ve been ranting and raving about for years. And there’s no data out there that says that lecturing is bad. What the data says is that if you add active and engaged learning to lecture, then you have much better outcomes than lecture alone. But we’re learning about those types of things in terms of active and engaged learning, how to pair it with and mix it with other strategies that work, looking at distance education in terms of systems and how we can use technology. So a quick example is I used to have a review session before exams. And oftentimes, it’s hard to find a place on campus to have that. And so you might be in a room off in one hall or the library or something. And if the exam was on Monday, I’d have the review session at like six o’clock, seven o’clock on a Sunday night. And there are students who couldn’t make it. I would simply say, you can get notes from someone else. And we’ve known for the longest time, if a student misses class, getting notes from somebody else doesn’t work. Well, now I do review sessions on Zoom, we don’t have to worry about finding a place to park, we don’t have to worry about some students finding babysitters, if they’re working, it’s recorded, so they get the exact same thing. So things like Zoom have really changed teaching in a sense that you can capture the essence in the experience of teaching and use it for others, and it has helped with some equity issues. You can’t do it all the time. And teaching over Zoom is different than face to face. But there are now ways of using different technologies and using different modalities to help to teach in ways that were not really used before the pandemic.

John: Speaking of that, during the pandemic, there was a period of rapid expansion in both the variety of edtech tools available and in terms of teaching modalities themselves. In the description of your book, it indicates that you address useful educational technology and what is a waste of time? Could you give us an example of both some useful technologies that could be used and some that are not so useful? And also perhaps a reaction to the spread of bichronous and HyFlex instruction?

Linda: Yeah, I’ll take this one. And I’m drawing a lot of stuff from another book that I co-authored, with Ludwika Goodman. We were writing about Online Teaching at its Best, okay. And she was an instructional designer. And I came from teaching and learning and we put our literature’s together. And we were talking about modalities a great deal, especially in the second edition with the pandemic. Well, one thing I found out, not only from reading, but also from watching this happen was that this Hyflex or bichronous, whatever you want to call it, is a bust, if there ever was a modality, that’s a bad idea it’s that one, even though administrators love it because students can choose whether to come to class and do the things they would do in class, or to attend class remotely? Well, yeah, it sounds like “oh, yeah, that could be good.” But the technological problems, and then the social problems, especially the in-class social problems are enormous. And in-class social problems, like small group work, how do you hear what’s going on in the classroom over this low roar of small groups? Okay, so how can you help? How can the students that are learning remotely, what can they do? Now, the way this was invented, by the way, was for a small graduate class, and then okay, like, makes sense, because you’re only dealing with six students in this room and six students who are remote. But other than that, it’s so bad, the logistics, the sound logistics, the coordination that the instructor has to maintain, the attempt at being fair to both groups, at bringing in both groups, when the groups can’t even hear each other well. Now, if we had Hollywood level equipment in our classrooms, we might be able to make this work a little better, but we don’t, and we’re never going to have that. So there are just a lot of technological and social reasons why HyFlex, that’s what I called it in Online Teaching at its Best, what it was called at the time is a complete bust. Now, not to be confused with hybrid or blended learning, which we found has worked exceedingly well. So bringing in some technology, but into a face-to-face environment and that being the base of the class. Now, remote’s nice, but you might not want to do remote all the time for all things. It’s not quite the next best thing to being there. But it’s something and as long as you don’t just stand there and stare at the camera and lecture for an hour. You’ll get complaints about that quickly. And particularly with students today when they really need to be actively involved, actively engaged. So yeah, sure, fine, talk for three minutes, maybe even push it for five, but then give them something to do and you really, really must in remote because otherwise, you’re just some talking head on television.

Todd: I agree completely. In fact, it was funny because I happen to have a digital copy of the book here. And so I typed in a ctrl F and I typed in HyFlex and there’s one comment to the preface that said there’s many different formats out there and then I will tell the listeners, if you’re expecting to learn about HyFlex, the word never shows up again in the book. [LAUGHTER] So, it’s not in there. I mean, you look at the literature that’s out there. And I think it’s fair to say that maybe there are people who can do it. I haven’t really seen it done well and I think Linda’s saying she hasn’t either. And it’s so difficult, especially for a book like this. That’s not what we’re all about. I mean, again, if it even works well, which I’d love to hear that it would be a very advanced book and that’s not what this is. So we do have a lot in there about technology in terms of edtech tools, though. There are those in there, I would just say real quickly, for instance, Padlet’s one of my favorites, I’ll throw that out there. I like Padlet a lot. But there are tools out there, if you want to do a gallery walk, which for instance, if you happen to be in a face-to-face course, you’d set up maybe four stations with big sheets of paper, you put your students into groups, and then they walk from sheet of paper to sheet of paper, and they move around the room. And they can do what’s called a gallery walk. You can do the same thing online with a jamboard, you can set up jamboards so that there’s different pages, and then each group is on a page. And then you just say it’s time to shift pages, they could shift pages. So I’ve done gallery walks, and it’s worked well. I’ve used Padlet for brainstorming. And one of the things I love about Padlet, I’ll have to say is if you are doing some digital teaching in a situation, you can watch what each group is developing on the page for all groups at the same time. I can’t hear all groups at the same time when I walk around the room. So there are certainly some technologies coming out that can really do things well. There’s also things that don’t work very well, though. And I think one of the things you want to keep in mind is just learning theory. Does the technology you’re using advance students, potentially, through learning theory? Does it help with repetition? Does it help with attention? Linda was just mentioning attention, if you lecture too long, you lose their attention. If you do something ridiculously simple or not… I was gonna say stupid, but that sounds rude. But if we do something as a small group that makes no sense, you don’t get their attention either. So using clickers, I have to say, I watched a faculty member one time because they were touted as a person who was very engaging. And this is at a medical school, so I really wanted to see this. And the person used clickers, but used it in a way that asked the students a question, they responded, and the instructor looked up at the board and said, “Here’s how you responded, let’s move on.” And then moved on to the next thing. And about five minutes later gave another question said, “How do you respond?” and they clicked the clicker, and then they moved on again. That had no value at all, and in fact, there was no actual interaction there. So afterwards, I say, can’t you just ask a rhetorical question and just move on? We got to be careful not to use technology just because it’s being used, it should advance the learning process.

John: However, clickers can be effective if it’s combined with peer discussion and some feedback and some just-in-time teaching. If it’s just used to get responses that are ignored, it really doesn’t align with any evidence-based practice or anything we know about teaching and learning. But those per discussions can be useful and there’s a lot of research that show that does result in longer-term knowledge retention when it’s used correctly, but often it’s not.

Todd: Right. And I think that’s a really good point. I’m glad you said that, because Eric Mazur, and his concept tests, for a large extent, that’s where active and engaged learning really took off. And that is a clicker questions. And they can be used as great tools. But again, if you’re using it for the right reason, which is what you just said, My comment is, there’s technology out there, that is a waste of time, and not a good thing to have, because it’s just not being used in a way that’s conducive to learning. So good point, that’s fair.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about who the audience of the book is?

Linda: Sure. It’s actually for anybody who teaches students older than children, I suppose, because it isn’t really designed for teaching children. But other than that, it’s really for people who teach but don’t have the time to read a book. The nice thing about Teaching at its Best is you can go to the table of contents, you go to the index, you could find exactly what you need for your next class. And it’s very oriented towards how to, so it could be for beginners or for experienced people who simply haven’t tried something specific before, or want a twist on it, or just want some inspiration. Because there there are a lot of different teaching techniques in there. And they’re all oriented towards student engagement, every single one of them. But I wanted to comment too, on just how the job of instructor or professor has changed over the past, I don’t know, 40 years, I suppose. I know when I started teaching it was a completely different job. And I started teaching in 1975, when I was 12, of course, but no and I was young to start teaching because I was 25 and there I was 180 students in front of me. So oops, my goodness, what have I done? But that’s exactly what I wanted to do. But you’d go in there, you’d lecture and you’d walk out. You were in complete control of everything. Like, you might throw out a question and you might get a discussion going. But it wasn’t considered to be essential. In fact, there were two teaching techniques back then: there was lecture, and there was discussion. And nobody knew how to do discussion. Now, I had to find out a few things about it when I was doing TA training, because TAs were supposed to be running discussions. But there wasn’t a lot out there. Thank God for Wilbert McKeachie’s book Teaching Tips, because that was about the only source out there you could go to. So anyway, but now the job, I mean, oh, it’s mind boggling what faculty are now expected to do. And they are supposed to, like, learning outcomes. Okay, I love learning outcomes. They’re wonderful. But I didn’t have to do that when I started, I just had to talk about my subject, which I dearly loved. And so, that was nothing. But you’ve got learning outcomes. So you’ve got to be like, a course designer, you have to deal with a student’s mental health problems, right? It’s part of the job, and you’re expected to respond to them. You’re supposed to give them career counseling in careers that you might not know much about, and possibly for good reason, because you’re in your own career. It’s so time consuming, not to mention fair use, oh, yes, fair use has changed, fair use has changed radically. And when you’re dealing with anything online, the rules are totally different. And you’re highly restricted as to what you can use, what you could do. When you’re in a face-to-face classroom, it’s a little bit easier. So yeah, so you got to be a copyright lawyer to stay out of trouble. And then you get involved in accreditation, you get involved in that kind of assessment. So you have to all of a sudden be totally involved in what your program is doing, what your major is doing, where it’s headed. There’s just too much to do. And there are more and more committees and oh, there’s a lot of time wasted in committees. Of course, you’re supposed to publish at the same time and make presentations at conferences. It was like that back then, too. But now, the expectations are higher, and it’s on top of more time in teaching, and more courses. I was teaching four courses a year, and you can’t find that kind of job anymore.

Rebecca: So Linda, you’re saying the animal shelter is going really well now?

Linda: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Todd: That’s hilarious. Well, I want to point out too, and I think Linda’s said it very, very well is that we are expected to do things we never had to use before. Never worried about before. And I love the fair use is great, because when I first started teaching, and I’ve been teaching for 36 years, when I first started teaching, you’d videotape something off TV and show it in class and then put it on the shelf. And I knew people who showed the same video for 10 years. Right now you better be careful about showing the same video for 10 years. But these are things we need to know. I would say also, by the way, this is a really good book for administrators, anybody who would like to give guidance to faculty members, or better understand teaching and learning so that when promotion and tenure comes along, you get a sense of this. And so if you’re saying to the faculty, they should use a variety of teaching strategies. It’s not a bad idea to know a variety of teaching strategies. And so I think it’s good for administrators as well, and graduate students. But I want to take a second and tell you, one of the reviews of the book, I guess, came in just yesterday or the day before from Dan Levy. He’s a senior lecturer at Harvard University. And what he put was Teaching at it’s Best is an absolute gem. Whether you are new to teaching in higher education, or have been doing it for a while, you will find this book’s evidence-based advice on a wide range of teaching issues to be very helpful. The style is engaging and the breadth is impressive. If you want to teach at your best you should read Teaching at its Best. And I love what he put in there because it doesn’t matter if you’re a new teacher or you’ve been doing it for a while, this book’s got a lot of stuff in it.

John: And Dan has been a guest on our podcast, and he’s also an economist, which is another thing in his favor. [LAUGHTER]

Todd: That is good.

John: I do want to comment on lenders observation about how teaching has changed because I came in at a very similar type of experience. I was told by the chair of the department not to waste a lot of time on teaching and to focus primarily on research because that’s what’s most important, and that’s the only thing that’s really ultimately valued here or elsewhere in the job market. But then what happened is a few people started reading the literature on how we learn And then they started writing these books about it. [LAUGHTER] And these books encouraged us to do things like retrieval practice and low-stakes tests, and to provide lots of feedback to students. So those people…[LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: I don’t know any of them.

John: …but as a result of that many people started changing the way they teach in response to this. So some of it is you brought this on to all of us by sharing… [LAUGHTER]

Linda: I apologize.

Todd: Sorry about that.

Linda: I apologize.

Todd: We apologize and you know, I will say too is, so yeah, sorry. Sorry about doing that. But I’m glad you said that.

Linda: We made the job harder didn’t we?

Todd: We did, but you know to just be fair for Linda and I as well as I still remember a faculty member calling me, It must have been about 20 years ago, and I just started doing a little bit of Faculty Development, she was crying, she had given her first assignment in terms of a paper. And she said, I’m sitting here with a stack of papers, and I don’t know how to grade them. And it got me thinking a little bit, how many of the aspects of the job that we’re required to do, were we trained to do? And that’s the stuff that Linda was mentioning as well, is nobody taught me. I’m an industrial psychologist. And so nobody taught me the strategies for delivering information to a group of 200 people. Nobody taught me how to grade essay tests. Nobody taught me how to grade presentations, I didn’t know about fair use and how I could use things. I mean, you go through and list all of the things that you’re required to do. And then look at all the things you were trained to do. And this is tough. And that changed. So I have one quick one I’ll mention is I was hired as an adjunct faculty member before I got my first tenure-track job. And I was teaching 4-4. So I had four classes in the fall, four classes in the spring. And about halfway through the spring, I ran into the department chair, and I was interested to see if I was going to be able to come back and I said, “Hey, Mike, how am I doing?” And this was at Central Michigan University, a pretty good sized school. He said, “You were fantastic.” And I said, “Excellent. What have you heard?” He said, “absolutely nothing.” So when it comes to teaching, what I learned was: research, you had to do well, and teaching, you had to not do terribly. And that is what you were mentioning has changed is now you’re kind of expected to do teaching as well.

Rebecca: And there’s a lot more research in the area now too. So sometimes it’s hard to keep up on it. So books like this can be really helpful in providing a lot of that research in one place.

John: And both of you have written many good books that have guided many, many faculty in their careers, and eliminated that gap between what we’re trained to do and what we actually have to do.

Rebecca: So of course, we want to know when we can have this book in our hands.

Todd: Good news for this book, which is exciting because we really cranked away on this thing and it’s listed in Amazon as being due on April 25. But it actually went to press on January 23. So it’s already out and about three months ahead of schedule.

John: Excellent. We’re looking forward to it. I’ve had my copy on preorder since I saw a tweet about this. I think it was your tweet, Todd, a while back. And I’m very much looking forward to receiving a copy of it.

Todd: Excellent. We’re looking forward to people being able to benefit from copies of it.

Rebecca: So we always wrap up by asking what’s next.

Todd: It’s hard to tell what’s next because I’m exhausted from what’s been [LAUGHTER] ever moving forward, as I’m working on and just finishing a book right now that’s to help faculty in the first year of their teaching. So it’s basically off to a good start. It’s what specifically faculty should do in the first year of getting a teaching position. And aside from that, probably working on my next jigsaw puzzle, I like to do the great big jigsaw puzzles. And so I just finished one that had 33,600 pieces. It is five feet….

Rebecca: Did you say 33,000 pieces?

Todd: No, I said 33,600 pieces.It was the 600 that…

Rebecca: Oh, ok.

Todd: …was difficult. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: Yeah.

Todd: When the puzzle is done, it has standard sized pieces, and it is five feet by 20 feet. So I just enjoy massively putting something together. It’s very challenging. So quite frankly, for those about and listening to this is if you imagine 33,600 puzzle pieces, that’s about as many studies as Linda and I have read to put this book together. [LAUGHTER]

Linda: Nothing to it. [LAUGHTER]

Todd: So that’s it for me. [LAUGHTER] Linda, what are you up to these days?

Linda: Oh, well, I live in la la land. So I’m still doing workshops and webinars and things like that mostly on my books of various kinds, various teaching topics. But I think what I want to do is retake up pastels and charcoals. My father was a commercial artist. And so he got me into pastels and charcoals when I was in high school. Well and then I dropped it to go off to college. Well, I want to get back into it in addition to working at the animal shelter. I know. It’s la la land and I wish la la land on everybody that I like.[LAUGHTER] I hope you all go to la la land and enjoy being a four year old all over again, because that’s the way I feel. I adapted to retirement in about 24 hours. That’s pushing it… you know, it’s more like four. But anyway, I slept on it. [LAUGHTER] That was the end of it. But I know I eased into it. I eased into it. I was still writing. I was still doing, especially before the pandemic, a lot of speaking. So then the pandemic hit and it just turned into online everything. And now I’m back on the road again, to a certain extent. I love it. So anyway, it’s a nice balance. So yeah, I wish you all la la land too.

Todd: That’s great.

Rebecca: That’s something to aspire to.

Todd: Yeah, it is. But you know, since you mentioned the speaking things, I just have to do the quick plug here. Linda, I think you and I, years and years ago, were joking around at POD about who would be the first one to get to the 50 states and have done a presentation in every state. And so I gotta tell you, I’m not even sure where you’re at in the mix, but I am at 49 states. And if any of your listeners are in North Dakota, [LAUGHTER] I could certainly use a phone call from North Dakota.

Linda: Well, I want to go to Vermont. I have not been to Vermont…

Todd: Oh, you haven’t.

Linda: …to give a presentation. So I would enjoy that. But I’ll go to Hawaii. I’ll do anything in Hawaii for you. Absolutely anything. [LAUGHTER] I’ll do gardening, [LAUGHTER] I’ll do dishes, your laundry. I don’t care.

Todd: That is good. Yeah, Linda and I had this gig. It was a long, long time ago. And I don’t know, it must have been 20 years ago we talked about it even. And there was some rules too. You had to be invited. And there had to be some kind of an honorarium or just I mean, it didn’t have to be much, but the concept was you just couldn’t show up at a state and start talking. [LAUGHTER] Otherwise, we’d have both been done a long time ago. But yeah,

Linda: Yeah.

Todd: … it was fun. This is the way nerds have fun. [LAUGHTER]

John: Well, that’s a competition that’s benefited again, a lot of people over the years.

Rebecca: Well, thanks so much for joining us. It’s great to see both of you again, and we look forward to seeing your new book.

Linda: Thank you for this opportunity. It was a pleasure.

Todd: It was so much fun. Thank you

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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.

[MUSIC]

272. Mind Over Monsters

During the last few years, college students have been reporting mental health concerns at unprecedented levels, straining the resources provided by college and university counseling centers. In this episode, Sarah Rose Cavanagh joins us to discuss the role that faculty can play in addressing these concerns.

Sarah is a psychologist, professor and Senior Associate Director for Teaching and Learning at Simmons University. She is the author of The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion and Hivemind: Thinking Alike in a Divided World as well as numerous academic articles and essays in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Lit Hub, Inside Higher Ed, and Vice. Her most recent book, Mind Over Monsters: Supporting Youth Mental Health with Compassionate Challenge will be released in spring 2023.

Show Notes

  • Cavanagh, S. R. (2016). The Spark of Learning: Energizing the college classroom with the science of emotion. West Virginia University Press.
  • Cavanagh, S. R. (2019). Hivemind: The new science of tribalism in our divided world. Grand Central Publishing.
  • Cavanagh, S. R. (forthcoming, 2023). Mind Over Monsters: Supporting Youth Mental Health with Compassionate Challenge. Beacon Press.
  • Elizabeth Romero
  • Ryan Glode
  • Reacting to the Past
  • Jasmin Veerapen
  • Gary Senecal
  • Miller, L. (2020). Why Fish Don’t Exist: a story of loss, love, and the hidden order of life. Simon & Schuster.
  • Robert Sapolsky’s Publications
  • Auel, J. M. (2002). The Clan of the Cave Bear. Bantam.
  • Kelly Leonard
  • Felten, P., & Lambert, L. M. (2020). Relationship-Rich Education: How human connections drive success in college. JHU Press.
  • Viji Sathy and Kelly Hogan
  • Michele Lemons
  • James Lang

Transcript

John: During the last few years, college students have been reporting mental health concerns at unprecedented levels, straining the resources provided by college and university counseling centers. In this episode, we discuss the role that faculty can play in addressing these concerns.

[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 Sarah Rose Cavanagh. Sarah is a psychologist, professor and Senior Associate Director for Teaching and Learning at Simmons University. She is the author of The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion and Hivemind: Thinking Alike in a Divided World as well as numerous academic articles and essays in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Lit Hub, Inside Higher Ed, and Vice. Her most recent book, Mind Over Monsters: Supporting Youth Mental Health with Compassionate Challenge will be released in spring 2023.

Welcome back, Sarah.

Sarah: Thank you. I’m delighted to be here.

John: Today’s teas are:… Sarah, are you drinking any tea?

Sarah: No, I always disappoint you. I am yet again drinking coffee.

Rebecca: Yet again, such a stable person in our lives with your coffee. [LAUGHTER] I have blue sapphire tea.

Sarah: That’s a pretty name.

Rebecca: Yeah, it’s tasty. And my new favorite.

John: And I am drinking spring cherry green tea here in the midst of winter in upstate New York. We’ve invited you here today to discuss Mind over Monsters. Could you talk a little bit about the origin of this project?

Sarah: For me, I think writing is more organic than it is planned, and so it felt a little bit like the book decided it needed to be written, rather than I decided to write the book. There was just such a groundswell of interest around young adult’s mental health, people talking about it, podcasts, books. And I am a college professor, I’m a psychologist, I am an educational developer. I’m the mom of an adolescent, and so I couldn’t help but be concerned and interested in this topic. And I also felt that, as someone who has struggled with anxiety my entire life, panic disorder in particular, that I had some small bits of wisdom from my lived experiences to share. And so it just all came together.

John: How prevalent are mental health issues among youth today?

Sarah: They’re pretty prevalent, unfortunately. Some people have even labeled it an epidemic. For instance, in 2021, three of the major American organizations dedicated to youth and adolescent mental health joined together and declared a national state of emergency, which was an unprecedented move. And they cited in particular the effects of the pandemic and the fact that already marginalized groups along lines of race and ethnicity, gender, and sexuality and income were bearing the brunt of the psychological effects of the pandemic. But also there’s a lot of complexities surrounding figuring out whether rates have truly changed or whether there’s also changes in stigma surrounding mental health, which are laudatory changes, we want people not to feel stigma, and to come out and reach out for treatment. There’s also changes in the thresholds of the diagnoses themselves, they shift every several years. And there’s also changes in people’s willingness to seek treatment, and also their decisions about the level at which they might need treatment. And so there’s some evidence that a lot of these complexities may be making epidemics seem worse than it is. But what is clear is that more young adults and especially college students are expressing more distress and asking for help with that distress. Counseling centers on campus are absolutely overwhelmed and students are expressing a lot of frustration with not receiving the level and the timing of care that they need in those settings, and so clearly, we need changes.

Rebecca: In a lot of public conversations, we’re hearing debates about needing to show compassion to adolescents who are struggling, but then also others who argue that youth is too coddled. Can you talk a little bit about what you would advocate for?

Sarah: And that’s a delightfully easy setup for me, [LAUGHTER] because in the subtitle of the book is “compassionate challenge and why we need to support youth mental health with compassionate challenge.” And I argue that this debate and tension between compassion and challenge is one of these false dichotomies that we human beings seem to adore. [LAUGHTER] Students clearly need compassion, and I think compassion has to come first. For me, what that looks like is establishing classroom communities and learning environments on campus that are characterized by safety and by a feeling of belongingness. You need to feel safe enough to take risks. And you need to feel that you’re supported not just by your instructor, but also your fellow students and the Student Success Office and all of the people on campus. But once we’ve established that grounding and that safe setting, then I think to truly learn and grow, we do need to take risks, we do need to step outside our comfort zones, and we need to be challenged. And I think that challenge can be very positive. I spend one of the last chapters of the book really digging into the science of play, and how play is all about being vulnerable and taking risks and play can be scary. And you can only play in settings where you, again, feel safe. And I think, finally, what I call compassionate challenge isn’t just important for teaching and learning. As I draw out in two interviews with clinical psychologists Ryan Glode and Elly Romero, compassionate challenge is also really key to addressing anxiety and symptoms of mental health. And I don’t think we’re going to be doing any therapy in the classroom, but learning environments marked by compassionate challenge are ones that are consistent with principles that help address and resolve anxiety, which again, involves facing your fears, and environments where you’re technically safe and there’s a facilitator there to help you manage those risks.

Rebecca: John and I were talking earlier about some of the things that I had observed in my own classroom in the last year with an increase in desire for perfection, like kind of perfectionism or anxiety around not being perfect and not being right and working with students in class and trying to find ways to help students work through that so that they could take risks or could show things in progress to get feedback so that they could continue to improve. Can you talk a little bit more about what that might look like in a classroom?

Sarah: Well, I think that a lot of that brings up assessment and grading. And I think why we see that perfectionism in the classroom is that students are very concerned about their grades, because they believe, to some extent rightly, that their grades are going to translate into future security, and to getting into the right graduate school or getting the right job. And we do this to students. In high school, we train them to be so focused on the grades in order to get into the correct college and I have a high schooler and her grades are constantly just streaming, coming in in real time to her phone. And then we’re surprised when students get to college and they’re too focused on their grades. [LAUGHTER] And so I think that helping students with that need for perfection is probably reforming our grading systems so that there isn’t that need, that that focus on perfectionism isn’t necessarily rewarded in the same way. And instead, we’re rewarding taking risks and doing something creative, and maybe failing and having multiple iterations of something and seeing that work can grow over time, which, I think, amplifies creativity

Rebecca: There’s a lot more focus on process than on the product, then.

Sarah: Yes.

John: You mentioned using play in classrooms, what would be an example of the use of play in the classroom?

Sarah: Well, I think you can directly play through using improv, and especially in the early parts of the semester when you’re all getting to know each other, a lot of icebreakers are very playful. And community building can be very playful. I think there are ways like the whole reacting to the past role playing approach in history. You can easily roleplay in literature classes. So I think you can directly play. I think that what play can also be is almost like a philosophy or a stance that you take, that what we’re doing in the classroom is not dire. And, related to the grading that we were just talking about, there aren’t large stakes, that what we’re doing here is this is kind of a sandbox, where we’re playing with intellectual ideas, we’re testing things out, we’re experimenting. And there’s a sense in which it’s lighthearted, even when the topics are not light hearted, I think that we can take this lighthearted stance with our students. And I think also mixing things up and not getting too into routines, can also be playful. And I feel like I have a lot of tricks in my teaching bag, different discussion techniques and ways of getting us up and moving and things like that. But there’s always a point, kind of through the three-quarter mark of the semester, where they’ve seen it all. And so I try to save one or two things for that point in the semester and kind of throw everything out the window and do something entirely different. And I think that that can be playful as well. And so I don’t think that play in the classroom is all about things that we think of as play proper, like improv and roleplay; it can also be all of these other techniques.

Rebecca: One of the things that I’ve studied in the past is play. And one of the things that’s interesting about play is that there’s rules and there’s structure. And so a lot of times we think that play is just chaos, but actually play almost always has rules. They might not be formal rules, they might be informal rules. But that’s a way that people can feel safe and able to play is that they understand what the structure is and what the rules are.

Sarah: Those are great points.

Rebecca: You think that it’s hard to facilitate because it might seem so foreign, but actually we’re all very familiar with play. And it is actually incredibly structured. We know that structured things can be really inclusive. And so you might be hesitant to try something that seems like it might be unstructured, but I think, lo and behold, play is actually structured.

Sarah: Yeah, and a lot of those classic improv activities have strict rules in fact and one of the rules is that there’s a kindness.So, even when animals play… you know, I watch dogs play a lot at dog parks, and it can get quite vicious looking, but the animals are safe, you don’t harm each other and that is a strict rule of play as well.

John: Some of this book is drawn from research you conducted as part of the Student Voices project. Could you tell us a little bit about that project?

Sarah: Absolutely. So this was a project that grew out of my last grant from the Davis Educational Foundation. I had done a quantitative study that I talked with you all about in the past. And we had some funds left. And I had an honor student, Jasmin Veerapen, who’s now at Columbia, getting her social work degree, and she needed an honors thesis project. And so we collaborated together and ran a qualitative follow up and interviewed students from 35 different very diverse types of institutions across the country. And it was not a project focused explicitly on mental health, but on emotions and learning. So for instance, the first two questions we asked of all of our participants was: What was the best learning experience you have had in college, and tell us all about it?” And the second was, “What was one of the worst learning experiences you had in college?” ..and their insights are all so rich, and I share a number of their wonderful stories in the book. It’s a great pleasure.

John: Would that be something that you’d encourage faculty to do in their own classes?

Sarah: Yes, it was very illustrative, a lot came out of that. And we actually had worked with a consultant, Gary Senecal, because this was my first qualitative research study, and so I didn’t really know what I was doing. And he’s done a lot of qualitative research, and so he was our consultant. And he helped us shape the questions. And I think he had a large role in shaping those first two questions, because they’re just open ended enough that students share very different things, but then they all coalesce, and so it was very informative. And I think many professors could learn a lot asking their students those questions.

Rebecca: You included many narratives throughout your book, some of your own personal stories and some of the stories of student voices from this project. Can you talk about why you decided to include narrative as a part of the book?

Sarah: Yes, when I think about the books that I most like to read, the nonfiction books that I most like to read, they have a really strong narrative component. So I recently read Why Fish Don’t Exist, which was one of my favorite reads out of the last few years. And I love Robert Sapolsky’s books, and I’m a story person. And I mostly read fiction. And so I really enjoy nonfiction that has a strong narrative component. So that was one of my motivations, that I wanted to write a book that was like the books that I like to read. I think that story, though, also is really compelling. I think that there are insights that are embedded in stories that things like quantitative data can’t always tap into in the same way. And I think in particular, for topics like this, and for emotions and for students’ perceptions of their own learning, I think that we need story.

John: In addition to narrative, which is really compelling in your book, you also bring in a number of other disciplinary studies. Could you talk a little bit about some of the other disciplines and some of the other research your book relies on

Sarah: That’s a little, maybe, too far into humanities, I’m a little worried. I am a social scientist by training. And I’m very aware of the fact that there is disciplinary expertise. But I do bring in a lot of humanity’s work, in particular monster theory. So I read quite a bit of monster theory, which wasn’t even something that I knew existed before then, but that’s in there. I do something that I get from my mother. I used to make fun of my mother for always citing literature and stories as evidence for things. I would take an anthropology class and come home from college, and we would talk about it. And she would shake her head at me and say, “Well, that’s not how it happened, in Clan of the Cave Bear. [LAUGHTER] But I do a little bit about that. So I bring in some stories from novels and short stories that I think illustrate the points that I’m trying to make as well. And then I think, most compellingly, I bring in actual experts from their disciplines. So I interview a sociologist about her research on trigger warnings. I interview a Latin American Studies scholar about his work on vocation, which I found so fascinating. And I also interviewed a couple of clinicians, as I said, and Kelly Leonard who is a Second City improv person, and so I bring in those other disciplines through the lens of the people I’m interviewing.

Rebecca: Sometimes it’s really helpful to have these illustrations because statistics can go only so far in helping us understand what that actually looks like and feels like in our classrooms or in the experience that students are having because we can feel really far removed… or I’m feeling farther and farther removed [LAUGHTER] from students and it helps to hear things in their own voices. And we don’t always ask them enough. I wish we asked more.

John: …which is something really troubling to those of us who focus mostly on statistical analyses, and so forth. [LAUGHTER] But it’s true, a compelling story can be much more effective in convincing people of some concept than any number of studies that you might present to them.

Sarah: But we do have lots of citations for people like you, John. But I tried to bring both sources to the table,

Rebecca: …which is good, because you got both of us here.

Sarah: Mm hmm.

Rebecca: So can you talk a little bit about the intended audience of your book?

Sarah: Absolutely. My primary audience, I think, is people who are doing the work of higher education, so college instructors, staff like me who work in teaching centers, and student success offices, administrators, and so it does have a strong higher ed thread throughout. That said, I don’t think there’s a super bright line between especially late high school and early college in some of these concerns. And I think it could be useful for high school educators, especially those who might be advising students about the college selection process. I think that there is some insight and some sections, maybe, that could be of interest to college students themselves, and possibly their parents. But I would want them to know that it’s not a parenting book. I don’t want anyone to pick it up thinking it’s a parenting book. There’s long sections, again, on trigger warnings and institutions needing to actually carry out their DE&I statements. And someone picking it up thinking they’re going to get some pithy advice about parenting is not going to be satisfied.

John: Would this be a good focus for faculty reading groups or book clubs?

Sarah: I think so. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: We think so too. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, it looks like, yeah, it looks like some really wonderful topics that you’re exploring to think about all of higher ed in a lot of ways, and perhaps some reimagining that needs to happen.

Sarah: Oh, thank you.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about what we, as educators or people working in higher ed, can do to create a more compassionate and challenging environment for our students? What are some actions we can take?

Sarah: Well, I think you have to do the compassion piece first. And I think that colleges really need to be examining, and I think they are examining, there’s lots of other people sharing this message of compassion and relationship, rich education, thinking of Peter Felton and Leo Lambert’s book. And I think that we need to embed compassion in the atmosphere in the classroom and the dorms. I think that we need to pay a lot of attention to community. I think that we need to shore up resources in counseling centers. I’ve been attending, as part of the research for this book, lots of webinars with people who are looking at this topic from a lot of different frameworks. And there’s a lot of interesting work being done on peer support, which I’m both interested in and also wary of. I think that peers are our natural first source of support. And that peer support could be really life changing for a lot of college students. But just like we shouldn’t be doing therapy in the classroom, I don’t think it’s the responsibility of college students to do counseling for their fellow peers. And they’re trained to spot warning signs and to do the kind of heavy lifting that a lot of counseling involves. And so I think that we’re going to need to dedicate more resources to trained clinicians in our counseling centers. In my interview with Ryan Glode in the book, who is, again, a clinical counseling psychologist, he really feels that counseling centers provide just sort of venting sorts of therapy, and that he’s a strong advocate of cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure therapy, and that students need much more individualized treatment and approaches. And so I think that that’s an interesting thing to explore. And the last thing I would say is, I always say this, but faculty need more support and time, because there’s been a lot of great essays coming out, the last couple of weeks even I’ve seen, about the fact that student success is really faculty success, and faculty are where students get more of their support than anywhere else. And we can try to reach out to them in many different ways, but they land in our classrooms, we know that we’ll see them in their classrooms, even if they’re not leaving their dorm much, they usually come to class. And so it’s an entry point. Mentoring is such a strong part of the college experience and so wonderful for growth and mental health. And so I think that for faculty to really apply all of this and have really close student relationships and really rich classrooms and all of these things, they need more time and more support. And so I think that the two places I would put my support is in the counseling center and then in supporting faculty, giving them the kinds of time and the kinds of support that will allow them to be the teachers that they can be when they have the time to do so.

Rebecca: Are there specific places where you found compassion to be lacking that surprised you in your research? We know that there’s a [LAUGHTER] strain on counseling centers, but were there some other places that really rose to really needing some attention,

Sarah: None of the students we talked to had trouble coming up with either a best or worst learning experience. And the good ones are really, really good. And the poor ones were pretty poor. And so there’s a lot of unevenness, I think, and I think that that, when I talk as I just did about, if you just give faculty more time, then they’ll blossom, and then the students will blossom, and sometimes when I have conversations with administrators about that, or see policies being enacted on different campuses, I can tell that there’s a wariness that if you give faculty time, they’ll just either do more research, or they will check out and that there’s a danger there and we need to work faculty harder. And I do see in talking to the students about their best and worst learning experiences, that the people teaching those worst learning experiences really need to step up their game a little bit. And so I think that there are those pockets out there that still don’t apply themselves to their teaching or look at it as an onerous responsibility. But the good teachers are really fantastic. And so maybe leveling that out a little bit, bringing the worst learning experiences up to the best learning experiences might be somewhere I recommend some attention.

John: One of the areas where people often see a dichotomy between compassion and challenge is in terms of deadlines in courses where material later in the course build on material earlier in the course, it’s really easy for students who are struggling to get further and further behind when they don’t have at least some sort of a deadline. Do you have any strategies for addressing that, besides focusing on the learning rather than on grades? What can we do to help ensure that students make regular progress while still maintaining compassion?

Sarah: Um hmm. I think this is the question of the moment. [LAUGHTER] And I can tell you, I just had a conversation with a reporter at The Chronicle who was writing a whole big piece on just this issue. And we at Simmons just met with our advisory council, who are a group of about 12 faculty who we check in with about what faculty needs are. And this was their number one answer, like clearly. So we’re going to do a panel in the spring at Simmons, where we have some faculty with very different perspectives. We’re hoping to draw out some of these tensions and have this discussion. And so I do think it’s an excellent question. And I think that a deadline is a good example of where compassionate challenge needs to be. I think that all of us need the structure of deadlines. I myself benefit [LAUGHTER] greatly from the structure of deadlines and schedules. And I think especially for college students in the early years, if they’re so-called traditionally aged students, some of the process of those first year or two of college is learning time management and in scaffolding them into good time management. And so I think that structure is very important. As Rebecca was saying earlier, it’s also an inclusive teaching strategy, Viji Sathy and Kelly Hogan have written extensively about that. But I think without compassion, deadlines are going to worsen student anxiety, and also it doesn’t make a lot of sense for contemporary life. And so some techniques that I’ve seen are things like using frequent tokens instead of just no deadlines or 100% flexibility with deadlines and things kind of pile up toward the end. You can have tokens where students can have a set number of missed assignments, or dropped assignments, or I need an extra week or two. I think that it’s important in whatever you do, if you are going to be flexible to be transparent with all of the students about it, because I think that some students will ask for flexibility and the other students won’t know that they can ask for flexibility. And a lot of that falls out along the lines where everything falls out and creates inequities. So I think that having some structure, but with some flexibility built in is probably the best way to go. I was interviewing a biology instructor for a different project. And she was telling me what she did is she had pretty close to unlimited flexibility within modules. So she had her whole semester set up in modules, but then you had to submit things within that module, because as you say, especially some fields, the information builds, and if you miss part, you’re going to be in trouble. And so I thought that was another interesting approach. But I agree that in particular when we’re thinking about mental health, that structure is better. And the last thing I’ll say is that at my previous campus, we had a panel of the Dean of first-year students, it was the head of our accessibility office, the head of our counseling center, and then a clinical counseling psychologist from our psychology department about issues surrounding student mental health. And one of the instructors asked about deadlines, and they were all unanimous, they said, deadlines are necessary. The worst thing you can do for a student high in anxiety is allow no deadlines or submissions whenever they like, because that will quickly get them into a negative place, and that they need that structure. So I think it’s a great example of the need for both compassion and challenge.

Rebecca: One of the things that I think about when I hear structure or certain kinds of support is routine. And you talked a little earlier about having some routine, but then disruptions to that routine. Can you talk about why some of the disruptions to the routine might be important, or why not having a routine all the time could be helpful for students?

Sarah: Well, I think the positives of routine are that they’re reassuring, for one thing. I think we all as human beings, it’s relaxing to settle into a routine, and it’s also lower in cognitive load. If you just know, okay, every Thursday, I have a homework assignment, every Tuesday I have a quiz, you don’t have to constantly be scrambling and figuring things out every week. And so I think that routines can be reassuring, and they can also be more transparent and easier to follow along. I think where the disruption is great is it re-energizes. So it’s great to be reassured and calm things down. But then that can get boring and kind of stultifying after a little while. And so once you have established the routine to mix things up once in a while, I think, can be re-energizing. And so I think that’s where a blend of the two can be really powerful.

Rebecca: You mentioned that you do this in your own classes. Can you share an example of one of the ways you mix things up in your own class,

Sarah: it’s not terribly exciting. But the one that I do this most clearly is in my motivation and emotion class. And in that class, we’re covering different topics and we’re reading research articles and doing presentations. And again, I try to mix things up, but I have a set number of things that I mix things up. And then usually right after Thanksgiving, I throw everything out the window and we just spend a week doing something different. And so we used to watch a movie together. And then we would write an essay about the motivation and emotion aspects and the themes that we’ve talked about all semester long, how it played out in those characters lives. And I was showing Lars and the Real Girl, I don’t know if it’s kind of an older movie now and stopped doing that for a while for a number of reasons. But then more recently, in this activity called “making the world a better place.” And I had a selection of psychological science articles, each one that tackled a societal problem, like climate change, or misinformation, and how we could use principles from recent psychological science research and to help improve this societal conundrum. And then we did small group work with snacks. And they would work on little group presentations all together that were very low stakes, and then present them to each other. And we would have a grant competition among them. But it was just this week where the routine was very different.

Rebecca: It sounds like almost a culminating point of the semester, instead of ramping up stress with a big project, it’s ramping down the stress with something that’s applied, but in a more low key way.

John: …but also valuable and fun.

Rebecca: Yeah, definitely. To me, it sounds like: “[LOUD EXHALE]”

John: We always end with the question: “What’s next?”

Sarah: Well, I have a new grant. Well, a semi-new grant. And it’s a National Science Foundation Incubator Grant with my co-PI, Michele Lemons of Assumption University. And it is examining assessment, feedback, and grading in undergraduate bio education in particular. And so we had a qualitative portion, we had a survey portion, and we had student interviews, and we’ve just wrapped data collection, So I have a lot of writing and meaning-making and analysis, and then a full proposal grant [LAUGHTER] to write. So on the research side, that’s what’s going on. And on the writing side, I don’t know yet. I have a few possible ideas. I’m in a writers group with Jim Lang, who I know you both know, and his new book, which is going to be fantastic… and you have to have him on the show… is all about how academics can successfully write trade books for a wider audience. And I’ve been enjoying the chapters as he’s been writing them. And I was reading his chapter on where to get your book idea, and I realized that I’ve written a couple of books now from my expertise, but I don’t have to stick with my expertise. I could do something super fun. And so I don’t know.

John: Not that your expertise isn’t fun or interesting. [LAUGHTER]

Sarah: Well, thank you. And anything I write will obviously have a strong psychology component, it’s just like in my bones at this point. But yeah, so stay tuned. We’ll see.

Rebecca: Sounds like some exciting things down the pike for sure.

John: We look forward to hearing more about that when you’re ready to share that.

Sarah: Oh, thanks.

John: Well, thank you. It’s great talking to you.

Sarah: Thank you. Always a pleasure.

Rebecca: Yeah, I always learn stuff from our conversations, so I’m looking forward to having you on again in the future.

Sarah: Oh, thanks. Same.

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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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264. Collaborative Rubric Construction

Students may not immediately trust faculty who they perceive as being different from themselves. In this episode, Dr. Fen Kennedy joins us to discuss how collaborative rubric construction can be used as a strategy for building and maintaining trust. Fen is an assistant professor of dance at the University of Alabama and the author of a chapter in Picture a Professor, edited by Jessamyn Neuhaus.

Show Notes

John: Students may not immediately trust faculty who they perceive as being different from themselves. In this episode, we explore how collaborative rubric construction can be used as a strategy for building and maintaining trust.

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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.

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John: Our guest today is Dr. Fen Kennedy. Fen is an assistant professor of dance at the University of Alabama. They are also the author of a chapter in Picture a Professor, edited by Jessamyn Neuhaus. Welcome, Fen.

Fen: Hi both of you, it’s good to be here.

Rebecca: Our teas today are:… Fen, are you drinking tea?

Fen: I am because I saw that there was a tea list, so I am drinking one of my favorite teas, which is a Lapsang Souchong. And because of the theme of my chapter, I have it in my wonderful mug that says, “What a beautiful day to respect other people’s pronouns.” Cheers.

Rebecca: Cheers. That sounds wonderful.

John: It does and you know, I’ve wanted to drink that tea on here, but I was never quite sure how to pronounce it. [LAUGHTER] I do drink it fairly often, it’s a really nice tea. I keep it separate from the others so the smoke flavor doesn’t infuse the other teas.

Rebecca: See, unlike you, I just embarrass myself by trying to say things I don’t know how to say [LAUGHTER].

Fen: I have a wonderful tea from Plum Tea Company, which is the Picard tea, which is a variant of Earl Grey, which is wonderful.

Rebecca: Nice.

John: And a nice nerdy thing to do too. Many of our guests would appreciate that aspect of it, and we would too. I’m drinking a wild blueberry black tea today.

Rebecca: Oh, That sounds nice, John.

John: It’s very good.

Rebecca: A little different than your normal. I just have Earl Grey today.

John: But not the Picard variant.

Rebecca: Yeah, unfortunately, I didn’t know that that was an option.

Fen: It’s wonderful, I think there’s kind of sweet orange notes in it. I’m a big fan.

Rebecca: That sounds really good. We might have to look, John.

John: So we invited you here, today, to discuss your chapter in Picture a Professor entitled “Collaborative Rubric Creation as a Queer Transgender Professor’s Tactic for Building Trust in The Classroom.” You begin the chapter by noting that transgender and non-binary faculty are rarities in higher education. Could you describe some of the challenges that you face as a non- binary transgender faculty member, who’s also a first-gen student and an immigrant?

Fen: Well, that’s a mouthful. [LAUGHTER] My chapter title is a mouthful and then the question is a mouthful, and well, I will do my best. And so well, I thought about this in advance. And I could give you some of the easiest figures and more objective measures of those obstacles. For example, I worked out quite recently, as an immigrant on an H1 visa, which is a work visa, but not a citizenship or residence visa, you are not allowed to work outside of the contract that you’re hired for. So any work that I’ve done outside of the university, I have had to donate my income to someone else, or just refuse payments. And I worked out that with the money I have lost being an immigrant, I could have put down a second deposit on a house.

Rebecca: …not insignificant.

Fen: No, so it’s not insignificant. The other thing that I think a lot of people don’t realize is that as an immigrant, you can’t really buy your books unless you absolutely know you’re staying in the country. So during my PhD, when you want to look up something, you can’t turn to your wonderful bookshelf and pull down the book that you own, it’s write to the library and see if it’s in stock and see when you can get it. So it’s this little logistical things. And I know we’ll get to gender because the chapter is about gender. But on the first-gen student, something that comes to my mind is: I was in a teacher training and the person giving this training said, “Well, you’re first-generation students, they’re really going to struggle in the classroom, you’re going to know who they are, they’re going to have a hard time knowing how to do things.” And I sat there getting my PhD, getting ready to teach and thinking, I’m not sure I like how I’m being described as someone who’s going to struggle who’s going to have these challenges, and no one has ever said, What advantages does a first-generation student have? What do they bring that other students lack? And so I think sometimes one of the big things is that you’re perceived as a challenge, you’re perceived as someone who’s going to struggle, which means that when you do something that’s original, or creative, or critical, often the response is to say, “Oh, that’s because you don’t understand” rather than, “Oh, this could be a productive direction that other people might want to take also.”

Rebecca: Those are some really good points. I think many of our students are labeled in all kinds of ways that prevent us from seeing all that they have to offer, and how much they can move our classrooms forward and how much we can learn from our students and not have this expectation that they’re going to fail. I really appreciate that you put that right out front.

Fen: I think also, when you follow that line of thinking, a lot of teachers… and I think the book is getting towards this point as a whole… a lot of teachers plan to teach to the students they want rather than planning to teach the students they have. So when they design syllabi, when they design policies, when they design their standards for the course, they picture an ideal student and say how would that student fit in? Rather than saying, “Okay, who is coming into my classroom? What do they need when they get out of it? And how do I take them on that journey in a way that makes them feel engaged, delighted, enthusiastic, valued.” And so we’re talking about Picture a Professor, but maybe not picturing our students is another thing that we could work on.

John: That could be a sequel, Picture a Student.

Fen: Absolutely.

John: I think when we all start teaching, we often have some assumptions about what our students are going to be like. But the reality of our students is often quite different. And that can lead to some challenges for both students and faculty. Following up on that a little bit, what do you do to try to find out more about who your students are.

Fen: So one of the things I tried to do is, think of the people that I hung out with, in my day-to-day life. I hung out with other immigrants, I hang out with first-gen students, I hang out with queer people. And I know about their barriers to coming into education. I hear a lot of people who’ve had really, really awful experiences. And I think about myself, and I was like, “What is the kind of classroom environment that I would have enjoyed? What is the kind of classroom environment that they would have felt happy in and at home in.” So I start with trying to make the door to the classroom as wide as possible, rather than keeping it narrow and forcing students to fit their way through. And then the other thing, I think, what I do is, I started university teaching when I was 23 and I was younger than some of the people in the room with me. And so I didn’t feel like I could step into a classroom and have authority from any degree that I had, or any age that I had, or any status that I had. And so really, if I wanted my students to do what I wanted them to do, I felt like the other end of the deal was I had to know more and teach it really well. And so coming from that perspective, I think, and not thinking of myself as entitled to teach and not thinking of myself as entitled to be at the front of the room, but having to work to be at the front of the room. And part of that work is making a space for the students who are in the room with me. And so I don’t have particular always things that I do. But I try and improve my classroom every semester and make it better for more people.

Rebecca: One of the things that I really appreciated about what you’ve said, Fen, is an underscoring of the term “delightful” multiple times, so that it’s not just something that a group of students can deal with, or it’s survivable, [LAUGHTER] which I think is maybe the bar that is often set, but actually, that you set the bar at delightful. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Fen: Well, it helps that I’ve always really liked being in classrooms. And school for a while was my safe space. Which means that I, in some ways, have in my past, lacked empathy with people who have not found that and who have not liked learning. And it took some hard experiences for me to realize, “Okay, this is something I’m going to have to step away from, because we’re taught often, if you don’t like learning, you’re lazy and it’s something of a personal failure, and you could be doing better.” And then realizing how many people are in a situation where they are taught that academia hates, and why would you want to constantly be in a space that hates you, for things that you have no control over? But when I start to teach things, I think, “How can I share this subject that I find really cool? How can I share it in a way that conveys my enthusiasm to the people I’m teaching it to.” And that’s fairly easy in a dance technique class, because dance is great fun, and also hard work. It is more difficult when you are teaching graduate critical theory. It’s more difficult when you’re teaching the required history course. But I love critical theory and I love history. And I find them really fun. And I think part of the way that you get people to enjoy the classroom is to give them ownership of the material and allow them to not step back at a distance and see the knowledge that is far off that they must aspire to, but put them in the middle of it and say this is work that we’re doing together. I say that I try and teach history, not to teach students history, but to teach the historians of the future, which means we’ve got to have debates and we’ve got to have conversations and we’ve got to have feelings and opinions that are legitimately ours rather than the ones we think we ought to have. [LAUGHTER]

John: That brings into the topic of your article, which is collaborative rubric creation with students. Could you talk a little bit about how you started doing that and how it’s been working?

Fen: Yes. So I really came to this idea of collaborative rubric creation because I was assigned a choreography course to teach for the first time and that gave me the opportunity to think philosophically about how does one grade choreography? [LAUGHTER] How do you grade someone making art? Because that is always… and I talked about this a little bit in the chapter… that’s always a big problem of a question in creative disciplines. There’s not a qualitative answer. There’s not a specific right or wrong. So how do you start to design that. And I must here, give a shout out to Jessica Zeller, who is a phenomenal dance teacher and also a really important voice in the conversation around what we call ungrading, and thinking about how to take down some of these structures of ranking students in boxes. And so looking through her ideas and trying to work out myself, and I thought, “Oh, what if we start the semester by talking about what art means to my students and what they want to do as choreographers,” because not every student wants to be a high-art experimental installation, interdisciplinary maker, even I kind of wish that more people were that thing. I don’t want to make them into me, I want to make them into the best version of them, which means I’ve got to understand what they want And also sometimes knowing that they don’t have exposure to all the things that they might want to be. So what’s the balance there? And I remember the first time I did it, I kind of structured it into their creative process, their self-directed learning and their citizenship. And what happened when we talked about the three different categories is they ran into all their assumptions about what they thought dance was. And so somebody had put down that an excellent choreographer uses partnering. They’ve done these wonderful, like written out on paper, and I said, “Well, do you think all expert choreographers use partnering? Do you think a piece is less if it doesn’t?” And they were, “Oh, wait, no, that doesn’t work.” And I said, “Okay, so what is the skill that’s being used? And we boil down, and so we got past these things that use partnering, like use motif and repetition, and started to realize what was underpinning those ideas, not the ingredients of what choreography had to include, but how you went about making choreography. And one of the big moments for the class was actually when we talked about citizenship, because they talked about “Oh, show up on time and answer all the questions.” And I said, “Well, with that in mind, how can you be a good citizen on a bad day? How can you be a good citizen when you are sick, or stressed out or having a panic attack?” And they went “Oh,” and so rather than, again, these indicators of good behavior and good practice, what is underpinning that or with a sense of being responsible for the space and yourselves and others, which sometimes is going to look different? It might be, “you have to email me and let me know if you’re not being there so I can shuffle the group’s around.” It might look like, “I’m going to take it notes for my friends and catch them up,” it might be “I’m going to zoom into class on a day that I can’t make it to class.” And that is a professional way of being a good citizen. And so it became a really generative conversation. And I went, “Okay, I’m going to do this every time I can.”

Rebecca: Sounds like a really productive conversation, and probably really pushing students to embody what it means to be a choreographer in a way that they wouldn’t otherwise approach the class.

Fen: I think it also gets them past the answers that they’ve just kind of learned by rote. And when I do this in technique classes, I start off by asking them, “What do you want to learn?” And usually, there’s a whole range from people who want to do their situps and their push ups at the start of class every day and get strong, there’s the people who would absolutely not like to do that. There’s the people who want to improvise, there’s the people who do not want to improvise. And when we only kind of pull it together, we see where the biggest priorities are and where, and what’s actually falling off the edges. And then I say, “Well, how do you want to be assessed on learning those things?” And so then, rather than their assessment criteria,being their straight knees and their wonderful athletic posture, we get things coming out, like “my problem solving,” “my adaptability,” “my ability to set a goal for myself and meet it within the range of my body.” And I really enjoy getting them to set goals that they’re invested in, so they understand that they have reasons behind them that they can then work towards, because they’re what they want to be working on anywhere.

Rebecca: One of the things you said a minute ago, in two different contexts was the students don’t always know where they want to be, or who they might want to be, or what kind of choreography they might want to make. How do you help students down that journey to discover and explore? Because that seems very tied to your rubric and your strategies here.

Fen: Yes, it is. And actually, it’s this process of creating trust. And I say that the rubric helps create trust, because they know that they’re not going to have a surprise. But if we’re all invested in the same goals, then we’re going on a path that we all kind of want to be on, which means that I get to say, “Look, I’m going to try something with you might seem really silly, and I want you to try it, I want you to try it for 15 minutes, and then we’ll talk about it, will you trust me enough to be really silly with me for 15 minutes?” And usually the answer is yes, because we’ve already agreed that we’re on the same page with what we want to get out of the experience. And I’m not going to suddenly swerve off into a different direction on my own agenda. So I think this idea of creating trust and buy-in allows me to expose students to a lot of different things, and a lot of different ideas, not because I’m saying this is right and this is where I want you to go even if you don’t understand why. But in the service of these goals that we’ve agreed upon, that we share, I think this will be helpful.

John: So it sounds like this process of rubric creation is not just creating this sense of trust, but you’re also breaking down some of their preconceptions about what the class is going to be about. Do you ever have trouble getting students to converge on a rubric? You mentioned that students come in with very different expectations, How do you resolve some of the differences in those expectations as a class?

Fen: Well, sometimes we just do all of them, if we have time to take different approaches, and we say, we’re going to compromise here, we’re going to do this some days, and not this other days, like I’ll do your situps, a nice, stretchy, soft, warm up, and we’ll see which one we like better. And at the midterm, we’ll check in and we’ll decide which one we like. And if we want to shift things. So, I think that’s how we’re resolving. And sometimes we sit down, we talk about it until we find out what we actually want and where the middle ground is. And on occasion, I say “There are limits what I can provide, and I cannot provide this experience for you. It is out of my skill set. Sorry, this is where you can go and get it.” And I think that two threads that I’m hearing myself say that I want to pull out the idea that things can change, that what you decided at the beginning can shift if it’s not working, and that I am willing to have limits in front of them and say, “This is what I can do and this is what I can’t.” And I think that’s really useful for them as well, because it helps them understand. If I’m there modeling that I get to set limits around my own workload, maybe they do too.

Rebecca: How often do you check in about the rubrics that you designed collectively,

Fen: Formally, not very often. And I think informally a lot, depending on the class. I think the first time I did it, I didn’t check in enough. And there was some confusion about how it would work out at the end of the semester. And it caused more stress than it needed to. And so the next time I followed the same pattern for a quarter of the class, I had regular check-ins throughout the semester, and I would look at like, “How is this working for you? And are you going in the directions that you want to and are you working your way towards these goals and targets,” rather than showing up at the end and going “Okay, now you’re going to be assessed on these things.” So I’ve learned to check in more. But depending on the class, sometimes I check in just as I chat to the students, and sometimes I have scheduled time,

John: How have students responded to the process, have they found it very helpful? Has it helped build that climate of trust?

Fen: Well, especially during the pandemic, thinking about what was reasonable to expect of students was really useful. And I think, because I already had this kind of system in place, I sent out things to my classes saying like, “What can I expect from you in terms of WiFi? Can you make it to classes? If you can’t make it to classes, would you prefer a podcast style or blog style? Or would you want me to just put up a lot of stuff and ask questions? This is the range of my flexibility, what would you like within it.” And so I think that was really, really useful. And I think it helps people who have obstacles to being in the classroom stay in the classroom. And I think that’s the big thing. Every semester, I have to submit my own benchmarks for what I want the students to do and how well they’ve done. But I am allowed to set my own benchmarks. And recently I shifted from what percentage of students are getting an A to, I would rather that a broader perspective of students were getting Bs across a wide range of material. When I submitted that benchmark, I said, “I don’t want to disregard the work of all the people who fought super, super hard to stay in the classroom and get a B in the course, because for some students, that is a huge amount of work. And they put in hours and hours and hours of time and effort and growth to get Cs and Bs in a course and I want the assessment of my teaching to show that I’m recognizing that and I’m trying to make it possible for them to do that. And I am proud of them when they do. A thing I hear a lot from my students is “You genuinely care about us. We know that you care about us,” and I’m really happy hearing that.

Rebecca: A thread that we’ve heard a lot lately is that the methods and things that are meant to be inclusive usually also involve methods that show care.

Fen: And I want to point out the other thing that I remember that a student said to me recently is, “You made me work harder in that class than I’ve ever worked in any class in my life. And I did it.” And so when we’re talking about these inclusive teaching methods and caring teaching, it’s not that we lack rigor, and it’s not that we asked for less. In fact, after we end up asking for more, because you can’t follow a known system, you can’t go to essaydownloads.com, which is not a real website… but I know things like it exist… because it’s not going to work for the kinds of work I’m asking my students to do. And so they’re being asked to meet really, really high standards, but they’re ones that will be genuinely professionally helpful to them as individuals.

Rebecca: You mentioned ungrading earlier and talked about students’ individual growth. Do you have students use the rubric to essentially self-evaluate or are you using the rubric to evaluate?

Fen: That depends on the class. In a choreography class I have the students come to me with a portfolio and a pitch for the grade they think they ought to get based on rubric, and we talk about whether that’s realistic or not. Actually, I’ve never had anybody over pitch, I’ve always had people under pitch on what they think they deserve, which is kind of sad, really. And then in some classes I use the rubrics more as a more conventional grading tool.

John: I think we’ve also heard that quite a bit from people who’ve used ungrading, that they’re more likely to find people who underestimate how much they’ve learned during the course, which is something that surprised me when I first heard it. But now we’re starting to hear that a lot. You mentioned teaching during a pandemic, and I would imagine that that’s especially challenging in a class like dance or choreography. Could you tell us how you manage your classes during a period of pandemic teaching?

Fen: I kind of had a great time. Like, obviously, there’s a lot that was not a great time. But I really admire the work my students did during those times. The commitment it takes to show up on Zoom and dance in your dorm room and keep being an artist is so much harder than it is to be when you’re in a studio among other artists. And they held themselves to that standard. I did talk with students about the reality of how do you give your best attention, which for some people is sitting looking at the computer and for some people is walking around, pottering, while they listen to a lecture and thinking about like, “Okay, what does it take for you to give your best attention today? because I’d rather you gave me your best attention than sat here, not being able to listen.” And I think that was useful. I was very lucky that I got to go completely remote for a semester. And I taught theory classes initially. And then I came back to a mix of theory and practical classes, one of which was choreography. And just like, as I said before, with the students it’s not planning for the class you want to have, it’s planning for the class you’ve got, and I had to do a hybrid class. And so rather than go “Okay, how do I make Zoom get as close as possible to an in-person class,” I said, “Okay, the first five weeks are going to be completely over Zoom, and at the end of it, we’re going to make a film about closeups. And we’re going to think of the dimensions of the Zoom screen and what it takes to be an artist within the tiny box. And so using the restrictions of the pandemic to shape how his class was going to be structured. And in history, again… I’m not sure if either of you have given lectures… but sitting on Zoom and watching a row of empty black boxes with a couple of faces while you try and give a lecture is a special kind of hell. [LAUGHTER] And I talked to my students, and they said, “We really do need lecture content.” I said, “Okay, so one class a week, I will just give you content over a lecture. And the other class of the week, you’re going into breakout rooms, and you’re going to do solo space self-directed learning. I’ll have questions for you.” I had a GTA, who was also in the rooms and they just talked their way through the history and the evidence and the questions and it was wonderful. And when I came back live, it completely reshaped my pedagogy. Because knowing that people were willing to get really deep into conversation further then I could take them to a kind of a guided discussion. And so not everybody wants to learn that way. Some people really do not want to sit and get into a really active lively discussion. And so finding a balance as I’m in the classroom, and there’s more opportunities. I call it “choose your own adventure,” but letting people have flexibility in how they’re learning. There’s lots of different ways to get through the course and that was shaped by Zoom and the necessities of how we teach dance during a pandemic.

Rebecca: So we talked at the top of the conversation about how few transgender and non-binary faculty members there are. And representation, as we know, is very important for our students and for our colleagues and to have a nice, wonderful learning environment. Could you talk about some of the challenges that you faced, as a faculty member who identifies as transgender and non-binary?

Fen: We are in a moment in America, and the world, where we don’t have a cultural consensus that transphobia is wrong, we don’t have a cultural consensus that homophobia is wrong, which means that putting myself out in the classroom is in itself a political statement. And that’s not one that every school wants to get behind. And it’s not one that every student feels necessarily confident about when they encounter me. We’ve got people coming in as undergrads, often I’m the first non-binary person they’ve met. And here I am grading them, and are they going to get into trouble if they get it wrong? And oh, my goodness, it’s a non-binary person at last. Let me ask them all my gender questions. Let me come out to you. There’s a spectrum of responses. But always, there’s a certain necessary caution around what I am allowed to say and who I am allowed to be. So that if somebody does say, “You’re grooming our children, you are putting our students in danger, you are sexualizing people and you are teaching children things that are against their religion.” And there are all things that could come up, how am I going to respond? And what is the record of my pedagogy and my actions going to say in response to those accusations? and that is a lot of weight to carry on your shoulders on a day-to-day basis. To know that the record of your actions might have to answer those questions. And so that’s something I think about a lot. And something I try and be very careful around. I have become more and more known for speaking about these interviews. I have been interviewed by Dance Teacher magazine, a couple of times, I keep my own blog about it. I’m someone that people go to when they want someone to talk about dance and gender now, which again means having a practice and how I shape my words and my presence. But on a practical level, I live in a small city, and even things like going out in the evening… is a student going to be in a restaurant? Or is a student going to be waiting on me and my partner? If someone takes a photo of me out in public with a glass of alcohol in my hand, is that going to come back to haunt me? And so it’s not just my professional life that gets shaped by these issues. But it’s every aspect of my life, where I have to be conscious of, again, what my actions may be held up as evidence for.

Rebecca: That’s a lot of emotional and cognitive energy that goes into all of that, and I imagine a great deal of planning, as you’re thinking about your courses.

Fen: Yes, there’s a lot of thinking, and I want to expose my students to a lot of very diverse material. And also, how do I give them the language of opting out? I don’t want to force anyone to watch things. And I’m actually a big believer in giving everybody the right of refusal in the classroom, most of the time, I work a lot with touch, which means you have to work really hard about consent. I definitely grew up in an era where your body was just picked up and moved around. And so thinking about my students’ right to say no to things, which often results in people feeling more comfortable saying yes to things. And I think in the same way that I sit down with my students and I say my pronouns are they and them, if you have a strong conviction that you can’t use that, you can use something else, I do prefer not to be called Mam, which I think is partly gender and partly British. But given that I’m out in the world, when I’m talking to my peers, and there’s not that level of force and power imbalance, I use they/them pronouns, and that’s what I expect people to use for me. But when it is someone over whom I have a certain amount of power, I think I have to give that little bit of space for them to go, “Okay, I need to think about my beliefs and my feelings and my desires and the power in the situation and know that I’m not going to mess up my entire academic career if I don’t get this right first time.”

Rebecca: Sounds like a lot of grace is extended. [LAUGHTER[

Fen: A lots of people weren’t sure about me coming down to Alabama. I chose to take the job here and I think it’s really important I say I had choices and I chose Alabama, in part because of how hungry the students were to learn, they really threw themselves enthusiastically at new challenging things. And I went, that’s where I want to be.

John: I was going to ask about that. While this could be challenging anywhere, I would think being in the south in general would make it much more challenging, especially given the level of religiosity of many of the students there.

Fen: Well, I think sometimes there’s a stereotype that the South is just an extra level of awfulness than anywhere else. And there’s a certain baseline of awful that you’re going to find absolutely anywhere where you’re a transgender professor. One of the places that I interviewed for a tenure-track position, they kind of grilled me for a long time trying not to say gender, but would I be willing to teach students with different beliefs? How would I manage students in the classroom who might have different ideas than me about how history worked? Which are valid questions, but really not the right question to ask when what you’re trying to say is, “How is your gender going to impact the classroom?” …which they can’t legally asked. And I walked into the interview at Alabama, and the head of dance said: “Just to check before we start the interview, you take they/them pronouns?” I’m like, “Yep.” And he went “Great.” And I was like, “Okay.” So in some ways, academia is a little blue bubble. But there are lots of things about being where I am in a situation that I am that I very much love and I also think that if people maintain this idea that the South is bad and awful, it’s often used as an excuse to stop people looking at their own behavior… we’re much better than the South, they need to change, they need to do things differently. People who are let’s get out of the south, let’s all move up north, whereas the activism down here is very powerful, like really incredible the work that people are doing to try and make the south a more livable place for everybody in it. And that should be respected and recognized, and it doesn’t do people justice to wrap the entire South up in this label of awful. That answer got a little tangled, but I think the summary of it is that there’s a lot of work to be done everywhere, and I’m happy to be doing the kind of work I want to do here.

Rebecca: That’s a very nice, succinct way of summarizing the tangle. [LAUGHTER] But it also always gets tangled, because there’s so many things that pull and push in different directions, and probably really worth acknowledging how much time you probably spend mentoring students who come to you based on your identity, and self-disclose because they’re looking for an advocate and they’re looking for a role model. And that labor is often incredibly invisible.

Fen: Yes. And I think, interestingly, I’m in a department where there’s a number of faculty members who collect… I call them goslings sometimes, [LAUGHTER] but students who, by virtue of identity or life situation, need extra love and support. And I think that every student at some point in their undergrad career needs a little extra love and support. And we are a large department. It’s hard to build those relationships with all the students, but I try not to just be there on the virtue of identity, like I do try and make time for anyone who asks for the time, often because I don’t get to know all the students very well, especially those with LGBTQ identities, you often can’t tell by looking. And so it helps me check my own judgment and make sure that I’m not unintentionally creating favoritism or groups. If somebody needs the help and the time, I want to be able to give it to them to the extent that I can. And I have had to learn how to say “I have X amount of time and then I have to have you leave my office.”

Rebecca: Boundaries, so helpful, so healthy.

Fen: Because if your professor is a person that your professor gets to be a person, just like you.

Rebecca: I feel like that’s such a powerful thing to end on. [LAUGHTER]

John: It is, yes. And humanizing the professor creates a much more positive environment where they do feel more connected to you.

Rebecca: Picture a professor, they are a person. [LAUGHTER]

Fen: Yes.

John: Okay. Well, we always end with the question: “What’s next?”

Fen: Well, I’m on sabbatical right now.

Rebecca: Woo hoo.

Fen: I have just gotten back from three weeks at the Hambidghe Arts Residency Center, which is just absolutely incredible… off the grid in the wilderness of the Georgia and North Carolina mountains. Fresh air. I got back yesterday.

Rebecca: Wow.

Fen: I leave on the 13th of October to go to Philly. I’m helping organize a partner dance event. And I am meandering up the East Coast, different cities ending in Ann Arbor where I am teaching a series of master classes and I’m presenting at a conference, and then I will come home and I’ll see what the next adventure is. But what’s next really is five cities in just under a month.

John: Sounds like a busy but productive schedule.

Fen: I’m really looking forward to it.

Rebecca: I hope you have wonderful travels.

Fen: Thank you

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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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Transcript

261. Social Justice Assessments

Traditional methods of assessing student learning favor those students that reside in well-resourced school districts while leaving low-income students at a substantial disadvantage. These grading systems also encourage students to focus on their grades rather than on their learning. In this episode, Judith Littlejohn, Meghanne Freivald, and Katelyn Prager join us to discuss a variety of social justice assessment techniques that can help to create a more equitable environment in which all students can be successful.

Judie is the Director of Online Learning at SUNY Genesee Community College, Meghanne is an Instructional Technology Specialist at Alfred University, and Katelyn is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at the Fashion Institute of Technology.  Judie, Meghan, and Katelyn worked together on a SUNY Faculty Advisory Council on Teaching and Technology committee on social justice assessments.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Traditional methods of assessing student learning favor those students that reside in well-resourced school districts while leaving low-income students at a substantial disadvantage. These grading systems also encourage students to focus on their grades rather than on their learning. In this episode, we explore a variety of social justice assessment techniques that can create a more equitable environment in which all students can be successful.

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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.

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Rebecca: Our guests today are Judith Littlejohn, Meghanne Freivald, and Katelyn Prager. Judie is the Director of Online Learning at SUNY Genesee Community College, Meghanne is an Instructional Technology Specialist at Alfred University, and Katelyn is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Judie, Meghan, and Katelyn worked together on a SUNY Faculty Advisory Council on Teaching and Technology committee on social justice assessments. Welcome Meghanne and Katelyn and welcome back, Judie.

Meghanne: Thank you.

Katelyn: Thank you.

Judie: Thank you.

John: Today’s teas are:

Judie: …I have Lady Grey.

Rebecca: That’s a good one…

Judie: …In my DTL mug.

John: …a nice Desire to Learn mug.

Meghanne: I have iced green.

Rebecca: And Katelyn, how about you?

Katelyn: Mine’s water right now, if it were the evening, I would have one bag of peppermint and one bag of chamomile together, delicious.

Rebecca: Sounds nice and calming.

Rebecca: I have hot cinnamon spice tea.

John: And I have black raspberry green tea.

Rebecca: We’ve invited you here today to discuss your work on social justice assessment. Perhaps, we can start with a discussion on what you mean by social justice assessment.

Judie: So social justice assessment considers factors such as race, culture, language proficiency, socioeconomic status, and ability while working to dismantle systems of power, bias, and oppression in evaluation of student learning. So various approaches including equitable assessment, labor based grading, and ungrading, as they relate to the purpose, process, wording, and structure of student learning assessments are included. So we’re trying to focus on the learning that our diverse students achieve as it relates to specific learning outcomes just to mitigate the influence of dominant norms on our students’ grades. So we’ve all been working together for the last couple of years on a SUNY task group that was part of the Faculty Advisory Council on Teaching and Technology, which I chair. So we’re a subcommittee of an Innovations in Assessment group, and there’s a couple more of us who couldn’t make it today, but we’ve been a really close-knit group, I think, working together for over two years. And we really enjoyed the project, which resulted in a website with all these artifacts on it that people will be able to access. And we’re hoping down the road that we can continue our work, but we’ll get to that later on in this conversation.

John: And we’ll share a link to the overall website as well as your group-specific component of that in the show notes. So this was partly implied in your response defining social justice assessment, but, what are some of the shortcomings of traditional grading systems in terms of equity?

Meghanne: When we were doing our research on this topic, we encountered many drawbacks of the traditional types of assessments that we all experienced all the way up through school and into college, and I’ll share a few of them. One is that the focus is often on the grade rather than the actual learning process and what the student will actually be able to do, and be able to learn as a result of engaging in the education process. They just focus on the grade, “what’s my grade?” and that sort of misses the point. It creates a system where students are compared to each other rather than having the focus be on individual growth and achievement. It also can put students at an advantage or disadvantage based on characteristics such as race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, disability status, language proficiency, and lots of other characteristics that students themselves don’t have any control over. We found in our research that traditional assessments tend to favor white, affluent, high-achieving students, and that really isn’t who most of our students are anymore. So we really need to remove barriers and create a way for students to accurately represent the learning that has taken place.

Rebecca: So you hinted to this in your response about traditional grading systems comparing students to one another. So thinking about that, what role should students play in determining how their learning is assessed?

Katelyn: I’ll tackle that one, and I want to answer it with a disclaimer to start because social justice assessment is an umbrella term that has all of these different strategies that are wrapped up in it, and each of those approaches, whether it’s ungrading, or labor-based grading, might have a slightly different response to that question. They all share the same goal, that students should not be systematically disadvantaged by the assessment mechanisms, and that we want to increase student agency in the classroom. We want students to be active participants in their own learning, but the actual question of how students might participate in determining their own assessments might look very different depending on who you’re talking to and what approach they use. Maybe it’s literally helping design the assessment mechanisms, the grading contract, grading rubric, maybe it’s creating flexible assignments that allow students to determine what learning is being assessed, or in the case of ungrading, maybe it’s just deprioritizing the assessment entirely in order to emphasize the individual student’s learning journey through the course. So I guess my answer, tentatively to your question, is yes, students should be participants in determining how they’re learning is assessed by the big how, and why is going to differ.

John: As you noted, there’s a wide continuum of alternative grading policies that can fit under this category of social justice assessment. Some of them are not that much different than traditional practices, and others are quite a bit different. One approach, which is much closer to the traditional grading systems that people are already using is a system of mastery learning. Could you talk a little bit about what mastery learning is and how that could be used in the classroom to provide a bit more equity.

Judie: So mastery learning is, instead of assessing a student or evaluating a student with one assessment, and giving them that grade, the students are able to go back and revisit the content and work again on any material that they didn’t understand or try things over again. So it’s an iterative process, and they should get some sort of formative feedback in between attempts so that they can understand what it is they need to work on and focus on. And this way, it’s more equitable, because the students are able to take the amount of time that they need to work on the assessment, they can access any review materials that they need to establish their foundational knowledge and continue on. And it just really helps the students learn and grow. And I think it’s a great way to establish foundational knowledge. I use it myself in all the history courses that I teach, and I just think it’s a great process. If you think about it, any athlete, that’s what they do. So if you’re learning how to play baseball, how many hours are spent in a batting cage, or like on the pitcher’s mound, how many times do you try again, and again, and then again, until you are able to do it correctly, or do things accurately? So I always liken it to use that sports analogy, because I really think that helps people understand that students’ learning… you have to practice and you can’t tell somebody something once and expect them to integrate it into all the knowledge they already have, and be able to recall it instantly. So I just think it’s a great way to level the playing field of students so that when you move on to the next part of your content, they all have the same foundation, and they’re ready to go forward.

John: And by explaining it to the students that way, in terms of a sports metaphor, it’s something that they can pretty easily connect to, and I think it also would help to promote a growth mindset, which we know is effective in increasing learning as well.

Rebecca: Another assessment strategy one might use is minimal or light grading that falls under this social justice umbrella, and is a bit different than mastery learning. Can you describe what minimal or light grading is?

Meghanne: Yeah, I’ve seen this described in a couple of different ways. This isn’t something that we really included in a lot of our research, so I kind of looked this up just a little while ago and it’s very interesting. And one approach is more on like the whole course level. And there’s another approach that can be taken on an assignment level. So for an entire course, what an instructor may do is that they would assign assignments throughout the semester, but most of them would not be graded, they would be used as like a conversation piece. And they would be discussed and gone over during class, which would then provide opportunities for the students to seek clarification and for the instructor to provide feedback in the moment. So then the assessment then becomes part of the learning process. So then when there are a small number of assessments that are given for a grade, then when the students get to those assessments, they’re not as intimidating. They’re things that they’ve done with their classmates, they’ve done them with their instructors, they’ve done them in class. So I think it’s a very interesting strategy because it removes a lot of the anxiety that students may have around assessment, because it’s just something that they’ve done in their class. Another take on this that I’ve seen is, on an assignment level, something like a paper, something that may require a lot of revision, where when the professor is grading that assessment, they would maybe not take the time to go through and mark all of the grammar and spelling and mechanical errors, but maybe they would look at a section of that, maybe point out some things the students are doing over and over again, but not mark up the entire paper, but just say, “Okay, these are the things you need to pay attention to that are recurring through your paper.” And then as they read and grade that student’s paper, they focus more on the message that the student is trying to convey and the ideas that they’re sharing, rather than the mechanics and the grammar and the spelling.

John: And one common thing I think, to both mastery learning and minimal light grading is that the goal is to provide students with feedback. In some cases that can be automated. Mastery learning systems involve some degree of automation, sometimes by textbook providers, or perhaps adaptive learning systems, or it could be questions that you put together. But if you’re going to provide feedback on writing, it can require a lot more time. And a minimal light grading approach allows faculty to provide feedback on the most important things without taking up as much time to allow faculty to provide feedback on a wider range of topics, which, again, is I think, to some extent in the same sort of spirit.

Rebecca: Light grading can help not intimidate a student with too much feedback. If you see just a paper completely marked up, it might feel like there’s no possibility for moving forward or revising. But emphasizing what’s most important to change, or most important to focus on can help a student prioritize. And this can be really important to someone new to a discipline who might not know what’s most important.

Katelyn: I’m so glad you said that.

Meghanne: There’s an element of trust there as well, because if we point out what a student needs to focus on mechanically or grammar wise in a small part of that paper, then they can be trusted to then use their judgment to go through it and read it more carefully, and then make those edits based on the feedback that they had received. So it is visually much less intimidating. Plus, it might be a motivating factor for some students too that their professor is trusting them to be in charge of that revision.

John: Another type of social justice assessment involves contract grading. Could one of you talk a little bit about how contract grading fits into this category of social justice assessment?

Katelyn: Sure, I think contract grading is one of those terms that’s gaining some broader popularity and recognition. So it’s probably a term that may be pretty familiar to a lot of instructors at this point. So maybe it doesn’t need a lot of explanation. I’ll just say there’s a couple of different models of contract grading. In some cases, the instructor might provide that contract at the start of the term. In other cases, the instructor and students would be able to negotiate that contract collaboratively together at the start of the term so that students have more of that active stake in the contract itself. Generally, the grading contract would lay out certain requirements which students would need to fulfill to receive their desired grade. And that might include requirements related to attending class or conferences, completing low-stakes assignments, completing major assignments, maybe some page- or process-based requirements. But the bottom line is that the contract gives students a clear picture from day one of the work required by the class so students can look at that contract and know exactly how much work they’re going to need to complete from day one, to get the grade that they really want to receive in the course. I think the additional benefit of contract grading for our conversation is that it decouples grades from assessment so students have more space to take risks in their work rather than aiming for correctness. And on the faculty side, faculty can respond to the content and spirit of the students work as opposed to justifying a grade. I think most important, though, because this system privileges students who are investing the time and effort into their learning, all students have the same potential to earn a high grade in the course regardless of their knowledge or ability with the subject matter prior to the start of the course. So to use another sports metaphor, it works to level the playing field on day one for students who may have very different levels of preparedness and experience with the subject matter.

Rebecca: Another strategy that folks might use, which we’ve certainly talked about quite a bit on this podcast at various times is peer assessment. Can you talk a little bit about what that looks like and how that fits into this social justice model?

Judie: So peer assessment, or I tend to call it peer review, helps to build student investment in writing, and helps the students understand the relationship between their writing and their coursework by helping them engage with the writing in a way that encourages more self reflection and works to help them build their critical thinking skills about their own work. And I think it also helps the students learn from one another, because they’re sort of trying to evaluate their peers’ work against the requirements for the course. But then you also look at your own writing in a new perspective, and you learn from what you’re seeing your peers write and from the feedback that you’re receiving from your peers.

John: Might students perhaps take feedback from their fellow classmates a bit more seriously than they do feedback from their instructors.

Judie: A lot of students self-report that they learn more from this peer review activity, because they’re trying to identify and articulate weaknesses that they’re seeing in their peers’ papers, and also in their own. And I think trying to incorporate feedback from both their peers and their instructor into their own work, I think, just helps raise that awareness and any kind of feedback that’s constructive, as they think about it and reiterate it and rewrite their work. It just helps with their critical thinking. And I think just raise awareness of how they write, and maybe they can be more thoughtful about what they’re writing going forward. I think they also, if they question their peers, say “How did you come up with this?I love this idea,” then they can apply some of this, that they’re learning from their peers to their own work, too. So perhaps that’s what you were getting at John, when you asked that question was, they may benefit more from their classmates telling them how they came up with their ideas than from their instructor just dictating what the expectations are.

Rebecca: I would expand the model to include not just writing but also other creative projects and things. It’s certainly a practice that’s pretty common in the arts, for example, to do peer review of student work.

John: And they also get to see what their peers are doing, which can serve as a positive role model. When students see that other people are doing something that they hadn’t considered doing, it could serve as a way of improving their work.

Katelyn: I think a lot of students come into the classroom thinking of their teacher as the sole reader or audience for their creations throughout the course of this semester. So anytime we can expand those audiences and have students thinking rhetorically about who else might be the consumer of their work. I think that that can benefit our students in really important ways.

Rebecca: It also seems like it’s a good opportunity to formulate community around an activity like that.

Katelyn: Absolutely.

John: One of the other areas you address with this group was the topic of labor-based grading, could you talk a little bit about that?

Meghanne: Yeah, labor-based grading removes the focus from the end product assignment and shifts it to the process of creating that piece of work. So students are provided with feedback throughout the process regarding their labor or the work that they put in. And they’re given opportunities to continue working to improve what they’re producing, and to achieve a desired grade based on a contract sometimes, so there is some overlap with contract grading, but not always. There typically aren’t penalties for students who revise and update their work, because that’s part of the learning process. And it really helps students determine what their end grade may be and how much effort they want to put in, because often, they will be given some sort of guideline for what different grades may be achieved based on certain levels of effort, or certain levels of work that are completed. And also there may be opportunities to grade based on completion rather than more of a subjective sort of qualitative grade.

John: So do you mean like using a light grading or minimal grading where you either completed satisfactorily or you haven’t, and as long as you complete a certain number of assignments or activities, you achieve that grade,

Meghanne: That or also if there’s criteria, like a rubric, and they hit all of the criteria, then they receive full credit.

John: Which becomes, actually, I think, a form of specifications grading.

Rebecca: And then one other model that you’ve talked a little bit about already today is ungrading. Can you expand upon that a little bit more?

Katelyn: Yeah, so ungrading works to deprioritize numerical grades or even attempt to eliminate them entirely. So I hope I’m not speaking out of turn when I say, I think that this is the most controversial of the approaches that we have been researching, it tends to get the most pushback from faculty because it is so different from what we have often been taught or trained to do. So instead of focusing on those numerical grades, instructors are encouraged to focus on providing learner feedback that encourages growth. Okay, I have a quote that is from an ungrading expert I’d like to share. This from Sean Michael Morris and he says, quote, “at the foundation of ungrading, lies something that could change school entirely. A suggestion that ranking and evaluation and the concomitant expertise of the ranker or evaluator is entirely an optional way of viewing things.” And I’m going to end the quote there because I think that that important kernel is that ungrading works to dismantle the hierarchy of the classroom and refocus the attention on individual student learning is an approach that requires a lot of trust between student and instructor, and a lot of student buy-in as well. Students have to be invested in the learning that’s going to happen throughout the course itself. And in a completely ungraded classroom, student grades might be based simply on a final student reflection, or even a one-on-one conversation between teacher and student about the grade that the student has earned. But because ungrading really rejects transactional grading systems, the final grade is more of an afterthought than an important outcome of the course, much less important than learning that’s occurred throughout the semester.

Rebecca: So today, we’re recording on August 9, James Lang posted on Twitter about how deep the system of creating actually is that there’s even things like discounts for insurance, for good students, or good grades. And that it’s really challenging to overcome a system that’s so ingrained beyond just our education system, but into many other systems as well. So I think that that, in part, is why there’s such a strong pushback on this particular method.

John: And we’ve always done it that way, at least for the last century or so.

Rebecca: Change is hard.

Katelyn: Yeah, I think that the traditional grading system is really embedded into not only academia but outside of academia as well. And even within a class that takes an ungrading approach, we still face that question at the end of the semester of “Well, what’s the grade going to be in the system?” because we don’t really have the option, at least at most institutions, to say, “No grade, job well done.” At least at my institution, I still have to put in a letter grade for the student. So we can work to reject that system as much as we can. But at the end of the day, we’re still operating within that same structure. And maybe that’s a question of what’s next, right? Like, are we going to see one day a future where more universities embrace this idea of learning for the sake of learning as opposed to learning for the grade? I don’t know.

John: One of the other things you address on the website is how perhaps the use of authentic assessment or UDL types of assessments might improve equity by providing a more equal playing field for students. Could you talk a little bit about how going beyond the traditional term papers and tests might provide a more equitable way of assessing students’ learning.

Judie: I think anytime you use authentic assessment that helps, or generally it allows the students the opportunity to demonstrate their learning in the way that works best for them. The students are writing a term paper, for example, they can write the paper the traditional way, or they can give a presentation or record a presentation, and still provide their citations and so forth at the end. Or they can do something visual, some sort of a PowerPoint or a nice visual display of the topic and again, cite their sources and explain their images to the group so that people understand how they’re meeting the learning outcome. And I feel like that’s just a good way if people are struggling with language, if people are just struggling with writing in general, I think that this levels the playing field, because it gives everybody an opportunity to really show their knowledge and shine and not just pigeonhole themselves into one more paper or one more multiple choice test, if they have test anxiety. Some of our traditional forms of testing or final assessment just set students up to fail. And allowing students to choose to demonstrate their learning in a way that they’re good at sets them up to succeed. And I think that’s what we really want at the end of the day. And of course UDL principles, those are Universal Design for Learning, and that does include equity in its heart. So that would definitely help to keep things equitable in the classroom. If you’re following UDL.

Rebecca: The multiple forms you were just talking about is a great example. [LAUGHTER]

Judie: Last semester, I had a student who, they’re supposed to do a blog post, and the student instead of writing a blog post, he made a video and he did it three different times. So one is on World War One, one’s on World War Two, and the third one was on revolutions, and so, this student stood in front of a whiteboard, and he had his camera set up so he could film himself. And he had his iPad in his hand. So he talked about a battle, say, for example, and he would draw it out on the board. And then he would show his citation on his iPad. And then he had other citations typed up and taped to the whiteboard. And he went on for 15 minutes, and just was making sure he explained things again, and drew little examples. And he was so animated, and so excited about his topic. And you’re not going to capture that on a written exam, or even in somebody’s written paper. It was just tremendous the way he was able to show all that he had learned and all that he was interested in, and the extra research that he had done, because he felt the freedom to pursue this topic, because he knew he was able to express it the way that suited him the past. And it was just amazing. So I think anytime we can incorporate these things, and I understand that there are times when, according to your creditor, or people have to sometimes sit for a specific certification, it doesn’t always fit, but I think if you can fit this type of assessment in, it is definitely worth it. Because just to see the joy in students when they can explore and expand their knowledge, and then feel confident in demonstrating that to you, it’s just tremendous.

Rebecca: I love the flexibility in demonstrating knowledge and understanding and skill sets because in some of our traditional methods, we are arbitrarily assessing something else. So we may be arbitrarily testing how well you can take a multiple choice test or how well you can take a test within a certain timeframe, or how well you can write, whether or not that’s actually the topic. So if I’m learning about history, there’s some learning objectives I’m trying to meet related to history that may or may not include writing. And if writing is not one of those outcomes that we’re hoping for, then we don’t need to be assessing it.

Judie: Exactly. He did this thing on medical advancements in World War One, it was just tremendous and he was so charming, because he just was so wrapped up in it that you just had to root for the guy. It was good.

Rebecca: I love that. So for those of us who may want to move towards equitable grading systems, what are some initial steps we might take? Because it could feel really daunting if you haven’t ventured down this path before.

Meghanne: Yeah, if you are not interested in overhauling your entire grading system, just to try this out, a nd to make your assessments more socially just, there are some adjustments that can be made to existing assignments. And really, the important thing is to consider the learning objectives and really think about what needs to be graded. So one of the things that we’ve talked about a lot in all of our different presentations that we’ve done is whether or not to grade for things like grammar and spelling, and mechanics, and English language proficiency. So in an example, like a discussion board, when you’re really interested in what the students have to say, and their interaction with each other, and the questions that they asked, does it really matter if their grammar and spelling is perfect in that instance, if they’re having a great conversation on a topic, and they’re learning from each other. So that’s one thing that we could suggest. Another is thinking about just the fact that sometimes students have challenges in their lives. They’re human beings, they have families, they have jobs, many of our students are athletes, and they have to travel and they have games and something like flexible due dates is very, very helpful for students because then they’re able to complete their work, certainly within a reasonable timeframe. But if those dates are a little bit more flexible, and they have access to those assignments in the learning management system beyond the actual due date, for instance, then that gives them the ability to complete that work without being penalized. So another mechanism would be in the learning management system, when students are taking quizzes, would be allowing backtracking, allowing students to go back and check their answers, that sometimes is a setting that a lot of professors really rely on, to try to avoid cheating. And as an LMS administrator, that is something that I see a lot. And I think that that can really be harmful to students, because many of our students are told to always go back and check your work. And if they’re not allowed to go back and check their work, that can be very frustrating. And also forcing completion is something that I would recommend turning off because again, that can create test anxiety. And often I think when completion is forced, there’s also a timer. So I think if any timers can be removed as well, then that does a couple of things. It can help remove testing anxiety. But then also, if there are students who require extra time due to a disability accommodation, then the professor at that point doesn’t have to go in and adjust all of the LMS settings for those students, because it’s already open ended and everyone can have as much time as they need to complete that assessment. So it really is just important to look at what the learning objectives are and what actually needs to be assessed. And the goal is always to remove barriers. So another thing that can be done is to just ask students, have a conversation about it, and find out what barriers they’ve experienced.

John: At the start of this. You mentioned the website that you were creating, could you talk a little bit more about what resources are there and how that might evolve over time?

Katelyn: Yeah, so the website, we have been slowly adding resources to over the past two years. And at this point, it’s becoming a pretty robust little outlet for people interested in social justice assessment. So, you go to the website, you can find an overview of the big picture theory of social justice assessment, as well as the various approaches that we’ve discussed today. We also have a really pretty large bibliography of resources for further reading for people who want to learn more about any one of these topics. And we’ve been working to develop a collection of sample assignments from faculty across SUNY. So we’re still working to collect additional sample assignments from faculty who might already be implementing some of these strategies within their classrooms. I think the more we can share those assignments with one another, the better off we’ll all be. I think a lot of us are doing social justice assessment in small ways in our classroom without realizing it. So the more we can share those resources and that knowledge, the more hopefully we can get people on board. So, hopefully, we’ll be able to share that link in the show notes. And people will be able to check that out.

Rebecca: So we always wrap up by asking: “What’s next?”

Judie: So for our little group, one thing that I think might be next for us is SUNY is updating the SUNY general education requirements that are mandated with the completion of any SUNY degree. And they’ve added a requirement for equity, inclusion, and diversity. So I’m hoping that our group can help contribute resources to that effort, and our website could be one more place where people go to for information on social justice assessment so that they can incorporate those into their courses that are designed to meet the DEI requirement.

Katelyn: Well, I’m gonna go take my one-year old to the pool. [LAUGHTER]

Judie: Nice.

Katelyn: I think, big picture, though, the “what’s next” I want to just give is, I hope that we’ll start to see more institutional support for some of these approaches. I think that there are still a lot of barriers, particularly for contingent faculty who want to embrace some of these practices. So I hope what’s next will be more departmental institutional support for this: more time, more resources, etc. But yeah, my personal what’s next is I’m gonna go enjoy this beautiful day.

Rebecca: Meghanne, do you want to add anything?

Meghanne: Sure yeah, at my institution, I am sharing this information, pretty much any chance I get, I’m meeting with our new incoming faculty in a couple of weeks. And this will be one of the topics that we discuss. And I’m also co-chair of our universal design for learning task force. And we have a few events and projects that we’re working on to spread the word on UDL, and also innovative assessments and social justice assessments as well.

Rebecca: Lots of great things coming and some really wonderful resources that you’ve shared today. Thank you so much for joining us.

Katelyn: Thank you.

Judie: Thank you for having us.

Meghanne: Yeah, thank you.

John: And thank you for all the great work you’ve done on this over the last couple of years and the resources you’re sharing.

Judie: I would just like to say that Shena Salvato is also in our group. She’s at Cortland, I believe. And Chris Price from SUNY is in our group, and they are missed today. They’ve been with us for all our other presentations. I know that Shana in particular wants to get the band back together and have some more meetings going forward so we can keep working together. And it was really good to see you guys again.

Katelyn: Likewise.

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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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256. Sharing Our Stories

Students do not always recognize the expertise of faculty who do not match their cultural stereotype of what a professor looks like. In this episode, Sarah Mayes-Tang joins us to discuss how she has used personal narratives to address these student biases. Sarah is an Assistant Professor in the Mathematics Department at the St. George Campus of the University of Toronto. She is also the author of a chapter in the Picture a Professor project, edited by Jessamyn Neuhaus.

Show Notes

  • Neuhaus, Jessamyn (forthcoming, 2022). Picture a Professor: Interrupting Biases about Faculty and Increasing Student Learning. West Virginia University Press.
  • Peterson, D. A., Biederman, L. A., Andersen, D., Ditonto, T. M., & Roe, K. (2019). Mitigating gender bias in student evaluations of teaching. PloS one, 14(5), e0216241. (A study that suggests that reminding students of bias in course evaluations may reduce bias.)
  • Perusall
  • Ogawa, Y. (2009). The Housekeeper and the Professor: A Novel. Picador.
  • Borges, J. L. (1998). The library of Babel. Collect

Transcript

John: Students do not always recognize the expertise of faculty who do not match their cultural stereotype of what a professor looks like. In this episode, we examine one professor’s strategies to address these student biases.

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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.

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Rebecca: Our guest today is Sarah Mayes-Tang. Sarah is an Assistant Professor in the Mathematics Department at the St. George Campus of the University of Toronto. She is also the author of a chapter in the Picture a Professor project, edited by Jessamyn Neuhaus.
Welcome, Sarah.

Sarah: Thank you so much. It’s wonderful to be here and to see both of you. [LAUGHTER]

John: Thanks for joining us. Our teas today are… Are you drinking tea?

Sarah: I am drinking tea. I have a…

Rebecca: Yay!

Sarah: …I wouldn’t miss it. …it’s a chocolate mint black tea by Sloane tea. They’re a Toronto tea company.

Rebecca: Awesome.

John: Very nice.

Rebecca: I have a very standard [LAUGHTER] English breakfast today.

John: And I have a Prince of Wales tea today.

Rebecca: Oh, I haven’t had that in a while. John. We’ve invited you here today to discuss your chapter in Picture a Professor. Your chapter’s entitled “Sharing Our Stories to Build Community, Highlight Bias, and Address Challenges to Authority.” Can you tell us a little bit about this chapter?

Sarah: Yeah, sure. I think that my chapter might be the most obvious kind of strategy in this book. So a lot of the authors are sharing really inventive, or new strategies that I hadn’t thought of. Mine is all about just talking to other people about the challenges that we face when we don’t look like other professors in the academy, or at least what students might picture as their idea of a professor, what might you picture when you Google a professor? So my strategy is all about talking to people. First of all, starting by talking to colleagues, in particular, colleagues that might face similar challenges. So first of all, I should say, I’m a white woman, so I can’t speak to the full challenges that, for example, people of color might face, but I’m a math professor, and I present pretty feminine, and I teach mathematics in I guess, like a pretty serious math department. And so I certainly don’t look like what students expect when they come into a big math class. So for me, and I think for a lot of other people that I work with, it really came as a huge shock, when students started to question even my basic mathematical ability, 18 year olds dealing with probably their own insecurities about mathematics, but it was coming out as like, she doesn’t know what she’s doing. And then the reaction from my superiors who are mainly white men, would be to act more authoritative, basically act ways that were more like them. And the way that I felt was just like, there was something very, very wrong with me. I felt very ashamed. And even though I sensed that it had something to do with my identity, I knew they wouldn’t question me in the same way, if I was a typical looking professor, I also thought I did have to change something about myself. And there’s such tremendous shame in that. And it wasn’t until I, at the end of the year, whispered a little bit about it. And then another colleague said this exact same thing happened to me, the exact same thing. And the whole year, we were going through parallel experiences. And knowing that changed my life, it changed my profession. I would have left the academy if it hadn’t been for that. And then over time developing a group of cheerleaders who I could go to, and then kind of gain more confidence. My chapter also addresses being able to speak to colleagues and being able to speak to our students, because it’s important that they understand the challenges that we face, because we don’t just have white men who we teach, we teach a variety of students. And I think if we can talk about our personal challenges, and they can see that we also have faced challenges that they might be facing, then that can really be very transformative. So that’s kind of a brief summary of some of the things that I talk about.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about how that unfolds in a classroom when you’re having those kinds of conversations with students in a math class?

Sarah: Yeah, so sometimes it unfolds very naturally, by some prompt that might happen. Yeah, there might be an extreme example. This past semester, I had another professor, he came in, and it was like, clear gender issue. And so I used that, in the next day actually, it took me a little while to react to it. And then the next day, we had a very deep conversation about gender in the classroom. But it might be before student evaluations, that has taken me a long time to come to, but how do you address the research about what students do in evaluations? Sometimes I assign reading about mathematicians’ experiences, I try to assign readings of biographies of diverse mathematicians, and then we relate it to their own experiences. And then if it’s appropriate, I don’t want to be all about me. But if it’s appropriate, I sometimes talk about what I’ve experienced. So those are some of the ways that it comes out. But I try to make my classrooms not just about the mathematics, because that’s really where the transformative stuff happens.

John: In terms of the teaching evaluations, have you addressed that issue specifically with students in terms of gender bias on evaluations before the evaluations? And has that helped? …because there is some research that making students aware of biases tends to reduce the amount of bias that shows up in the actual evaluations.

Sarah: It’s really hard for me to say if it helps.

John: …there’s no control group.

Sarah: Exactly. So even though I teach gigantic classes, you’d think that I’d be able to do some sort of like statistical thing, I have no idea if it really helps. I do get comments, after, if I do address it. I know that some students will say, “I’m not just saying this because she’s a woman.” So there is some backlash in that. So it’s unclear. I try not to do it right before the student evaluations, but like a few weeks before. I also do evaluations throughout the semester. And yes, it’s difficult to see if it impacts the evaluations or not. However, what is meaningful to me is not whether it impacts my evaluations, I think, but again, reaching the students who might not fall into those majority groups and helping them see that some bias stuff may be going on and it’s not all in my head and that is impacting my experience, and there’s actual research behind that.

Rebecca: I can imagine that students in a math class don’t expect to talk about identity. Can you talk a little bit about the student response to some of these conversations that you’ve had with students.

Sarah: It varies. I find that students are more and more open to it. I’ve taught a lot of first-year classes. So as they go through first year, they’re more open to it. Because at first, they’re like, “I just need all the math and they find a big change between high school and university in terms of the contact hours. So like you’re wasting our time talking about this stuff. But by upper-year classes, they find it such a refreshing change, because they’ve been in so many math classes, where it’s just all content, content, content. A lot of lectures. And so I really didn’t react to any of that backlash. And it’s almost like a breath of fresh air. And another aspect of identity that I think has been meaningful, like, has maybe come very naturally, the idea of like, “Are you a math person?” …because that’s another type of identity that’s really common in our society. And even that, it certainly linked gender and race, but it’s something that isn’t directly gender or race. And so talking about how that fits into their identity has also been a key to unlocking more personal conversation and getting them to really reflect on themselves in a mathematics classroom. Yeah, and I think one of the keys is like having them watch a mathematician talk about their work and how their identity is linked to their work. And then they comment, for example, Perusall or something where they can annotate the text, and then they start to get involved in some conversations, I can bring those comments into class and then we can have some pretty dynamic conversations.

Rebecca: I can imagine teaching first-year students in math with a societal “I’m not a math person” problem. I know, I teach in art and design, so we have a lot of students that claim that identity, “I’m not a math person, I don’t do math,” and are afraid. Can you talk about some of the ways that you have reduced the fear, allowed people to see themselves as being math people, even though they’ve never seen themselves in that way? I know you’ve had some really interesting things that you’ve done.

Sarah: Yeah, I love reaching those people. And it’s a lot more difficult now in my job at a big university than it was when I was teaching at a liberal arts school, where all students are required to take a math course. So maybe I’ll talk a little bit about my experiences at the liberal arts school to start. So I was at Quest University Canada, a small school, about 500 to 700 students. It kind of started as an experiment. And so we are encouraged to do all sorts of things. And we had a lot of students who were so afraid, just as you describe, of their mathematics course. And they were putting it off, putting it off, putting it off. And I think one of the things that really traps them is the idea that everything has to build on the thing before and a lot of them got lost somewhere in early elementary school and they never recovered. And it was some sort of threat to their identity, probably some like quick quiz or something. Someone said something, and they were lost, forever. So it’s trying to show them that well, there’s actually parts of mathematics that math majors don’t see until their fourth year that you can do right now. And that’s usually how I try to approach it. So I think one of the things is just addressing that head on, talking about their experiences in mathematics and telling them we’re going to do something different. You’re not going to see numbers, you’re not going to see arithmetic even, this is going to be about shapes and space and ideas, and maybe even accessing points of connection with individual students. So I can give examples of particular projects if you’d like or particular courses.

Rebecca: I’d love to hear an example of a project.

Sarah: Sure. I’m a firm believer that the things that you think are going to be total train wrecks can either turn out to be the best things you’ve ever done or they could be trainwrecks. But definitely my best things have been the wild ideas. So I was teaching a course on mathematical creativity. And it was going to attract a lot of students that were totally afraid of math because they had to take it as part of a series of courses on creativity. So they got to take a social science course on creativity and a chemistry course on creativity. But they also had to take this, in their minds, terrible math course on creativity. So I was really excited to teach it. But how would you describe the feeling of creating something new in mathematics. And for me, and for most mathematicians, if you hear like these quotes about mathematics, they’re like mathematicians will say “math is like poetry. Math is like…” …they give all these analogies with very creative analogies. But most students don’t access that until graduate school, because there’s not this freedom of exploration. So I spend a lot of time just wondering, how do I feel creative? How do students feel creative? And it was really only on research that I felt really creative? So, how can I model research for students? So what I ultimately did was, I asked them, first of all, I didn’t tell them where we were going, cause there’s going to be a two-stage project centerpiece of this course. And first stage is you have to define something from geometry, but it can’t be like anything you’ve ever defined before. So one group defined, they called it like an ice cream cone shape. So it was a triangle with like a circle in it. And then we really worked on making their definition mathematically. So how does the triangle touch the circle, another group to defined a caterpillar shape in a precise way. And then the second part of the project, after they have their definition they couldn’t change was to discover as much about that object as they could. And they were only graded on how, on their journals, how much time they spent thinking about it, and how much they talk to other people. And I’m telling you, the ideas that these students had, and the level of mathematics that these totally math-phobic students did, was incredible. It was what I would expect from fourth-year students. And they were starting to use the word theorems and proofs. I said, you don’t have to prove anything, I just want you to like discover things, but they were coming to it naturally. And it was amazing. I could just gush about all the things that they did forever, like all of the discoveries that they made for themselves. And I still hear from these students about the impact that this project had from them, I don’t know, six or seven years ago now. So yeah, that’s one of my favorites. But at the time, I thought, Oh, this might go really poorly.

Rebecca: It’s amazing how the freedom to explore and discover can really open up the freedom to see yourself in a new way, or to be a researcher in a different way. As you were talking, I’m remembering an opportunity I had as an early faculty member workshop. And it was a multi-day workshop with mathematicians, and I was the non-mathematician, to help develop curriculum. And I had never hung out with math folks that much before. But it was really interesting. And we had really interesting conversations about creativity and the overlaps of our work that neither of us had recognized before. So it’s really interesting how those opportunities to have those conversations, whether with students or with colleagues can open up so many possibilities.

Sarah: Yeah, there’s so much and I’ve learned so much from my first year-students who are interested in some very diverse things, and they brought a lot to, like I was gonna say, my teaching, but like, also, just me personally, [LAUGHTER] I think they really enrich my life.

John: And you have taught some interesting classes, including a first-year seminar course in math and literature and poetry. And another one was women’s mathematics. Could you tell us a little bit about each of those classes and how you’ve used that to get students more engaged with math?

Sarah: Sure. So both of them are at the University of Toronto, I will probably do it as U of T at some point, which is not University of Texas for American listeners. And in part they were written to try to attract students who might not traditionally sign up for a math course, all of our first-year courses are massive at U of T, except for these first-year seminars, which are capped at, I think, 25. So really, students’ opportunity for a small class experience. So the math of literature and poetry, I think some of the seeds were planted, actually, by one of the students in that math creativity class. She was a poet, and she identified herself as a poet as a first-year student, and she was also very afraid of math, but she kept finding linkages. And she said, “You know, I think this can help me with my poetry.” And I am totally not a poetry person at all, or I certainly wasn’t, I’m maybe more now. And so that started to get me thinking about like, maybe if I combine math with like a poetry course, I could engage some other students. And she’s one of those students that I still talk to you and she just got her MFA in poetry and still using her math. So I talked to her actually, in developing this course. She helped me a little bit on the poetry side, also a key part in the math and literature and poetry is I had a TA from English because, again, I’m not a specialist. So I needed someone to help me and she was wonderful, a PhD student in literature. So I think another source of inspiration that was also integrated into it was that I had taught novels previously and seen how novels helped students relate to mathematicians or see themselves as mathematicians. I was just amazed at like how much empathy they had for the characters. So we read novels like about mathematicians, like the Housekeeper and the Professor, a really great Japanese novel in translation. And then there was mathematics from novels. So for example, one of our key novels, or a story, of the Library of Babel by Borges and you can actually ask, what is the shape of this library? What could the topology of it be in mathematical language? So then that was a key for investigating topology.

John: Was a library closed or open?

Sarah: Yeah, [LAUGHTER], exactly, that sort of question. We can start to narrow it down. So that was the math in literature and poetry course, in terms of content. The woman’s mathematics course is still kind of growing in my mind. It’s been in the works for a really long time. I just like us to center it almost like an experiential learning course, where the object of study was the university or like the mathematics in our university itself. And so as a result of both history and modern mathematics, and all sorts of things, I decided one of our units was going to be on data visualization, which is a little bit more number focus than I often have in first-year seminars, but people are often surprised that like Florence Nightingale was not just a friendly nurse, she was [LAUGHTER] an amazing data scientist. And she was really one of the first people to bring some of these amazing data visualizations, and she’s an amazing statistician, all these things. And there’s also a lot of women in this space currently. So their project was like, well take some data about the math department, maybe, or students in the math department and find an appropriate visualization for it. And they generated stuff that we really haven’t seen, like, what does it look like in our departments to have 13% woman faculty. You can say it all you want, but to actually see it with like the people, it is actually pretty startling to me. And then another project with that course, was we worked with a university archivist, and went into the university archives. So our university has a long and storied history, we hold ourselves up as a great research university. So we have many illustrious women in the past who have studied here, but people don’t know about them. And since I would say, we have a pretty bad situation with women in our department now, people kind of assume, after this archives project, I would go around and I would ask people, “When do you think the first woman president of the math student union was?” and people would say, “Oh, there’s never been a woman president. Like, are you kidding?” Because that’s the way it looks like now. But the answer is actually 1910 or something. And there were strong women, like way back when. And so students went to the University Archives, they looked at student records, they looked at faculty records, they looked at photos, and they told some stories from that. So that’s a project that’s gonna continue for a future class.

Rebecca: Sounds really interesting, and a great way to get students engaged with many different mathematical ideas, but also really engaged with this idea of identity related to disciplines.

Sarah: Yeah. And another thing that it did is it also helped them see themselves as part of the university because it was the first semester of the academic year, they were first-year students, and so it helped them see themselves as part of the community.

Rebecca: We don’t, in our curricula, look at the history of our university as part of what’s informing our work or informing the students. And so I can imagine that that’s a really unique kind of experience that could happen in any discipline, that would be a really interesting opportunity for students to just better understand their traditions that they’re coming out of.

Sarah: And I think our university archivist wants to work with classes, like they’re so excited to see, especially first year classes, get us to coming there and being part of that aspect of the university. I’m always a big fan of all of our librarians and I know that you guys are too,

Rebecca: You should see my notepad right now. It actually says “go see our archivist” because him and I had a conversation about a project we could do with my class. [LAUGHTER]

Sarah: Yeah, they’re wonderful.

John: Often, archivists are working in rooms all alone by themselves. And in fact, ours do work in the basement. And the opportunity to engage with students is good for them, as well as for students. That sounds like a really engaging project.

Rebecca: I’m ready to sign up for all of these classes. So I hope you have room.

Sarah: You are welcome to come and even speak and spread your wisdom, I would love that. [LAUGHTER]

John: Speaking of room… you also have taught some introductory calculus classes with up to 3000 students in them and you transformed them into an online environment along with a colleague during COVID. Could you tell us a little bit about how that course was structured and how it changed when you went to remote teaching?

Rebecca: It sounds so daunting.

Sarah: Oh, okay. So COVID for everyone has been really, really tough. And especially that I always have to go back and think what year was that? 2020 to 21 academic year…, everyone had it really, really tough. So we all like deserve, like hero badges or something, and I’m ready for a break. So I think we all need to catch up on our rest still from that. But I was fortunate because before the pandemic was on anyone’s radar, we had already arranged kind of a transition point in my job where I was going to be going from coordinating this gigantic introductory calculus class to not coordinating it. And the new coordinator, my colleague, Bernardo Galvao-Sousa, he was going to take over it. We were going to have a one year overlap, so he could kind of see how I did it and just like everything was gonna go normal and then he was gonna take over. So that overlap year was to be the 2020 to 21 academic year. So it was fortunate that we were both able to work on it, I don’t know how it would have happened otherwise. I had already been in a period of transforming this class, it had been basically the same from no one really knows, like, as far as anyone could remember, it had been the same. And I was basically brought on and hired at University of Toronto, to bring it to the 21st-century. So over the past three years before that, I had been changing it completely. And then, of course, we went online, which required it to be rethought because you can’t teach a course for 1000s of students the same way. So what was the course like before? Well, we have a lot of rules in our university for first-year courses, in that they have to have a midterm, they have to have a final exam worth a certain weight, there were three one-hour lectures a week, one one-hour tutorial, kind of the whole structure was pretty traditional. But I had been introducing some innovative projects, we were shaking things up in how we did them in tutorials. And the whole curriculum was really modernized. So I’ll give an example of one aspect of the course, the applied communication task, and how we transformed that aspect of the course, to put it online and still give students hopefully as good of an experiences as they could online. So applied communication tasks were this word project. So first semester, they were three separate projects, second semester it was one project, they were applied, and they were about mathematical communication. And I’m a big believer that I don’t really invent many new ideas, I just kind of like look at the needs of my students in my place and try to adapt things from elsewhere. So I had talked to every department that took my students after so this was like a calculus course for science students. And so they were going, the majority to life sciences, but they were also going to chemistry, they were going to physics, some are going to earth sciences. And then some are going to psychology and some at some other smaller departments, not smaller departments, but smaller portions are going to other departments. I guess economics was another big one. And I talked to them about like, what skills don’t students have that they should have from calculus? And one of the big themes was that students were afraid, they were just afraid to approach math in new context. So they could solve all the problems that were traditional, but they couldn’t if they saw a scientific paper, and there’s math, they were like, “I’m not familiar with this math, what do I do?” So I really took that as inspiration like, well, we should have students do that very thing. So as an aside, I put questions like that in exams, like, you know, take problems from scientific papers, give them information and put them on exams. But then also, in the second semester, have them find a scientific paper that has a mathematical model. And ultimately, the goal is to communicate something about that scientific model. Now, what form should that communication be in? Well, one common form that scientists use is a scientific poster. And the advantage of that is that it could be kind of an event, it can be kind of a grand finale for the course in tutorials. So we had a bunch of mini-poster sessions with about 100 students each. And so each of the posters presented models. They got into groups, kind of halfway through the semester, they combined some of their papers, but that took them through the experience of talking to a librarian and having to deal with databases. It got them through finding what’s important and what’s not. Well, I don’t understand… really this is way over my head in terms of math… what can I say from this model, and so all those skills like that, and then also the kind of communication. And it also combined oral communication where they have to talk about their poster and written communication, they had to write about their poster and they really worked on different drafts of different parts of their poster, and they have to read. First semester, the projects prepare them for that. They had a project that was focused on written communication, that was writing a proposal to their city council based on population projections from their hometown. They had a reading task and that’s changed a little bit over the years. So that’s what it was. What we did online is we basically kept the same projects, except instead of having the sprinkled in the tutorial, like every second or third tutorial was about the project, now we knew that they’re at home, they do not have any resources, any people around, we really need to make these be focused tutorial and make the structure very, very, very clear. Because otherwise, this really complex project is just gonna get completely confusing. We structured the first semester in that the first three tutorials were focused on writing. And the second three tutorials were focused on reading. And the third three tutorials were focused on oral communication. And then within that, the first tutorial had the same structure, the second tutorial had the same structure. And the third tutorial had the same structure. So they kind of had something much more predictable. And there was like a lot more evenness, and we didn’t try to give them as many skills as we did in the in-person, we cut down the expectations, we trimmed as much as possible. And then something similar in the second semester, we trimmed a lot, we focused a lot, we didn’t aim as high on the exams, in terms of all of those questions from scientific papers. We didn’t have exams, instead of exams, we had three different types of quizzes, the fun type was reflection quizzes, which had them reflect on their learning sometimes, or maybe conduct some sort of experiment at home, and then use that and make a model or something to like, go on a walk, this was in the deep COVID In the fall of 2020. And so like go on a walk, if you can’t go on a walk outside, go on a walk around your house and find something to model. So some people are modeling bird chirps or whatever. And then you create your own scientific models. And if you have two to three thousand students spread around the world, obviously, cheating is a huge concern. So we tried as much as possible to make it interesting. And for me, like, yes, academic integrity is big, but it was the perception of academic integrity amongst the students. Like we really wanted to keep them engaged.

John: So how did you assess and evaluate all those quizzes? Did you have a large team of TAs?

Sarah: We had very limited TA hours actually. So I think that’s another part of big course stuff that we don’t talk about a lot. It’s actually something I’ve been writing about, I’m just not sure where to send it because we don’t talk about it. It’s like management, like how do you manage a large organization? So we have about 50 people. How do you distribute your resources, and we have very limited resources. So we wanted to do these quizzes, we want to them very well, we have very few TAs and we still wanted TAs to teach tutorials. What are we gonna do? So what we ended up doing is redistributed our instructor resources. And normally students would be in classes of 200 in person. And we had them in classes of 400 online, because we figured the difference between an online class of 200 and an online class of 400 was not going to make a big difference. And technology, I can go into all the technological challenges. Now, the technology is all there. But August 2020, breakout rooms for this large of groups, impossible. So we had to do all these Zoom, and it’s crazy stuff. That’s how we managed is we had instructors who were like just in charge of quizzes. And that’s how we did it. And then every third quiz was kind of the automatically graded kind.

Rebecca: I think it’s important to bring up some of these logistics or project management skills the faculty have to have, especially when coordinating such big courses. And I appreciate that you’re sharing some of those things, because you’re right, we don’t talk about it. Just like we don’t talk about those same experiences that we have as young female faculty in the classroom or whatever kind of identities that impact our experiences.

Sarah: Exactly. Yeah. And both of these are the things that really keep me awake at night. It’s not the actual teaching, it’s the “How am I going to possibly grade?” [LAUGHTER] Or like, “How can I negotiate with my chair for more hours per students?” Or “What are you going to do with that one TA who’s behaving inappropriately with students?” It’s all of these extra things. Very, very, very different if you’re doing even a class to 500 versus a class of a few 1000 is quite different because you can’t see it all.

Rebecca: Yeah, managing an equitable experience is a really different kind of thing. It just keeps scaling up. So finding that equity piece is a challenge.

John: But it is impressive that you did those reflection quizzes at that scale, because that’s something I’ve wanted to do, but have been a little reluctant to do in a class of 400 that I teach in the fall. And now this is suggesting maybe I should do some of that. [LAUGHTER] Providing the feedback is the main concern that I have.

Sarah: Yeah, well, I think for gigantic classes. I don’t know however, we defined gigantic, like I guess gigantic versus the thing that you want to do. It’s often like what’s really the priority here and then what can you sacrifice, like, there’s always going to have to be a sacrifice. So I can’t provide the same feedback on a quiz to a group of 2,000 students as I can for a group of 20 students, or the classes that I had this year were in the low hundreds. And I can’t provide them the level of feedback that I had like on everything. But using peer feedback can be helpful, or just explaining to them, I can’t provide you feedback on this. If you want more feedback, you’re going to have to seek it, which is hard I know and not ideal. However, these are the things that we face, or just like deciding that the grading scale is going to be really generous and loose. I experimented this last semester in class of like 300-ish students with not ungrading, but more this [LAUGHTER] direction, letting them determine a lot more of their achievement levels, trusting them to say, “Oh, yes, I have mastered this actually.”

Rebecca: Well, now you’ve piqued our interest and we need to know more about it.

Sarah: Yeah, like, I’m still kind of thinking about how to describe it or characterize it because I started off with a structure. And then I really let the semester go on and adjusted as I saw my students change and as I changed myself. So I don’t have a lot of eloquent ways to discuss it. This is a upper-year course for group theory. And I wanted to do a lot of things that I just didn’t have the resources for. So I had to make a lot of tough decisions. And also, we are in a super grade-intensive university. And by the time they’re in like, third year, this is so ingrained in their mind. And this particular course has a very high percentage of international students, probably over 80% international students. And in my university, I think that they tend to be more concerned about grades because they have to be and somehow, just like not giving them grades on anything. [LAUGHTER] Like saying, “Okay, you’ve either mastered this, or you’re excellent on this, or you’re not there yet” was really difficult at first, a lot of them dropped the course immediately, because they didn’t understand it. They were like, “what percentage is this?” And I’m like, “Well, there is no percent.” “Well, is it 100?” I think they did not understand the concept of it at all. So I wanted to focus on oral skills, and oral skills are so hard to assess. But I want to give them the opportunity to develop their oral skills, I didn’t really want to assess them as much as I wanted to make sure that they were speaking about math and they were talking about math to other people. They could reattempt any assignment they wanted. So, they did a test, they could show me that they had actually learned the material on the test. But they had to talk to other people about it, they had to demonstrate they had spoken to other people, a lot of the main things like videos, and one group organized a mini conference on the topics for the weekend. They did a lot of amazing thing as a result of this. And the TAs provided very targeted feedback. So we’ve provided feedback on the skills that we knew students needed feedback on. So, they needed feedback on particular cognitive skills that they were not able to assess, like research has shown that they are not able to assess their own proofs, or students are not able to provide that same feedback. That’s what we assess. But we didn’t bother assessing things we didn’t care about.

Rebecca: It’s an interesting way of thinking about it. I know that I also was experimenting a little bit with ungrading this past semester, and also found that international students are the most like, “I don’t know what this means.”

Sarah: [LAUGHTER] Yeah, you have to just admit, sometimes, you don’t really understand it. Also a good opportunity for discussion for students, and talking about what that means when we don’t really understand.

Rebecca: Yeah, I think it’s good to model that.

John: We always end with the question, what’s next?

Sarah: Well, I just submitted my tenure file two days ago.

Rebecca: YAY!

Sarah: So I need to catch up on a couple of things, but then rest. I have not had a good opportunity since the beginning [LAUGHTER] of the pandemic, so I think that that’s going to be my answer. Yeah. [LAUGHTER]

John: That sounds like a wonderful plan. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: And great advice for everybody listening. [LAUGHTER] We can all use a little rest.

Sarah: We all need that reminder.

John: And we should note that this is the first time that Rebecca and I have recorded in the same room since March of 2020. So this is sort of a return to normalcy for us.

Rebecca: Yeah. So it was nice to share this experience with you, Sarah.

Sarah: Yeah, it was so nice to talk to both of you and to see you together. [LAUGHTER] So, I know that listeners can’t see you, but I have enjoyed seeing you and speaking with you.

Rebecca: Well, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you

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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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250. Hacking Assessment

Traditional grading systems often encourage students to focus on achieving higher grades rather than on their learning. In this episode, Starr Sackstein joins us to discuss how classes can be redesigned to improve student engagement and learning. Starr has been an educator for 20 years and is currently the COO of Mastery Portfolio, an educational consultant, and instructional coach and speaker. She is the author of more than 10 books on education, including the best-selling Hacking Assessment: 10 ways to go gradeless in a traditional grades school, which has just been released in a new edition.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Traditional grading systems often encourage students to focus on achieving higher grades rather than on their learning. In this episode, we discuss how classes can be redesigned to improve student engagement and learning.

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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.

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Rebecca: Our guest today is Starr Sackstein. Starr has been an educator for 20 years and is currently the COO of Mastery Portfolio, an educational consultant, and instructional coach and speaker. She is the author of more than 10 books on education, including the best-selling Hacking Assessment: 10 ways to go gradeless in a traditional grades school, which has been released in a new edition. Welcome, Starr.

Starr: Thanks so much. I’m excited to be here.

John: Today’s teas are… Starr, are you drinking tea?

Starr: I am drinking water. No tea unfortunately, not yet.

Rebecca: Not yet. Okay. See, there we go, there’s promise there. I have Scottish Breakfast tea today.

John: And I have spring cherry green tea.

Rebecca: Well, that’s good.

Starr: Those both sound delicious, really.

Rebecca: So, you haven’t had that one in a while, John.

John: I haven’t had any in a while…

Rebecca: true that…

John: …we took a pause in recording for about a month. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: Fair. But even prior to that it had been a while I think.

John: I think so too.

Rebecca: We invited you here today to discuss Hacking Assessment. The first edition of your book seven years ago helped to launch the ungrading movement. Could you give us some background on what prompted you to move away from traditional grading systems?

Starr: Absolutely. In years one to five when I was in the classroom, I would say that I pretty much did grading and assessment the way it was done to me. And the one major significant thing that changed during that time was I had a child. And in his elementary school, they actually use standards-based grading. And when I got his first report card and saw just how much information I got from his teachers, and how the behaviors were separate from the actual learning and the narratives were really aligned with where he needed support and what was going on. I was like, Mmmh…for someone teaching AP English, only having the opportunity to give one grade, with pre slugged sort of comments that I was allowed to bubble into my… back then we were still using Scantrons for entering grades. I’m definitely dating myself by saying that, but it’s the truth. And I started getting really frustrated with that. And from there, I started doing a lot of reading. Alfie Kohn has really played with a lot of these ideas for a long time now. And then folks like Ken O’Connor, who had the book 15 Fixes for Broken Grades, his first edition, I think it’s been republished twice already, in the time since I’ve read from there. I read his book, and I was like, “Oh, my God, I am doing all of this wrong.” There are so many things on this list that I do, and I never thought about it that way, and it’s just not how I want to keep doing things. And I think there’s a synergy with when you decide to read a book, whether or not it resonates with you and whether or not you’re ready to start implementing the things that you learn. And I think I was very ready to first acknowledge that the practice I was doing wasn’t serving my students as well as I could. And I was looking for alternatives. So having those jumping off points, having read a bunch of different things, and then meeting Mark Barnes along the way as well, and experimenting with alright, well, these are suggestions for this kind of space. What does this look like in New York City public schools, as an 11th and 12th grade English teacher and also as a journalism teacher? How do I start making this work? And that’s sort of how it all happened and then it took years to figure out how do I make this work well, because I did it for a while before it worked well. [LAUGHTER] There were a lot of mistakes, unfortunately.

John: We’ve been dealing with a number of people starting to experiment with ungrading in college, but it’s a little bit easier in a college environment, I think, to make these changes, because there’s a little bit less structure imposed on teachers. How were you able to implement this in a K through 12 system?

Starr: So I think I was very fortunate to be in a very small community when I started doing this. We were six to 12. I was already a very established teacher in that community. I had a track record of getting students prepared for college. And most of the families when I made choices, always kind of knew that they were intentional, and there were reasons. And in my AP classes, that was probably the most struggle, because parents get nervous when they have 12th graders, what is this gonna look like on the transcript? How is this going to impact my students moving forward from school? And I just really tried to set up systems and to be super transparent about everything that we were doing so that first of all, I live streamed my class a lot, for better or for worse. And I say that because not every class was a winner. So if you were watching when it wasn’t a winner, like, well, this is reality, it wasn’t a good day. But I think they were able to see the rigor of what was going on in the space and despite the fact that it didn’t look like what normal AP classes looked like, they could appreciate my wanting to be flexible to the individual learners in my classroom… that even the creative projects I was asking them to do was often a lot more intensive than just doing a test or just writing a paper and gave that level of inquiry into that process as well so that students could be really excited about the learning they were doing. And the more comfortable I got with different technologies… I experimented with blogging to increase reading. That’s one of the biggest problems in English classes. I think most kids don’t read the books for a lot of different reasons. So how do you get them to read when you’re teaching a literature class, beyond just the five or seven or 10 books you’re reading as a whole class. So they started blogging, and we started using the blogging communities for recommendations on different books they were enjoying on their own and why they enjoyed it. And I really encouraged them to use that space too as a way to develop their writing voice. So it wasn’t like analytical writing all the time, it was more conversational… reaction sort of stuff to what they were reading and focused instead of like overviews of everything that they read… an analysis paper, which isn’t always fun for every single kid. I started tweaking that and I think parents appreciated my transparency. I did screencasts of our dashboard, because I had changed the way I was using the tool that my whole school was using. So like, if you have any questions, this is what it looks like, this is what you’re seeing. And if they emailed me, I just really tried to get back to them immediately, so that I could really put their concerns to rest before they started doing the thing that parents do, where they start making it a lot worse than it actually is. So I tried to catch that right away. To be honest, though, my colleagues were the ones with the greater pushback than parents and students… a couple of students, but just shifting the conversation away from grades, instead of what did I get? What did you learn? How can we track that progress over time? How do you know you learned it? Where do you see that evidence in your own learning. And I think very soon after getting in the routine of this is how we do things now they got it and saw that the level of metacognition as well as the rigor in the actual tasks were much greater than what they would have been seeing in a regular class anyway. So sometimes I got the: “this writing reflection is like a whole other paper that you’re asking us to do.” And I’m like, “Yeah, it is. But it also helps me give you better feedback, and it also helps me know where I need to adjust my instruction. So there’s a reason and it’s worthwhile, and it’s gonna help you, when you’re not just in school. This is a practice that you’ll probably carry with you.”

Rebecca: One of the things that you just brought up, Starr, is something that I definitely want to follow up on, which is getting our colleagues to also buy into this, and administrators. We exist within systems that require grade inputs. Grades are transcripted. So how do we get the people around us who support us professionally, to get on board? And what does that actually look like, functionally, when we’re generating grades when we’re saying we’re kind of ungrading all semester.

Starr: So those are really good questions. And in the second edition, I actually have built in leadership tips to support leaders who are unfamiliar with this kind of assessment practice and how they can support teachers who want to do it, if they’re not doing it wholesale as a school. I advocate for systemic use of this practice, because if we catch kids much younger, by the time they get to high school, their language and fluency in discussing their own learning is a lot greater. I was a 12th grade teacher, my kids had come through an entire system where this was not how it was done. So it was like, literally at the last minute, I’m like, “Yeah, I know, that’s the way you’ve been doing it this whole time. But we’re gonna do it a little differently and I promise you’ll still get into college.” It’s a different vibe. And my colleagues, I think, knew my students appreciated it, because they would start hearing from my students: “How come you don’t do this?” …which is also like a little bit of a target was put on my back, because if a school or a district is going to make the shift, it requires a lot of professional learning. And if you aren’t the kind of teacher who makes the time to do learning on your own, then there really does need to be supports put in place prior to it’s happening. And I’m a super reflective teacher, I did National Board Certification, I will go out of my way to get myself to a conference even if my school wasn’t paying for it. Because as an educator, I felt it was an essential part of my job to continually grow and model that for my students. But not every teacher is like that. And I’m not suggesting that everyone has to be or whatever their process is, but I do think it’s important to invite colleagues into your space, give them that “what you could do tomorrow kind of tips” like what are the first few steps you could take to try this out before you commit to it wholesale. And in terms of the grading aspect, the way that I got around the traditional grading was assessment conferences with my students. So really building in a vibrant and robust portfolio system where students were collecting their learning over a larger period of time, giving them the vocabulary to talk about their growth as they looked at those things, and then a conversation just like this. So based on the standards we worked on this marking period, where do you find yourself in terms of mastery? And what does that translate to for a report card grade, because I had to put a grade on the report card as well. So it was really just making them acutely aware of what exemplary work looks like, how they were meeting benchmarks to get there over time, and then also switch that transactional sort of relationship around getting grades to a more progress minded model, where they understand learning doesn’t happen in one sitting. And even though you may have successfully completed one assignment, that doesn’t mean you’ve mastered a particular skill, it’s just your first go at it. In order to get to that mastery level, you have to do it over time with less and less support, and kind of do it on your own.

John: What sort of buy in did you get from other teachers that you were working with?

Starr: It was secret at first. There were like people just dropping by out of curiosity to see what was going on in my classroom. Then a couple of other people just asking, “what would this look like in my gradebook?” I was very lucky in the one sense that our whole school was a portfolio school. So that part of it was already there. And then I also did some PD with my colleagues around reflection practices. We tried to really create something that was consistent, and also the same. So like I had created a process for doing reflection, which is that five steps sort of: first, you have to reexamine what was it I was asked to do? What were my steps for completing the assignment? Where do I think I’m meeting the goals that I set for myself? How am I doing that? What level am I doing that at? And what would I do differently in the future? And then we kind of scaffold that down to sixth grade up to 12th grade. So what is that kind of reflection look like in a sixth grade classroom, a seventh grade classroom, all the way up to 12. So that there are realistic expectations in that space around those things. And my classroom was always open. And I resented the fact that when my principal decided that she wanted us to go to a standards-based model, I implored her to not do it the way she did. I think we should have a pilot team, we should have a committee that does this, we should test it out first, try to get either a grade level team or a content area vertically to commit to doing this and then have input from more people. And then we need to train folks in the areas they aren’t already familiar with, starting with unpacking standards and getting them comfortable with that kind of language and what our expectations are. But that’s not what happened. It was like an email that went out. We’re going to do this this year. And it was a disaster. And I got attached to the disaster as a direct correlation to how all that happened. And unfortunately, you get one good shot to make a significant assessment or grading shift in a decade, because unless your folks are leaving quickly, no one forgets. So really setting up systems in the future, if folks who are listening want to do this on a bigger scale, set yourself up for a three- to five-year implementation plan, start small and grow it organically and provide tons of support along the way so everybody feels confident and not just your teachers, your community also. What does this look like for your parents? What are they going to be receiving that’s different? And just make sure that you have answers to commonly asked questions on the front end, so that when new stuff starts coming in, you’re ready to triage that, you’re not just answering the standard questions over and over and over again.

John: You mentioned in your first edition of the book that one of the motivations for this was to get students to focus on their learning rather than on grades. How successful was this? Did this work for most students?

Starr: For most, yes. And believe it or not, the ones that don’t traditionally do school well, who don’t play the game, it worked best for them. And as three educators sitting on this podcast right now, I think we can all agree that sometimes our brightest students are not the ones who do the best. The ones who do the best are the ones who are most committed to getting high grades and kind of checking the boxes and doing everything that they have to be compliant for in order to get that score. So when we shifted the focus away from that and started looking at skill acquisition and content deepening, and really getting them to be able to advocate for their own needs in that specific area, I think that it wasn’t just about them completing the tasks I asked them to do, but it required them to engage with me in a dialogue in the kinds of tasks they wanted to be doing, the way they wanted to be doing it. And it required my flexibility with taking that input and actually putting it into action. So I think that once they saw that I was listening to their feedback actively and using it right away to shift the way class looked, they understood that I wasn’t just saying, “I’m asking you to do this,” it was a real partnership, where if this is going to be successful, and you want your voice to be heard, you need to contribute or else you can’t complain when you don’t like what ended up happening, because I really did try to say “yes,” just about to everything, if they could articulate how their decisions and their choices aligned with what the objectives were, then I was totally hands off in their process to sort of help them be successful in the big picture. And it also really decreased the amount of folks who didn’t participate in the group work or didn’t participate in the learning. So when people say my students don’t finish work, or they don’t submit things, to me, that’s a red flag that either something else is going on that you need to get to the bottom of, or the kind of learning you’re asking them to do isn’t resonating. And rather than just pulling out the binder from what you’ve done for the last 20 years, you really do have to make a concerted effort to make changes so that it meets the needs of the kiddos that are sitting in front of you right now.

Rebecca: So you’ve talked a lot about reflection, and the role reflection is playing. Can you talk a bit about how you were able to get students up to the level of reflection that is really meaningful and gets to this metacognitive skill, building

Starr: Feedback, feedback, feedback. We give a lot of feedback to everything that kids do in the classroom. But the first few times we ask them to reflect, it’s so important that we’re also giving them feedback on their reflections, providing exemplars for them, really creating success criteria too, like that co-construction, like if I’m telling you, these are three examples that are wildly different, but all successful, what do you notice about all three of them? What are the things that need to be a part of every single reflection that we do. And then as they do them, rather than have them revise every single one that they do, since they’re doing them with every major assignment, it’s like, “alright, well, now take the feedback you got from the last one, apply it to this one and let’s see if we can’t grow you.” And usually by, I would say November, they’re already writing fairly good reflections and their ability to have conversation about their level of learning already starts to increase, because by November, you’ve already had a progress report conversation, you’ve already had a quarter one report card conversation. And I was doing a lot of modeling myself, like I would reflect openly on how successful projects went, in my estimation, and be really, really tied to the outcomes. And not just what I think or what I feel, but what I noticed, and how I would do it differently if we had the opportunity to do something similar again. And I think, again, that level of transparency and my comfort with saying to them, I don’t know how to make this better. What do you think? What made this experience challenging? Were my directions not as clear as they could have been? What do I need to learn from this experience? So it was very much a two-way street, which took time. And I do want to say that too. Like, I think I was seven or eight years into the classroom before I was comfortable enough to say “I didn’t know something.” That takes confidence in a way that you don’t really think. In the beginning of my career, I felt like I needed to be the expert over all of the students in my room, and I had to have an answer for everything. And I said a lot of wrong things because I was trying so hard to look like an authority. And I think the older I get, the more I work with educators, the more I realize that I’m a learner, I don’t know everything, even the stuff I’ve spent a lot of time teaching I don’t know everything about and new perspectives are incredibly useful in how I approach something because it’s the first time this group of kids is seeing something I might have tried before. Their input is extraordinarily useful for me to make changes moving forward.

John: It’s also a great way of nurturing a growth mindset in students by reminding them that we’re all part of this learning experience together. And that no matter how much experience you have, there’s always more you can learn. And so I think that’s a really great process. And it’s something that I think it generally takes a while for most people to get to.

Starr: Yeah.

John: So you mentioned having conferences with students, how often do you conference with students?

Starr: So, there’s lots of different levels of conferencing. So you have your in-class formative conversation where they’re asking questions and you’re taking the pulse of whether or not you’re going too fast or if you need to stop the class and do a mini lesson on something you notice everyone’s struggling with. Or if you pull a small group because only a small group of kids are really having an issue. So there’s that kind of on-the-fly conferencing where you’re walking around with a clipboard or an iPad and you’re taking notes on what you see. And then listening to the questions kids are asking and making a determination as to whether or not this is a small or bigger issue that needs to be addressed. And then there are formal conferences where kids are coming prepared to have that conversation where you’re giving them time in class. So part of my structuring… because remember, I said it took me a long time to find a system that worked that ended up in Hacking Assessment… so I started creating Google Forms, where there were very targeted questions that also aligned with the assessments that we did, and the different pieces of learning and the standards that we were addressing at that time. And before they could set up a conference, they needed to fill in that whole Google form, then I had all that informatio, so I could really target clarifying questions or gaps that we could spend our five minutes talking about. If they had done all the work to do certain things, they don’t have to rehash what I could read. And if I had 34 students in most of my classes, so there’s a lot of kids, there’s a little time, you really have to make that three to five minutes count, and give every student the opportunity to give you the most information that you could have to be able to determine what was going to go on the report card. So those conversations certainly got a lot better over time as well. The first one, there was a lot of prompting from me, a lot of questions to get them ready by conference number 2, 3, 4, and certainly by the end of the year, if you watch on my YouTube channel, I have examples of what those look like. By the end of the year, the student is doing 98% of the talking. And I’m just redirecting if they kind of get off a little bit, or if they miss a spot versus at the beginning, it’s more of like a 40-60 where I am interjecting and kind of bolstering confidence, helping them set goals and stuff. So there’s more of a give and take at the beginning of the year.

John: You mentioned giving students some choice in terms of the assignments and so forth. What are some of the more interesting assignments or learning activities that your students have come up with?

Starr: The one that always comes to mind was, towards the end of my time in the classroom, before I became an instructional coach, I literally gave my students my entire unit plan for Hamlet. And I said, “Alright, this is the way I always teach it. But I want to do it differently this year. So I want you to look at the overall objectives. And as a group, I want you to come up with something different, then we’re going to vote as a class, which group suggestion we want to go with, and whichever group is chosen, you’ll come meet with me at lunch, we’ll design an assignment together and work through the success criteria and benchmarks for doing it successfully.” And if I tell you some of the things these kids came up with, I would have never come up with in a million years. And what we landed on was these psychological profiles of the characters of Hamlet, where they had to first use the text, to use Shakespeare’s language, to diagnose them with some kind of psychological issue. For example, Gertrude would be a narcissist. And then they do research on the actual issue, so there’s a research component as well. And then they had to come up with a treatment plan for the character and create a movie that demonstrated the growth from whatever the treatment plan was. And what it really did was have this really in-depth character analysis of each character from Hamlet, regardless of which character you did, you were set on a course. And then we also created this Google form, so that when we had screenings of the movies at the end, students were actively taking notes about what they learned about the characters and giving feedback at the same time to the creators of those movies about what they learned and what they were still curious about. And it was really phenomenal, honestly. I think that I wish I would have started doing stuff like that sooner. Other examples would have been students creating movies in Minecraft, like for our satire movies, that’s usually so like, just technology, but I was very uncomfortable with, that they were able to use that. I was like, yeah, “If you could do it without my support, I could help you with content, but you’re on your own for the technology.”

Rebecca: So you’ve hinted at some of the changes in your second edition. Can you highlight some additional changes between the first and second edition?

Starr: Okay, so yes, there are a lot more resources. So over the last seven years, part of the reason I hadn’t made a second edition up till this point, was because I really wanted there to be a value added. I wanted there to be new voices I can highlight. I was really also looking for systems that started doing this work because I wanted there to be more case study material that kind of went in that it wasn’t just single teachers kind of playing with it, but actually systematizing it in ways that work for them. So there are brand new hacks and actions for every single chapter, all of them have read the first edition and implemented it in their own way. So what you’re getting is people’s take on how what they learned looks like. I really tried to implement K to higher ed. So Susan Blum did write a section as well on what it looks like in college for all of my reticent K-12 folks who were like, “This isn’t going to be viable in the future.” I had central office people write about stakeholder buy in and how they brought this into their space from a leader perspective, instead of just a classroom perspective. A lot of new tools that have been developed in the last seven years, lots of stuff about that, rubrics, progressions, not just in English, which was my background, obviously, really trying to span math, science, social studies, related arts. So there’s one with a music teacher writing about how they’ve done that in that area… elementary teachers. So there really are tons of resources with a lot of different fresh voices who are using this now, as well as a very intentional talk about equitable practices. I think a lot of this stuff is equitable, but I never thought of it in that lens until COVID. And then once COVID happened, really trying to talk about how these things address some of those gaps that need to be addressed, but weren’t explicitly tied to them in the past. So that’s really where the bulk of things have shifted. And then there’s an incredible appendix with lots and lots of examples of everything.

John: And your first edition was wonderful. It provides a lot of good resources. And in each section, it talks about how to deal with pushback, which is one of the things anyone introducing something new has to deal with. So I’m assuming that continues into the second edition.

Starr: Yep, sure does.

John: So your first edition was very successful, and has received a lot of traction at all levels of education, and helped spur the ungrading movement at the college level that we’ve been talking about a lot in the last couple of years with our guests, and with many of our colleagues. For those people who have read the first edition, what would be the benefits to them of picking up the second edition, and who should they share that with at their institutions?

Starr: So I’m really hopeful that this time, it’s not individual teachers picking the book up on their own, although I certainly advocate for that. I want to see teams use this as a PLN opportunity and explore the text in a way that makes sense to them. It is not narrative, necessarily. So each chapter is its own sort of entity. And so I would encourage folks to choose the chapter that they’re most ready for at this moment and pick it apart in a way that’s going to make most sense for their practice.

John: We always end with the question: “What’s next?”

Starr: Oh, I’m so glad you asked. So what’s next for me right now, we are doing a free book study with the new book when it launches August 2, and it’ll be on Amazon. And then also, once this one launches, and things are moving, I’m under contract with ASCD for my next book, which is specifically about portfolios and student-led conferences. So that is still something that’s a little thinner in Hacking Assessment, because I think that that really requires a little bit more depth than I could give it in that book in one chapter. So I am currently working on that and really trying to gather with some of the districts that I’m working with to build really great systems for building portfolios. What does that look like? And how do you parlay that piece into these student-led conferences so that you can have a robust system in your space?

John: That sounds like a great supplement. Well, thank you. It’s great talking to you. We’ve heard mention of your book from many of our past guests, and I’m glad I was finally able to get to read it. And I’m looking forward to the second edition, which should be arriving soon.

Starr: Awesome. Thank you so much.

Rebecca: Yeah, thank you so much. This is such great information and we’re looking forward to all your new work as well.

Starr: Thank you.

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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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244. Unlearning

To deepen our understanding or improve our skills, it is often necessary to question our preconceptions and unlearn some of our past practices and assumptions. In this episode, Lindsay Masland joins us to discuss her unlearning journey. Lindsay is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology and the Associate Director of Faculty Professional Development in the Center for Academic Excellence at Appalachian State University.

Show Notes

  • Blum, S. D. (Ed.). (2020). Ungrading: Why rating students undermines learning (and what to do instead). West Virginia University Press.
  • Jesse Stommel’s website
  • Stommel, J. (2018). How to Ungrade. Blog post, Jesse Stommel. March 11.
  • Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of educational research, 77(1), 81-112.
  • Wisniewski, B., Zierer, K., & Hattie, J. (2020). The power of feedback revisited: A meta-analysis of educational feedback research. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 3087.
  • Hattie, J., & Clarke, S. (2018). Visible learning: feedback. Routledge.
  • Pittman, C., & Tobin, T. J. (2022). “Academe Has a Lot to Learn About How Inclusive Teaching Affects Instructors.The Chronicle of Higher Education. February 7.
  • Chavella Pittman and Tom Tobin (2022). Include Instructors in Inclusive Teaching. Tea for Teaching podcast. Episode 231. March 16.
  • Prentis Hemphill

Transcript

John: To deepen our understanding or improve our skills, it is often necessary to question our preconceptions and unlearn some of our past practices and assumptions. In this episode, we explore one faculty developer’s unlearning journey.

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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.

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Rebecca: Our guest today is Lindsay Masland. Lindsay is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology and the Associate Director of Faculty Professional Development in the Center for Academic Excellence at Appalachian State University. Welcome, Lindsay.

Lindsay: Hi, thanks for having me.

John: Are teas today are… are you drinking tea, Lindsay?

Lindsay: I am not because I’m one of those people that can’t have a lot of caffeine in the afternoon hours and this is afternoon hours for me, so I am drinking store brand seltzer. So, very fancy.

Rebecca: It sounds very fancy to me. [LAUGHTER] It sounds perfect. I’m celebrating the fact that it feels like it’s a summer day here, which is magical. And so I made iced tea fresh.

John: And what type of iced tea is this?

Rebecca: This is English Breakfast iced tea.

John: Very good.

Rebecca: Decaf.

John: Lady Grey, by the way, makes a superb iced tea.

Rebecca: It does, you’re right.

John: I had that for the first time at the English P=avilion in Epcot when we’re at one of the OLC conferences, and I had to ask them what the tea was because it tasted superb. I had never had it as an iced tea before.

Lindsay: Sounds like I need to branch out because I am in the south, you know, and we do like our iced tea. And I mostly have iced tea that I brew the tea myself, but it’s always English breakfast tea. I hadn’t thought to branch out.

Rebecca: Yeah.

John: Since this was an English pavilion, it was probably acceptable to try that.

Rebecca: You didn’t say what kind of tea you were drinking, John.

John: I have a black raspberry green tea today from the Republic of Tea.

Rebecca: Oh, that sounds nice.

John: It is good. I haven’t had it for a while.

Rebecca: I don’t usually think of raspberry and green tea together. I always associate that with black tea. That’s all… That’s the whole thought. [LAUGHTER] There’s nothing more there. And welcome to our land, Lindsay. [LAUGHTER] It’s the end of the semester. So we invited you here today, Lindsay, to talk about unearning. Can you talk to us a little bit about what unlearning is?

Lindsay: Well, I guess I should first say this is not my term. There are probably other people who could more likely say that this is their term. But I just know that when I think about my own experiences as a faculty member over the last 11 years (that’s how long I’ve been in academia), and then a faculty or educational developer for the six or so, that the main thing that’s happened for me is recognizing how much that I used to believe was true, that simply wasn’t serving me anymore. It wasn’t serving my students, for sure, but it also wasn’t serving me just as a person. And so to me, that’s what unlearning is, is when you have those aha moments, the achievement of threshold concept moments, if we want to connect to some of that language from faculty development, where you realize this is not something that I want to continue to believe or live out.

John: And I think this also applies to our students’ experiences and to our role in teaching students… that they come to us with a lot of preconceptions, as we come to teaching with a lot of preconceptions, and some of those don’t hold up very well. So I think it’s a great topic to be discussing. What are some things that you have unlearned, since you’ve been in this role?

Rebecca: Or are in the process of unlearning? [LAUGHTER]

John: Yes.

Lindsay: Yeah, I think that’s a really important caveat is that I feel like we never arrive, I think as teachers as humans. And so we’re always in the process of doing something I think a lot of the times, we’re thinking about being in the process of learning. But simultaneously, I think we should be in the process of unlearning the things that don’t serve. So I think one major thing that I was kind of socialized into is… my background is Psychology, my PhD is in Educational Psychology with a concentration in Quantitative Statistics, and I only bring that up because I think it’s really important for understanding, I guess, the baggage [LAUGHTER] that I brought in some ways to the teaching role, because psychology, especially when I was getting my PhD and the time before that really overprivileged a quantitative “objective” view of the world. And so that is what I was socialized into. We didn’t learn any qualitative analysis, for example. And so that’s kind of what I was carrying with me. And I also think… I don’t want to blame it on psychology, I see why psychology is that way… because psychology at one point kind of split off from philosophy hundreds of years ago. And one way they were able to distinguish themselves from philosophers was to say, “Well, we have science and we collect objective observations about things that feel really non-objective, because psychologists study feelings and behaviors and ideas and thoughts… things it seems like you shouldn’t be able to quantify those.” But like, our whole shtick is that we can. And so I bring that with me, I think, into the teaching, into educational development. And I don’t think that was very helpful, [LAUGHTER] necessarily, because what I think ends up happening is you start, at least I know I brought kind of a deterministic way of thinking, like, “Okay, we just got to figure out what are the evidence-based teaching strategies, and I’m going to learn those, and then once I become a faculty developer, I’m going to teach those. And then if we all just do that, everything will be great.” Because that’s a very, like, if then we measure this, we do this, we get this clear result. That’s the whole thing with psychology is trying to predict behavior. And so if you bring that into the classroom, it’s like, I’m going to design in a way that’s going to predict everybody’s behavior. So I think that was something I needed to unlearn. When I realized, you can’t predict behavior, [LAUGHTER] that teaching choices are not deterministic, they are contextual, and that you really need to bring some chaos theory [LAUGHTER] into your understanding, honestly, of teaching. So I think it was when I started to read some books seriously about chaos theory, and also about different types of statistics that were intentionally modeling either context or randomness. And I was like, wait a minute, we’re taking a math equation, and we have like a thing in the math equation that is measuring “randomness.” I was like, what’s that? But it made me realize, like, wait a minute, okay, if the physicists and the mathematicians are doing that, we need to get on board.

John: This really resonates with me, because my background is that I’m an econometrician. And I got interested in this by doing some research on what techniques seem to work in my classes and in other classes. And those error terms, though, I’ve always taken pretty seriously. But in recent years, I’ve become much more interested in behavioral economics, which introduces all the ways in which we don’t behave in ways that are entirely consistent with the economic models that we normally teach in our classes. Actually, I’ve been bringing in more psychology into economics, which is probably even more deterministic than psychology ever was.

Lindsay: Yeah, that’s a good point. But it’s so funny, because in so many of these models, we’re always trying to reduce the error term, or control for the error term, like make it irrelevant by our methodology, we’re going to control for the error. And I think once you start teaching, you’re like the “error,” first of all, that’s like a really problematic label [LAUGHTER] for your students, but the “error,” it’s like, that’s where it’s at, like, we need to actually be designing for that, because there is variation in ourselves and in our students. That’s, I think what successful teaching is. But, it’s important, because I’m seeing this discussion right now a lot on social media is people are expressing their, what I would call righteous frustration about certain teaching strategies, assessment strategies, belongingness strategies, any of that… certain strategies being kind of like heralded as the ideal, and then other people responding like, “Well, I can’t do that. That’s not feasible for me. So does that mean that I’m not going to ever be a good teacher?” Because that’s not effective. And to me, I’m like, “Okay, this is just all playing out now in our discussions, is people are starting to embrace the idea of context or interactions.” I mean, I think about it in terms of statistics. And in statistics, we have things called main effects where there’s one variable, and it seems to affect everybody equivalently. But most of the time, there’s also an interaction where different variables are interacting. And anytime there’s an interaction, you pay attention to that thing, not the other thing. And so I’m kind of excited that people are getting angry about “Well, I can’t ungrade…” …for example, or something like that… things that are a lot of people are talking about, I’m like, “Well, good, let’s have a discussion about that.”

Rebecca: As an artist, I really appreciate you coming to my site.

Lindsay: Actually, this connects well to unlearning. My day job, I guess we can call it, is an academic. But I have a second kind of life after my day job, which involves being on the stage, I have a lot of theater and dance activities that take up my time. So I actually have this whole artistic side of myself. But one of the things that I was kind of socialized into was keeping those separate. Academia is for serious people and art is not serious. And I want to really make it clear that I don’t believe that, but like, that’s what I was socialized into. And then it was a big unlearning, honestly. I stepped away from theater and dance for like 10 years, when I was finishing my PhD, and up until getting tenure. And in retrospect, I think I was doing that to be more serious. I was always saying to students, I get tenure, I’m going to do a musical again. And I did it. And I’m even getting emotional thinking about it. I was like, how did I live without this part of myself for 10 years, and that was really damaging. And I was like, I shouldn’t have had to do that. And I don’t want anybody to have to do that anymore. So, I think it’s really important because that was damaging to kind of live without that side of myself and now they’re together and I feel like a whole person again, because I’m bringing the subjective and the objective in together.

Rebecca: I think it’s important to remember that we’re all human. And that often gets lost when we’re thinking about teaching or we’re thinking about scholarship or we’re thinking about a trajectory. As a faculty member, the humaness and the things that are outside of the Academy are often lost or not attended to, at least during that tenure process.

John: And I had a very similar experience in terms of playing music up until the time I was in grad school. My band got together and went on tour, and I stayed in grad school. It was probably 15 years or so before I started playing again, and it’s gone back and forth a few times. But it is much more interesting when you can be that full person. And going back to the analogy with empirical studies, most of the variation in most studies of teaching is in that random component. And those random components are the people, the instructors and the students in that relationship. And it’s important not to forget that. So this is a really good point, it’s really easy to forget in our day-to-day work. So it’s good that you’re focusing in this direction, I think we all probably should focus more on being that whole person, especially now.

Rebecca: And we’ve all had those experiences of that randomness, because you might have two classes that feel entirely different, but it might be the same subject, the same syllabus, the same teacher, but the students in the room are different, the time of day might be different. So therefore, the context is now different.

John: What are some of the other things you have unlearned?

Lindsay: So another thing that I guess kind of follows on from that unlearning the obsession with objectivity is also disentangling or coming to understand what is my proper role in the classroom. And so starting in academia, I think a lot of people have this kind of experience, I guess I was 29, maybe, or just turning 30, when I was in my first tenure-track position, which is the position I’m still in, I’ve been at the same institution the whole time. And so I’m a female, I’m still in the same decade as some of the students that I’m going to be teaching. And I also am somebody that has a young face. I’m not tall, kind of like pint-sized, in some ways. [LAUGHTER] And so I have all of these kinds of status things that are, I guess, in some ways, possibly working against me, in terms of me thinking I can…I would never use this phase now, but… control a classroom, I think that’s kind of what I was thinking is like, “Oh, gosh, I’m going to do this.” And so I think you’ve kind of come at it with a lot of like, I’m the authority and I know this stuff and so that’s why you should trust me to grade you. I guess that’s kind of the unspoken thing that’s being shared there. That’s not to say I was extremely strict, because I don’t think that’s true. But I do think that I felt like my job was to show that I was smart. And I can’t fault myself for that, because that is your job in grad school, to show the people looking at you that you’re smart. That is your job in college. And honestly, it’s your job in K through 12, [LAUGHTER] the way a lot of the systems are set up. I’m not saying it should be the job, but a lot of the reinforcement systems are set up, that is what you’re supposed to be doing. So I can’t get mad at myself for being reinforced doing that for the first 30 years of my life. So that’s why you have to unlearn it. Because if you’ve been reinforced and rewarded for a certain way of being, of demonstrating your expertise, and I have a right to be here, then it’s going to be hard to turn that off. And then the other thing that connects to that is when I started to really think about my values, my pedagogical values, and what I was trying to live out in my teaching, what I was trying to bring to the classroom table, I realized that like expertise and being an expert and authority that was not on the list. That was never on the list. And so if that’s true, then that’s not a value for me, then why would I be doing things that are about reinforcing authority or reinforcing my expertise? So I think that’s another thing that I had to unravel and am still unraveling,

John: When you start as a new faculty member, might that be something that is perceived as being important in terms of affecting your student evaluations, and perhaps affecting peer evaluations, who’ve also been trained in that type of perception of the sage on the stage, the scholar who’s the expert in the room, I think those incentives continue on and it’s a lot easier to break that once you get past that tenure stage.

Lindsay: I think that’s so true, and that’s one of the things I struggle with a lot in faculty development. Before I was the Associate Director for Faculty Professional Development, my kind of stair step into this position was as early career programming coordinator. And I still have that role right now, we kind of pulled that into my position. But so what that means is that in addition to doing things like new faculty orientation, I’m working really closely with brand new faculty in learning communities and book clubs, and one-on-one consultations. And I continue to struggle with wanting to tell them: “Go break the rules, like go do this. Go live out your deepest values, because I know that, at least as a person, you’ll feel better because you’ll be living aligned to your values.” But then the other side of me is like, that feels irresponsible in some systems. And so that’s why in my non-early-career-focused work, I’m working to change systems of teaching evaluations, systems of promotion and tenure and reappointment, those kinds of things… though, I mean, I think it’s a both/and… we can work on them in both ways, and recognize that it’s inherently problematic for me to encourage that. So I do spend a lot of time with both the early career folks that I work with, but also anybody is talking about get really clear about your own personal margin for error, I guess, if we want to keep going with this statistical metaphor we’ve been using… but really just like the margin for you to get in trouble, like, what realistically could happen to you if you break these spoken or unspoken rules, either at your department level, your college level, et cetera. And as long as you’re really clear about that, then you kind of know like, “Okay, how far can I push it,” and then I say push it as far in the direction of your values. And if that means, like, being radical or progressive, as far as you can go without threatening other things that are important to you. So I totally agree, John, that it’s really hard to be saying, like, go break rules and say, but that might have dire consequences for you. [LAUGHTER]

John: My advice to junior faculty depends very much on which department they’re in and the culture of that department. And I let people know that what they want to do is really good and it’s really consistent with what we have learned about effective teaching. But some of it may have to wait until they get past that tenure threshold, unless there’s some type of revolution in their departments, which isn’t always likely.

Lindsay: Yeah. And so I guess what I’m trying to do is to plant the seeds of that kind of, in a lot of cases, it is more progressive pedagogy, or just more aligned to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, which is not always necessarily what I would call progressive, but it’s at least aligned to something, either evidence or values. But I guess my thought is, if I kind of plant those seeds, and then some of the early career faculty can run with it, because they find themselves in a department where they can do it, the other ones who have at least heard the message, and then maybe they will circle back to that when they get to a point where they feel more safety. But I know like even in my own department, because part of my time is in a Center for Teaching and Learning, but the other part is, I am a regular faculty member, and we even had to do some of that work in our own department. I mean, so we’re psychology, we’re the people who do the science of teaching and learning at a science level. That doesn’t mean there are people in my department who do that, per se, but at least everybody who’s a psychologist, at least in grad school, learned about cognition, motivation, emotion, we learned all the things that we talk about. So we have I say, a step up in our department, even though that’s true,that we have that privilege of knowing some of that information, we still were really in that sage on the stage expectation. And like even our peer review of teaching form, if you looked at it was really a form about entertaining public speaking, I would say. Like, that’s what the behaviors that were being measured. And so we had to go through a whole process that took, I’d say, at least two years to read, design that form, and get the buy-in from everybody, senior faculty and junior faculty alike, to approve, to adopt that form. And that form is more aligned to concrete behaviors that connect to the science and every behavior is like footnoted and hyperlinked, and things like that. And that’s kind of what we needed to do to get everybody on the same page about what does teaching excellence even possibly look like and how is it different from entertaining public speaking? So I totally agree that I guess that’s another data point for our idea that context matters, context matters in that case about how progressive can you be.

Rebecca: I really appreciate the thinking through that in terms of tension or in terms of risk, and really thinking about that that context matters for each person, and that they have to determine that for themselves, and really know that for themselves, and that it’s an individual choice. And those choices might be limited by your context. And that we might not have had models that demonstrate how that might be or how we might want those values to play out in a system. So I think it’s interesting that you’re talking about having to define values, but maybe not always having a model who had those same values.

Lindsay: Yeah, that’s a good point. When I think about the things that I would most like faculty to learn from me or from other faculty developers, it’s not actually the teaching strategies. It’s really about how to be self reflective. And how do I do that? How do I figure out what my values are? How do I figure out what my risk is? And then how do I put those two things together? And I feel like that’s maybe something that’s somewhat new in faculty development, because old models were really about: “come to a workshop to learn how to do this formative assessment technique” or something like that, but that completely ignores the context and the risks and the person who we’re asking to learn to do these things. Maybe it is an “evidence-based practice,” it’s in a journal somewhere, but it would fall totally flat, given this person’s personality, or given this person’s own neuro-divergence, or whatever we want to talk about in terms of the actual instructor themselves. And so that’s kind of what I am really interested in right now is figuring out how to best scaffold people into doing that. Because then it’s not about looking at some new teaching strategy and being like, “Oh, that’s awesome” or “Oh, that’s not awesome. So I’m going to bad mouth it.” It’s more “Does that work for me? No, it doesn’t.” And that’s fine. [LAUGHTER] I decided, “Oh, I totally see why that would work for so and so, but it doesn’t work for me.” And we’re all okay with that. But I feel like we have some distance to travel, [LAUGHTER] both as instructors and as people who do faculty development,

Rebecca: one of the things that’s often associated with expertise and authority in the classroom is grading and assessment. Can you talk a little bit about where you have been unlearning in that area?

Lindsay: I just want to point out that was a beautiful segue. I love that Rebecca. Yeah. And so ungrading is something that, honestly, I’m pretty new at, but like many threshold concepts, it’s one of those things that when you learn it, it can’t be unlearned. And also, you can’t turn off thinking about it, and it shows up in everything. So that’s how it’s been for me. So I’ve only really been dabbling with ungrading the past academic year. But I have been moving towards that, I’d say for five years, probably. And so for me, it was just reading. I read the book, edited by Susan Blum on Ungrading, of course, as many people have, but it was also just reading Jesse Stommel’s posts, and all of the things that he links to there… just questioning “what are grades?” It kind of brought that kind of naive look to it. But I don’t think I recognized how ubiquitous grades were and how we just assumed that’s just part of it. That’s just what you do. And that’s funny that I hadn’t questioned that because my scholarly expertise even before coming to all of the teaching and learning was academic motivation. That’s what my PhD is in. That’s my master’s thesis… even all the way back to my honors thesis was about motivation and learning. So it’s kind of blows my mind that I had not stopped to disentangle grades before, because they’re an extrinsic reinforcer. And so maybe that’s why it was so powerful for me when I read some of these arguments as saying, “Okay, is putting a letter or a number on to an assignment, actually accomplishing important things?” And I think the answer can be yes. But just simply asking the question, that’s not something that people had done before. And I was somebody that before I did ungrading, I did a lot of feedback. So I’m well aware of work by like John Hattie, and other people that show that quality of instructor feedback is one of the things that are within our controllable factors that can move learning forward the most. It has the biggest effect sizes in learning, the quality of feedback. And so like, I knew that, and so I was always assessing work with that in mind and giving a ton of feedback, but I was ending it with putting a letter grade on it, or a number, or something like that. And so reading about that made me really question, does actually putting the letter grade as the cherry on top, does that actually add anything else to what I’m doing? And I was like, wait a minute, it’s not. And in fact, there is, again, scholarship of teaching and learning research that shows that when you give students the feedback and the letter grade, at the same time, they orient their attention to the letter grade, and sometimes never even process the feedback. And so we’ve seen all types of experimental manipulations, where if you give the students just the feedback first, and then you let a period of time pass before you unhide the letter grade or something, students actually engage with the feedback and the quality of their work improves. So if we know all that stuff, I do all that stuff before I’m grading, but I just had never sat there and said like, well, what would happen if you stopped doing that? And that is what has happened for me in the last year. And so that’s one of my most current unlearnings. And so I did it in two graduate courses. Well, one graduate course first as an experiment, because that was a 10-person cohort. And I thought, first of all, it’s really small. And second of all, they’re graduate students. And so it seemed like a much lighter lift. And then this past semester, I did it with a new grad class, it’s a statistics class. So a lot of times when people talk about ungrading, they say that really only works in writing-focused courses. A lot of people who are English professors use it. And so I was like, “Well, I’m going to do it in statistics.” And so I tried that. And then I also tried it with a 50-student undergrad course this semester.

John: Could you tell us a little bit about how you implemented this in your statistics course? Because this is something I’ve considered for my econometrics class, but I’m not really sure how I could implement it very effectively.

Lindsay: Sure. So I think it’s important to say that the statistics course is a graduate statistics course. And so I could not say that you can do exactly what I did, because it’s a different context, right? And the context is probably pretty important too. So the graduate program that I’m affiliated with is a master’s and specialist level school psychology program. So the students go through three years of training. And at the end, after they take a test and stuff, they are licensed to be K-12 school psychologists, not school counselors, that’s different, school psychologists who are doing database decision making in schools. So these are not PhD level, but not undergrads. And the other thing that it’s important to know contextually, is almost no people go into school psychology wanting to do statistics. So none of them are like, “Oh, yes, I love math. And I love statistics. I’m going to be a school psychologist.” So I’m just rare in that all those statements are true for me, but almost nobody, [LAUGHTER] almost nobody else is that true for. So, that’s important context, because I’m talking about 10 students, I see primarily women, because that is who school psychology field draws, who are math phobic, and who in their heads are thinking, “I’m never going to do stats again after this class. I’m just going to get through this. And we’re going to move on.” And so for me, the goal there is to make them realize the power of statistics in their day-to-day future career as school psychologists. And so getting really clear with myself about like, “What’s the point? What’s the goal? Who are these people?” See, notice, I haven’t said anything about a teaching technique or an assessment or anything, yet, it’s just like, what are we trying to do here? And for me, it’s them to not be afraid of statistics anymore, and to be able to use it in their day-to-day lives. And I should say the third one is for them to recognize the power of statistics for social justice and how they could, for example, in their future schools, identify disproportionality in suspensions. Meaning what if your school over suspends black children when compared to white children for the same exact conduct offense or something like that? I want them to know how to point that out using numbers. Because we do know a lot of people seem to believe numbers more than words… not saying it’s okay, but they do. So I want them to be able to use that. So because that is my focus, what that allowed for me to do is really trim down my curriculum. And so I don’t teach a lot of statistics that most people would think surely you teach this, and I’m like, I don’t, because they’re not going to use that as future school psychologists. So that’s one thing I would say is important is cut out anything you can cut out, [LAUGHTER] that’s possibly feasible, because you need the space just in your semester to be able to do this kind of stuff. The next thing that I do, and I did this before ungrading, but it connects them, is the whole class is set up to be really scaffolded. And to follow like an I do, we do, you do approach. And so what we will do is if we’re learning some specific statistic of the day, or the week, or, you know, of the two weeks, first off, give them a general overview of it, not a mathematical way, but in a problem-based way. So what if this is what a school wants to know the answer to? This is the statistic you use for that, now let’s kind of figure it out. And then we will all work through together solving it. And then I will put them into groups. I’ll give them a new data set. But it’s the same exact thing we just did, y’all go do it. And then the homework assignment is again the same exact assignment, but a new data set. And so all that’s like really intentional scaffolding. So hopefully, by the time they have to do it themselves, they totally know how to do it. Now, where does the ungrading come in? In a class like that, to me, it kind of feels like, especially with graduate students, adding letter grades on to a process that has gone from, we’re all working together, then you’re working in groups, then you’re gonna do it yourself. And there’s tons of feedback and community the whole time, it feels almost insulting to put a letter on the end of that deep cognitive work, because by the time they get to doing it themselves, they should know what they know and don’t know, they should know what they’ve mastered and what they still need help with because we’ve been doing it so much. And so it almost just feels natural to when they then turn in that individual work, if there’s something they missed the boat on, I just like, “Hey, you didn’t do this right. Here’s how to do it properly.” And then we’re going to use that skill again later down the road. To me putting a letter or a number on that doesn’t help them anymore. But the real important thing about all of this is that if we never came back and did that one statistic again, why would they ever read the feedback in the first place, because now we’re moving on to a new unit. So at the end of the course, I have some kind of culminating assignment where they pull it all together. And in order for them to be able to make the case that they have earned some certain grade at the end of the semester, one of the course objectives is the ability to use feedback appropriately. So they have to go engage with previous rounds of feedback in order to create a final product that they could use. lobby for an A for. So that’s kind of how I do it.

John: Since you do have to assign a grade at the end of the course, how do you go about that process?

Lindsay: One big thing that I have learned, not unlearned, but learned, about ungrading this year, is that the true ungrading where we never put any letters on anything until the very, very end, when our institution requires that of us, at least for me, and for my context, I think that works best with graduate students. I’ve found over the last year of doing it, that if we have a list of learning objectives, and I also have a list of skills and dispositions that we’re trying to cultivate in them as future school psychologists, if I give them that list, they are very accurate at assessing whether they’ve got an objective or they don’t. So it’s like I never have to change the graduate students’ grades unless they have been too hard on themselves. And then that kind of feels like a gift of like, “Well, this is what I see. You’ve actually mastered everything. So how could this be anything other than an A?” So, that’s good. Undergrad is slightly different, right? They are in a different place, they need more support. And also, they’re not like grad students who have all truly willingly gone on, where undergrads… obviously college isn’t compulsory, but societally it feels kind of like it is. So with the undergrads I’d say what I’m doing there is something that should better be labeled collaborative grading, not ungrading. And we started to see some discussion about this of ungrading from an equity perspective. Some students are so focused, or have been so reinforced… so we connect back to what I was saying about how you reinforce your whole life. They’re so reinforced by a system that does put letters on work, that it requires a lot of unlearning for them and it may be too much to ask within a single semester and usually within a single course. It’d be different if a whole institution was doing ungrading and that institution was set up around preparing students to be successful in ungrading. Then I think we could totally get rid of all the grades. But that’s not my context. In my 50-person class this past semester, there were two students who had experienced ungrading before, 48 who hadn’t. I was kind of excited about the two, honestly. But there were 48 who hadn’t. And so to me, it felt irresponsible to throw them in that deep end. So what we did is a whole bunch of assignments, heavy feedback, all of that. But on the more high-stakes, or slightly more summative types assessments, I did include a rubric, but it was a rubric that didn’t have points, the levels were not included, approaching expectations, meets, or exceeds expectations. And so a lot of people have talked about like kind of a two point rubric or things like that before. So that was my variation on it, just you didn’t do it, you did it but it’s not there yet, or you get it. And so I did include that feedback for them, because I felt like they needed that level of structure, but I didn’t feel like putting letters or numbers on at that point were helpful. But we did bring in letters ‘cause three times during the semester… so at the third, two thirds, in the end… they did a process reflection, which is really common to ungrading where basically the instructor scaffolds the students thinking through their body of work up to that point. Now normally in ungrading, that kind of thing happens at the very end. So they’re thinking about the body of work for the entire semester. I was thinking the cognitive load of that is going to probably be too much for my undergrad students. So let’s have them do it first, just a third of the way in, and they’re going to think through: am I meeting learning objectives? Am I’m meeting habits and dispositions? Can I give evidence for why I think that’s true? And then I have a table at the end of that process reflection that says, from my perspective, as the instructor, these are the kinds of behaviors or benchmarks or assessment types of feedback you would receive that line up with an A. These are the ones that line up with a B, so kind of self diagnose, based on all of this. And so they do that, and we’re only a month or so into the semester. And so then I give them feedback on whether or not I feel like they’re on target with that letter. And so we did that two times during the semester before the final time, which gave us the chance to get on the same page about what letters mean. But it still feels kind of like ungrading to me, because I never put a letter on a single thing that was turned in, like one assessment or one assignment. It was always assess your body of work against these learning objectives and levels of quality, assess your body of work. Next time when I use it with them. I might not call it ungrading, I might call it collaborative grading.

Rebecca: I think sometimes the use of “ungrading” when there ends up being a grade is super confusing.

Lindsay: [LAUGHTER] That’s such a good point, because now there are a couple of colleges where they truly don’t have grades, but the rest of us it’s like there is a grade at the end, y’all. [LAUGHTER] And so I think you have to have a really small cohort that you can spend so much time individually making sure everybody understands like, “Well if it were up to me, there wouldn’t be a letter at the end, but there is…” …making sure everybody internalizes that. But most people don’t teach in a tiny context like that and don’t have that luxury. So that’s why I’m kind of thinking that this kind of collaborative periodic benchmarking of your body of work so far still to me does what Jesse Stommel says ungrading is. One of his definitions is that kind of skeptical eyebrow raised at conventional grading systems. To me, collaborative grading is still the skeptical eyebrow raise. But it also is respecting the context that is our students’ reality and our own reality.

Rebecca: …really cultivates a reflective practice too. And in some ways it’s like reflective grading, reflective practice, or something, you know? [LAUGHTER] I’ve been thinking about this a lot, too. I was experimenting this last semester with such things. And I was really uncomfortable with the term ungrading when there was a grade, ultimately.

Lindsay: Yeah, and you know that bit with reflection, like we’ve known for a long time that metacognition is really strongly correlated with student achievement. And so way before I’d ever heard about ungrading or untraditional assessment and things like that, I was already doing even scholarship in teaching and learning around like, “How can I kindly force my students to reflect? How can I gently get them to actually read my darn feedback? …because I had some statistics from my LMS that showed that only 10% of my students were spending more than 30 seconds on their feedback. And these were on like really comprehensive projects. And the LMS only triggers a view of the feedback if it’s been 30 seconds or more. And I was like, it would take anybody more than 30 seconds to read the feedback, and they’re not doing it. So I’ve been experimenting for a really long time with adding on assignments where you couldn’t complete the assignment unless you read my feedback. And you’ve probably heard of these exam wrappers… is what they’re frequently called. Yeah, I got rid of exams a long, long time ago, but I still had that wrapper thing where it was like, go and tell me what one of your strengths is, according to your feedback. Like you cannot answer that thing for a grade… this is back when I did grading… unless you could read the feedback. So yeah, I think that reflection is where it’s at. I think honestly, that’s what I think this whole upgrading thing is about. it’s about two things: it’s about questioning unquestioned assumptions and assessment. And then it’s also about leveraging the power of self reflection.

John: I think for undergraduates, providing those breaks in the process of the course can allow students to do some course correction, because students tend to procrastinate, as we all do. And if they know that the final evaluation occurs at the end, there may be a tendency to put off doing that reflective practice and the course correction that might be helpful for them ,until it’s sometimes too late. So giving them that feedback that perhaps has a little bit more weight to it, or may be perceived as having more weight in terms of its impact on their overall success in the course, I think is really helpful.

Lindsay: Absolutely. And I will say one thing that I learned this past semester doing it and I added it to what I call my “to fix” document. I have one of those for every course, just a bulleted list of things like “Don’t do that again.” And one thing I added just like a few days ago, because I was turning in final grades a few days ago, was add to the rubric… so that rubric of suggested grades have these behaviors line up with As and these behaviors line up with Bs… add to the A category, “shows evidence of responding to feedback.” That wasn’t one of the things. And there were people where I was like, I’m not convinced that you listen to that three-minute recording I did about your paper because you didn’t necessarily change it. And so I’ve already been reflective myself about that should be one of the learning objectives is learning how to use feedback. And so I’m already going to be changing that in my course.

Rebecca: Leading up to our conversation you mentioned student-centered teaching is one of the places that you unlearned, too, can you tell us more about that?

Lindsay: Yeah, so this one might feel like a little bit of a left turn [LAUGHTER] because we’ve been talking about things that are I feel like usually squarely associated with student-centered teaching, thinking about the student and the instructor as a whole person, me ceding some of my authority, me doing collaborative grading like that all sounds super student centered. But the unlearning piece around student centered connects back a little bit to the risk and margin discussion we were having. But it also connects to something that we have seen is that the people who seem to be the most student centered, will sometimes kind of martyr themselves in service of that value that they hold. And so it will become clear that all of their pedagogical values are about the student. And one thing I have learned is how important it is to support faculty in selecting pedagogical values that are about the teacher as well. And this connects to Chavella Pittman and Tom Tobin’s Chronicle article and I know you all interviewed them about inclusive teaching. And it’s so funny because for a few years I’ve been doing a faculty workshop called “Inclusive Teaching Includes You Too.” And so when that came out, I was like, “What? That’s what I think too.” So, I was like, so excited. Like I immediately messaged Tom and I was like, “This is so funny when this kind of thing happens that the same idea comes out of totally separate areas.” But for so long we’ve talked about student-centered teaching and there’s always this like implicit thing that like teacher centered is bad. But I think for a lot of us, especially those of us who have been at the forefront of student-centered teaching and have continued to like “How much more student centered can I be? How much more student centered?” We’ve gotten to a place where we are thinking that the instructor is irrelevant. Like, I’ll do anything for my students, I’ll make any choices, because it’s for their learning. But I want to make sure that we don’t forget how important we are too. Because if we only do this for the students, and we don’t do this for ourselves as teachers, and really value how important we are to this whole system, then we’re going to end up in that martyr place, we’re going to end up in a place where we’re making choices that lead us to burnout, that do not respect boundaries. And so I’m starting to think about bringing us back to instructor-centered teaching, but redefining what instructor centered means. And that it doesn’t mean sage on the stage, expert on the stage. It means human in the classroom, right? It means I know who I am as an instructor, I know what I bring to the table. And that is at least as important as everything that students bring to the table.

Rebecca: Imagine that, humans in a room, all treated as humans.

Lindsay: I know it sounds so obvious when you say it, but it’s like, but we’re not living in a way that makes us think we believe that. If there were like Martians watching us, they’d be like, What are these beings doing? [LAUGHTER]

John: I think that’s especially relevant now as we’ve come through the pandemic, where there has been so much emphasis in professional development on student-centered teaching. And I think a lot of faculty are experiencing a tremendous amount of burnout, because much of that has involved a lot of additional work on their part. And that sort of balance is important and forgetting your own human needs is not going to be very helpful in the long run if you’d like to continue to be helpful for students.

Lindsay: That’s the ironic thing is that if you are too good at being student centered, you will run yourself out such that you are no longer available to be with students at all. That’s the ironic thing about it. So learning how to set these boundaries, which a lot of times does involve saying no to students, which I think is something that a lot of people think we can’t do if we’re student centered, we say yes to everything. So I think a really important thing for us to be able to do is say no to our students, which feels strange for somebody who has typically conceptualized themselves as a student-centered teacher, it feels like you’re supposed to say yes to everything the students asked for. But there’s this amazing quote from an embodiment practitioner named Prentis Hemphill. And this is what they say… they say, boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously. And I think teaching a lot of the times is love work, even if we don’t like to call it, that it is kind of like living out our values, living out our love for teaching and learning. And that in order to do that the best, I have to have boundaries so that I can teach you and me simultaneously. I can love, I can learn, you and me simultaneously. But I think that will be a huge transition for a lot of students-centered teachers is recognizing that boundaries are empowering, not always limiting.

Rebecca: I think that’s a perfect moment to end on. So we always wrap up by asking what’s next?

Lindsay: That’s a good question. My hope is that nothing is next. [LAUGHTER] We’re coming into summer, we’re also going through some changes on my campus that may or may not have impact on what our year will look like and things like that. And so instead of overthinking about that, I just want, in some ways, to ignore the liminal space I’m in about academic career stuff and say, “You know what, this is a great opportunity for me to not work.” And so I typically teach classes in the summer, it’s not a requirement, it’s something I do extra. This is the first time in six years I have not taken on any summer courses, I’ve taken on summer faculty development, but I’ve tried to put it all in May, or the very beginning of June. So for me, my hope is that what’s next is a lot of reading and gardening and pondering and playing with my new little puppy.

John: That sounds wonderful. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: That sounds like you’re putting the instructor first a little bit here.

Lindsay: Right? I mean, I am trying to live out my values and values or boundaries, joy, ease, so like that sounds like that. Yeah,absolutely.

Rebecca: That sounds perfect. Thanks for joining us, Lindsay.

Lindsay: Absolutely. It was great to talk to you all.

John: It’s great talking to you. We’ve been following you on Twitter and have appreciated all your posts and we’re glad we finally had this opportunity to talk to you and I hope we’ll talk to you again soon.

Lindsay: Absolutely.

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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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236. ePortfolios

As David Wiley has noted, “disposable assignments” often have small impacts on student learning. In this episode Nikki Wilson Clasby joins us to  discuss how one campus has used ePortfolios to create authentic learning experiences in their English composition courses.

Nikki is the coordinator of the English Composition Program at SUNY New Paltz.

Show Notes

Transcript

Rebecca: As David Wiley has noted, “disposable assignments” often have small impacts on student learning. In this episode we discuss how one campus has used ePortfolios to create authentic learning experiences in their English composition courses.

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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.

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Rebecca: Our guest today is Nikki Wilson Clasby. Nikki is the coordinator of the English Composition Program at SUNY New Paltz. Welcome, Nikki.

Nikki: Thank you. It’s good to be here.

John: Thanks for joining us. Our teas today are… Nikki, are you drinking tea?

Nikki: I am certainly drinking tea, yes.

Rebecca: Woohoo!

Nikki: Would you like to know what it is?

Rebecca: Yes!

John: Yes!

Nikki: [LAUGHTER] So this is an exotic blend called Tetley, a very strong British brew, which we Brits love, unless you’re a PG Tips fan, but Tetley’s pretty up there. And I have it with 2% milk which is the best way to drink it.

John: Most of our colleagues on campus from England tend to drink Yorkshire Gold.

Nikki: Mmhmm.

John: They seem to prefer that to the other options.

Nikki: Yes, well I am a Yorkshire lass, but I have to say Tetley has that kick that I need. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: Good to know. I think today I have Scottish afternoon tea.

Nikki: Ooh!

John: And continuing with the theme I have an Irish breakfast tea from Twinings.

Rebecca: Oh!

Nikki: Oh very nice, that’s a good one too. I like that one.

Rebecca: This crew needs some strong stuff today.

Nikki: We need some scones now. [LAUGHTER] Then it will be complete.

John: We’re recording this at 12:30 today, and I’ve already had five meetings today including a class.

Rebecca: This is my second pot.

Nikki: I’m impressed. [LAUGHTER] You can come and have tea with me any day.

Rebecca: [LAUGHTER] Perfect. So we’ve invited you here today to discuss the use of ePortfolios in the Composition Program at SUNY New Paltz. But first can you tell us a little bit about your role at New Paltz?

Nikki: Yes, I am the Coordinator of the Composition Program. I stepped into this role two years ago, and I am also a lecturer. And so I teach mainly our upper-level writing and rhetoric courses where I specialize in visual rhetoric. And I also teach courses in what we call Practical Writing and Design which is a new course dealing with a sort of blend of graphics and writing. And I also teach a FIG, a First-year Interest Group, for the Communication Disorders. And I run practicum for our TAs.

Rebecca: So you’re not busy or anything?

Nikki: I’m not busy at all, no. Plenty of time for drinking tea. [LAUGHTER]

John: And plenty of reason to drink that tea with the caffeine.

Nikki: Which is why I drink Tetley, yes. [LAUGHTER]

John: So, we invited you here, though, because we heard about the common use of a WordPress site for the creation of student ePortfolios. And I think the first question we have to ask is… How did you possibly get agreement within a department on the use of one platform?

Nikki: [LAUGHTER] Actually it’s pretty simple, there’s no drama involved here. So in 2019 the composition committee reworked our three-credit English 180 Composition II course to a four-credit GE course, which we retitled English 170 Writing & Rhetoric. And we had been using print portfolios for a long time, and so during the process of revamping our course the composition committee reviewed how we could improve our portfolio assessment. And Matt Newcomb, who was the coordinator at the time, and I had been long advocating for ePortfolios. So during our meetings we decided that it would be a good time, seeing as we were revamping this course, to introduce ePortfolios into our curriculum. And we’d looked at options in Blackboard, but they were just too…

John: Awful? [LAUGHTER]

Nikki: Yes, too awful, but just by happenstance and pure serendipitous coincidence the university at this time decided to just opt for a CampusPress system, and they adopted Hawksites. And so it was made readily available for us to use. And so the timing was perfect, we just jumped on it right away and said, “Yes, this is what we want. This is the way we’re going to go.” So because Matt and I had been advocating for ePortfolios for so long it was pretty simple to get our program on board with the project.

John: And we should note that the Hawks are the campus mascot for SUNY New Paltz. And that Hawksites is just a campus-wide instance of WordPress, I believe.

Nikki: It is, yes. That’s exactly what it is. We just gave it the name Hawksites. Yes, it’s a campus-based university blogging website and ePortfolio tool.

Rebecca: Are students developing these in this more beginning course, and then working on the same portfolio throughout their entire curriculum?

Nikki: Well, this is what’s really interesting. So the faculty are allowed to use the ePortfolios as a tool for however they want to integrate it into their program, so they have free rein to do whatever they want with it. And we all use it in different ways and to different degrees, depending on our comfort level with technology, and how it fits into our curriculum. But as a composition program we use the ePortfolios for assessment purposes, so I can tell you a little bit about how that is organized. So whereas we can have free rein to use them however we want, we do have some very specifics that we need for our assessments. Would you like me to tell you about those?

Rebecca: Love to hear about those.

Nikki: [LAUGHTER] Okay, so for English 160 which is the basic, very first writing course, students have to go through this ePortfolio assessment at the end of the semester to determine whether or not they are fit to move on to English 170. So this is the tool that we use to make sure those students are ready for the more vigorous program. So for that 160 assessment process the students have to upload to the ePortfolio, or at least be able to visibly show on the ePortfolio, they have to have two of their strongest assignments, and they also have to have their revisions for those assignments. They can choose whichever ones they want to put on, but they have to be two major assignments. The only requirement is that they have to show that they have been able to write in different modes, different genres for different rhetorical situations. And there needs to be an element of research in their citation, you know the beginning stages of that research process. And obviously we’ll be looking for the standard of their writing as well, that’s why the revision aspect is really important. So that’s what they’re required to do for the ePortfolio. And then the 170 students, they have different requirements. But let me just backtrack just for one second. So across the board for 160 and 170 as part of the ePortfolio requirements, all the students have to create a reflective cover letter that goes up front in their ePortfolio. They write that reflective cover letter at the end of the semester and we give them questions, guidelines as to what to tackle. And what we want from them is a sort of critical overview of their progress during the course. And they have to cite examples of their writing to prove their case. So it’s a persuasive letter, and our assessors read that first, so they’ll read that reflective cover letter. And that gives us a very clear sense of what the student understands about their writing process, and that makes us feel a little bit better about whether they’re ready for 170 or not. It shows that they’re applying the techniques and skills that they’ve learned throughout the semester to that cover letter. So the 170 students, we have a very specific framework for our 170 Writing & Rhetoric program, it’s based upon a wicked question. So a wicked question might be… What should we eat? Or how do we save the world? Or what does it mean to be human in a digital landscape? And all professors can choose whichever kind of wicked question they want, that they’re excited about, and then they base all of their assignments around that wicked question. That gives us a lot of flexibility for Writing & Rhetoric, which is wonderful. So the semester is divided into two sections. We basically require two major assignments that are argument research based, and then each of those two large assignments has two smaller assignments that help students gear into those big assignments. So, for instance, you might have a proposal with an annotated bibliography that leads to a research paper. So students have to choose one of those sections. So in the ePortfolio we want to see two smaller assignments leading to a large assignment. We don’t need revisions at the stage for 170, we acknowledge that revision is part of the process, and that they will be revising anyway for those papers. So that’s the structure of the assignment sequences for those two ePortfolios. And then beyond that we add other things into the ePortfolios as we see fit. So, for instance, this semester we have our internal assessment which is for our 170 students, and that’s on basic critical reading. So that’s kind of how our ePortfolios are set up. And then at the end of the semester we have a system set up where we review each other’s ePortfolios based on a common rubric that we have put together. So that’s basically how it works.

John: It sounds like a great approach in ensuring standardization across their classes and making sure that all students meet the requirements to move on.

Nikki: It is, it’s very effective. We have lots of conversations afterwards about who’s on the cusp, borderline cases, and so it’s very democratically pieced together. And then of course we have to work on individual cases of students who are failing for various reasons. And it’s a pretty good system, and it’s been very effective over the last two years that we’ve been using it.

John: This is more of a technical question about the organization… Is each site organized by class or is it by students? In other words, does a student have their own WordPress account that they use and create an ePortfolio that is unique to them across all their classes? Or is there a class site where all the students in the class post their work? Or is it some combination of the two?

Nikki: So what happens for us is that in our composition program, we have a template on Hawksites, and our students create an account through Hawksites, and they are given the template that they have to use. So they are essentially creating their own account on Hawksites for our classes, and it’s unique to them. It’s not something that we share with other classes, this is specifically for our class. Does that make sense?

John: Mmhmm.

Rebecca: So just to clarify, if a student was in another class, in another subject area, they may have an additional site.

Nikki: Correct, students can create as many accounts as they want on Hawksites for individual programs. I have about 10. [LAUGHTER] It’s fantastic. It’s such a good resource, we love it.

John: I’m hosting a variety of WordPress sites as well for different purposes.

Rebecca: Me too. One thing I think that’s always important to ask when we’re talking about ePortfolios, is whether or not that student work is public to everyone, public just to members of the community, your classroom community? Or are they private? Or do students have a choice of the privacy settings?

Nikki: The students have a choice of privacy settings. But what we encourage students to do is to select the option that allows only people within our university that have a university ID and login to be able to access it, and only the people that the students give the link to, or the people that the faculty give the link to. And this allows us to share those ePortfolios amongst the people who are going to be assessing. So there is some choice for the students, but it also gives us the option to share easily amongst our colleagues. But I want to add something into this too, that within our template that we had created at Hawksites, we have a permissions policy embedded into the site. And that is a basic form and students can sign it, they can say yes or no. We ask the students, “Would you mind If we shared your portfolio for teaching purposes? Would you mind if we shared some of your work for research or for teaching methods?” And students can pick “yes” or “no” for all of those. And that’s nice to have that there on the ePortfolio, so whenever we’re looking for examples we can check the permissions pledge and see who’s agreed and who’s not agreed, and then of course we respect the students that haven’t signed it. So there are some levels of privacy within our cohort of teaching. There is a blog function on our Hawksite. It’s up to the professor whether they use the blog or not. But as they stand, the students can’t see each other’s ePortfolios, those are private. But there is a blog function within Hawksites, and faculty can choose whether they decide to share that blog function with other students or not. I have used that function for a different project, but I haven’t seen anybody take advantage of that because we also have Blackboard which has its own blog function too.

Rebecca: How have students responded to the idea of using ePortfolios?

Nikki: That’s a really good question. It very much depends on the instructor and how the instructor teaches the ePortfolio component. I can tell you that for TAs who are new at trying to grapple with this technology and pedagogy, some of them have in the past waited till the very end of the semester to have the students upload their work. It’s too stressful for students, they can’t handle it. It’s a lot of work to put a good portfolio together. So I make the TAs have the students sign up for an account within the first two weeks of the semester. And I encourage the TAs to find ways to get the students to engage with their ePortfolio on a low-stakes non-graded level just so that they can learn how to use all of the functions and the tools. And also get them in the habit of using their ePortfolio as a working kind of document, and not something that just gets shoved to the end of the semester. So it really depends on how it’s taught. But if you do teach it with those kinds of sensitivities in mind, and you don’t stress the students out, I find my students in particular love using their ePortfolios. They enjoy engaging with them, they enjoy seeing their work look professional on the site, they enjoy the option of using a more web-based writing process for embedding videos, hyperlinks, uploading images, embedding their beautifully designed Google slide presentations into their site. So they do enjoy that process. I give them time in class to do it so it’s very therapeutic for them. But they also appreciate learning some of the real-life skills that comes with curating an ePortfolio, and they recognize that this will help them later. So the enthusiasm for it is pretty high, and most students feel very proud of their ePortfolios by the end of the semester because they have something to show for all of their hard work, and it looks good. So they’ve adopted it really well. My worry about students is they do all this work, and they hit the submit button for grading, and then that paper disappears down the black hole never to resurface, and then they just move on. And it’s a shame because that work is good work, and we want our students to feel like they have a stake in the writing process, they have a stake in scholarship and research, and the ePortfolios provides a really nice platform for allowing them to think of themselves in that respect, and not just the humble student that struggles, if you like. [LAUGHTER] Helps them feel a little bit more professional.

John: David Wiley refers to those types of assignments that students post in Blackboard, or submit their paper at the end of the term and never see again, as disposable assignments. And having something that looks professional that they have access to, and that they can share and feel good about, is something that students really value. I’ve had students write some books in my class, and they really enjoy seeing this final product. It’s something that they can share with their friends, with their parents, with potential employers, and link to on their resumes and so forth or on LinkedIn, and they’ve appreciated that tremendously. I think you do some of the same, right, Rebecca?

Rebecca: Definitely the students love it when it’s like… It’s a real thing, a real shareable thing, with real audiences. [LAUGHTER]

Nikki: Exactly, and that’s the key thing, right? Especially in rhetoric having that real audience, it’s super, super important.

John: And in my experience it leads to a much higher quality of work when they have that non-disposable assignment. Have you seen the same?

Nikki: Yes, I totally agree. There’s a level of accountability that goes on there. So when you’re racing off an essay at the last minute and submitting it, it disappears into the black hole. With the ePortfolio it comes back to hit you in the face, and you can’t put that stuff on the web, you have to go back and revise it. And it’s really nice being in the classroom and having the students respond to your comments and make those revisions. And then you kind of hear the penny dropping, it’s like, “Oh boy, I really didn’t do this very well, I better snatch this up for the ePortfolio.” And it is very reassuring to see that in action. So yeah, it’s lovely.

John: So how have other composition faculty responded? Are they all comfortable with it? Was there any resistance?

Nikki: That’s a really good question. I know, for me, I’ve been involved in this sort of work for a long time, I came from Iowa State University here and we’ve been working with ePortfolios for a long time. And that switch, going from the paper portfolios which I hated [LAUGHTER] sorry, I hated them… Going from the paper portfolios to the ePortfolio, that’s a big mind switch to go through. So we had to work with our faculty, encourage them to set up a Hawksite of their own so they could experiment, help them feel comfortable sharing those Hawksites in the classroom so they could use that as a teaching tool. So initially there was some learning to do, and that’s great, I mean that’s great, that’s fine, perfect. So it took a while to make that switch to ePortfolios, but now that we’ve made that switch, I think we all recognize that it’s so much more accessible, it’s so much easier to organize, it’s so much easier to assess. We’ve only been doing it since the fall of 2019, but I don’t hear any complaints [LAUGHTER] about the ePortfolio. It is part of what we do now. So it’s good.

John: And that was perfectly timed to be ready for the pandemic.

Nikki: You know, it was perfectly timed for that. And what I like about it, and I think what we all agree we like about it, I encourage the faculty to have the students post the links to the faculty right from the very beginning. So that way we can just go in periodically, and we can just monitor what’s happening on there, and then we can give direct feedback to students about it. So it is, it’s a wonderful tool.

Rebecca: One of the things that you’ve mentioned is this template that you share out, and you mentioned some of the permissions that you allow students to choose. Can you talk about some of the other features of the template itself that you share with students? Like, what are some of the things built into it?

Nikki: Yes, so the template has the tabs already constructed so that students don’t have to work out how to recreate those. Obviously we teach them how to generate new tabs, but the basics are already there. So it has a homepage tab, so we encourage students to post a photograph of themselves and think about how they want to present themselves to a general audience as a student. So they have that, we work on that side of things. And then we just have the tab for the reflective cover page. Then we have the tabs for the individual assignments and their revisions,and then we have the permissions tab. And then we also include on the ePortfolio, this is a new feature, during the pandemic we had a lot of issues with attendance and accommodating students who were sick and who were in quarantine, so what we did was we posted the essentials of the course policies on the ePortfolio. And we had students acknowledge and sign that they had read them, and that they understood what those different policies were for attendance, for assignments, for what they needed to do if they were sick, all of those things we put on their ePortfolio site. So it became a quick reference guide for students that they can just pull it up, and they could see what was required of them. But also for us as faculty when students were suffering, or not keeping on track, or getting to the end of the semester and things were not looking good. We could pull that up, we could see who had signed the pledge and we could say, “Look, policy said that you needed to do this, this, and this, and you didn’t do those things.” And so that helps stem the flow of the great appeals at the end of the semester which I have to deal with. So that worked well for keeping students on track, and keeping that information transparent and clear.

John: And you have it in writing, digital writing.

Nikki: We have it in writing, and the students sign it. So it helps them take accountability for their part in this process. They can’t say, “Oh, I didn’t know about that,” when it’s on the ePortfolio and they’ve signed it. It’s like, “Mm, well apparently at some point you did read this.” So that helps. Not all students read it [LAUGHTER] of course, but at least it’s there though, that’s the important thing. Those documents are not buried somewhere else, they’re visible, they’re right up there. And I think that’s really, really important, and I’m really glad that we decided to do that, especially over the pandemic. It’s been helpful.

John: And I know I always read all the terms and conditions when I sign up for a new software package, and so forth.

Nikki: Of course we do. [LAUGHTER] The other thing that I want to add in there is that, for me, some of the professors do this too, but I have my students create a writing journal tab in their ePortfolio, and they have weekly writing journal prompts in there. And I do that so that students have a safe space just to write, and to reflect on what we’re doing in class, and to apply those ideas to material that they’re interested in. And I set that up because I wanted them to feel like they owned their ePortfolio, that it was their ePortfolio, that it was their personal sort of diary, if you like, of all of their work. So that tab is very important for my classes, and my students enjoy doing that kind of work.

Rebecca: You also mentioned earlier that the work looks professional, so I’m assuming then there’s some stylistic things that are built into the portfolio as well. There’s at least a base look for things, no?

Nikki: There is a very basic look, and I would love to be able to include more design tools in the ePortfolio because we don’t have a choice of font style, we can move our images around [LAUGHTER] to a couple of places. It’s very, very rudimentary, and it would be really lovely if we could add a few more tools in there to make it look even better.

John: So everyone in composition has agreed to use templates, but it sounds like they might use them all differently. Is that correct?

Nikki: Yes. Thankfully, even though the design elements are pretty rudimentary, there are some tools to change the actual overall look within the basic template. The students can change the background image, they can change colors, they can personalize it in a way that suits them which is really nice. So yes, that’s fun, and those are good skills to teach the students as well.

John: What about different sections of the course? Is there a standardization in terms of how the platform is used? Or does that vary from instructor to instructor to some extent?

Nikki: It varies from instructor to instructor depending on their comfortability with technology, and how they want to integrate the ePortfolio into their program. I’m not a standardization sort of person, but we do have… the basic elements for assessment are standardized, they have to have those specific elements for assessment. But apart from that they are free to use those ePortfolios as they wish, and that’s the way that I want it to be.

Rebecca: One of the things that might be helpful for listeners too, earlier you were talking about your assessment process, and that people from other sections review work, that you’re reviewing work of the students of other instructors. So I’m wondering if you’d talk a little bit about the logistics of how that actually works. Because I think for some folks it can be such a big undertaking, so hearing stories of how other people organize those sorts of things can be helpful.

Nikki: Yes, so first of all students have to be eligible for an ePortfolio review, that’s the first step. So students have to have completed all of the assignments and all of their requirements, like the library instruction, oral presentation, all of those things. The student has to have at least a D to be able to be eligible. So that sort of weeds out some of the stuff. And then what the faculty do is we take seven portfolios per class, and that’s a random selection, so you take the first student on your roster, and then every fourth student gets to go in that pile. So each faculty member has seven students randomly selected for ePortfolio assessment. Plus, we have then any student who is borderline, any student that is just clinging on there, or any student that a faculty member is really unsure about, so that goes into the pot too. And then my assistant and I, we create ePortfolio partners and we specifically place, for instance, seasoned faculty members with new TAs. And that’s the way that we do it, so we choose who assesses whose work. And that makes it a very organized system and a fair system, especially for the new TAs who are not sure about what to do, at least they’re working with someone who has experience. So that’s how we do it, and the assessments can take place whenever is convenient for that particular pair, as long as all of the results are all tabulated and submitted by a specific time period. And then after that time period we’ve got some space here to work on ePortfolios that have issues. So once that rudimentary assessment is done then anything anyone is concerned about can be given to my assistant and I, and we’ll go through case by case any of those borderline cases that we’re worried about, we can work on those. So that’s kind of how it works, and it’s a really good system. It works really, really well, it’s very efficient, it’s fair for everybody. At the end of the semester, you know we’re tired, the faculty have already been through all of the ePortfolios and given their verdict, and then we double check with those seven to make sure, it’s really a calibration thing to make sure that everybody’s on the same track. And I need to preface this by saying that all faculty members have to go through a standardized calibration training at two points during the semester, so we make sure that everybody knows how to use the rubric and can apply it effectively. So with those checks and balances it actually works out incredibly well.

John: Are there standard documents that you share with people, and then you see how they evaluated to compare against the benchmarks, for the calibration?

Nikki: Yes, we do. We have a standardized rubric, and then during our retreat sessions we will selectively pick, like, a very, very borderline portfolio for people to assess. We put people in groups, and then we make them grade the ePortfolio with the rubric, and then we discuss it and we talk about what’s working, what’s not working. And if there’s any huge discrepancies in the assessment of those ePortfolios we talk about what was going wrong with those discrepancies. So it’s pretty organized, and it’s pretty efficient.

John: It seems like a really nice way to provide equitable and fair assessments that adhere to the standards that you’re trying to meet. I’m impressed.

Nikki: Thank you.

Rebecca: You talked a little bit about students needing to meet standards to go through the portfolio assessments. Does that essentially equate to their ability to continue on in that particular program?

Nikki: Yes it does. If they’re not meeting the basic requirements for an ePortfolio review, technically it means they’ve failed. And so what we do with those students is we then decide… How did that student fail? Did they fail on their own merit? Or did they fail because they tried and tried and tried but just couldn’t get it? So we have standardized measures here that says, “Okay, so if a student has been trying really hard, and they just didn’t get it, then we will allow that student to repeat the course.” So we have checks and balances there for those students.

John: So this program is used universally in the Composition Program. Have similar practices been adopted by other departments at New Paltz?

Nikki: I’m ashamed to say I don’t know, and the reason for that is because I don’t get out much to see. [LAUGHTER]

John: That’s not uncommon especially during the pandemic.

Nikki: Yeah, I just don’t know, and I feel embarrassed to say that, but I came out of teaching a 4/4 load into this position. So that’ll be one of my next step projects is to figure out who else is using them on campus and talk to them about how they’re using those ePortfolios.

Rebecca: So another thing that is worth considering is… You mentioned that students can choose some privacy settings and things. How long do students have access to these portfolios after they’ve created them?

Nikki: As far as I know students have it for as long as they’re a student.

Rebecca: So we’ve talked about assessment being a primary motivator and maybe some professional skills as being a good motivator for putting ePortfolios in place. But are there other advantages to using student ePortfolios that we should be thinking about?

Nikki: So apart from the ePortfolios for the students being an opportunity to see themselves as professional communicators, to help boost their ethos and their confidence. I think we talked a lot about what the students get from this, but from a faculty’s perspective the ePortfolios are a fantastic tool because they are so accessible, they’re easy to coordinate for assessment, we don’t have to wade through buckets and buckets of paper. And also we don’t have to, [LAUGHTER] I know this sounds like a really minor thing, but when we used to do the paper portfolios we’d do the portfolio assessment, and then we would call the students into our offices to break the news to them whether they’ve passed or not, and give them their paper portfolio back, and a lot of students didn’t come. So we ended up with piles, and piles and piles of portfolios in our offices and it’s like, “Well what do we do with those?” I found it really distressing. You know, if you’ve got four classes and 120 students, and every semester, and then they just pile up, that was distressing. So to switch to the e-system just feels better on my soul, [LAUGHTER] for the planet doing this. But the ePortfolios, they’re just such a good tool for faculty for teaching, for training other faculty, and for sharing what we do with our students with each other, and sharing ideas and seeing what the possibilities are. The ePortfolios just offer so much more potential for pushing what writing and rhetoric is, and what we do with it in the classroom. So from a pedagogical point of view, I can’t imagine going back to paper portfolios. It’s just a fantastically amazing, creative, and soul-satisfying tool to have at your disposal.

John: That’s a really nice, positive note to end on.

Rebecca: So we always wrap up by asking, What’s next?

Nikki: Well, so last summer my colleague Rachel Rigolino and I used Hawksites to develop an online tutor training site because we need more TA tutors in our system to help with the writing program, and that was really successful. And so what we want to do now is to extend that. We would like to develop a Hawksite for our TAs so that we can put all of their innovative teaching ideas into a Hawksite, so that it’s accessible to everybody for sharing ideas. And that’s a really big project. So that’s our next big step, to do that.

Rebecca: Sounds like it’ll be really helpful, and really exciting to work on.

Nikki: I think so. I think it will be vital. [LAUGHTER]

John: This sounds like a really good program, and thank you for joining us, and thank you for sharing this with us.

Nikki: Thank you, it was a pleasure. Thank you 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.

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

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217. Grading Justice

Traditional grading systems can encourage students to focus on their grades rather than on their learning, and favor continuing generation students who are more familiar with the hidden curriculum of higher ed. In this episode, Kristen Blinne joins us to discuss grading strategies that promote equity and encourage learning.

Kristen is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Communications and Media Department at the State University of New York at Oneonta. Kristen is also the editor of Grading Justice: Teacher Activist Approaches to Assessment. Judie Littlejohn, the Instructional Designer at Genesee Community College and a frequent guest on the podcast, joins us again as a guest host.

Shownotes

Transcript

John: Traditional grading systems can encourage students to focus on their grades rather than on their learning, and favor continuing generation students who are more familiar with the hidden curriculum of higher ed. In this episode, we discuss grading strategies that promote equity and encourage learning.

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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.

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John: Our guest today is Kristen Blinne. Kristen is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Communication and Media Department at the State University of New York at Oneonta. Kristen is also the editor of Grading Justice: Teacher Activist Approaches to Assessment. Judie Littlejohn, the Instructional Designer at Genesee Community College and a frequent guest on the podcast, is joining us again as a guest host. Welcome, Kristen.

Kristen: Good morning. I’m very happy to be here with both of you.

Judie: Good morning.

John: Today’s teas are… Are you drinking tea?

Kristen: I am, it is a jasmine green tea, my favorite of the tea world.

Judie: And mine is a Twinings Lady Grey.

John: And I am drinking Tea Forté black currant tea, which is one of my favorites, with some honey from Saratoga Tea & Honey. I think you both met through Judie’s work on the FACT2 Subcommittee on Social Justice Assessment. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Judie: The subcommittee is part of the larger Innovations in Assessment Committee and Chilton Reynolds is one of the co-chairs of that, and he is at Oneonta where Kristen is. And so he notified our group that she had published this book. And Chris Price in our group reached out to Kristen and asked if she’d be willing to meet with us. And she did, and we had a great conversation. Unfortunately for me, I was driving that day. So I was on the thruway trying to participate as well as I could. And it was great, it was a very engaging conversation, a nd it was great to hear from Kristen and hear her enthusiasm and all her great ideas. So it’s great for me to meet with you again and to finally see you this time. [LAUGHTER] So welcome, I’m glad to see you here.

Kristen: Thank you, I was so excited to receive that message about the FACT2 Social Justice Assessment group. I didn’t even realize that that existed at the time that that email was received. And so I was truly overjoyed that these conversations were happening in a coordinated way in the system, and to be able to just have that moment to jump into the conversation here, kind of what the group is doing and the vision for moving forward. And it’s exciting to see even the website materials that are up that are situating these conversations for a broader audience.

John: We’ll share a link to the website for that group in the show notes. So, we’ve invited you here today to talk about this book. Could you tell us a little bit about how this project came about?

Kristen: Yeah, so the Grading Justice book project really grew out of a few different streams in my experience just teaching, but also my experience as a learner, as a student going through a system. I have to say that it was born out of a lot of frustration that I had as an instructor. [LAUGHTER] And I hate to frame it in that way, because it’s kind of a negative framing. But I think most instructors can agree that we spend a lot of time grading, and the grading comes with a bunch of challenges, especially if you’re doing any kind of activist or social justice work or you’re trying to create equitable learning spaces. Trying to do grading in a fair way that best meets the goals of the course and to have students on board with that process is difficult work. And so in my case, I looked back to my experience as a student when I tried to build my classes coming in as a college instructor. And I realized that as a student, I really didn’t have a very positive relationship with grades. They didn’t matter to me that much, I was always in it for the learning, but I had a lot of difficulty going through the system because of the emphasis on grading. I wanted to be a learner and I wanted to explore my creativity in ways that maybe didn’t fit with the limited grading structures that I encountered as I went through K through 12 and into my college experience. It wasn’t until I finally landed at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, an institution that doesn’t do grading, that I’ve really embraced my learning in a new way. So when I came into my own teaching process, I realized it’s like, “Wow, okay, I have to now impose these grades on the learners in my classes. And how can I do that in a way that honors the journey I went on, recognizing that other students may be also experiencing the same struggles that I had?” So I came to this Grading Justice project because I wanted to have these conversations with educators, really across disciplines, but the book is focusing a lot on people who are working within the field of communication and critical pedagogy but also critical communication pedagogy. But my hope is that it has appeal to a wider audience than that. Aside from the frustrations, another thing that I noticed because I do a lot of social justice work is… How do you assess social justice work in an equitable way? So that was one of the questions I came into the project with: How do we assess social justice work? But then… What would a social justice approach to assessment look like in our teaching and learning processes, especially in the realm of critical pedagogy, because it was part of a critical pedagogy book series? I’ve noticed that a lot of people who embrace critical pedagogy, they may still be using traditional learning systems. And so how do you, as an educator, work with that tension that might be coming with reinforcing systems that may be perpetuating inequality while you’re also trying to undo systems of oppression and engage in power sharing with students? And so I was finding this contradiction that inspired me to want to really pursue this in a very serious way.

Judie: A major theme of the book is that grading systems can either perpetuate inequality or work toward equity and justice. How might traditional grading and assessment systems perpetuate inequality?

Kristen: So one of the things that really spoke to me as someone who was trying to navigate how to create a more equitable classroom, because I’m really invested in making my classroom as diverse and inclusive and accessible as possible, is having conversations with students about assessment. Because what I found over time is that students, as I mentioned about myself, many of them have a pretty negative relationship with grades and grading. And a lot of them don’t see them as accurately measuring their learning, at least in the experiences I’ve had in having these conversations across my classes. I had this lightbulb moment when we had a guest speaker come to SUNY Oneonta, Ernest Morrell came as part of one of our teaching institutes. And he said something in a small group session that, really, I think about a lot in regard to this question about grades perpetuating inequality. He said, “We need to stop measuring students’ success against failure.” And in that moment, when those words kind of tumbled out of his mouth, I just was like, [EXPLOSION SOUND]. It occurred to me, I always have wanted to encourage… I don’t want to say encourage failure in the class… but I want to encourage experimentation… classroom as living laboratory where people can try things and have it maybe not work out. An example I could give of that is I taught public speaking for many, many years. It’s a class that students have a lot of anxiety about taking in many cases, and there’s a struggle there. And so one of the things one of my students did once is they decided to sing a poem about Rachael Ray. I wasn’t sure if this was a great idea, but they did it. And if you ask them, they would say it was an utter failure. And it didn’t work out in the way they wanted it to. But why would I grade someone on that failure? And say, “Well, it didn’t work out as you wanted to, the audience wasn’t really that invested in that approach of singing a poem.” There’s a way that that could actually have worked very negatively and inspired a student not to take a chance in this case, but it allowed them the space to try something. So one of the things that I think about with this quote of Ernest Morrell is stop measuring success against failure. What does that mean if we think about grades in regards to equity and inequity? Well, first off, what does grading do? It quantifies our learning. It creates some kind of measure that we’re using as a tool of comparison. It operates, in my opinion, a lot like a credit score. It gives us a numeric value or worth that can grant us access to or limit us from different opportunities. Those opportunities can be admissions into something, whether it be grad school or undergraduate, teaching assistantships, it can offer us opportunities for funding and scholarships. There’s lots of ways that it serves as this gatekeeper process. It’s also something that labels us as learners: the A-student versus the C-student versus the student that we might say is the failing student. And in that way, it can stigmatize pretty extensively. It’s also, in my opinion, a system that both rewards and punishes. And what it’s rewarding and punishing is really dependent on the way that the instructor situates grading in their course, of course. Beyond that, I would argue that, as many other educators working with non-traditional assessment might suggest, that it oversimplifies complex learning processes. It creates a snapshot of a moment that doesn’t give us the full context of what’s happening in that student’s life in that moment. So we don’t have any idea most of the time about all the many struggles that our students are facing, until often maybe it comes about at the last part of the semester, when they’re trying to finally disclose some of the struggles that they’ve had. Aside from that, of course, beyond that comparison, and then like a mechanism of standardization, it also is something that’s applied pretty inconsistently across instructors, which in some ways renders it as a kind of arbitrary measure in the sense that my B isn’t your B. They don’t mean the same thing necessarily. So how are students supposed to make sense of a process where they can’t recognize this standard across this thing that’s supposed to be standardized? Because it invites, I think, when you take all those factors into account together, an opportunity for students to look at this system as a kind of game that they have to navigate. And not a game in a fun way where we’re enhancing our learning, but a game in the sense that, “All I need to do to be successful in this system is to learn what the professor wants. How do I make sure that I meet this deadline or I can amass as many points?” And it becomes this process that for many, I think, is very decoupled from the learning itself. And then we can, of course, see how this snowballs into all kinds of conversations about grade inflation and its relationship to evaluations of instruction and marginalization in regards to the bias that can happen as instructors grade across the different learners in their classes and their abilities and understandings. And all of that is, in the end, we need to start asking that question, I think, more and more: “What do grades mean? What are we actually trying to measure to kind of undo some of the ways in which grades function in an inequitable manner?”

John: And so students spend a lot of their time focusing on learning the rules of the game. But it’s a different game in each and every class that they take, which I think you’re arguing would distract them from actually focusing on learning the material that we’re hoping they get out of the course. Your book is an edited work, where you have a number of contributors. How did you solicit the contributors for this project?

Kristen: I first started by doing an open call in the National Communication Association listserv. At the time, it was called CRITnet, which is Communication Research in Theory Network, it is now called something else. But at the time, I sent out an open call there. I also handed out flyers at the national convention we had in Salt Lake City the year that I was putting together this project. And so I was really excited by the people who responded to that call. I also reached out to a few of the contributors based on work that I knew that they were doing in this area to try to round out the collection. And I can imagine that this could have had multiple volumes, just with the really interesting work people are doing in grading and assessment. So the chapters in the book are diverse in their scope, and even still, they paint a very small picture of a very big conversation. So we had a chapter that focused on grade inflation, just about the rhetoric of grading. Chapters that looked at team teaching and types of collaborative course construction. Assignments that are focused on, I say the “borderlands” or looking even just at activist work in general. And then chapters that explored going into critical Universal Design for Learning, moving into discussions about teacher evaluations, but also just assessment more broadly. And then my own chapters focused on my experiments with non-traditional assessment, the experiments I’ve had in that realm, and the work that I’ve done in addition to setting the stage through the introduction. And I’m so grateful for the collaborators that were part of this project. I mean, I really see it as our book. Of course, my name as the Editor, but we were a team. And we were a team that went about this project in a way that I thought was really beautiful, because I did invite the chapter collaborators to read each other’s chapters and offer feedback as part of the process in addition to my feedback. And we also then worked together at a national convention post the publication of the book to do a short course where we actually taught about our respective chapters. And it was well-attended, and we had some really robust and interesting conversations about how instructors could carry these ideas forward.

Judie: Kristen, in chapter seven you discuss your own experiences with non-traditional assessment. Could you tell us a bit about how your assessment strategies have evolved?

Kristen: I’d love to explore that more. As I said, I feel like my journey with learning to do assessment really started with my work being a student at Goddard College. I was building my own course plans as part of the way that Goddard is set up because it’s working in a tutorial model where, in my case, at the time I was there, you did 15 credits with one faculty member. You built the content for that course and they helped guide you through that process. At the end of that journey, you did a self-evaluation, and they did a narrative evaluation that went into your transcript. So that really, for me, set the foundation for this experience. But then when I went into graduate school, I had the opportunity to work with one of the faculty at the University of South Florida, Mariaelena Bartesaghi, who was, at the time, working with our Interpersonal Communication course. Many TAs oversaw that course. And she had done a grant that she had designed to reimagine that course around process pedagogy and portfolio work, and was really drawing on the work of Peter Elbow and Jan Danielewicz’s work on the unilateral grading contract. And so that was where I really started dipping my toes into finding a way outside of more traditional grading systems when I was a teacher versus a learner. And so I have to say that my own approach started with that approach, the unilateral contract. And for those people that may be unfamiliar with that, it’s a process that really creates the B as a baseline, the B grade. So it’s behavioral in the sense that students are assigned a series of expectations that they must meet in the semester and if they meet those expectations—whether it be number of classes missed, or work turned in, following the instruction, so it’s up to the instructor to determine what those criteria are—then they’re guaranteed that B grade. And anything that goes above a B is up to the discretion of the instructor as far as whether they’re working with a plus/minus, a B+, A-, A. And often in that case, there may be a focus on the quality of the work, there may not be, depending on the instructor and how they implement that plan. One of the things that I found in Elbow and Danielewicz’s system, is that they maintain a strong hold on the course policies. But I was more interested in trying to find a way to go more in the direction of your assured work and thinking about how I could share power with students and have them collaboratively construct course policies. So pretty quickly, and what I kind of call in the text, the guaranteed B approach. One of the ways that I started was always about collaborative course content construction with the students. So consensus process to build ideas about: What does participation mean? How does it function in our class? What role should attendance play in this process? What would an A look like based on the assignments that we’ve done this semester? And so letting them have a voice in that and having a lot of conversations in the context of the class about grading and assessment. So really involving their voice in the process was important to me. I will say that, just kind of broadly, as far as my own approach, I don’t do tests and quizzes, I prioritize other types of assignments. I don’t use percentages or points. Early in my process, I used a lot more markers in my grading. So like a check, check-minus, check-plus, or I would use markers like “meets criteria for a B,” “does not meet criteria for a B,” “exceeds criteria.” Because at the time, I still thought that students really wanted that marker to help keep them on track. And that part has really evolved for me. And I think earlier in my process, I was a lot more attached to attendance and participation models. Even though they might have been student-identified and selected, I put more weight on it than I maybe do at this point. So from the guaranteed B approach, my focus went further into a tiered method that I call kind of a pick-a-plan grading where it was, I think, most similar to what some may use, like a labor-based grading, where you’re actually doing more work for higher grades. And I found that students really responded very positively to that. It still had that kind of guaranteed B if you did this level of work based on the same kind of criteria, but then it allowed more work equals a higher grade. You weren’t guaranteed that more work would equal a higher grade, but it allowed them to make choices upfront saying, “Well this semester, I have a lot going on, so I’m going to choose to do less work,” and that’s okay. And I had quite a lot of students do that. From there, my process evolved to I think what I consider one of my favorite approaches in my experiments over the years was what I called the 100% participation or engagement plan, if you want to use it as a plan, which I think scares a lot of instructors, that idea [LAUGHTER]. Because participation is such a murky realm already for many. What does that even mean? What does that look like in practice? So for me, what that meant in my class is that the students dictated: What does 100% participation look like? And as part of that, I required that students meet with me to discuss their own participation and engagement in the course, we create a consensus around that. And then at the end of the semester, would actually meet to finalize each person’s grade based on what the class determined as their overarching grade categories and the students’ own assessment of their participation. In the text I also talk about the group-focused version of that, which I won’t get into at this space. But the last thing that I talked about as part of my experiment, is that in some semesters, I would just ask the students to pick what kind of assessment they wanted in the class. So I’ve given them some of these ideas: “Do you think you want to do a guaranteed B approach? Do you want to do more of a tiered pick-a-plan approach? Do you want to do an approach where you are doing 100% participation and engagement?” And so it would not be uncommon for me to have some semesters where every class had a different assessment system, based on what the group themselves decided. And key to that is that I always just remained flexible and adaptable to shift it if it wasn’t working, because we had other tools that we could draw from. Another way that the select your own assessment process has worked for me is that you can ask students to decide what they want to be assessed on in the class, this paper versus this—I don’t do tests, but you could do it with tests—as a method. So all of those were really great experiments for me, and “experiment” I almost think it sounds negative in the way I’m saying it because I tried and I had a lot of failures trying these different systems, a lot of struggles, and things that came up. And it occurred to me along the way that maybe some of these practices, while they were kind of masquerading as being more just and equitable, I was maybe falling into some of the exact same traps that I would have been had I been using points and percentages in a more traditional approach. And so that was another huge “aha” moment for me that contributed to the construction of this project. How do I actually embody a system that maybe isn’t falling into some of those traps, even if I think that I’m doing that work? And that’s where I found myself developing my approach to ungrading that I call “awareness pedagogy.”

Judie: That’s interesting how you’re trying to do the right thing, you’re trying to make something better, and then you find out or realize that maybe it’s not better. It’s frustrating. I’ve run through that with offering extra credit, and then I read an article that said that extra credit inherently favors the students who are already doing the best and have the best time and the best preparation. And I thought about that for a long time and realized, “Yeah, I’m doing a disservice to a lot of students by adding to the pressure with more extra credit.” And it wasn’t easy to get to that. I kind of had to see it and then reflect on it for a while, and it was frustrating. So, I don’t do that anymore.

John: Especially when students are asking for extra credit, especially late in the semester. Explaining to them why you don’t do it, though, perhaps could be a useful learning experience for them too.

Kristen: It’s interesting. Because I can’t even remember the last time a student asked me about extra credit in a class. [LAUGHTER] Maybe they just assumed that it just doesn’t exist.

John: Both faculty and students generally find grading to be a very unpleasant experience. And I think many faculty would like to move away from this to some extent. But they may be facing pressures, especially if they’re untenured, and probably especially in the STEM fields, to use traditional grading systems or grading approaches. Are there some strategies that faculty could use that they want to move away from really bad practices to somewhat more equitable practices of assessment?

Kristen: Yeah that’s a great question. And absolutely, I think it’s so important to just acknowledge that not everyone has the same access to actually utilizing a non-traditional assessment in their classroom, whether it be because they’re mandated to assess in a specific way, “Here’s the syllabus, here’s what you’re teaching, go forth and meet your class.” Or if it’s because they maybe are in a marginalized space in the process or they’re in a precarious position. So some of the things that I think that I would invite instructors to consider to lessen the impact of grades and to maybe make the grading process more purposeful is to just, first and foremost, revisit your course policies. And whether you collaboratively construct them with students or not, revisiting our course policies is a really interesting way that we can start to look at the consequences of what we’re setting forward for students to do in our class. So as I said, I used to lean a lot more heavily on the role of late work in my class, like the no late work. And also just having more strict attendance policies because, again, I was thinking about it in terms of this behavioral approach that Elbow and Danielewicz had outlined. And I just stayed with that for a while, and it made sense to me at the time. But after I started seeing that maybe reinforcing these non-academic behaviors was actually not in accord with the learning goals that I have for the class. And I wasn’t really taking into account the whole picture that the student was experiencing, I started to go back and go, “Okay, how can I soften the role that those behavioral policies play in my course?” I think that’s one thing that instructors can do: look at what they’re determining in regard to attendance, late or makeup work, participation in general, and just having conversations with our classes about what it means to participate in the context of this class. What does attendance do or not do in regard to your capacity for success in this course? And also, just more broadly, makeup work and late work is something where we can see a lot of students really suffering in their grades in the end, and it could be that they have any number of things going on that they’re not ready to disclose to us. So that’s one thing. Another thing is aside from course policies in general, and rethinking the non-academic things that we’re actually grading is to consider the possibility of doing minimum grading. As outlined by Thomas Guskey or Douglas Reeves, this idea that eliminating the zero in our gradebook. The zero is a powerful tool that can really keep students from progressing. They may have had something come up that caused them to miss that assignment, maybe were not willing to budge about it, but that zero is going to have a ripple effect that it’s very difficult to recover, depending on the weight or the points of that assignment. So consider minimum grading, a 50 If you’re working with 100 points. What if you give them a 50 versus a zero, that does something that can maybe allow the student some possibility of bouncing back. Because how does it motivate someone if they have a zero and they know they can’t recover? It’s like you’ve lost them. And then what is our learning doing in the class? Are we just going to let them be adrift and not try to find a way that we can move forward? So I would encourage that. I would also say that if we’re thinking about it from a social justice standpoint, that we should stop averaging when possible… again, because if we look at grading as a kind of reward or punishment, averaging can take that moment where we did that zero or we froze them in that time when… Who knows what happened? Maybe they lost a loved one, maybe they just received a very scary diagnosis of their own health, maybe they’ve been working more than 40 hours a week or something that we just don’t know about… they’re experiencing trauma at home or in a relationship. And so averaging, I think, is one of the things that I would encourage instructors to consider reducing their reliance on or even curving. But that, of course, gets us into a whole ‘nother realm of like, “Okay, well, how does that impact now, if you’re going up for rehire, or on the job market, or a tenure and promotion? If you start putting these policies in play, how will your colleagues understand them as they’re assessing you?” Which, in itself, requires a lot of additional labor which I think keeps some instructors from stepping their toes into these different possibilities.

Judie: I read in Jesse Stommel’s blog post, “How to Ungrade,” where they start off their class with maybe the first few weeks the students’ work is not graded, it doesn’t have a point value, it just is for them to learn how to do the assignments and get the feedback. And then they could start from there for some sort of point value, so that they have a chance to grow accustomed to how the course works and what the expectation is before they’re graded.

Kristen: And that’s a beautiful way to think about it too. And that was one of the things that I’m glad you raised it, because I also wanted to mention that, is building in more space for pass/fail opportunities or for ungraded assignments. And even extending that further is maybe building in more space for peer evaluation and self evaluation. Having those conversations with students about what constitutes good peer evaluation or peer feedback and creating guides for that. And even having conversations with your class about what constitutes a good discussion in class, if you’re a discussion-based class, because maybe not a lot of students have actually learned how to engage in productive discussions or dialogues, especially across difficult topics. So creating those opportunities to have space in your calendar to allow those conversations to happen, I think is really, really helpful.

John: You mentioned how students can learn from their mistakes. And as academics, we know that we often learn the most by trying something and failing, and we want to encourage students to do that. But when we use high-stakes exams, that certainly deters students from taking risks and trying new things. What can we do to help relieve some of that pressure to encourage students to be willing to learn from mistakes, because that’s not something they’ve learned from their past educational experiences?

Kristen: Absolutely. And I think that’s why I prioritize revision in my classes, like every course I teach has some element of revision built into the process. So for example, in the courses I’m working with this semester, everything is ungraded up until the final project, which is the primary way in which the course grade is determined. So everything’s a draft until that final project that they turn in. So they have their self-evaluation process as part of that. They have a peer feedback component, and then they get my feedback, they build in that revision. And then we actually do our grade consensus process at the end when they’ve gone through all of that revision and feedback, so that they have that last layer of opportunity to revise it even further towards their grade goal in the semester. And so I think revision is one way that we can do that. And not every class lends itself equally to utilizing a revision project, I realize that, but there are ways that you can do it in a manner that I think students can still gain something from, even if it’s just to show them that not every assignment is one and done, that it’s a process that they can find ways to improve it and to gain new information.

Judie: If we look at the students that are in a classroom, how can faculty leverage the diversity of student backgrounds to create an equitable learning environment?

Kristen: So one of the things that I really wanted to share with you all that I tried this semester for the first time, and I thought the results were pretty great. At the beginning of this semester, I asked my courses to do a syllabi inventory of their classes. And we all know, I know we hear instructors say it all the time, like, “It’s on the syllabus. Return to the syllabus, it’s there.” And it’s this often unread document that creates the roadmap for everything that’s ahead. I know that there’s lots of ways that instructors try and get students to read the syllabus. They create syllabi quizzes, and they do all these little things to get them involved. But I thought, ‘Well, why not ask them to go into their syllabi for all of their courses this semester and to answer some questions?’ So I just used Microsoft forms to build something for them where they went in and they told me about the number of courses they were taking. They did a comparison of the attendance policies across their courses, how participation was defined across their courses. They looked at late work policies, grade grievance policies, policies around accommodation and support, policies that may be focused on communication in the classroom, or specific instructions about how to communicate with your instructor. And not just by email, but how to address them or other things that instructors mention. There were also questions about behavioral focused policies. So what are the things that might cause them to be penalized in a class, whether it be disruptive use of cell phone or technology in the classroom, whatever it is. At the end of that process of looking at the similarities and differences across all their course syllabi, to tell me what their ideal course would be if they were building it based on what they saw in the classes that they’re taking in this semester. And then I use that data in the next class session to say, “Well, how can we build this class to take that information that you’ve gained and to create policies that would be compassionate, but also hold you accountable for your learning choices so that you’re getting the most out of this class that you can?” And it just was such a fun conversation. And I got a lot of feedback from students that was unsolicited in the sense that they said, “Well, I just had never looked at my syllabi in this way before. And I actually feel a lot more prepared for the semester now that I actually compared.” And it gave me a sense of just, like, how much stress students face trying to navigate the different instructor expectations. I was, I don’t want to say shocked, because we’ve been doing this for a long time and you have a sense because you talk to your colleagues about what they’re doing, but just the level of work, expectations that were there, and the huge spectrum from very flexible to very inflexible, and how it would be a full-time job for students to just navigate those expectations. So it makes sense to me even more now that we’re maybe putting our emphasis in areas that we could rethink, as educators, to help students get the most out of their learning, and less about having to make sense of what we want in a class.

Judie: I can relate to that, because I teach history online, and I keep weekly schedules. But if students need more time, they just have more time, they have until a date at the end of the semester when everything is due. And I try to re-emphasize that you take the time you need, it’s fine, there’s no “late,” there’s no penalty, just relax. And when you can do it, you do it. But then I send them reminders that this phase is ending, this next one is starting. So it’s a good idea to try to stay on track. And often I’ll get emails from students saying, “I’m so sorry, this is late. I understand there might be penalties.” And I think, “Why do they understand there’ll be penalties?” And all sorts of apologies. But then I kind of took a step back and thought, “Oh my gosh, if they’re juggling five and six classes and all these different policies, of course they’re confused.” And I just try to write back and reassure them that I understand that people have different situations, and you have to take the time you need without penalty. And please, don’t let my dates add to your stress. But it’s got to be really difficult for students to try to keep track of everybody’s policy on top of all the reading and work that they have to do in all their courses.

Kristen: Absolutely, yeah. It was a real eye-opener for me to just see the data in front of me. And to contextualize that with the broader conversations we had about just their general relationship with grades and grading and their own perceptions of whether grades accurately reflected their learning in their classes. So it invited us into a space that I thought was vulnerable, but also really powerful for imagining a way to do it differently. And of course, we have this backdrop that we’re facing with the pandemic and how campuses are navigating the return from remote learning to in-person instruction and the stresses that come with that as students maybe are now navigating not only different policies, but different platforms. So that was another question that I asked is, “How many classes are you doing remotely versus in person? And how is that impacting knowing what you’re doing and when and where and how in your process?” Again, a lot of stress. As a new Chair, I can say that I have had so many conversations with students this semester, just in tears, trying to make sense of maybe unclear expectations that are being set forward in their courses, or just lack of communication that’s happening. And I just get this sense that so many of them feel adrift. And I know that, at least among my colleagues on campus, our motivation has been challenged because you go out and into your classes and you maybe see that people aren’t as engaged or connected as maybe previously pre-pandemic. And it’s like you feel like you’re tap dancing really vigorously to get everyone to be part of a process, and it’s this delicate dance we’re all doing to make this matter.

John: You started this project before the pandemic but it was completed during the pandemic. How did the pandemic influence the final work on the book? And do you think the experience that faculty had in more directly observing some of the challenges our students faced might make them more open to considering non-traditional grading practices?

Kristen: I definitely think it has made faculty more open. I’m part of a lot of social media pedagogy-focused groups where there’s been pretty strong debates about what we’re doing in this moment as we teach and learn in a pandemic. And some people feel pretty strongly about maintaining this perception of rigor and these strong standards as a way to keep everyone on track and hold on to that perceived norm that we had pre-pandemic. And then there’s others that have, I think, done so much emotional labor, bending over backwards to be as compassionate as possible to recognize just the weight that everyone’s carrying in regard to just the heaviness of this pandemic, and the impact it’s had on us personally, professionally, and just socially. And so, especially at the earlier stages as this book was coming out, I wanted to go back in before it actually went to print to talk about the ways in which institutions had transitioned to different grading models in 2020, to try and attend to the impact the pandemic was having. So we learned that, institutionally, while it seems like you can’t decouple traditional grading systems from academia in general. We did. We went into so many institutions, created pass/fail options, credit/no-credit options, a variety of different system-based changes where students could not have their GPA directly impacted by the pandemic. And then, of course, we saw that happen, and then we went right back to the previous methods and models pretty quickly after that semester, returning to this norm. So I say “norm” kind of in air quotes, but it reminded me that we can do it, we can make some transformative changes in our learning if we want to collectively embrace that. But it’s also something that I think people still have a lot of discomfort about. I think many instructors, at least I hope, want their students to succeed, and they want to be compassionate and to help them succeed. But we don’t always know the best way to do that because we are managing, ourselves, a lot of expectations just in our own responsibilities and roles. And we’re also tired, and many people are stressed, and just definitely surviving, not thriving, in this moment. So I know that people are also getting fatigued… compassion fatigue happening. They’re becoming a little bit less trusting of the many emails that students are sending, asking for exemptions and extensions and extra credit. And so I think we’re in this moment where we’re all invited to say, “Where do we want to go from here? What kind of learning model will best meet the needs of our future generations because so much is impacting it?” We have this huge political opposition that’s permeating our social world and conversations in the public sphere. We have this fear and anxiety about climate change. We have just so many things going on that this is a beautiful moment for us to imagine a new way forward that could best meet everyone’s needs, I hope, to thrive more in our learning environments.

John: Behavioral economists have found a lot of evidence of status quo bias, that people tend to do the same things in the same way, unless there’s some sort of disruption. And I think this pandemic, and all the other things you mentioned, have led to a disruption which makes possible transformative change in ways that would be much less likely to occur at the same rate in other time periods. I’m hoping, at least.

Kristen: Exactly, and I know I think about it a lot in just regards to changing our own communication patterns in our relationships. I mean, one of the ways that we go about doing that is to do what comes unnaturally, to do the opposite… cultivate the opposite, jostle ourselves out of our norm so that we can imagine another possibility. So I’m hopeful. I think that we’re seeing just these conversations just taking hold in a lot of ways. I mean, I lean a lot on the Facebook group, Teachers Throwing Out Grades. It’s a big group of people, about 12,000 people at this point, that are having these conversations just in that one space. I mean, I know they’re happening in all kinds of other spaces. But that one is one that I like to follow very closely. And even, if we’re using Facebook as an example, the Pandemic Pedagogy group is where you see a lot of people having debates about these issues that we’re facing as teachers and learners.

John: Yeah, those groups have been really helpful in the last year and a half or so, as well as the Twitter conversations.

Kristen: Oh, absolutely. Yes, the academic Twitter and other spaces.

John: And we’re recording this at the end of the semester. And you mentioned all of the emails and requests from students. And one thing I’ve tried to convey to my students is, unless there’s really extraordinary circumstances, I’m not going to make special exceptions only for the students that approach me, that I’d rather build it into the course structure itself so that those opportunities are available for everyone. Because, otherwise, the students who are most likely to request extra credit and so forth are the students who generally come from continuing generation families. And there’s a lot of students who don’t realize that they have that opportunity to request things. So in general I try, in my courses, increasingly in the last few years, to build in more opportunities for revision, for submitting things late, and so forth. But those are open to everyone on an equal footing. And I say if they’re having some major crisis, then I’m happy to talk about it. But in general, I think we have to be careful not to only make exemptions for those students who come forward. It’s much better, I think, to build those opportunities for everyone, including those who might be afraid to ask for those special cases.

Kristen: And I agree, and I definitely try to structure my courses in that way. But I’m thinking now from kind of the perspective as a Chair or just as a Faculty Advisor… What do we do with the students that, in those classes where they have those opportunities, they’re still succeeding because those opportunities exist, but they also, maybe in three of their five classes, are dealing with these very rigid policies that maybe instructors are not understanding that they just got a major medical diagnosis, or they’re on the verge of needing to take a medical withdrawal because they’re having a mental health crisis? And then how do we help those students still succeed? And those are questions that I don’t have an answer for. I keep asking myself that because I know that, when I think about grading broadly, often grading is a disruptive tool that impacts the relationship between the teacher and the student. And so maybe students don’t always feel comfortable coming and talking about it until the end where they’re saying, “I didn’t get the grade I was seeking,” perhaps, or, “Is there anything I can do to recover the grade?” But then where can we plug in in other spaces, I think, instead of being in that instructor role, but in advisor roles or in other, like, role-model positions with students where we can help them? Those are questions I keep asking.

John: Certainly there’s a difference in instructor flexibility, which is a major problem that students face. And as we talked about before, they have very different requirements in each of their classes. And just yesterday, I had five requests for extra credit. And each time I referred them to the opportunities that were already built in. And I said, “I’m not going to ask you to do extra work when you haven’t done some of the required work that you still can do. Before you ask to do something more, maybe you should look at the things that are available for you that you’ve been asked to do since the start of the semester and start there.” And that doesn’t always get the most positive response.

Kristen: And that’s where I think self-assessment can be a really great tool that, if instructors actually build in, whether it be on an assignment basis, or just the broader course, a self-assessment. I know that I’ve worked with asking students to kind of keep a log of their process in the class, the work that they’re doing in-person or out of class. If you’re remote, of course, those distinctions aren’t important. But it’s been helpful, I think, for us to have those honest conversations at the end of the semester. It’s like when we’re talking and you’re saying, “Well, I think I deserve an A in this class.” But then I’m saying, “Well, but you weren’t there for more than 50% of the semester. And these are the assignments that were not turned in. Please help me understand your perspective so that I can say, ‘How is that fair for those students that maybe have been there and participating in a way that you weren’t. Help me understand how you’re understanding this.’” [LAUGHTER] And then I would say 9 out of 10 times that student comes back and says, “Wow, that probably isn’t fair to the other people.” So anytime that I think we can pull back the curtain and just have these process conversations, I just continue to be so inspired by what can come out of them. Of course, you’re always going to have the student that’s like, “I deserved an A. I know I didn’t turn anything in and I wasn’t there.” Because I think they’ve learned that in the game, or the rules of the game, that if they just keep self-advocating for the A, that maybe we’ll somehow meet them in this, like, maybe you’re failing them and they get the A, maybe, and you’ll land at the C or something. And they see it as this negotiation practice. But more often than not, I would say I have found that, at least in my classes, that students actually are harder on themselves in their self-assessments than I would have even been.

John: And at the other extreme though, might stereotype threat play a role in some of the self-assessments as well, for students who are in marginalized groups?

Kristen: Absolutely. One, you could say the idea that many people have an inflated sense of their effort, or their knowledge of a topic, right? So we have that. And then they just hold to it. And then we have the ways in which we’ve embodied these negative stereotypes and stories about who we are as people and learners in different identity groups. And of course, that’s going to impact. That’s why the thinking about difference and how difference punctuates every part of our process is so vital, right? It’s a difference, because we all come to the table with different capacities. I think this is why, more than anything, I started asking in my self-assessments, I mean, the most important thing for me to know is, “What was most meaningful to you in this class? How are you going to build that into your life in some capacity and take it forward?” So it doesn’t mean that I’m not chasing concept understanding, it just means it’s more for me about what matters to them, and so it just changes the assessment conversation. If they can’t articulate what’s meaningful to them, that tells a pretty specific story. That’s quite different than the student that says, “I’m not such a good writer, or I had all these struggles that impacted my capacity to turn work in in this way or that way or to participate as much as I would have liked to because I have a lot of anxiety and I don’t feel comfortable speaking in front of the class. But here’s what mattered to me, here’s what I’m going to say. This has changed who I am as a person, because it changed my thinking.” That’s what I want to assess. That’s what I want to know, as a teacher.

John: And that type of metacognitive reflection, we know, helps increase learning, and there’s a lot of research to support that. So, by itself, that’s a really good practice to encourage. So we always end with the question, “What’s next?”

Kristen: So what’s next for me is I’m hoping to continue to have these conversations and continue to experiment in my classes with ways forward that I can refine what it means to do assessment and grading from a social-justice perspective. How we can best harness our communication resources—whether it be our theories, or our methods, our conversations in the classroom—to create a system that’s more just in the realm of teaching and learning. So what I’m really working on now is expanding this thing I’m calling “awareness pedagogy,” which is something I wrote about in the book in chapter eight. This process that’s built out of ungrading. Ungrading is an umbrella term that I think has been pretty widely adopted by many people to talk about a type of grading process that decouples grading from feedback. And it really focuses very heavily on learner self-assessment. In many cases, for people doing ungrading, that means that the learner themselves assigns their grade through a self-assessment process with the instructor’s support and sometimes integrating peer feedback. So, in my case, awareness pedagogy, I’m using five broad categories that I work with to help students build awareness in my classes across the kind of courses that I teach. And I teach classes in Communication, I’m doing classes on listening and interpersonal communication, intercultural communication, classes focused on conflict. And so it’s really well-suited for that discipline, which I know is different than other people that may be listening. So I’m working on that. My next project is to expand what I introduced in chapter eight into a book-length project to really get into the nuts and bolts of awareness pedagogy as its own kind of approach to social justice assessment in the classroom and what that looks like. Especially in the realm of thinking about diversity, equity, inclusion, and access, but also integrating a lot of contemplative pedagogy as part of it because that’s an area that I’m extremely attracted to in my own work.

John: Well, thank you. And it’s been great talking to you, and thank you for all of your work on behalf of students.

Judie: Thank you.

Kristen: Thank you so much. It’s been wonderful to spend this time with you all.

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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 Anna Croyle.

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210. A Pedagogy of Kindness

The informal culture of some academic departments can facilitate an atmosphere of mutual mistrust between faculty and students. In this episode, Cate Denial joins us to discuss how a culture of suspicion can be replaced by a pedagogy of kindness. Cate is the Bright Distinguished Professor of the History Department and the Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Cate is the 2018 to 2021 Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians and the recipient of the American Historical Association’s 2018 Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award. She is the author of A Pedagogy of Kindness, which will be released as part of the West Virginia University Press’ superb series of books on teaching and learning.

Shownotes

Transcript

John: The informal culture of some academic departments can facilitate an atmosphere of mutual mistrust between faculty and students. In this episode, we discuss how a culture of suspicion can be replaced by a pedagogy of kindness.

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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.

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Rebecca: Our guest today is Cate Denial. Cate is the Bright Distinguished Professor of the History Department and the Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Cate is the 2018 to 2021 Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians and the recipient of the American Historical Association’s 2018 Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award. She is the author of A Pedagogy of Kindness, which will be released as part of the West Virginia University Press’ superb series of books on teaching and learning. Welcome, Cate.

Cate: Thanks for having me.

John: We’re really pleased to have you here. Many of our guests have referenced you on past podcasts. And you’ve long been on our list of people to invite so we finally got around to that. I’m sorry it’s taken this long.

Cate: Oh, I’m glad to be here now.

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

Cate: I am drinking tea. I am drinking Yorkshire Gold black tea with just a hint of milk in it.

Rebecca: The true British way.

Cate: Exactly, it’s the way of my people. [LAUGHTER]

John: We long have had some of that stocked in our office for our British faculty members because that tends to be pretty much universally their preference.

Rebecca: I have that East Frisian, that’s my new favorite.

Cate: Ooh.

Rebecca: It’s a black blend, of what I don’t know.

John: And I have a pineapple ginger green tea.

John: We invited you here to discuss “A Pedagogy of Kindness.” You’re working on a book version of this now, which grew out of a document you posted on Hybrid Pedagogy in August 2019, and it’s been well referenced by many people. It’s been a useful resource, especially during this pandemic. In this blog post, you talk about your evolution as an instructor. Could you give us an overview of how your teaching approach changed after you attended that Digital Pedagogy Lab Institute at the University of Mary Washington that helped prompt some of these changes?

Cate: Yeah. The Digital Pedagogy Lab Institute in 2017 was kind of the “aha” moment for me. And events had been building up to that for a while. So when I was a graduate student, I was not taught how to teach very well. And I was sort of taught to think of students as my antagonists, to anticipate that they would try and get away with all kinds of things, they would plagiarize, they would cheat, they wouldn’t show up to class, or do the reading. And that my teaching career has been the process of unlearning all of those things. I have been helped along the way by colleagues in K-12 education when I worked with the Teaching American History grant in Iowa for 10 years, by some of my colleagues from Knox College, particularly Gabrielel Raley-Karlin, who is my friend and associate in sociology. And then I also was a participant in some intergroup dialogue workshops at the University of Michigan. And all of those things kind of came together to sort of make fertile ground for the stuff at DPL to sort of land. The Digital Pedagogy Lab is a profoundly kind place, everybody is so well taken care of, there are pronoun buttons, there’s great food, all of your creature comforts are taken care of. And this track that I was in, which was the introductory track, was very focused on how to really care about our students and to interrogate the way that we taught to ask if we were sort of thinking about their needs fully. While I was there that weekend, I came to the conclusion, I had this moment of going, “Why not just be kind?” and that really set me off on this new trajectory.

John: What were some of the practices that you had been using that you moved away from as a result of this Institute?

Cate: I took a long, hard look at my syllabus, and really noticed that the language in which I was speaking to students was very much from a place of authority, sort of on a pedestal, instead of thinking of them as my collaborators. So, I changed the way that I talked about all the policies on that syllabus. I changed the way that I talked about the honor code from being very sort of finger-waggy and sort of insinuating that everyone was going to screw up at some point, to a statement that said, “Hey, I take responsibility for teaching you how to do these things. And I believe that everyone in this class is fundamentally honest,” which is completely 180 from the language I was using before. I stopped taking attendance, I stopped having hard deadlines for assignments of any kind, I became infinitely more flexible with my students. I changed the “I” statements in my syllabus to “we” statements and really emphasized that I thought of students as my collaborators. Everything changed. Everything changed because I looked at it from a completely different vantage point after that moment.

Rebecca: I think one of the things that comes up when we say “kindness” is that people confuse that with “being nice,” or just being a pushover, having no standards.

Cate: [LAUGHTER] Yes.

Rebecca: …a laundry list of things that are associated. Can you talk about what you mean by “being kind”?

Cate: Kindness is definitely not niceness. I like to say that niceness is okay with lying, and kindness is not, it is unkind to lie to someone. And kindness often means telling very hard truths. But kindness is about three things in teaching, I believe. The first is justice, the second is believing people, and the third is believing in people. So justice means knowing who is in a classroom and who isn’t at any given time. Being super attentive to our positionality, and thinking about our social identities, and those of our students. Thinking about student needs in all their complexity. So having a basic needs statement in my syllabus, making sure I have fidget toys for students, I bring a huge bag of snacks to class, those kinds of things. So really thinking carefully and honestly about where I’m standing and where they’re standing. Believing people means that when people tell me that their printer died, their dog ate their homework, they had the flu, that I believe that on every score. I always feel that it is better to risk the idea that someone might pull one over on me, than to inflict more hurt on a student who’s already in crisis. So I always err on the side of belief. And then believing in people means believing that students can be our collaborators. So, changing the way that I grade so that my students and I do that together, changing the way that I think about our conversations as a class when we’re doing class discussion, and structuring those to make sure that everybody feels heard. Making sure that students get a say in what we read and what direction the course goes. And all of those things, I think, are integral to showing compassion and making the classroom a compassionate space.

Rebecca: I’d like to pick up on one of the ideas that you just presented, which was this idea of grading with students, not something we often hear. Can you talk a little bit about what that looks like?

Cate: Yeah. So, I’m a big proponent of ungrading, and ungrading is basically a big umbrella term for any action that gets us away from having numbers and letters on assignments, at any point. So there’s a big spectrum, you can do very small things that contribute to an ungrading atmosphere, and you can get rid of grades altogether if your college supports you in that. So, at my institution, what I’ve done is my students and I put together a list of grading standards, things that we think constitute each of the grades on the grade spectrum. And then when they turn in their first paper, they also turn in a self-evaluation of their work. And some of the questions are very mechanical: Did you turn it in on time? Did you ask to turn it in late? Did you do what the assignment prompt said? And some are much more open-ended: In what ways was this assignment an act of exploring new intellectual territory? I always end the self-evaluation with: “Is there anything else I should know?” …which is a great space for students to be able to tell me all the myriad things that are going on as they’re trying to focus on this assignment. And then the students and I either sit down together or Zoom together to have a conversation about what they think their grades should be. And sometimes we reference those standards that we talked about already in class, and then what I think perhaps their grades should be, and we discuss it. We talk about what are the two big things they could do that would make their assignment even better. And we focus on what you can do next. So we come to an agreement about what a grade should be. And my role in that is, really, to make sure that people don’t undersell themselves, and to make sure that people are accurately summing up the work that they did, rather than, some students have said to me before, “I don’t want to seem conceited by saying I get an A.” So there’s all kinds of little hiccups that I have to take into account.

John: I think a lot of faculty resistance to ungrading deals with those two extremes with students who may undervalue their work and students who overvalue it. Do these discussions with students help correct their perceptions and help give them a better understanding of what they’ve actually learned?

Cate: I think so. And I think that having the conversation about grading standards before we even get to awarding a grade is a really integral part of the process. So we co-create those standards, and they get to say if they want to edit a line, take something out, put something in. So we’ve already had a really great conversation about what grading is, and why I approach grading this way, before we ever get to the point where we’re going to grade an assignment together. In the four years that I’ve been doing this…a little over four years now… I have never had someone overestimate their abilities. But I have had many students who have underestimated their abilities for a variety of reasons. And so, it’s great to be able to say, like, “I think you’re underestimating yourself, let’s bump that up.” And to explain why, also, so that they have a better sense going forward of what they’ve achieved, and what they can continue to achieve.

Rebecca: One of the things that you also highlighted, Cate, is the idea of flexibility. And I think the phrase you used was “infinite flexibility.” [LAUGHTER]

Cate: Yeah. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: I can imagine many faculty really running away from the idea. [LAUGHTER] Can you talk a little bit about why you shifted to flexibility and what you mean by flexibility?

Cate: Yeah. When I say “infinite flexibility,” I don’t mean you have no boundaries and you do whatever. What I mean is more, there are so many ways in which I’ve been called upon to be flexible, that I couldn’t possibly enumerate them. There are different kinds of ways every time. So, what do I mean by flexibility? I mean, I plan my courses so that I have the time to be able to have softer deadlines, for example. So I set aside some time for these grading conversations in the week that a paper is due, but also in the week after because I know there will be students who need extensions. And so I make sure that I have plenty of time to be able to have those conversations with them, no matter when they’re going to turn in that paper. It means fostering an atmosphere where students feel okay saying, “Something’s come up, I really need that extra couple of days.” And I don’t force disclosure, so no student needs to tell me exactly what is going on in their life in order to get that extension. It’s really just a question of saying, “Hey, I need this thing,” and then it’s theirs. Flexibility in readings, being able to change things on the fly as things are revealed to be too easy, too hard, finding exactly the right mix for a particular community of students. Flexibility about time off. When do we all just need a break and a mental health day? Those kinds of things. Flexibility in terms of the kinds of assignments that I make, and the things that I asked students to do for a grade. That’s really important too, I think.

John: You mentioned giving students more ownership of the course and that flexibility certainly would be part of that. But you also, I believe, talked about using UDL principles in your class. Could you talk about some of the ways in which you’ve implemented UDL strategies?

Cate: Yeah. So the design of my syllabus is something that I thought a lot about on that score, in terms of making sure there’s always alt text where I have images, making sure that there are images that help guide people to certain pieces of information so that it’s not a wall of text that faces a student at any one time. Making sure that there’s lots of resources in the syllabus for students who might need extra help, whether that’s tutoring or talking to me, or connecting with our office for disabilities. In the classroom it has meant things like bringing in a large basket of fidget toys and encouraging people to use them. Making sure that, wherever possible, I have both a text version of something, and an audio version of something if it’s available. Making sure that if there is an audio version of something, there’s a transcript. Making sure if I’m uploading videos, that those are transcribed also and have subtitles. So all of these things adjust with me, trying to keep in mind: How can I reach the maximum number of students as possible at all times knowing that many of my students may have things like learning disabilities, but they’ve never been diagnosed? Or, they can’t afford to have them diagnosed. So planning things so that I try and catch as many things as possible that I can anticipate, and then being flexible with other requests as students make them of me.

John: Do you give students multiple ways of demonstrating their learning?

Cate: Yes, I do. So, one of my favorite assignments is the unessay. So that is an assignment where I ask students to show me what they have learned in any way that does not involve a major paper. I used to give them the option of a paper or something else. But I found that people often chose the paper because they thought it was the safer route. And what I was interested in was getting them sort of outside of that thinking and trying something experimental. So I’ve had students make food and diaries, and do embroidery, and make quilts and dioramas and maps and street plans, and just an amazing variety of ways to show me what they’ve learned in a given term. That also means that they can tailor that to what they are best at, right? So there are other assignments in the term that are written papers. So this assignment, if you’re someone who doesn’t write papers well or really struggles to write them well, this is a moment for you to show me that you can rap, or you can sing, or you can play guitar, or you can make something. And for the students who really find papers easy, this is a moment to refine another skill, to get really good at making a presentation, for example, or to think about how to visually communicate their knowledge. So I think it has something for everybody.

John: And for you, I imagine, it’s much more fun to listen to these different forms of assignments.

Cate: It’s super fun. And their creativity just astounds me every time that I do the unessay and I do the unessay in almost all my classes. I would not have thought, for example, to make a star quilt in a course about native history. But one of my students decided to research the kind of sewing that students were asked to do at some of the boarding schools, and found the long history of star quilts in native culture, and then decided to make a very simple one for themselves. That was a tremendous project where they learned so much about native history in the 20th century, and I would never have predicted that in a million years. Their vision of what they can do is so much bigger than what I can imagine on my own. And that’s one of the real delights of the unessay, is getting to find out all the other things that they’re good at, and all the ways they can draw connections to places around campus, other things they’re doing, other disciplines that they’re really interested in.

Rebecca: Cate, when you have students complete an assignment like an unessay, is there some sort of companion to go with that to explain the learning that occurred while they were doing that activity?

Cate: Yes. So there are a couple of other pieces that go with it. The first is that when the students make a proposal to me for what their unessay will be, they also have to turn in our grading standards modified for that project. So that’s another place where the grading standards come in really useful. That means that when I’m going to grade everything, I have an individualized grading sheet for every single project and can sort of just go through them one by one. Students also turn in a reflective paper where they reflect on what they learned by making or doing their project. And those are some of the best pieces of writing that I get to read. They’re much more informal than a paper would be. But they are these wonderful spaces where students are incredibly honest about where they struggled, and how they overcame those struggles, and what the projects have meant to them, which is really exciting.

Rebecca: For those reflective assignments, do you have specific prompts that you encourage students to respond to, or is it more open than that?

Cate: It’s much more open. I just say, “You know, I want you to reflect on what you learned during this process.” And they can take that in any direction that they want.

Rebecca: One of the other things that you brought up, in terms of flexibility, were less rigid deadlines. But a lot of faculty are often very concerned about workload or other things that could occur if the deadlines were relaxed. Can you talk a little bit about how you manage your time with this flexibility? You’ve talked a little bit about the conferencing and making sure you have conference time, but when you’re getting many things in over the course of the semester, how do you manage that?

Cate: I have reduced the number of assignments that I ask students to complete. I used to have many, many more. And I realized that some of that work was busy work, and that I would rather have fewer assignments that took longer, and where students were more engaged than lots of little bitty assignments throughout the term. Some of it is planning, some of it is planning to give myself a different kind of time to grade these things. So, in the grading conversations, like I said earlier, being able to have sort of time spread over two weeks, instead of just one, to get everything graded. It’s also about talking to students about exactly how much time they need to get the assignment done. So you raised the question of workload like, “Aren’t we going to add to students workload and their stress if they’re just putting these things off?” But what I found is that I can’t predict when their workload is highest. And sometimes my assignments really make for a crunch for them, because everybody’s expecting everything at the same time, such as around midterms. So saying to a student who asked for an extension, “How much time do you need?” Then perhaps a conversation where we can say, “I just need a day,” or “I need two.” And it never becomes a situation where I’m like, “Turn it in whenever you want.” [LAUGHTER] It’s much more about, like, “Let’s realistically think about what extra time would be useful to you, without it becoming an open-ended thing that can drag on forever, and really become a problem.”

Rebecca: That’s a really important point because having infinite deadlines is not helpful for anyone. It’s not helpful for us as instructors, and it’s not helpful for students.

Cate: Absolutely.

Rebecca: We all get motivated by deadlines, even if they are a little flexible. And as professionals, we know that our deadlines are a bit flexible, often.

Cate: Exactly, yeah.

John: So, do you think that pandemic has made people more open to consider a pedagogy of kindness as they’ve observed some of the struggles more directly of our students?

Cate: I think that has been the case, yes. I think there is tremendous momentum towards pedagogies of care. I think that we’ve also experienced the pandemic for ourselves. And we have been overworked and stressed out and worried about our families and friends and communities. And we have needed kindness, we have needed the breathing room that this can provide. So, I think that it is both seeing the real challenges our students face often because for the first time we were inside their homes, and seeing some of the material circumstances that they were living in, hearing from them about the challenges they were facing mentally and physically, but also reflecting on our own experiences and knowing what would help us. And we didn’t always get that help ourselves. And so being able to provide it for others, I think, has been a really good thing.

John: What is the anticipated publication date for your book?

Cate: I don’t know. And that is because I needed a little kindness myself this summer, and for my deadline to be a little bit flexible. My original due date was September 1st for delivering the manuscript but I had some major health challenges this summer. And so I wrote and asked if I could have some more time, and I was very glad to be working with an editorial team that was great, and that gave me that extra time. So, the book manuscript will be delivered this Fall, but I’m not sure where that will put things in terms of a publication schedule.

John: In the meanwhile, your “Pedagogy of Kindness” blog post is available to anyone who would like to read it, and it’s a very useful resource. And you’re joining a great collection of books there, we’ve had many of the authors on and we’ve referred to these books very often. And we’ve used many of them for our reading groups, and we share many of them with our faculty.

Cate: Yeah, I was once given the advice by one of my advisors that, when you’re thinking of publishing somewhere, look on your bookshelf and see where all the rest of the books come from. And when I looked at my bookshelf on pedagogy, everything was coming out of West Virginia University Press, and so I knew that that was exactly where I needed to pitch my book.

Rebecca: I know you have many people waiting for it, and we’re all excited to read it.

Cate: I’m very excited to finish it, so…[LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: I’m sure. The best part about having things on a to-do list is crossing them off. [LAUGHTER]

Cate: Exactly, yes.

John: You’ve been running the Bright Institute for a while, could you tell us a little bit about this?

Cate: So the Bright Institute was something I came up with five or so years ago. We got a very generous donation at Knox College, from the family of Edwin and Elizabeth Bright. And it was to facilitate the teaching of history before 1848… American history before 1848. So my idea was to bring together other liberal arts professors from across the country who also focused on that time period, so that we could try and help people with some of the challenges that liberal arts professors face. So we generally have less time to devote to our scholarship and to keeping up with readings in the field. We tend to not get grants or fellowships at quite the same rate as our colleagues at big research institutions. And we are people who have a lot of responsibility for teaching. So the format of the Bright Institute is that every summer there is a two-week seminar. The first seven days of that seminar are about reading scholarship in some particular field within early American history. We’ve had some just incredible conversations in those parts of the seminar. And then the last three days of the seminar are devoted to pedagogy. So taking the content knowledge that we now have, and thinking about, “How do we apply that to the classroom situation?” And then to help with research, we give everybody who’s a part of the Institute $3,000 every year to fund their research or to take them to conferences, there’s lots of ways that people have used that money to support them in this scholarship.

Rebecca: That looks like something to look forward to every summer.

Cate: Yes, one of the highlights of my career [LAUGHTER] is to be able to support so many people in doing such incredible work. And it’s such a delight to bring everybody to Galesburg every summer and have 14 other people who all do the kind of history I do. We tend to be kind of isolated on our campuses, we’re very often the only person who does early American history. And so to have this wonderful team of people with whom you can talk about scholarship and teaching is just so filling.

John: I wish we had more of that in all disciplines.

Cate: Me too. And I wish that I could replicate this… like I personally had the funding to replicate this for say, community college people, for precarious academics. It seems to be working very well, and I would love to see that model replicated in other ways.

Rebecca: Well, thanks so much for all this information and things to think about as we’re moving into next semesters, next classes, next academic years. We always wrap up by asking, “What’s next?”

Cate: What’s next, most immediately, is finishing the manuscript and getting that off to my press. And then after that, my college just won an NEH grant. So next summer, I will be leading a team of students in researching the dispossession of native nations from what is currently called West Central Illinois, building out on a website that some students and I have already built, and going to visit the communities that were dispossessed, to build relationships between the college and those communities. So that’s a really exciting thing to have on the horizon for next summer.

Rebecca: That sounds really exciting.

Cate: Yeah, it is. And we just found out about it, so it’s brand new information. [LAUGHTER]

John: That’s wonderful news, congratulations.

Cate: Thank you.

John: We’ve really enjoyed talking to you. We’ve been looking forward to doing that for a while and thank you for joining us.

Cate: Thanks so much for having me.

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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.

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