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.

[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 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.

[MUSIC]

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

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

[MUSIC]

259. Experiential Learning

Course content and instructors are often forgotten once a  semester concludes. In this episode, Breanna Boppre joins us to discuss how experiential learning can humanize course content and provide meaningful and rich experiences that stick with learners for many years. Bree is an Assistant Professor at Sam Houston State University’s Department of Victim Studies. She is also the author of a chapter in Picture a Professor, edited by Jessamyn Neuhaus.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Course content and instructors are often forgotten once a semester concludes. In this episode, we discuss how experiential learning provides meaningful and rich experiences that stick with learners for many years.

[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 guest today is Breanna Boppre. Bree is an Assistant Professor at Sam Houston State University’s Department of Victim Studies. She is also the author of a chapter in Picture a Professor, edited by our friend, Jessamyn Neuhaus. Welcome, Bree.

Bree: Thanks for having me.

John: We’re very happy you can join us.

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

Bree: I sure am. I am drinking a tea given to me by my close friend and department chair, Shelley Clevenger. She gifted me this tea. It says, “you’re magic” on the front. And one of the ingredients is “luster dust.” So the tea is actually blue with glitter.

John: That is a first, I believe.

Bree: It’s very unique, and it’s herbal tea. It tastes great.

Rebecca: Does it taste sparkly?

Bree: Mmmm, if sparkly had a taste, this would be it. [LAUGHTER]

John: So, we’re having a sparkle party.

Bree: Yes, definitely a sparkle party. [LAUGHTER]

John: I’m drinking a black raspberry green tea.

Bree: Ooh, yum.

Rebecca: And I have a jasmine black today.

Bree: Nice. That sounds good too. Not quite as sparkly as mine, but… [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: Definitely not, and not as blue, either. [LAUGHTER]

John: So we’ve invited you here today to discuss your chapter in Picture a Professor. Before we discuss your chapter, could you tell us a little bit about your department and the classes that you teach? Because we have not run across a Department of Victim Studies before, and I think it would be helpful to learn a little bit more about that.

Bree: Yes, I would love to talk about our department. It’s actually the first and only Victim Studies Department in the nation, and so this is really unique for us to have this opportunity. We’re housed in the College of Criminal Justice. So we’re a subset of criminal justice but we like to think of ourselves as different, both in what we study and teach about, but also the way that we do things. So we are very much community engaged. We emphasize caring and kind pedagogy, and we emphasize things that engage with the community to help survivors. And so, we have a lot of campus events. We have a lot of events dedicated to building awareness, but also donations and things for organizations in our community that helps survivors. And so, it’s really a great opportunity. I’m really excited to be here in the Department of Victim Studies. I’ve been here just over a year now. And the classes that I teach… violence against women, and I teach it more as gendered victimization. So we talk a lot about how gender and stereotypes shape victimization and harm. I also teach a brand new class that I created called “transformative justice,” which is a survivor-led movement aimed to address harm and violence without relying on systems that cause additional harm and trauma. And so, preventing harm and crime in the community before people end up in prisons and involved in the system. So that’s a really cool class that I’ve enjoyed teaching. I also teach family violence, and I teach research methods at the grad level, and that’s what I was prepping right before the podcast. So those are the classes I teach. I’m really excited about them. It’s heavy content, for sure, but I enjoy it.

Rebecca: I can imagine that teaching such topics really often includes students who are also victims and there’s some challenges in that arena as well. Can you talk a little bit about some strategies that your department uses to support survivors who are in your classes?

Bree: Yeah, so I can talk about what I do personally. So I’ve done a lot of research beyond teaching about the impacts of trauma, and I actually have a background in cognitive behavioral therapy and counseling techniques. And so, I interned as a grad student with community corrections and would engage in these counseling type classes for men who are on probation and parole. And one thing that I noticed was that the amount of trauma that these individuals have experienced, you can’t treat someone separate of that trauma. And so, that’s very much how I teach in the classroom as well. I’ve relied a lot on other scholars, like Karen Costa, who’s done a lot on trauma-aware teaching, who I know was a guest on the podcast multiple times, and others who, instead of teaching business as usual, we have to center the experiences of survivors and recognize that the vast majority of students have survived something traumatic at some point in their lives, whether it’s victimization, sexual assault, things like that, but even the adversity that they’ve encountered throughout their lives. That has has an impact on their experience in our classrooms. And so, I have used Nicole Bedera’s method of survivor-centered teaching, she has an amazing article in Teaching Sociology that really centers survivors in how we teach. And so, oftentimes, and even myself, when I first started teaching, and a student would disclose to me something related to victimization, because a lot of students feel close to me, they see me as that caring empathetic person. And so, I have had a lot of disclosures throughout my teaching. And at first, I wasn’t exactly sure how to handle it, because we know Title IX, we know that we are mandatory reporters of certain victimization and of certain things that we’re told, but not everything. And so my role as a professor, I’m very aware that I am not a licensed counselor, and I take that very seriously in referring out, as Karen Costa says. And so, I’ve done a lot of work to understand the role of Title IX and my role as a mandatory reporter, and that has really helped me know effective boundaries to myself and my teaching while also supporting students. And so, Nicole Bedera recommends really understanding each institution’s Title IX office requirements, because they can differ across institution. So one of the first things I did when I came to Sam Houston State was reach out to the Title IX office, and really try to understand what I am mandated to report. And now in every victimization related class, I have a module about survivor-centered teaching and self care. And so, in that module, I explain to students what they disclose to me, how that could potentially trigger a report, because I want them to be empowered and informed. I want them to know that if they disclose specifics, that if it occurs on campus, or a campus event, that’s something that I have to report, and if they don’t want me to report, they can disclose those things in a different way. And so, that takes more of the ownership on students and the power and agency to them, rather than to me, and it’s made me a lot more comfortable when students do disclose because I have a lot of assignments where they reflect, and that’s where the experiential learning background comes in. I’m very much about reflection, and so a lot of the students, I prompt them to reflect on the material and that prompts them to often disclose that they have survived something in their life that’s similar. And so, being empowered and informed, both as the students and me as the professor, having those survivor-centered and trauma-aware tools have made me a lot better able to address it in a supportive and empathetic way.

John: That transparency should make students feel much more comfortable and as you said, empowers them to make decisions that are best for them, which I think provides a much better relationship.

Rebecca: So it’s worth mentioning, if you’re interested in Nicole Bedera’s work, she was on episode 201, “Beyond Trigger Warnings.”

Bree: Highly recommend her article. Seriously, this changed my teaching for the better in many ways, and I’m a huge fan of her work.

John: We’ll include a link to that in the show notes. So the title of your chapter is “Using Experiential Learning to Humanize Course Content and Connect with Students,” and you’ve already addressed a little bit about how you use experiential learning. Could you expand on that just a little bit in terms of how you do this in your classes?

Bree: Yeah, so I actually started engaging with experiential learning as a doctoral student. Our PhD program is actually unique in that it had a required teaching and pedagogy class, which is shockingly rare for academic PhD programs, especially in criminology and criminal justice. So I was really fortunate to have that experience where we learned about teaching and pedagogy before we even entered the classroom. And so, we had to explore different approaches and write up what we envision our teaching approach to be, and one of those approaches that always stood out to me was experiential learning, and part of that interest in experiential learning was my own experience as an undergrad student. When I think back to my classes, one of the most vivid memories I have is in a corrections class, we toured a local prison, and I can still remember the weather that day, how it felt being in that prison. It was very dank and dark, which is similar to most prisons. [LAUGHTER] And so, that feeling of being there, I can close my eyes and still envision that day of touring that prison that really stuck with me. And the power of experiential learning to have that impact, to engage with multiple senses, your sight, your hearing, your smelling, you’re feeling the temperature, all of that has an impact, and I especially think it’s important for criminal justice in teaching classes related to prisons, which is what I taught for many years at Wichita State before coming to Sam Houston State, and those experiences are really what stand out with students and have that high impact. So that’s part of why I decided to focus on experiential learning for my pedagogy, especially early on, and we would do things like go on prison tours, or we would go on tours of local domestic violence shelters. I would take the students to these locations, and as I’ll talk about later on, when we discuss experiential learning online, there’s potential issues related to accessibility there. But if the students are able, it really is an immersive experience, and it’s really beneficial for them to go to these sites with the support of their instructor to gain that experience… that hands-on, what would a job in this area be like… but also to connect with people who work in the field. Because often my students have gained internships or jobs from going on these tours, the agencies also view it as a potential hiring or recruitment opportunity. So it’s really beneficial for me as the instructor, but also for the students and for the agencies in the field to connect directly with often juniors and seniors who I teach, and they’re going to be graduating soon and want to do something with that degree. So that’s really the “why” for me. It’s also very humanizing, and I talk about it in the chapter as a method of inclusive teaching. Because for me, I was never one of those people who wanted to be the sage on the stage, I’m much more into collaborative learning, and being more of the guide on the side. And so, I found with experiential learning, it really helped us build community and experiences together. Every time, I swear, when we would go visit the prison, something would happen. So one time we went and it was chow time, which is food time, and they offered to let us try the food. So that was a big experience for many students that we still talked about after and that’s, again, a big part of experiential learning is the reflection piece. So we would reflect on that experience together in class, we would talk about it, but also students would reflect on it on their own through reflection papers. And so, as I’ve evolved these approaches, one of my favorite parts of experiential learning is service learning. And so, service learning is really taking experiential learning to a next level, where we’re incorporating real-world experience, learning and applying concepts to helping actual agencies or a community of need that is identified by the students in the class and using that volunteer work to help and engage in civic engagement.

Rebecca: Those shared experiences are really powerful. We’ve seen these in many different situations, whether it’s service learning, or field trips, or study-abroad opportunities where groups of students are together, and they have this shared moment. It helps them connect, but also it’s a place to relate content back to that they all know, because they were all there, which has a lot of power. So you hinted at this already, Bree, but we know that you’re teaching entirely online now. So how do you go from visiting prisons to your current circumstance of teaching online and how do you bring these experiential components in that modality?

Bree: Yes, so I’m not gonna lie. In spring 2020, when the pandemic hit and we were told, “You’re going remote for two weeks,” and then that two weeks turned into the rest of the semester, I freaked out a little because I relied so heavily on the in-person, and the experiential learning is a big part of that. I did freak out. And so, I had never really taught online before. I taught one summer class online previously, it was a, quote, “canned class” that I couldn’t really change or adapt from. And so, I freaked out a bit. And then I remember the last class before we went online, I got a text from my colleagues saying, “the provost is about to announce, we’re going online.” I was like, alright, we’re going to stop what we’re doing: “What has worked for you as students online and what has not worked?” and we workshopped together, what the rest of the term was going to look like. And so, a lot of them mentioned, “we love these aspects of the in person, that community building, the humanization.” And so, I really had to think carefully and critically about, okay, how do I accomplish that online? And so, like I mentioned, the way I teach, I don’t like lecturing. I will lecture for like 10 minutes at a time, but you will never see a class where I’m just lecturing for an hour, that’s not enjoyable for me. And so, I tried to think about how to translate that to the online platform. Because often, I would pepper in my lecturing with other videos, with activities, we would do Kahoots, we would do group breakouts, we would do all these things,“oh, my gosh, how do I do this online?” So I came up with this approach, in our activities, where I would really think through how we did this in person, and try to modify it for online. So even though we can’t be in the classroom physically, at the same place, the same time together, how can we still achieve this community remotely. And so, I would do things like the Kahoots, the quizzes, the community sorts of activities to try and accomplish that, and with experiential learning, I’ve taken a lot of aspects of experiential learning, especially the reflection piece that has become very important to my pedagogy. And so, it may not be the traditional experiential learning anymore for me online. There’s parts that I incorporate, but I’ve really have had to adapt. And so, some of that includes being more creative about these big project-based assignments that I have. So I read Susan Blum’s, edited book, Ungrading, which is awesome. And so, inspired by that, I started assigning eportfolios, where students will experientially go through these modules, and they have reflection questions guiding them, and they write up kind of like this blog-style summary of the content, like they’re explaining it to someone who has no background in criminal justice victim studies, they have no idea what any of this is, and they’re explaining it to someone else. So it is very much like a blog. But then the second piece of those module reflections are reflecting on their learning, and that’s where they really think about their experience during the module, even though it’s online, even though they may be sitting watching TV or they may be having childcare during while they’re trying to learn. A lot of my students are single moms or in caretaking roles, they have a lot of other things going on. And so, they’re reflecting on that learning experience, despite all the other things that are going on in their lives. And so, that has been really key for me, that reflecting not just on the content, but their learning experience. So that’s been a way that I’ve adapted experiential learning. I still incorporate service learning as much as I can. So there’s four main types of service learning and direct service learning is the one that we often think of, when students go to a physical location and volunteer. Now, during the pandemic, that was not possible. So a lot of the agencies that I worked with, especially prisons, they shut down access, students were not allowed to come there. So I had to think differently about creating opportunities for civic engagement and advocacy. And so, some of the things that I’ve done are infographics and public service announcements to build awareness about social issues and taking that a step further to create those specifically for campus organizations. Or even now I’m partnering with local agencies, nonprofits, who may not have the resources to devote to social media and branding, and my students are actually helping with that by creating social media campaigns and things like that. And so, I’ve just tried to be creative. We have unlimited technology, we have so much available to us that is web based, or internet based, that students have access to, like Canva. Oh, my gosh, Canva is the best tool that I’ve incorporated, and they make these data visuals and public service announcements through Canva and they can even do it on their mobile phone. So it makes it really accessible for them, and it gives them a way to make an impact, even though we can’t have that direct service learning experience.

John: Could you tell us a little bit more about some of the service learning activities that your students have been engaged in?

Bree: Yes. So, I again, teach research methods, which often is not the favorite class, both from students and instructors. It’s often seen as a more boring content area, which is fair. There’s a lot of jargon, there’s a lot of complex concepts for students to learn. But I have found that experiential learning is even more important for teaching research methods. And the way that I do it is through research-based service learning. Well, because of the pandemic and because of agencies shutting down and not having direct access, I’ve been focused more on helping our campus community because that is an organization that I have access to and that I’m directly involved with. And so, some of the things that we’ve done in the past is we had students and I create surveys together for their fellow students in the university to fill out and then students, they create the survey questions. They think through research questions, how to create measures and concepts related to those questions. I facilitate this process, but they’re doing a lot of it firsthand, and then we distribute the survey online to students across the campus, they see how many students respond to the survey, which is often 10 to 20%, and they see the implications of that, and then they work through the data themselves. I’ll compile it in an Excel file for them, and then they create data visuals. They interpret the results, and then together, we compile a report that we give to university stakeholders. And so, that has been a really rewarding, and accessible version of service learning for me… is that research-based service learning, and it’s also beneficial for me. As pre-tenure, 40% of my position is research, 40% is teaching, and then the 20% is service. So I find that research-based service learning really combines all aspects of my scholarship together, and it makes it this really rewarding aspect of my teaching that has been successful both in person and online. And so, that has been a really cool avenue that I also have gone on to publish the results, and that has led to peer-reviewed articles and things that are important towards my tenure. So I wanted to bring that up, because I know a lot of fellow instructors, they see service learning or experiential learning and are like, “Oh, that all sounds great, but the amount of time that goes into it is a lot, especially when you’re working with external agencies.” And so, I really promote research-based service learning as this accessible alternative that can also benefit those faculty and instructors that are expected to do research as well.

Rebecca: Finding those connections between service, teaching, and research can always be really challenging. But when you can find those connections, definitely a worthwhile endeavor. I know that I’ve had similar experiences. Can you talk a little bit about students’ response to service learning, as well as your community partner? And I guess in this case, it would be your campus stakeholders?

Bree: Yeah. So I’ll back up a little. When I taught in person, one of the first service- learning projects I did was for the local drug court. And so, the drug court manager would actually come to our class, and we presented the results to her. And so, that experience of being live, us handing her the results, talking about the results together as a class, that made it really rewarding for both me and the students. And so, as a result of that drug court partnership, one of my students actually got an internship at drug court, which was super cool. That may not have happened organically otherwise. And so, students’ responses have been very positive to both service learning and experiential learning broadly. I think that both teaching and learning online can be very isolating. That was my fear of teaching online, was losing that connection, and that connection from what I’ve learned from Michelle Pacansky-Brock and Fabiola Torres on Twitter, I’ve taken trainings with them on humanizing course content. They are amazing. What I’ve learned from them and doing trainings about online teaching is that really the connection matters, and there are still ways that we can get that connection through humanization. And so, I think building those connections for students’ research shows, especially for underserved students, first-generation college students like myself… I was a first-gen student… those sorts of efforts to build that community and build that connection between student and instructor but also among students is really key towards their success and retention. So I have noticed, just taking the extra effort to send out personal check ins to students to get to know them as human beings, has greatly increased my student evaluations, but also my fulfillment and enjoyment as an instructor, because I read Kevin Gannon’s work, Radical Hope, it’s on my bookshelf over here, and he mentions this tension, often between this authoritative type of instruction where often instructors are seen as adversaries, and instead, there’s things that we can do to connect with students. So we go into this role of being allies to students, and that’s really where I see my role as empowering and supporting students rather than enforcing rules and teaching during the pandemic really, really brought that to light for me, that often these rules, especially around late work, and imposing late penalties, and strict rules around that, that’s not sustainable. And so, it’s also not inclusive, especially for our students, who many of them, again, are mothers, they’re in caretaking roles, they’re parents, they have full-time jobs already outside of their class that they’re taking with me. I think that instructors maybe forget that students have these full lives outside of this one class that they’re taking with you, and I try to be really mindful of that. And so, students’ responses to experiential learning have been great. My response has been great. The stakeholders have also really appreciated being able to connect with students. When we sent out the report to stakeholders for the campus survey, one of the interesting findings was there’s this care center on campus that offers free mental health referrals and academic assistance to students in crisis, and based on our survey with criminal justice students, only 25% even knew that the care team existed. And so, I shared this with the care team. I’m like, “Look, I know the amazing work you do. I’ve referred various students to you but largely, students don’t know you exist, which might be impacting self referral.” And so, students in that class gave recommendations for how to build awareness of the care team, and the following semester that I taught this class, we partnered with care team and created a social media campaign to build student awareness about who the care team is and what they do. And so, that was a really cool way of legacy teaching where we built upon what one class did in a semester, which was Spring 2020, where everything was wild, and it took a lot to get done in one semester, with the beginning of a pandemic, we built upon that in a second semester, to really create actionable things that the care team could use to build awareness about what they do for the campus.

John: You mentioned a focus on inclusive teaching, could you talk a little bit more about some strategies that you use to create an inclusive environment in your classes? You’ve talked about some of these, but do you have any other suggestions? Because I think everyone’s trying to make their classes more inclusive now and any tips you could provide would be helpful.

Bree: Yeah. So I think for me, a big part of it has been educating myself. I’ve taken a lot of trainings, I’ve had trainings specifically on Universal Design for Learning, inclusive teaching. So some of those trainings that I took actually had us listen to interviews from students about their experiences as first-generation students, as students who English is not their first language, as students who are full time working and caretakers. Listening to their stories really helped me design my classes in a way that is more accessible. I design my classes being very empathetic and mindful of the students who enter our class. So SHSU is a Hispanic-serving Institution, more than 50% of my students are first-generation college students, so I automatically design my classes for that population, and in turn, like we see from Universal Design for Learning, that has benefits for everybody. So if you design a building with a ramp for individuals who can’t walk, that ultimately can benefit other individuals. The ramp makes it easier for them to get to the building to get inside. So I really embrace that approach in my teaching, and I try to be inclusive from the start. Again, educating yourself is a big part. I’ve done a lot of work on anti-racist pedagogy and just in everyday life, so that has been really helpful for me as well. And then I’m not perfect by any means. I try really hard, and there have been times where things have come up and students have felt safe enough to bring it up to me that there was potentially issue with how something was presented or delivered in the class, and I think my biggest advice is, when that happens, take a step back, take a pause, and really use empathy to listen. This student took time out of their everyday life to come to you and explain how this content or how the delivery made them feel. So I know that the first instinct might be to be defensive. But I think it’s really important to take a step back and try to really understand where the student is coming from. And actually I have this situation in the fall and it ended up turning out to be a really informative and transformative experience for me, but also for the student and now the student still keeps in touch with me and emails me often about updates in her life. And so, I think that’s a really big part of teaching in a way that’s empowering and supportive, rather than being authoritative and the sage on the stage when you share that power, and that’s important for me teaching in victim studies, because I teach in our victim services management program, which is the master’s degree. The students who come into this program are rock stars, they have worked in the field for years, they are running nonprofits, they are doing all this amazing work already. And so by sharing the power, and by me recognizing I have this degree, and I have some experience, but their experience is just as valuable and important as mine. I think that is really setting the stage for inclusive teaching and that’s what I embrace.

John: You mentioned a collaborative environment in your classes. What role do students play in creating content for your classes?

Bree: Yeah, so that’s actually my ultimate goal for students. In a lot of the effective online teaching trainings I’ve took, a lot of what we give to students is stuck on the learning management system. If you give a student an assignment or a quiz, they submit it, and they may never have access again. So a lot of the assignments I give them are getting off the learning management system and giving them tools and things that they can have beyond the semester. And so, some examples of that are, again, creating eportfolios. So they create these eportfolios that they use throughout the class, they create their intro background page where they talk about themselves, as much as they want to share or not, they can keep it anonymous if they want to. But they create this front page, which is personalized to them. And then they have different sections where they have module reflections. They have a course glossary, where they define key terms for each module and put the term and the definition there. And so, I started this approach… again, after reading Ungrading. But also, when I think back to classes, I had this really cool class about serial killers. And we created a portfolio with case studies about each serial killer, and I hung onto that thing for like a decade. I even gave it to my grandma who was super into crime shows and she wanted to read it. And so, I was like, this is something that is missing when we teach on the learning management system, and it’s something that I want to facilitate for students. Online, I think the eportfolio fits best rather than a paper portfolio. And so, it’s something that they can take with them and,it was funny, I was at a campus event, it was a campus ally training, and there was a staff member there who said, “Oh, you’re Dr. Boppre, one of our student workers is taking your class and she showed me her eportfolio that she made in your class and was so proud of it, and it looks so cool.” I’m like “That is gold. If that is what happens as a result of my teaching, I have achieved what I wanted to.” I want students to end my classes with some creative item that they develop throughout the class, and that they’re so proud of and so excited about that they’re sharing it with others. And so, the eportfolios, I definitely love those. I also assign infographics, which I think I mentioned earlier. So students create these visually appealing flyers with information about controversial issues in our field. So for victimization related classes, they’ll talk about intimate partner violence, violence against women, and they’ll summarize the research. They will do what they would typically do for a research paper, but in this visually appealing, accessible format. Honestly, I can’t tell you that I’ve ever shared a paper from class with anybody from undergrad, but I would share an infographic. I would show someone and say, “Look at what I’ve done,” and that’s what students tell me, they’re really proud of that infographic that they’ve created. And so, that has been really rewarding for me is to help facilitate these students’ creations. I’m not gonna lie, it does take a lot of tutorials and working through students to develop these skills, but I tell them, I’m very purposeful about the technology that I choose for classes and I’ve honestly had to ditch some approaches for some that are more useful and relevant to their future careers. But I really focus on the tools and technology that I think will best serve them in their future careers no matter what they do. And so, that’s why I emphasize these eportfolios, because you’re developing a website, and I have a personal website for all my scholarship, but I’ve used Google Sites to create community exhibits, I’ve used them to present research presentations. I’ve used these web design skills for so many other things that I can envision for other students and the same with the infographics and getting used to using Canva. We live in an ever growing society that wants information quickly and visually, especially like TikTok, Instagram… that is the reality that we live in today. And so, these approaches really fit with where we’re going in our society. And so, learning Canva, you might make an infographic for class, but then you have those skills to make a flyer for an event at work, or you have those skills to create an infographic for something else related to your class or for your career. And so, that’s really what I emphasize, these creative, project-based finales is what I call them, because they help students create something and cultivate skills that will benefit them far beyond the end of the semester.

John: David wildly refers to those assignments that end up in the LMS and disappear at the end of the semester as “disposable assignments.” And the type of thing you’re describing are the non-disposable, open pedagogy type things that students often find much more engaging, because they have much more meaning to them, and I think you’ve described that quite nicely. So we always end with a question, what’s next?

Bree: So I’m entering my fifth year on the tenure track. So, I’m still very much focused on research. But this upcoming semester, I’m actually putting all of the trauma awareness and the survivor centered teaching into my research-based service-learning project with students. And so, we are actually going to ask students about survivor-centered teaching and trauma-aware teaching and we’re going to do a survey and focus group with students. So I’m really excited to test students’ reactions to these approaches and the need. That’s ultimately what I want to demonstrate, the need for these approaches from an empirical standpoint, and involving students in that process. I think that’s going to be really powerful. One of my students in my summer class actually inspired me to do this because we were having a zoom session, and we talked about survivor-centered teaching, and she’s just like, this is the first time I’ve ever felt empowered to tell my story, because in every other class, I have felt silenced by these Title IX and mandatory reporting warnings, I just have not felt comfortable or able to share. And so that is a big part of my future in what’s next, is continuing to empower students to tell their stories and to view students as the whole student, and how these life experiences shaped their interactions in the classroom and the eportfolios is a way that I get to do that. They do get to share their stories and reflect on it. But I’m always looking for what more we can do, and that’s really what I want to focus on. Because these life experiences, even my own life experiences. Both my parents were incarcerated throughout my life, I grew up visiting my dad in prisons for 15 plus years. Every weekend, I was at the prison. To say that experience has no impact on my teaching or learning would just be ridiculous to say. That had a huge impact on who I am, how I learned, how I teach. And so, I’m very upfront about that with students, and I also want to empower them to have their own stories and reflect on how it impacts their experiences, because education truly can be transformative. It was for me as a first-generation college student, as someone with those life experiences in my childhood. Being able to go to college transformed my life, and if I can play a small role in that for my students, that’s my ultimate life goal and that’s why I’m here.

Rebecca: Thank you so much Bree for sharing your really great techniques and providing us with a lot of things to think about as more of us are teaching online and thinking about experiential learning and service learning in those contexts.

John: And we noted on your website, you have a word cloud that lists some words that students have used to describe your teaching, and the most frequent words were fun and creative. But right behind those were unique, amazing, informative, thorough, and awesome. And that would be a nice aspirational goal for many of us, to see those types of responses for students, because I suspect that those wouldn’t be the most common words that students generally use for most of their classes. So thank you for joining us, and I hope you’ll be back again in the near future.

Bree: Yes, I was so excited to come. A lot of my pedagogical heroes have been on this show. So I’m very honored to be here and thanks so much for having me.

[MUSIC]

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

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

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

[MUSIC]

255. Thriving Through Behavioral Science

Many students pursue learning strategies that are not aligned with their long-term objectives. In this episode, Erik Simmons joins us to discuss how principles of social and behavioral sciences can be used to help students achieve their objectives. Erik is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Boston College School of Social Work. He is 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.
  • Research Program on Children and Adversity – Boston College School of Social Work
  • Michie, S., Van Stralen, M. M., & West, R. (2011). The behaviour change wheel: a new method for characterising and designing behaviour change interventions. Implementation science, 6(1), 1-12.
  • Michie, S., Hyder, N., Walia, A., & West, R. (2011). Development of a taxonomy of behaviour change techniques used in individual behavioural support for smoking cessation. Addictive behaviors, 36(4), 315-319.
  • Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Macmillan.

Transcript

John: Many students pursue learning strategies that are not aligned with their long-term objectives. In this episode, we discuss how principles of social and behavioral sciences can be used to help students achieve their objectives.

[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 Erik Simmons. Erik is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Boston College School of Social Work. He is the author of a chapter in the Picture a Professor project edited by Jessamyn Neuhaus. Welcome, Erik!

Erik: Thank you, Rebecca. Thank you, John, for having me.

John: We’re very happy to have you here. Today’s teas are:… Erik, are you drinking tea?

Erik: I am drinking tea. I have a Tower of London house blend. It’s a black tea with a little honey infusion. And it has been keeping me going. So I just finished the full pack today. So this is very timely to be asking what I’m drinking. I’m gonna have to remember this one.

Rebecca: Awesome. Finally, a tea drinker, John. [LAUGHTER] We get a lot of coffee drinkers around here.

Erik: Do people usually slot in their coffee selection?

Rebecca: Sometimes? Yeah, sometimes… or the water. There’s a lot of water.

Erik: Okay, well, it’s good for you.

John: And Diet Coke.

Erik: Diet Coke also can keep you going.

Rebecca: I have a Scottish afternoon tea today.

John: And I have a wild blueberry black tea.

Erik: Oh, wow, that sounds delicious.

John: It really is.

Erik: Quite tasty.

Rebecca: Before we discuss your chapter in the Picture a Professor project, can you tell us a little bit about your dissertation research on behavioral change in low resource coastal communities that rely on marine ecosystems in Indonesia and the Philippines.

Erik: I’d love to talk about that, because it’s a project that’s very near and dear to my heart. And I found it very innovative in that we were taking our lab-based research on psychological and behavioral sciences and taking them to the field to help improve the lives and well being of families and children in Southeast Asia. And really what we had identified was one core facet that undercuts almost every wicked problem that we experience that implicates human behavior. And that’s the need for behavioral sciences. So we saw in these projects that, if we could take evidence-based programs, adapt them to the problem at hand to make sure they’re culturally sensitive, and make sure they’re acceptable by the communities, you can change a whole range of different problems and different behaviors that can help improve wellbeing and, in this case, improve the environmental sustainability of these communities as well, who are very reliant on their aquaculture and on the natural resources around them. What we were seeing in that project especially, was that, hey, if you take a whole bunch of people, and if you can provide them with programs that are meant to engage with their behaviors, their social systems and beyond, you can improve not only their lives, their health and wellbeing, their family functioning, but also things like the environment. So that’s where we were going for. And it was not only an exciting process, it was fun. But it puts us on the front line of working with people, which is something that I’ve always had a passion for.

John: Now, this is a little bit aside from the general focus of the podcast, but what type of behavioral interventions did you work with there?

Erik: What we tend to do in my work and the work of the many seminal, prestigious, esteemed professors I’ve worked with in the past is we take these blended complex interventions that target a couple of different pillars within your life. So we’ll have a little bit from an intervention that focus specifically on your parenting capabilities, per se. We’ll have a little bit on the ability or psychosocial capabilities or capacities for you to self regulate and to goal set. We’ll have a little bit on your emotional regulation. We’ll have a little bit on your social behaviors to help recalibrate social norms within your communities, there’s social dynamics, and we throw all those together, we workshop them with the communities, it’s always a co-building process in the work that I do. And what you end up with is something that can target internal factors, external factors, social norms, and social dynamics within their communities. And of course, as we were working there, certain environmental modifications around behaviors such as recycling, engagement with fishing behaviors. So we take these homunculus type of behavioral interventions that all have evidence bases, but we cut them up, we chop them a little bit, we combine them with each other to get a fit for purpose intervention, because we never go with a one size fits all.

John: You’re currently working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Research Program on Children and Adversity. Could you tell us a little bit about that program?

Erik: Yes, absolutely. It’s another global project, as you guys will get a sense for here, I really like going about helping communities all around the world. And what we’re currently working on is a home visiting intervention. And all that means is you essentially have an active coach who’s an interventionist, they’re a lay worker within the community, currently, I’m working in Rwanda, and they will go to a home and help a family with young children. And now these are the families, John and Rebecca, here that are the most vulnerable in Rwanda, families that really need a lot of assistance. And they have someone who will flexibly schedule with them, come to their home, help them with the initial years, I believe it’s zero to 36 months, or the first three years, assessing similarly once again, parenting capabilities, family dynamics, and then interactions with your child in those first three years, because what we know is that the lifespan development trajectory has a wide range of potential, but as we grow the range of this trajectory slowly, slowly shrinks. So starting early is really important to making sure that individuals have the highest promising potential for their lifespan development. And that’s what we’re really aiming for. So we have active coaches coming into homes to help families with the early years for their children. And we focus on everything from, once again, parenting capabilities to anthropometrics like child growth, to make sure their children are getting a lot of cognitive development, physical stimulation to help them grow appropriately, language interaction, and a lot of play. Plays a big part of the intervention. So that’s currently what we’re working on in Rwanda. We also work in Sierra Leone, we’re currently trying to work with Afghan families who are seeking refuge in America right now.

Rebecca: You’ve talked a little bit about wanting to work directly with people and, of course, teaching is always [LAUGHTER] working directly with people.

Erik: Absolutely.

Rebecca: So your chapter in Picture a Professor is entitled: “Black Man in a Strange Land: Using Principles of Psychology and Behavior Science to Thrive in the Classroom.” Can you tell us a little bit about how you’re using principles of psychology and behavior science to thrive in the classroom?

Erik: Yeah, I sure can. I’d love to open this up for a conversation as well. And you guys can kind of tell me how crazy I am here. When I saw this call for proposals, I thought this was perfect, because to my knowledge, at least to my social and collegial circles, I had never met anyone who was a young black American man teaching in an Australian classroom. And I thought immediately, I have to share my experience because it was just so unique, at least to me, and I don’t know, maybe there are others out there. And if they are, you know, please feel free to reach out to me, I’m sure we can have some great conversations about being in a different country looking different than a traditional… or let’s not say traditional I don’t think that’s quite the right phrasing here… but maybe just what might be considered stereotypical or typical is a common sense of an educator, and trying to connect with students. And the one thing that was really helping carry me through a lot of my experiences, and helping me connect with my students, was my expertise in social and behavioral sciences. Because I knew if we could take some of the principles of evidence-based behavior change techniques, social norms, social identity, and social dynamics, as well as being able to build an empathetic space where we were using humanistic psychology frames or frameworks to understand each other, we could get a lot done together. And the big premise, or the big proposition of the chapter, I’m not going to remove all the intrigue for me to say is that if we treat people like people, and if we take a very humanistic, very compassionate, and very understanding approach to connecting with our students, our pedagogy is going to improve, student outcomes are going to improve all across the board. So the main proposition, the main premise, of what I’m trying to say is, despite maybe not having a lot of similar ground, or similar background, historical context with your students, if you can find certain areas to connect on a psychological or behavioral basis to them, you can improve the experience not only for the students, but also for yourself as an educator.

John: What are some specific techniques that you’ve implemented that rely on behavioral science.

Erik: So, one of my favorites immediately is having a sense of, and it’s a strange word here, but it comes from social identity theory and social identity leadership, that’s called we-ness. And it’s WE hyphenated to N-E-S-S. And it’s the idea of using social identity theory to immediately set group norms and social dynamics that reflect you as being a member of the group and you being able to associate yourself in some way with your students. I think oftentimes, in educational spaces, we almost feel, as educators, we need to separate ourselves, we need to be different, we need to be in charge, we need to be the leaders who can take a distinct role in that classroom, whereas social identity theory says no, you should go in their first day, and you should say, “Well look at all the ways that we’re more alike than different.” And that’s a strong way, not only to make connections with your students, but to open up the floor for your students to be more comfortable coming to you and your students being more comfortable with expressing their needs. And as I mentioned, in my initial work, having that conversation of co-design space, and then being able to identify you as not only a competent leader, but also someone who is going to defend their process and their progress. So that’s absolutely one of my favorite techniques to use right off the bat when you’re starting a semester to say, “Hey, we’re all more alike, we’re all in the same classroom together, we’re all going to be probably very similar in at least our interests. So there’s more things here that connect us than separate us.” I think it’s a powerful lesson for education as a whole.

Rebecca: Do you usually apply this concept as an activity? as a conversation? What does it actually look like in the classroom?

Erik: So there’s a few ways that you can do it and depending on size, I think those massive lecture halls… this can be a little bit difficult, but I think in the small capstone classrooms where you have 20 to 30 students, absolutely, going around and just having a conversation or putting up slides or having an activity where you’re drawing certain topics out of a hat and you have themes of saying “Okay, we’re gonna go talk to three of your classmates for a little while, and educator included, about your family for a little bit or maybe about a certain activity you like and you can use this to start to develop and design a little hierarchy or infrastructure. You’re going to come up with similar themes in almost every classroom, I’d be surprised if these few topics didn’t come up. People have passions and activities outside of the classroom, people have friends and family that they like talking about. And sometimes just having a couple of prompt questions that you can talk about together with your class, if time allows it and if classrooms are small enough to help you have those discussions. It’s just an extremely powerful tool, asking the questions and opening up for your students to share, whether that be slides, whether that be a list of things that you might want to talk about, whether it be asking students what they’d like to learn about and seeing, you know, where you guys kind of connect on that front are things I do first semester. I always give all of myself in that first little lecture of saying, here’s who I am as a person, now, who are you? I like to know who you are too, and whatever students are comfortable with sharing, that’s what you go with. I do those activities as a start always before I get into any topic matter, a sharing not only what I do, but who I am. And then we go from there as developing that sense of we-ness and shared culture right away.

John: Do you encourage students to use commitment devices to help meet their learning objectives for the course?

Erik: Absolutely. So the work of Susan Michie has been very seminal on me. One thing she developed a little while ago, she does a lot of work with trying to codify, categorize, and help us define the different types of behavior change that we can use to help people reach their goals, to help people change their behavior. One thing she developed is called the behavior change technique taxonomy. And I love this thing, because it’s just a list of 83 different devices that you can use to help people develop versions of themselves. And that’s what I’d start with is saying everything I try to do, I try to encourage students to… if they’re not self defining it, at least it has to be halfway have them bring their commitment to the table, because one thing we know about the difference between early childhood development and early child learning and adult learning is the self-directed nature of it and if you’re not taking that self-directed approach, then you’re bound to purge whatever changes or information you’ve just acquired throughout a semester across coursework. So things like social commitment devices and social commitment tools are incredibly useful in helping students help reach their goals. Now, I would provide a caveat here in who they’re making the social commitment to makes a huge difference. And we call this referent groups in social psychology here. And it’s important to know for social identity, it’s important to know for different social norms, if we can talk about a little bit as well, and it’s important to know for social commitment, is who are you making a referent group to, and who you’re making that commitment to? So making the commitment to me, making the commitment to the person you’ve just met, might not actually be the best way to go about it. But saying, hey, for your first assignment, why don’t you go make the social commitment to your best friend, close family member, your partner, and then trying your best to stick to that, is really important. And there are lots of tools you can use with other people externally, to help students reach their goals. And I think the social commitment is a big one. And there’s lots that we can look at into the science of goal setting to help students achieve things and keep themselves on track. Because temporally, it’s really hard. We’re captivated by so many things, currently, especially students, from technology, social media, the race for attention has never been as breakneck as it is now. So thinking about how you can use commitment devices, goal-setting devices, and different types of activities along that front help students stay on track with their goals is crucial to the process of helping students achieve and get to where they want to be. Because at the end of the day, it’s what it’s all about. It’s not about what we need them to get out of lesson plans, it’s about them being able to attain what they’re looking at getting out of their education.

Rebecca: Can you share an example of how you’ve helped students goal set and meet their goals using some of these devices?

Erik: Absolutely. So I think even setting aside time, whether it be assignment time or in-class time, and some of these things seems so simple, but they’re so powerful. I’m sure you’ve heard of things like the SMART goals, or the different types of things. And listen, there’s a whole lot of goal setting typologies and frameworks out there, they all have very similar underlying principles, they’ve just been designed by different people at different stages. And that is their attainable, they’re measurable, they have some degree of specificity intheir time constraints to that regard. The SMART one is the one I tend to use. Now I use two different types of advices. You guys gonna have to bear with me here because it’s actually very powerful in the goal setting space. Now, lots of times we think when we’re setting a goal is visualize, visualize where you want to be in a year and a couple of months and 10 years, what have you. And what the research kind of tells us is those big nebulous goals or the goals that are really far off, they’re really, really great at starting us down a path. So they might be really helpful in helping us choose a major or choose a direction. But one thing they’re not great at is motivating us in the interim, so day to day. So one thing I tend to do with students and I never pushed them on this problem for goal setting, especially… especially across the semester, is actually visualizing what it looks like if we don’t do the day-to-day activity to reach our goal is way more powerful than saying “Okay, well what do I need to do to get to that goal?” And I’ll give you an example here. So sometimes when my students come in I’ll say, “Let’s take five minutes, I’m just gonna give you a quick reflection activity.” Sometimes it’s writing, sometimes it’s just, “I want you to think about it.” And I’ll say, “Let’s think for a little bit what it looks like, if I don’t do what I need to do today to reach my goal, what does my life look like if I don’t take the steps to attain where I want to go?” And I say, “You don’t need to think of absolute doom and gloom or tragedy if you don’t reach here, but using almost a kernel of ‘Oh, no, I really do want that, I do want to do this today because I do want to achieve my goals…’” is a powerful, short term motivator than saying, “Just think of where you want to be in a couple of years, and do you want to do this thing today?” and I was a coach for a long time. I still am, I guess it’s a part of my personality, my identity. And one thing that was always really hard for me is going to practice. And that was kind of like going to class, kind of like showing up to class. And one thing I noticed was when I thought of, “Oh well, you know, if I don’t go to the gym, today, my coach will be disappointed, I’ll miss out on seeing my friends, I might not do as well, later on in my career as an athlete or whatever,” was a lot more motivating for me to go to class every day, or to go and get in that extra workout than me saying, “Oh, I want to be the best in the world at some stage in my life.” So beyond the initial setting of the goals, using any given SMART framework or a couple of step, couple thread framework, having students do very short term, small reflections on things that might help them keep going or maintain without absolutely inducing a sense of dread in them, I find to be really helpful for students. And I haven’t had anyone completely lose it on me yet and say, “You gave me anxiety this semester, having to think about all these things so frequently.” So that’s been helpful.

John: What are some other specific techniques that you’ve used in your classes that are based on behavioral science?

Erik: Oh, there’s a wealth of women, I can go on and on. But some of my favorites have to do with metacognition, and thinking about the higher-order cognitive processes necessary for students to find the justifications they need for motivation. So motivation has always been a really big part of my research, and motivation comes from a lot of different things. So when we’re thinking about reward systems within your brain, I don’t want to say we all know, because I’m sure we’re talking to a very diverse audience. There’s specific reward systems in your brain that offer you certain neural correlates or hormonal biomarkers that are going to reward certain things and start to… we’re not going to say punished for that, I think it’s a weird word. I don’t know why psychology use that… but diminish the activity of other activities. And by reward, it just means it’s reinforcing that behavior so you’re going to do it a little bit more. And so one thing I always like doing is helping students use a metacognitive infrastructure to help self regulate, which sits within the goal setting literature as well, to say, “Well, what do we need to help reward you further in your progression?” For some students, it is strictly grades. But I find that to be a very poor long-term motivator, and you end up the students just kind of being very anxious and very set on just scoring well, which to me never set right as the purpose of learning, of the purpose of turning up to the classroom. So thinking about what positive reinforcement will be necessary for a student to continue going, and you’re never going to be able to define that for a student. But one thing I like to tell everyone who is unfamiliar with the psychological and behavioral sciences is that the carrot is always a way more powerful tool than the stick. The stick is just always more readily available, it’s the easiest to get to, but the carrot is easily the best. If you can find it, it’s a lot more powerful than going to that stick. So I think putting the work in initially is saying, hey, if let’s take the most simple of example of… this probably hasn’t worked on anyone since year two, or year three, but saying, if it takes a pizza party for you guys to really want to be here, if that’s the extrinsic reinforcement I can provide you, I’ll absolutely do it. And for students as they grow older, it usually isn’t that, it has to be something necessarily useful. But finding whatever metacognitive unlocking we need to do for students to think about their own thinking and say, “Why am I here? What is it that I actually want out of this?” And then we can retrofit that and create a little engineering process for each student in or at least small groups of students to say, “Okay, well, maybe it’s not scores this semester, maybe we’ll judge you based on your progress on this particular metric and evaluation,” which I think shifts as well to more… and this is this private bias speaking here…, but psychometrically informed evaluation of students progress than just saying retention of information, knowledge, or learning.

John: How do you encourage students to engage in this metacognitive reflection?

Erik: So there’s an ample amount of literature here from cognitive behavioral techniques and what started as cognitive behavioral therapy not too long ago, but I especially like give a shout out to my former advisor, Professor Matthew Sanders, who said, “Why are we only using cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT for neuroses or things that are going wrong in us? Why can’t we use this to make our lives better and enhance positive outcomes just as much.” So there’s lots of different things we can use, such as reframing of cognition that can help us to unlock or take that next step into the metacognitive space. So let me give you an example that I think will resonate for all of us here, is lots of times people get really nervous about presenting. Presenting is a big one for cognitive restructuring that a lot of people have, because they have a lot of apprehensions or anxieties about presenting. Being able to think about presenting on two fronts here can drastically improve not only your experience with presenting, but your own ability to reflect and improve on how you approach presenting and that’s saying, the anxiety you feel before presentation is the same energy, it’s the same physiological system of excitement for an activity you might have doing something else. So when you can get students to take different perspectives, cognitively, of how they approach things, how they feel when they do certain things, and then have slight cognitive reframes, you are bound or you’re at least on the first step of the path to also behavioral reframing and behavioral restructuring. So perspective shifting, having activities that allow students… it’s something that you gain very early on in your life… but to habit or perspective shift. Allow them to start to play with these cognitive different realms and to start to interrogate their own cognitive biases, their own cognitive perspectives, some of which have been held for, I’m sure, all years of their lives, their whole existence, but being able to exercise that cognitive muscle and perspective taking, cognitive reframing, cognitive restructuring, is the first step to the metacognitive level, where you’re always stopping and saying, “Wait a second, I need to introspect on this a little bit. Am I here because my parents want me to be here, am I here because I want to be here? How does this align with my identity, values.” And in my particular space, we try not to get too reductionistic as to, we don’t need to get specifically to certain brain areas. But being able to have that introspective process of self and how it interacts with the social ecology around you and your historical past is, in my first step you need for metacognitive capability.

John: So specifically, though, do you have them do blogging? Do you have them write journals, or something similar to engage in that? Because left to themselves, students may not always engage in that metacognitive reflection.

Erik: You cannot, [LAUGHTER] absolutely, just leave students, not only students, educators, all of us to our own devices, a big area of my study is on executive functions, which kind of allow us to interact with these metacognitive skills here. And one thing we know about executive functions is it’s the tasks, skills and activities you do in the day to day that really improve them, rather than just saying,” if you think really hard every day, it’ll eventually get there, you’ll break through that ceiling and you’ll be at the highest level of really interacting with your thoughts as you possibly can.” So there’s multiple ways you can do that. One thing I think has been missing… of course, as we know, in the classroom, we do a lot of reading and writing… but even just very simple, and I mean, simple in that, I mean engaging, engaging in fun problem solving within the classroom of coming in and saying, “Hey, this is a difficult thing going on in the world right now or maybe this is a simple thing going on in the world right now… here’s a problem, how would you go about solving it and being able to exercise sub skills of executive functioning, your planning, your monitoring ability, your cognitive temperance, or your ability to restrain or engage based on your own desires and your own will, having activities that help you practice this is really the way to develop your metacognitive ability.” So I think you’re right there, John, in that having students blog regularly, writing is such a powerful tool, and having students just have the conversations, having students trying to inhabit a different experience, it’s kind of seems almost like a mediated pathway to get to higher metacognitive skill. But it’s the only pathway, because there is no direct “Hey, if you just do this task a lot. It’s not quite like coding or like anything else that has a very technical basis, where if you just do the practicing, you’ll get there.” And these are what we call developing expertise by the work of Daniel Kahneman. And so these are softer or a little bit harsher learning environments rather than the very strict ones where if you just go and practice you will eventually improve. So yes, you need a range of different activities that may seem a bit creatively informed to get you to your main goal or your main outcome. But yeah, this is what you can definitely do with students to improve their metacognition. And the metacognition as well as the executive functions tend to be generalizable to other things they’ll do in their lives. So it’s not just what they’re going to be learning in your class, but it will be learning in other classes and then beyond.

Rebecca: One of the things that we talk a lot about on Tea for Teaching is how many faculty aren’t actually prepared in their programs to become teachers. They might not have training as teachers, and then they’re teaching. So if you were to think about this population who maybe doesn’t have a background in behavioral science, in addition to what you’ve already talked about, what are the couple of things that you think all faculty should know about so that they can better support their students and thrive in the classroom.

Erik: This is something that once again really inspired me when I saw this call for proposals is, I completely agree, and I know there’s a lot of demand on us as faculty. There’s so many responsibilities from these days to project management to admin to well beyond just your teaching, but it hurts my soul a little bit here that we end up in these spaces where we’re throwing first-time teachers into the deep end with very minimal assistance of knowing how students learn, how certain underlying principles might be the things that are really driving the retention of knowledge or the acquisition of skills. And what do we know? One of the biggest things I’ve always relied back on when I’ve talked to people about developing skills, especially in the space of teaching and pedagogy is that you’re likely just to role model whatever you imagine initially as being an adequate or maybe above average teacher. So it’s the same thing we see with parents and children, it’s the same thing we see in our social networks, is that we model after the things that we like, that we desire. So I think having a lot of exposure is the first thing we need to know as faculty, to different pedagogical practices and teaching styles because that’s going to give us the most to pick and choose from, and to be able to develop the most evidence-based practices in teaching. Now, the second thing I think I say here always is understanding of fundamental attribution error for your students is a must have across everything. And the fundamental attribution error… sorry, for anyone who is unfamiliar, is your insight, or your cognitive process to look at someone external to you and say, “they are that way, because a personal quality or the way they are, a character disposition,” and say “You’re behaving in a certain way and it might be due to your environmental factors.” And the best way this is described in many literature is, is anyone who’s driving in a car has had that moment where someone cuts them off, or someone does something that looks a little bit silly, and they say: “That person is a terrible driver, I can’t believe they’re doing that.”….where we have no idea where that person was going, we have no idea what state that person might be in, but it’s always a terrible driver. But if we’re to make the same mistake, it’s “I didn’t get enough coffee this morning, I’m just a little bit tired. It was my mistake. But this isn’t reflective of me.” And the same goes for students. When we look at our cohort of students every year, I think this is importantly true in the pandemic, is being able to say there is always a confluence of multiple factors that are cascading and colliding at one time to give you that student in a classroom every day. And you need to take that student as they are rather than expect things that are unrealistic, or are going to be unreliable in the long run, because we demand a lot of our students. So understanding our students where they are and where they’re at on any given day is an important thing we can take from psychological and behavioral sciences. It’s going to improve our experiences and improve our students, rather than demanding or expecting a perfect student out there. And noting that our students operate many different roles, they are pluralities of many different things. So knowing that about our students, I think, is really important in your expectations with how you design your coursework, you go about your class, I think that fundamental attribution error is really important. And then I close out with a third thing here that I think is absolutely crucial. And I think that is shared charter, shared mission, and shared values, which kind of ties us back to our social identity theory here a little bit in saying initially, it’s really important to start a shared charter, shared mission with your students and saying, once again, co-designing and participatory approaches of what do we need out of this? Not what do I need, not what do you need, but having that dialogue with your students is an important part of behavioral design that can help us improve the way we go about our teaching pedagogy. And it’s a really helpful way too if we feel like we don’t have a good understanding of human learning, a good understanding of human behavior. It’s asking students what they want, it’s a great place to start, maybe they don’t know either, but at least we’re getting that feedback from them. And then there’s that investment into the shared mission together. So I think it’s important for a lot of faculty to know who just feel as if they’ve been thrown into open water, and you have this group of people look back at you and relying on you, but you’re not quite sure what’s going to be best for them for the retention of their knowledge and the progression of their careers in education.

John: Would you suggest doing that right at the beginning of the term, and perhaps even jointly shaping the syllabus for the course if that’s possible in your institution?

Erik: It’s a lot of work. That’s a lot of work. But yes, absolutely. And not only that, but I think the monitoring reflection, it’s an important part of all behavioral and psychological sciences, and especially behavioral change is having at least whatever the increment might be. Sometimes it might be pre- to post- to the semester, sometimes it might be every week, but having instances where you touch back in and say, “Hey, is this still working for us?” …and if it’s not, having the ability to make amendments, and being able to encourage new strategies that students can use to help them reorient or re-navigate towards the new goal, because one thing we know we do really, really poorly is make projections about what we want, what we need, in our personal space. So one of my favorite psychological exercises, we ask people, “How different are you going to be in 10 years?” And they go, “Oh, well, I won’t be that different. How much can I change? I know who I am.” But then you ask them, “Are you the same person you were 10 years ago?” and they say, “Oh, no I’m an entirely different person”. And somehow those two things never seem to align. So in that sense, it’s really important that we at least have little markers or flagpoles there that we can stop at and say, “Hey, is this still what we want? I know, we said this in the beginning, but it’s always alright, to make a change, it’s only too late to make a change once the semester is over.” So having the small incremental things, good, but having the baseline start and doing that initially, that’s where the bulk of the legwork should do. And if you can co-create a syllabus, please co-create a syllabus,

Rebecca: I think co-creation is such a wonderful way of existing, but also our institutions are often set up in a way that does not encourage such behavior by requesting syllabi ahead of time, sharing it out, because we want students to know what to expect. There’s all these things that are in place, also with students in mind, but often deters the behavior of co-creation. And some folks may not be at the liberty or feel like they have the ability to do that co-creation work. But I think there’s sometimes ways that we can do this in smaller ways than just a syllabus.

Erik: Smaller ways, absolutely. But Rebecca, you bring up an incredibly crucial point. And I really would like to touch on this because it does underpin and drive it. It’s almost the engine to all the work that I do. We’ve been talking a lot about individual change strategies and things we can encourage students to do. And I have a list of those that is nearly inexhaustible. But the one thing that I think comes to be missing in a lot of this is our focus on systems and the institutional things that sit around us, the foundations that sit around us, that sometimes provide barriers to us as you were saying, Rebecca, being able to make these changes in the way we like to approach our classes. And that’s one thing that in a lot of my work now and in the future I’d like to bring into this space of making changes is: lots of times when it comes to systems change, it’s really about removing obstacles for educators and for students rather than providing new solutions, or “Hey, add this to your syllabus or add that in and it will make your life easier.” Sometimes it’s just about removing the obstacles that make things really difficult for you to make specific changes. And that goes for students and educators alike, when you’re looking at co-creating a syllabi, or being able to engage your students more in the process. I think a lot of times the institutional perspective, or the institutional opinion, is that students, they’re not ready for that, they’re not able to do that. And you’re right, Rebecca, you know, they need to know what to expect. And I think students are way more capable and adept at these things than we think they are, as are faculty, and just saying, “Hey, let’s think about how we can look at the institutional rules that govern and reinforce or impede on certain behaviors, and how might we change these…” because that’s always going to be the best way you can catalyze change, is making changes to your institutional rules, your systems that exists at the higher level or higher order that might be, than actually looking at individuals within that system. Because sometimes you can say, “Hey, we really want this, we really want that.” But if your institutional rules are going to, once again, provide obstacles there, you’re not going to see a lot of changes. And I’ve seen this in everything from my environmental work to helping families out is, without the actual adjustment to the system as you’re trying to make adjustments to households, the classrooms, you’re just not going to see it happen. So these things have to be done in tandem. And I’m so happy you brought up that point.

John: One of our guests on a past podcast, and I’m not sure which one… I can think of three or four who might have said this… [LAUGHTER] is that they do have the official syllabus which is shared with the department, administration, and so forth. But then there’s the actual syllabus which is shared with the students and updated as they go. And that might be a good compromise, where there’s a core of content or a core of learning objectives and so forth that are in the official syllabus. But then you may have something that’s a bit more flexible and adaptable to the students that are actually in your class.

Rebecca: I mean, I submitted a syllabus that reflects a moment in time, it’s got a date on it, and then it’s a Google doc, a living document. Things change. Disasters happen. We get confused about something we need more time on it.

Erik: Sure. And I think having that space to make those changes and saying it doesn’t have to be a perfect syllabus is ideal. And one thing I talk a lot about in my work is behavioral inertia, where we’re going is kind of how the ball continues to roll. And it’s always really hard to knock us off of that behavioral inertia of what we’re currently doing. And we have stuff like this in our life. Maybe we have a certain policy or a plan or something and we see a better policy and a better plan, but we’ve had this policy and plan for 10 years. How much work would it be to actually change it? How much will it actually save me? And the same goes for our syllabi or our students in that we can get stuck in our ways. But as you’re both saying here, having the small compromises and just making incremental change, you don’t have to go scorched earth every time and say, let’s throw out every syllabus and just start from scratch every semester. But hey, this has been working okay. And having that living document you can make small adjustments to, this works for a semester three years ago, but it’s not working now. So let’s make a change to this particular section, for this particular activity and changes stuff. So just having those little things where our goals feel attainable, and we’re taking them in small enough… it’s called goal slicing… small enough slices that we can actually achieve them rather than trying to make it feel like a monumental have to move the heavens to get this done. I think it’s really, really important. So I’m glad you both brought that up, kind of looking for the solutions here that I think are really important and incredibly vital for us slowly making progress toward where we want to go.

Rebecca: We always wrap up by asking what’s next?

Erik: Yeah, what’s next? I think this is a great question, I see a field where I say there’s so much to be done. I have always been absolutely engrossed by an understanding of pedagogy. I’ve always really desired to know how I can improve performance as an educator. And the one thing I think that’s really important right now is looking at how we can infuse different practices for mentorship and coaching sciences into our ability for faculty and teaching professionals here. And so that’s where I see us going next. I always like having focus on students because students are why we do what we do. But I think to improve the students, once again, we’re going to talk about a little bit of a mediated pathway here, is going from a focus on what do the students need to do to what do we need to do as teaching professionals and faculty to make sure we’re adequately and sufficiently prepared to enter that classroom. So what I’d really like to improve on is use the same mechanisms of social psychological behavioral sciences to help improve your pedagogical ability, teaching professionals, and this is kind of what I’ve said in a lot of the parenting work I’ve worked on in the past is if we want better outcomes for the kids, we probably shouldn’t be going to the kids directly, because they don’t have a lot of control over what’s happening, especially when they’re really little. We really need to be going to the parents and improving the parents. And same thing goes here, as we can use evidence-based behavior change principles, techniques, and tactics, complex interventions, to help improve our ability as faculty members and teaching professionals. So we’re not just throwing educators off the deep end and say, “Hey, you’ve never taught before, but here you go.” So that’s what I see as being the next step in evolution to improving pedagogy as us in education as a whole.

Rebecca: Well, thanks so much for joining us, Erik, and sharing some science with us today, as well as some nice teases for your chapter in Picture a Professor.

Erik: Thank you both. That was a lot of fun.

John: Thank you.

[MUSIC]

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

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

[MUSIC]

246. Embedding Career Competencies

Students generally enter college to advance their employment prospects. In this episode, Jessica Kruger joins us to discuss how explicitly embedding career competencies in the curriculum can engage and motivate students. Jessica is a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Community Health and Health Behavior and is the Director of Teaching Innovation and Excellence at the University of Buffalo.

Transcript

Rebecca: Students generally enter college to advance their employment prospects. In this episode, we explore how explicitly embedding career competencies in the curriculum can engage and motivate students.

[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&hellip

John: &hellipand Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer&hellip

Rebecca: &hellipand 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 Jessica Kruger. Jessica is a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Community Health and Health Behavior and is the Director of Teaching Innovation and Excellence at the University of Buffalo. Welcome back, Jessica.

Jessica: Happy to be back.

John: We just saw you at CIT.

Jessica: &hellipgreat conference.

John: It was nice seeing everyone back in person again. For me, and I think for Rebecca too, this was our first conference in person in at least a couple of years.

Rebecca: Yeah. Yes, it was. Refreshing.

John: Speaking of refreshing, our teas today are&hellip Jessica, are you drinking tea?

Jessica: Iced Tea.

Rebecca: &hellipthe best kind during the summer.

Jessica: Exactly.

Rebecca: I have some nice piping hot Ceylon tea again.

John: And I have spring cherry green tea.

Rebecca: Is that a new one for you, John? Or you just haven’t had it in a while?

John: I haven’t had it in a while.

Rebecca: That sounds good&hellip

John: It is very good.

Rebecca: &hellipif you like cherries, which I don’t. [LAUGHTER]

John: It’s spring cherry, it’s not just cherry, these are spring cherries.

Rebecca: &hellipthe best kind.

John: &hellipfrom the Republic of Tea&hellip actually from Harry and David. But it’s produced by the Republic of Tea for Harry and David.

Rebecca: So we’ve invited you here today to discuss your work in incorporating career readiness into the public health curriculum. Why should there be an increased focus on incorporating career readiness in our courses and degree programs?

Jessica: I like to tell people, it’s not just our job to teach students really cool things, it’s our job to help them get a job. And so ultimately, by incorporating career readiness skills, we’re equipping our students to go out into the world and get their first job. And really, in public health, there’s so much work to be done. And so if students aren’t ready to do that interview, or send out their resume, or even talk about their experiences that they’ve gained in the classroom, they’re not going to land that job.

John: Has it been hard to convince other faculty of the need to provide this career readiness for students?

Jessica: So myself and another faculty member have been incorporating the career competencies in our courses, we both teach a 200- and a 300- level public health course. And, in those, we are getting students anywhere from sophomore, juniors, or seniors. And I think it makes sense in our profession where many students go out and get jobs after their bachelor’s to have them start thinking about this early, even as early as their second year in our courses.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about the kinds of careers that your students in your program pursue?

Jessica: Yes, so we have students working all over. And I’m really proud to say we have a student who’s actually working at a safe injection site in New York City, which is one of the first that has been opened. We have students working locally in health departments, working for hospital systems, and local nonprofits. And so our students are really going out there and doing what needs to be done, especially what we’ve seen over the past two years with the pandemic. We’d had so many students work in contract tracing, and also with local health departments, and it’s growing. Public health is becoming more recognized. And that’s why we need to continue to prepare our students for what’s next.

John: For those listeners who aren’t familiar with safe injection, could you talk about what that is?

Jessica: The first facility was opened in New York City. This allows for individuals who use injectable drugs to go into a place that is clean and monitored and inject safely. Someone is there to monitor them, provide them clean supplies, and even help them if there is an overdose. So this is a harm reduction technique that prevents deaths.

Rebecca: Can you talk about the ways that you have employed career readiness into your courses?

Jessica: We use the framework of the NACE Competencies and NACE stands for National Association of Colleges and Employers. And these are competencies that were set forth by actual companies, employers out there, saying what they actually want in a new graduate. So there are actually eight different areas, things from teamwork, leadership, ensuring that students are able to be critical thinkers, have career and self development, include equity and inclusion, and be proficient and technology. And so what I’ve done is incorporate first starting at the syllabus level, incorporating some verbiage saying: in this course, you’re going to learn career competencies, and we’re going to cover seven out of eight of these career competencies. Because I’m teaching a 200-level course, I’m not focusing on the skill of leadership, that’s a little bit higher level that I’m working at in this course. But in every assessment that I have in class, I have not only the objectives, why we’re doing it, but I include what competencies we’re working towards, and how they can talk about this in a job interview&hellip to a internship site. So it’s not just that you’re writing a paper, you’re working on those written communication skills, and you’re able to articulate that

John: How have students responded? I would imagine it would increase their motivation a bit when they see how directly applicable these skills will be for them.

Jessica: It all comes down to transparency, because the more transparent and applied students feel that their assessments are, the higher quality I tend to see their work. And so by telling them, you’re not just writing a paper for me to read, you’re writing a paper to practice this skill. And you’re also going to do a presentation, because in public health, you need to have excellent written and oral communication skills. And hey, you’re also going to make a poster on Canva, because you need to know how to use technology. And so by kind of stringing these competencies together, it allows students to see that what they’re doing is not just for a grade, but to help them build those skills.

Rebecca: Can you walk us through a specific example?

Jessica: Yeah, in this course, I have students do a variety of writing samples on different problems. So, in public health we’re very applied. In one of the papers, students are talking about how public health has been influenced by other areas&hellip philosophy, psychology&hellip and so they could just see it as a paper, a 1.5 page paper, or thinking about it from a career readiness standpoint, they’re learning how to write succinctly and to whatever audience&hellip so, in this case, a lay person learning about public health. And so in writing this, I include why they’re doing it. And when I’m giving the example of what I’m looking for in the assessment, I often have the students reflect on what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. I think it’s important for them to think about that, why am I writing this paper? Why are we doing this? &hellipto improve your skills, to work on that written communication. Another example that I think is probably maybe a little bit more applied here is students write a paper, they record a short pitch of this paper using Flipgrid. So they’re doing written communication, oral communication, and in that little flip grid that they’re doing, they have to dress professionally, practice that skill, and give feedback to peers. And so all of that together, which is seemingly not a too arduous of an assignment, is really hitting on a lot of those career skills.

John: Have other faculty in your department picked up on the use of expanded career readiness in their classes?

JESSICA :Yes, one other faculty member has joined me and currently we are studying the effects of this on our students. So what we have done is ask our students at the end of the semester to complete a short survey asking them about how they felt about including career readiness into their courses. And overwhelmingly, students are so appreciative that we’re thinking about this, preparing them for what’s next. And it also shows that we care, we’re not just there to be a sage on the stage. We’re there to help them get ready for that job, that grad school, or whatever else they choose.

Rebecca: Do you have other findings from your research so far? I know you’re early in this process.

Jessica: Another major takeaway from this research is students wish they had this much earlier. They wish that we started talking about it day one. And while we could have told them about the career design center on campus, they’re not forced to practice this in their courses. They’re not tying this to that NACE Competency framework. But really, when we think about it, career readiness is everyone’s job. In our University of Buffalo, we’re working to create a career ecosystem, meaning that faculty are really on the front lines of this. They’re the first people that students are going to go to for career advice. And not all faculty are equipped to have that conversation. But at least, at the very minimum, being able to direct them to the Career Design Center and other resources that are available through the Career Design Center, I think is key. One simple way that I’ve introduced students to the actual physical Career Design Center on campus is I have them go take a selfie. They have a great little selfie station, and that’s one of their first things that they do in my course. So I can start to put a face to a name. And they can also learn about why it’s important to have a professional selfie. So they can put on their digital profiles like LinkedIn.

Rebecca: I found in some of the classes that I teach, I’ve in the past done assignments where we do professional email communication related to the work that we’re doing, or reports that might be common to the discipline. And students have responded much more positively to those kinds of writing assignments, because they can see the practical application and can connect the very specific, like, I can see how I’m doing this skill, and it’s gonna result in me being able to do this other thing. We just don’t always articulate that when it maybe is a little more abstract, when it’s maybe a more traditional paper and how that might tie to the kinds of work that they might do as a professional.

Jessica: Most definitely. And I’ll say this really was not much effort, I did not change what I was doing in my courses. I really just added a sentence or two to each of my assessments, relating it back to the NACE Competencies, I also brought a little bit more awareness to what we were doing in class. When we would do group work, I’d say, “Oh, you know what? You’re working on teamwork. That’s great, because in public health, we work in teams, and this is also related to the NACE competencies.” So it doesn’t have to be like a capstone course where you’re deliberately working on resumes or other career competency. But I think weaving this in, adding to it, and really raising awareness about some of these skills can really help students go to that next level, or start thinking about what they need to do to build some more skills before they leave our universities.

John: You’ve already answered this partly by talking about teamwork and other skills that can be done in any class. But what about those instructors in a course on abstract algebra? How would you build in, say, career readiness into that, other than the types of things you’ve already mentioned?

Jessica: Well, I think teamwork and technology would be two very easy competencies to weave in to any sort of course. Also, if you’re doing advanced level math, you’re probably using critical thinking skills. And you’re probably talking about what your findings are. So you’re hitting communication, you may not have much on professionalism, or career and self-development, but still, you’re hitting five career competencies, and not having to add anything, but really just highlight what you’re already doing.

Rebecca: Were you surprised when you sat down and looked at your syllabus and your learning objectives and looked at the NACE competencies and put them side by side and how well they aligned?

Jessica: Yeah, and in fact, it’s interesting, because in public health, we have an accrediting body called CEPH. And our CEPH Competencies for preparing students at the baccalaureate level actually align perfectly with NACE. And so it made sense, once you sat it down to say, “Oh, I’m already doing a lot of this.” And yeah, it might take part of my class time the second day of class to bring in one of the career designers so they put a name to a face, but it’s not taking away any time from my instruction. And by adding the transparency in that connection. I think it’s created more of a caring environment for my students. They know I care about what happens to them after this course. And more students have come to me than ever, asking about what’s next, whether that’s grad school, or how to apply for that first job. And that’s really rewarding. Now, I know not all faculty want more meetings with students. We all have busy schedules. But it’s also great to build those connections, because those are the students who are going to continue to be connected, have mentorship and be successful.

John: And we’ve always been preparing students for their future lives and careers. But we haven’t always been that transparent about it. And it sounds like that’s a really good approach. For someone who wants to start building this into their courses, how would you suggest they get started?

Jessica: I think one of the first things is go have a conversation with someone in your career design center on campus, see what they’re offering and see how you can collaborate with them. I found that our Career Design Center at University of Buffalo has so many resources so that faculty can literally plug in modules on career development that are already created for them. It was also really enlightening to learn what it’s like to be a student, to go to the career design center. And so sitting down with someone and understanding some of the intakes that they do, some of the questions, and even some of the tools that they have, really helps give you an overview of everything that can be offered to students. So when that student comes to you and says, I’m thinking about this career in biostatistics&hellip Oh, great, I don’t actually know a lot about biostatistics, but you should go to the Career Center, because they have a great tool where you can see what your life would be like as a biostatistician. And so first learn about your career design center on campus.. Second, I think it’s important to start slow with any new thing that you’re doing in your course. It may be that you dip your toe in the water and just connect some of what you’re doing with career competencies. So when you have students work in teams, say, you know, teamwork’s important. This is actually what people care about when you get a job. And here’s how you might want to talk about your experience in teamwork, if you don’t currently do this outside of the classroom, and provide them some of those prompts. And then if you want to dive in, and really incorporate your NACE competencies, I think for most professions, in most disciplines, the alignment will be there. And it’s not a ton of effort to highlight that, especially if you start with just your assessments and maybe highlighting some of those and then moving towards other things by maybe adding some career readiness modules, or having your students go to your career design center, take a selfie, whatever they have to offer.

Rebecca: Sometimes it’s really exciting and nice to have some ideas of ways to connect with students that are just so straightforward. [LAUGHTER]

Jessica: I’ll also say, while our students have grown up in a digital age, I find that technology tends to be their weakest category when we think about the NACE competencies. And so if your field uses any technology, talking about how to be proficient in that, how to be a lifelong learner, and how sometimes it’s hard to learn something new, but you have to if you want to keep up into the field,

Rebecca: One of the things that I have been doing in my classes that students have appreciated is when there are things like free online conferences related to the discipline, assigning them as an assignment. And to do that, and to talk about what that experience is like and encourage them to connect with professionals in the field. And a lot more opportunities for that kind of an experience has been offered over the last [LAUGHTER] couple of years.

Jessica: That’s a great way to incorporate that&hellip talks, and even as you introduce a new topic, having them recognize that maybe after this class, you’re not going to be an expert, but here are ways that you can build this skill that you may need. And it might be going out and trying something new, it might be connecting with another center on campus. But recognizing there are resources there for you.

Rebecca: I think underscoring the idea that you need to continue learning in your field is something that students don’t always immediately recognize without us pointing out. They don’t recognize that one of the things they might want to ask in an interview are what the professional development opportunities are, or ways to grow as a professional in their first job.

Jessica: Most definitely, and how they want to do that and how they can identify those areas of growth. That’s something that’s not often transparent. We send them out into the world and say, “Great, you’ve got this degree.” But there may be many areas where they can become a little bit more proficient or dig a little bit deeper into a topic. I want to also highlight that I think that this is so important for our first generation and our URM students. In our undergraduate program, we have about 37% of our students being underrepresented minorities or first-generation college students. And if we don’t talk about this, no one else is going to talk about this. And by becoming someone to turn to about career readiness and about asking those questions of “What do I do for my first interview?” or “How do I prepare for this internship?” &hellipwe’re not going to be able to build that for those students because they might not have someone at home to turn to. As a first-generation college student myself, I found that no one was talking to me about this. And so I think it’s critical in higher education that we think about this as an equity and inclusion component within our curriculum.

Rebecca: That’s a really good point. I’m glad that you underscored that Jessica.

John: And one other thing that I think many people have been doing is bringing in guest speakers&hellip and you can bring in some recent graduates to talk a little bit about some of those pathways. I think we’ve all learned how easy it is to bring people in remotely to give presentations. We don’t have to physically bring them to campuses anymore.

Jessica: Yeah, I think that’s really powerful having career panels. And it’s great to connect with our graduates. I love when they say that what they’ve learned in the class actually helped prepare them for what’s next. We’re not just shooting from the hip here, we really talk to our graduates, understand where we need to focus and continue to improve our program as we continue to grow.

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

Jessica: Ah&hellip summer is upon us. And so it is my time to write up all the papers that I’ve been sitting on over the semester. One of that is the paper on incorporating these competencies into our courses. And I look forward to sharing the results when we get that out there. But I’m really interested in how we work with faculty to help them think about adding career competencies to their courses. Because I don’t think this just has to happen at the undergraduate level. I think the graduate level is also key. I teach both grad and undergrad courses. And as I’m revitalizing our graduate capstone, I really think that this is perfectly aligned, along with our competencies for our accrediting body. And so really, it’s all come together for me, and I’m really excited to see what other folks think about it as the word begins to spread.

Rebecca: Sounds like a really exciting opportunity. And I think you’re right, graduate school is a great place for some of these conversations to be happening.

John: Well, thank you. These are things I think we should all keep in mind, because even if we’re not thinking about career competency as being important for our students, students certainly are. It’s always great talking to you.

Jessica: Thank you very much.

Rebecca: Thanks, Jessica.

[MUSIC]

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

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

[MUSIC]

243. Trauma Aware Pedagogy

Since the start of the pandemic, there has been much discussion about student disengagement in their classes, but little discussion about why student engagement has declined. In this episode, Karen Costa joins us to discuss the role that ongoing trauma has on students and all members of the academic community.

Show Notes

  • Costa, K. (2020). 99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos: A Guide for Online Teachers and Flipped Classes. Stylus Publishing, LLC.
  • Jaschik, Scott (2022). “Provosts Stand Firm in Annual Survey.” Inside Higher Ed. May 11.
  • Thompson P. and J. Carello, eds. (forthcoming, 2022). Trauma-Informed Pedagogies: A Guide for Responding to Crisis and Inequality in Higher Education.
  • Brown, A. M. ProQuest (2017). Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. AK Press.
  • My Fest 2022
  • Brown, A.M. (2021). Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation. AK Press.
  • Lang, J. M. (2021). Small Teaching: Everyday lessons from the science of learning. John Wiley & Sons.
  • Darby, F., & Lang, J. M. (2019). Small Teaching Online: Applying learning science in online classes. John Wiley & Sons.

Transcript

John: Since the start of the pandemic, there has been much discussion about student disengagement in their classes, but little discussion about why student engagement has declined. In this episode, we examine the role
that ongoing trauma has on students and all members of the academic community.

[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 guest today is Karen Costa. Karen is a faculty development facilitator specializing in online pedagogy, trauma-aware teaching and supporting ADHD learners. Karen holds graduate degrees and certificates in higher
education; trauma and resilience; trauma-informed organizations; and neuroscience, learning, and online instruction. She is the author of 99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos, and has served as a facilitator for the Online
Learning Consortium, the Online Learning Toolkit, and Lumen Learning. Through her business, 100 Faculty LLC, Karen offers supportive, fun, and engaging faculty support and development to faculty from all over the world. Welcome back, Karen. Thank
you for having me back. It’s been a couple years, believe it or not,

John: It seems like it was just yesterday, it was like right after we got that announcement about campuses shutting down for a couple of weeks until COVID was over.

Karen: I looked back at my calendar, and I think it was April 2, 2020. So early COVID days, there was so much we didn’t know. And here we are two years and change later, still dealing with so many challenges. Yeah, wild.

Rebecca:: …with this very small pandemic. [LAUGHTER]Today’s teas are… Karen, are you drinking tea?

Karen: I feel that I should be, but I’m not. I wish I could say something clever here. I wrote a book with the words “simple and sustainable” in the title. I’m a simple person. I drink water all day long out of my water
bottle. And I have nothing interesting to share. I can say that I’m very proud that I kicked my diet coke habit… not that I’m judging anyone that still carries that. I have simplified [LAUGHTER] over the past couple years, down to water pretty
much.

Rebecca:: And water is the foundation of tea.

Karen: Oh, there you go. Thank you. [LAUGHTER] I feel better?

Rebecca:: How about you, John,

John: I have something not quite as simple, but pretty close. It’s just a simple peppermint tea today.

Rebecca:: That sounds good. Sounds like the perfect kind of tea for the day, I have a hot cinnamon spice for the day…

Karen: Interesting.

Rebecca:: …which is not my normal choice.

John: When we last talked to you, as you noted, it was very early in the pandemic. And we talked about trauma-informed pedagogy during what we hoped would be, as

Rebecca: said, a relatively short experience. But now we’ve had a little bit more experience with this pandemic and with trauma on the part of pretty much everyone involved in higher ed or in anything else in the world.
So we thought it might be good to revisit the issue of trauma-aware pedagogy. It might be helpful if we start with a review of what’s meant by trauma-aware pedagogy.

Karen: Yeah, it’s surreal that I’m coming back here a couple years later to talk about this. And it’s strange that so much has changed and also it feels like so little has changed as well from a couple of years ago. So
it’s wild… this work. When I spoke to you in 2020, I had been doing this trauma-awareness work on a much smaller scale. And to be honest, I had felt like there really wasn’t a ton of interest in it. I would find other people who are interested
in it and get so excited: “Oh, you want to talk about this.” And then the interest level soared. And I have been sharing this work with so many educators over the past couple of years. And they have helped to inform the way that I think about
trauma-aware pedagogy. So it’s been really wild. In short, in honor of, again, keeping it kind of simple, trauma-aware pedagogy, for me, it’s about looking at trauma through the lens of pedagogy and looking at pedagogy through the lens of trauma.
It is not about being a clinician or aiming to be a therapist for our students. I am always very clear about that with people. We want to have a very clear scope of practice, very clear boundaries. I am not, certainly, a clinician. However, pedagogy
is my area of expertise. So I work with faculty to help them develop a fundamental awareness of: what is trauma? We hear that word tossed around, what is it? And how does it show up in our classrooms? How does it show up on our campuses? It shows
up in our relationships, it shows up in our relationships with colleagues, with administrators, with students, and how does it impact students’ ability to learn? And we can work around that. There are strategies that we can use in our classrooms
immediately to help address some of those things. Certainly one of the things I would add is that I’ve been talking more about this concept of collective trauma over the past six months or so, really with this idea that, again, as you mentioned,
this is still ongoing. And there is really, in my awareness, there is no end in sight. And we see this intersecting with so many other social ills and challenges and climate change. So we are being called to ask questions about the very fabric
of society and higher education. So I’m absolutely still talking to folks about the impact of trauma on student learning and in your classroom. And also, I would say, now, much more of my work is around this idea of collective trauma, and what
is the future we want to create for higher education and the world? That wasn’t very simple, but… [LAUGHTER]

John: …it’s a relatively complex problem.

Karen: Yeah, I did my best.

Rebecca:: Maybe we can start with a little bit of conversation about the impact that trauma has on student learning and some strategies we can use in the classroom and then move up to these bigger institutional kinds of
conversations and system conversations.

Karen: Yeah, absolutely. So, trauma shows up in the classroom… one of the primary ways is how it influences what we call executive function. So those are things like focus, concentration, time management, the ability to
prioritize… Did I already say decision making? …if not, that’s one of them. So we talk sometimes about executive function skills as the little CEO in the brain who is directing everything. And trauma really puts a stress on those executive functions,
our brain actually diverts resources away from executive functions toward survival mode. And I always remind people, that’s really not a bad thing at all, right? That’s why we’re still here, because we learned to focus on our immediate survival.
That is why we’re still here. However, in higher education, when people are focusing on their very survival, that certainly impacts their ability to succeed in that traditional higher education learning environment. So we can come at this from
a lot of different angles, that, again, as I was just talking about, that really begs the question about what is the higher end of 2022 in the future going to look like but in the immediate, what I’ll say is that faculty can do things like simplifying
their messages, not sending out huge info dumps of information, being very mindful about not overloading students. We can offer appropriate supports, such as task lists for each week of a course. Students and faculty that I work with and me, we
love checklists. So things like that can be very helpful. When people are having a tough time deciding “what do I work on next?” …offering, for example, videos with assignment tutorials, to clarify expectations, being flexible with deadlines,
oh, this is such a big one. It does and doesn’t baffle me. There were formal policies put in place in 2020. Faculty were told you really need to take these late assignments, we need flexible late policies, we move toward pass fail. We are two
years into this pandemic, we have report after report after report about the mental health challenges that people are facing… life threatening mental health challenges. And those policies, those flexible learning policies vanished, probably sometime
around spring 2021 or early 2021. And that’s wild to me, like it’s just completely out of alignment with all of the [LAUGHTER] science of learning and the realities of the mental health challenges that folks are facing. This is difficult stuff
to talk about. I literally was just reading a report an hour ago, we just saw record numbers of overdose deaths, looking at the 2021 data. This is the context in which we are all learning. So anything we can do to be more flexible, to be more
supportive, to direct students to additional resources, is going to relieve some of that burden. We cannot do it all, we cannot fix trauma writ large with our pedagogy. I do think we can help to mitigate it. At the very least we can be a kind
word in the midst of this storm for our students.

Rebecca:: There’s a lot of conversation happening about disinterested students. But what you just described, Karen, I think is what faculty are responding to… the inability to plan and make decisions and manage time. And
that comes across as being disinterested in learning, but maybe it’s just not being able to function in our current system.

Karen: I would argue that we are functioning in the way that we were designed for lack of a better word in that we are focusing on our very survival. So one of the analogies that I give people is: if you’re teaching and
a building in this building catches on fire and your students are all running out of the door, and you stop and say “Why aren’t you focusing on my lecture? Why aren’t you focusing on this group activity?” or “We’ve got a big test coming up. We’ve
got a review session right now, what are you all doing? Where are you going?” That is the mindset that so much of this student “disengagement” framing and discussion and discourse comes from. Why aren’t students paying attention to these things
that are not related to their immediate survival? And instead, they are very interested and focused on these things that are very much related to their immediate survival. And when you frame it that way, I think it helps people… well, people who
are willing to face that reality. To consider it in a new light, it feels like we’re blaming students for running from a burning building, for focusing on their very survival. And I would add, we are then putting a pressure on faculty and staff
to put out a fire with their pedagogy. Whether you’re in the classroom or teaching outside of the classroom in a tutoring center or a library, it seems that there is this energy of what teaching strategies can you use to stop students running
from this burning building. And again, we’ve got these students whose very fundamental human rights are being stripped from them, and a huge increase in eco-anxiety, which another way we can frame that is, eco-anxiety is looking at the reality
of climate change and our general failure to act on that. And we wonder why students are not interested in the upcoming exam. I think students are interested in the realities of their lives, and that higher ed is going to have to figure out how
to speak to the realities of our lives.

Rebecca:: I think related to that is also the reality of faculty lives.

Karen: Yeah.

Rebecca:: There’s a lot of focus on conversation on supporting students and not necessarily on focusing on supporting faculty, staff, and all the people that make higher ed run.

Karen: Well, if I may, this morning, there was some data that came out from Inside Higher Ed report, I think it was called the Provost Report, I’m sure we can put it in the show notes. And something like only 4% of Provosts
interviewed said that they strongly agreed that there was a specific plan in place to support faculty and staff mental health. Only 4% strongly agreed with that. How is that not 100%. We have seen this coming…. again, I see a report every day
that is talking about faculty burnout, student burnout, broader mental health issues, and this is not being addressed on campus by our leadership. I really see my work is at the intersection of faculty and student success. And this is a really
big challenge. And to be honest, I am increasingly telling faculty and staff to stop investing their time and energy in places and people who are not investing in them, and to think about how they can create smaller, more inclusive spaces and
communities, regardless of what their administration is not doing [LAUGHTER] in order to protect their wellness and to start working toward creating a better, more inclusive, future for all of us, because so much of our leadership just is not
showing up to do that work.

John: I think one of the reasons why the official policy on campus is to back away from the request for faculty flexibility with deadlines and so forth, is a recognition that faculty have been overwhelmed. But yet, I think
a lot of faculty are still being quite a bit more flexible, and that adds to the stress that they’re dealing with. Because when you have lots of students turning in lots of work at random times, it makes work a little bit more complicated. Do
you have any strategies that might work well for faculty who are trying to be flexible, but still trying to find time to deal with their everyday stress?

Karen: I’m so glad you brought that up. Because yes, absolutely. I agree with you. And I want to come at that from two angles. And I might forget the second as I’m talking about the first. But, the first thing I want to
say here is that institutions could choose to invest in supporting faculty through reducing their course loads and reducing class sizes. Now I know some people that are listening to this just said, “Oh my gosh, Karen, that’s never going to happen.”
It could happen. We make choices about our values through where we invest our time and energy and money. And if your institution, for example, is invested in, I don’t know, I’ll throw out proctoring technology and spending tens of hundreds of
thousands of dollars on these tools that we have increasing amounts of data that they don’t even work, number one, and that they do harm to students, particularly students of color, and students with disabilities. So If your institution is investing
in those, they can certainly choose to re-invest instead in creating systems and structures that allow faculty to have more time to do the work of inclusive teaching, which includes adapting to deadlines and giving students flexibility. It doesn’t
mean you get rid of deadlines, it doesn’t mean you get rid of structure. It means that we meet students where they are and help them as best we can. I want to direct my answer first to leadership and say if this is something that research and
science is showing us that we need in light of the findings we have right now about this mental health crisis in faculty and students, then start investing in faculty and students. So the second thing I would say is to the faculty: we cannot sit
around and wait for leaders to do what is right, we have to act in this moment with what we have. So I’m taking a breath here because there’s so much work to do. And I’m just watching people continue to suffer and struggle. And it seems like the
theme is that leadership is not showing up for people. And what people tell me, time and time again, is that my institution has betrayed me, it has failed me, and I have just lost faith. Okay, I had to get that out. What I invite faculty to do
is to do what they can. So trauma-aware teaching is not self sacrifice. So it is not: “I am going to make myself sick, or put myself into worse burnout or into burnout to take care of my students” …because that in the long run does not take care
of your students. That means that you’re not able to do your work, and you’re not able to support your students as effectively, and we don’t want that. So the first thing that I tell people about trauma-aware teaching is that we have to take care
of ourselves. That is our responsibility as humans, that is our responsibility as educators. And this is murky and messy, but we do our best to take care of ourselves. We say no to whatever we can, perhaps, that doesn’t immediately impact our
wellbeing or our students wellbeing. And we focus on what we can do. We find supportive communities to talk about this in a real way, to talk about the hard stuff. I have been part of communities of faculty who have been able to show up together
and just cry at what is going on and listen to each other and listen to each other’s family stories and life stories. And then we carry on with the work of teaching. So do what you can, this is not about being some perfect teacher, there are things
I could probably do to be more flexible and inclusive, that are just not within my bandwidth. I have a book chapter coming out in a book called Trauma-Informed Pedagogies about this concept of a scope of practice for educators. And I think that
might help some people to put a very practical structure around this. And what it really causes us to ask is: “What belongs to us?” and “What are we qualified to do?” amd “What is not ours or what can I refer to somebody else?” But we cannot do
everything for everyone. We can do the best that we can where we are and continue to take care of ourselves. And I know that so many faculty are doing that already and have been doing that. So, know that it is not your fault if your institution
does not invest in supporting faculty and students. Do what you can where you can and take care of yourself.

Rebecca:: I love that advice. I think there’s some struggle, though, probably for faculty, depending on their position… that some faculty can easily do that and others can’t or can’t do as much or can’t be as flexible
because of their own circumstances. And then students say: “But XYZ faculty does this. Why can’t you do it too?” Do you have some advice for how to handle some of those situations and to support one another?

Karen: Absolutely. So I’m an adjunct myself. So I think that would be one category of folks that we might be talking about here. I have chronic illnesses, I have disabilities, I have ADHD. And I also carry many privileges
that protect me from some of those particular challenges. So again, we can only do what we can do where we are with what we have. In that case, depending on your relationship with those students or with your students in general, one of my pieces
of advice is to talk to and be transparent with students. And perhaps I would have a conversation with them about how faculty, in general, are not always going to teach in the same way and the pros and cons of that. And I also might enlighten
them into the fact that different faculty have different resources at their disposal and different expectations. I would start by being transparent with students. And then I would certainly, to the extent possible, be raising my hands… I say that
to people a lot, raise your hands to whatever extent you can with what power you have, to administration, in meetings,amongst leadership to say this is the reality of what is happening. This is what my students need. This is the bandwidth that
I have to give it to them and the limitations that I’m facing them. And we need to invest in faculty and students. The more of us that are pushing for that… Do I expect them to listen? No, but I long for the day when they will. And I will continue
to ask, for as long as it makes sense. And the other thing I would say is to faculty who do have that privilege and power, we need your voices to be advocating for us on campus. So we need you to be calling for an investment in faculty and students
in a way that supports the least resourced among us.

John: Over the course of the pandemic, faculty became much more aware of student trauma that had always been out there, but it became so much more obvious. Do you think that’s something that faculty will carry forward
into the future, or as we move more to traditional classroom teaching, will people forget some of the inequities that our students face?

Karen: I would like to believe that we are facing a future where we will have the luxury of forgetting, I do not think that is the future that we are facing. If I’m being completely honest, I think that what’s coming is
going to be… I’m mindful of saying this… but I think that what’s coming in terms of climate change is going to make the past two years look not as difficult. And they were incredibly difficult. I think we are going to face increased challenges.
I say to people, pandemics are a symptom of climate change, we can expect more and more intense and more frequent pandemics, in addition to all of the other life threatening, species threatening, impacts of climate change. So I don’t think we’re
going to have the luxury of forgetting, I will say that the vast majority of faculty that I work with are incredibly caring, are curious about what they can do to support students. That’s not where my concern lies. I’ve been reading a lot of the
work of adrienne maree brown. She talks about and writes about a system called emergent strategy, and it’s about shaping change. And I’ve been really diving into her work, thinking about how do we shape change in higher education. And one of her
mantras is “small is all.” So we get together in these small communities. And we make these small choices and changes, whether it’s raising our hand and a meeting, or giving a student an extension, and we recognize that every small act matters
and builds towards something bigger. And the faculty that I work with are doing that work right now. What I’m trying to figure out is where do we go from here? If our leadership and administration are focused on this idea of “it’s post pandemic,
it’s the new normal, everything’s wonderful, everybody’s back on campus, isn’t this great?” …and they are refusing time and time again to address the realities of our lives. Where do we go from there? And again, I’m increasingly finding myself
telling people: “think about where you are investing your time and energy, and if that makes sense for our current reality and the future that we want to create.” And I hope that administration and leadership will start to get on board more with
that. I think faculty and staff, by and large are, with some exceptions, are already doing so much of that work.

Rebecca:: Karen, what’s the future that you want to create?

Karen: You know, I’m hosting a workshop on this, part of My Fest 22, a group of educators are putting this together. And we’re gonna get together for 30 minutes, because small is all. And we’re going to talk about emergent
strategy. And one of the questions is: “What is the higher education that we want to create?” I will say that as somebody who is fairly newly diagnosed with ADHD, that I have been part of communities in the past couple years, with fellow ADHD-ers
where we get together online, which is accessible for me, and we ideate and we create and we’re weird, and we’re wonderful, and there’s not really these rules and boxes that we’ve so long been forced into. And it’s just like an explosion of creativity
and goodness. And I was at a conference recently. There was a lot of sessions, it wasn’t for ADHD folks, but the session I went to was about ADHD folks. And later in the day, the conference organizers said this was our most engaged session. One
of the things I think about is having our ADHD learners, our disabled learners, our neurodivergent learners, really centering them in the future of higher education. We are the ones who are coming up with new ideas. We are the ones who see connections
between ideas that other people, neurotypical people, don’t see. We are the ones who have often suffered greatly and been let down by institutions and been so savvy and strong in adapting and figuring out how to do it with no support. And I would
love to see a higher education that starts to center these learners and these educators. Because the sky is the limit, there are no bounds to our brains. So I would love to see a higher education that does that. An example of that: I like to go
really big and out into outer space and then bring things back down to planet earth for people. We have long had these centers for… sometimes they’ve recently been called Centers for Disability, but they were long the Disability Center, Center
for disabled students, different names, but they’ve been focused and grounded in that accommodations model. We’re starting to see centers for neurodiversity pop up. And they are not just for students who have a formal disability diagnosis, they
are for all students, because we need to educate non disabled or pre-disabled folks. And we need to educate folks without learning disabilities, about the gifts and challenges of these populations. And they are centered around… I use the term
strength-based, challenge aware, so they’re not deficit based. And I really think these could be sort of hubs for a new, brighter, more colorful, more interesting, more inclusive, higher education. They are few and far between right now. But when
I talk to campuses about ADHD, people get very excited about this idea. I was at a workshop with a school in New Jersey a couple of weeks ago, and someone said, “I’m starting that on this campus.” And I was just like, “Oh, my gosh, this is emergent
strategy.” This weird lady named Karen showed up to talk to your faculty, and you got this idea. She learned it from somebody else. And now this person feels motivated to create the center on their campus for neurodivergent students. What could
be next? Those are the reasons to be hopeful when we see those small connections and people sharing and building off of each other’s ideas. And I could go on and on, but that was the first thing that popped into my mind for a future for higher
ed. So I’m gonna trust that it came into my mind for a reason. But there’s so much there. And I think that question is really important for everybody to ask themselves. So I’m glad that you asked me. Thank you.

John: Could you comment a little bit more on the focus that many faculty and administrators have had concerning student disengagement during the pandemic?

Karen: Yeah, my primary goal is to really help us reframe this idea of student disengagement, which often is equivalent to student blaming, and putting the weight of the world on faculty and staff. As I mentioned, that
Provosts’ report, I have never, other than when it came out of my own mouth, heard anybody talk about provost engagement or provost disengagement, I would like to see that on the cover of the Chronicle, or on the front page of Inside Higher Ed.
Why aren’t we talking about that when only 4% are saying we have a concrete plan in place, which leads me to believe 96% aren’t doing that work. So let’s talk about provost disengagement with the realities of students and faculty and staffs lives,
I would like to have that conversation. So we got to be curious about the systems here. Why are we so hyper focused on this conversation about student disengagement? One, we got to reframe the fact that students are very engaged in taking care
of themselves and their families and communities. And why aren’t we focusing on leadership and their engagement? Higher Ed doesn’t live in a bubble. What about our elected representatives engagement with the reality of students and faculty and
staff lives, the judicial systems engagement, we could go on and on here, but we zone in on students, and we blame students and then again, we wonder why faculty aren’t putting some pedagogy on it to fix it all. So that was the main thing I want
to invite people to think about is whenever you hear that phrase, student engagement or student disengagement, to think about systems, to think about power, to think about whose engagement we aren’t talking about, and to be really critical and
thoughtful about that conversation,

Rebecca:: I really agree with you, Karen. I’m always thinking about the design of things as a designer. And so what was this designed to do?

Karen: Yeah.

Rebecca:: …and what does it support? And how does the design need to change if we want things to change?

Karen: Right.

Rebecca:: …but we have to be willing to redesign.

Karen: Yes, I love that. And I have that design background as well. And we have to be willing to redesign. Is this the higher education that we need in this moment in time? That’s a scary conversation to have. I’ve been
prepping a workshop and one thing I have in there is what I’m calling “the great letting go.” But I think we’re going to have to let go of some really deeply held attachments in higher education and in our teaching, to redesign for the world that
we have now for the students that we have now, for faculty and staff. We are entering into what I suspect is going to be a really intense volatile era. And all hands need to be working toward, again, creating, imagining this brighter future. And
I’ve been saying this a lot lately, higher education was built to exclude me, it was built to exclude, I would say, most of us who are currently teaching and learning in it. And so many of those systems and structures that were built around exclusion
are still how we do business and how we teach and learn. So I talked before about where are you going to invest your time and energy? I’m very careful lately about where… it’s something I learned in the pandemic, and I had learned it before, but
I learned it even more. Where do I have power? Where don’t I have power? Where do I want to invest my time and energy? Who do I want to spend time with? Who do I want to learn with? And I want to be with people who are looking to create that more
inclusive, more colorful, brighter, higher education.

Rebecca:: I think there’s probably many of our listeners who are ready to do that too. [LAUGHTER]

Karen: Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

Rebecca:: There’s many of us that would like to see change and are working towards change, so we’re glad that you’re speaking out, Karen.

Karen: And that’s why I have adrienne maree brown’s books next to me. Sometimes I just hold on to them, adrienne maree brown’s books: Emergent Strategy, and then I recently got her book Holding Change. So I think one of
the critical conversations we can be having right now is how do we shape change? That is a question that adrienne maree brown is asking. How do we work toward this higher education that we want to create and a world where people all have enough,
and where everybody can show up as their weird and wonderful selves and be supported and learn together? And do that in service of not only humanity, but the entire planet and all species. What does that look like? And emergent strategy is a tool,
it’s a tool to help us shape change. When you’ve got no resources, when you’ve got an administration that does not seem to be willing to acknowledge these realities, people who are interested in protecting the elite, rather than opening up these
systems, what are you going to do? How are you going to move through your day? And I feel like why I’m so drawn to emergent strategy is it gives me answers about how to do that work. Small is all. What can I do? What small thing can I do to move
this idea or conversation or energy forward in this moment. And I do the next best thing. And that’s been so helpful for me.

Rebecca:: I love the idea of taking these small steps. It makes it much more manageable. Yeah, exactly.

John: And making small changes that make your classes more inclusive so that they do work for everyone, no matter what challenges they face, can do a lot to help our students.

Karen: Absolutely. There’s a book series, I know Jim Lang, and I think Flower Darby did it online, called Small Teaching. So these ideas are out there, they’re circulating. And I think the more of us that are gathering,
again, in these smaller, inclusive communities. Divest from the spaces that are not supporting us, take your time and energy away from those and put them to where this work is already being done. So many of our marginalized communities have been
doing this work for centuries. Let’s invest our time and energy more mindfully to intentionally shape change in higher education.

John: It’s also very similar to Tom Tobin’s notion of the “plus one” strategy, make small changes and do it incrementally and it can add up to a much larger change over time.

Karen: Yeah, and we can do that in our classrooms. And I think we can also do that in this broader work as advocates for higher education as a whole and moving again toward a more inclusive system or redesigning the system,
as we just said: plus one, small teaching, emergent strategy. We have systems in place that we can look to to do this work.

Rebecca:: Culture changes when the people involved in the culture make a change.

Karen: Yes.

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

Karen: I have some fun things planned coming up. Again, I’ve been really focused on doing the work that just feels right in my body and that has a spark. I mentioned that emergent strategy workshop coming up. I am the,
I guess, person who will be welcoming people but not actually facilitating a Zine workshop. Remember Zines from the 90s? We’re going to get faculty together to do that work. And I also have imminently, hopefully, some really cool workshops around
what we’re calling climate action pedagogy or CAP for short. So helping faculty to infuse principles of climate action into their classroom. It will involve if you couldn’t figure it out already, it’ll be relying on principles of emergent strategy,
which is really exciting. And then I’m taking time off this summer. I’m very excited for that and protective of that time. So, good stuff coming up, again, very focused on small communities, supporting faculty and students, investing in faculty
and students, and doing whatever small thing I can where I am. I don’t know what’s coming, I get absolutely overwhelmed at times, and hopeless at times. And what I find really is critical for my mental health and for my work, is to just ask that
question, take that time to feel that way, and then to ask that question: “What can I do? What small thing can I do?” …and the future is really quite terrifying, but what I’ve realized lately is that I’m gonna go out swinging and fighting. And
I’m not certain about really anything, but I know that I’m going to do everything that I can, while I can to make this world a better place.

John: We very much appreciate all the work that you’re doing.

Karen: And to you all I want to say that, I was sharing with

Rebecca:, earlier, I’ve been working on a podcast, it’s going to be 10 episodes, and I know how many episodes you all have recorded, and I knew it was going to be more work than I thought it would be. But it’s definitely
like that, and then some. So thank you all for investing your time and energy into holding this space for educators. And I have a new glimpse into how much work it is. And we so appreciate all of the work that you do.

John: It’s a lot of work, but it’s also a lot of fun. And we get to talk to some great people like you.

Karen: Good.

John: Thank you.

Rebecca:: Twice. [LAUGHTER]

John: Three times.

Rebecca:: Three times, yeah.

John: Actually, we first talked about 99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Videos….

Karen: Oh my gosh.

John: …which is something that our faculty have loved.

Karen: Okay, that was lost in the pandemic brain. So that’s interesting. People send me things that I’ve written or said, and I go: “That’s really nice. I have no recollection of that, but it’s really nice.” [LAUGHTER]
Our brains make choices. [LAUGHTER] Thank you. Third time’s the charm. It’s great to be here with you again.

Rebecca:: Well, thank you so much for joining us. We always appreciate having you and value everything that you do.

Karen: Thank you.

[MUSIC]

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

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

[MUSIC]

225. A Sea of Troubles

Students sometimes see our courses as abstract, irrelevant, and separate from their lives. In this episode, Bill and Elizabeth James join us to discuss a teaching approach that explicitly connects literature with contemporary culture and students’ lived experiences. Bill and Elizabeth are both public high school teachers in Stockton, California, and the authors of A Sea of Troubles: Pairing Literary and Informational Texts to Address Social Inequality.

Shownotes

Transcript

John: Students sometimes see our courses as abstract, irrelevant, and separate from their lives. In this episode, we discuss a teaching approach that explicitly connects literature with contemporary culture and students’ lived experiences.

[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 Bill and Elizabeth James. They are both public high school teachers in Stockton, California, and the authors of A Sea of Troubles: Pairing Literary and Informational Texts to Address Social Inequality. Welcome, Bill. And Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: Thank you for having us.

Bill: Thank you very much.

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

Elizabeth: Coffee.

Bill: Coffee. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: Oh, a coffee pair, I see, mm hmm… best kind of tea ever.

John: Coffee has been dominating our recent podcasts.

Rebecca: It has been.

Elizabeth: Ours is just pure parental desperation. We’re in the last leg of December and teachers and everything. So, I’m pretty sure it’s Folgers. And it’s a necessity.

Rebecca: Do you feel awake then?

Elizabeth: Indeed. Yeah. [LAUGHTER]

John: And, while this is being released a little bit later, we’re recording it during the week before Christmas, so I’m drinking Christmas tea here.

Rebecca: Today, I have a Blue Sapphire, which is a black blend.

John: So we’ve invited you here to discuss A Sea of Troubles. Could you tell us how this book project came about?

Elizabeth: Phil and I are a married couple that also teach at the same high school, and that’s where we met. So when the pandemic started, we were trying to balance home life, and we’ve got two little kids here, and a plague and the move to Zoom teaching, and in the midst of all this there was still the conversation of will the spring exams still be happening, those state tests and what will we do for the kids? …which seems silly, and sort of looking at the tree instead of the forest situation, but Bill had the idea that it spoke to a larger issue of this question in education of incorporating nonfiction. So there was this weird situation where the world was nothing but nonfiction stories of very important things that everybody needed to understand right now, and that the stakes were very, very high. And then we were prepping our students with “here’s an excerpt from a brochure from Yosemite National Park. This will be how you know whether or not you can investigate a nonfiction text.” It’s like, well, one of these things is not like the other. So, it started with his pitch to me was: “It’s like Hamlet, you know, it’s the sea of troubles. We’re just looking at the sea of troubles. What if we just acknowledge that reality?” And then the second half of that is, as long as we’ve known each other, one of the things that has really bonded us as teammates and teachers is this true belief that literature is the way to get kids hooked and improve with their reading and writing and critical thinking, and that all of the se, in our estimation, oftentimes really boring, condescending, sort of lowest common denominator tasks. That’s how you lose kids, you don’t get them. So we had fought this nonfiction incorporation, kind of our whole career being like, “You don’t need it, because if you’re doing literature right, you’ll get all that other stuff.” For once, it seemed like what if we just put all of the really low bar stuff all the way to the side and said, teach Romeo and Juliet, but let’s also talk about the tragedy of growing up and Bildungsroman, and all of these sorts of things that kids are really going to connect with and that are going to serve them well [LAUGHTER] with encountering nonfiction texts. So we tried to bridge that gap and sort of saw a natural marriage there and an opportunity for it, and then started writing furiously from that point forward.

Rebecca: One of the things I really like about this book is the guidance provided around some very specific activities. Can you talk a little bit about how each of the chapters is structured?

Bill: Sure, each chapter pairs a pretty commonly taught literary text that’s probably in schools textbook rooms, probably available, probably being taught at that school, and then pairs that work with a current social issue, a sort of universal social issue that somehow is reflected in that book even if the book is centuries old, and sort of builds a unit around that pairing. For example, we pair Merchant of Venice with racial injustice, A Raisin in the Sun with socioeconomic injustice, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with abuse of power, and so on and so forth.

Elizabeth: Yeah. And I’m so glad we’re here today, because one of the sort of unintended consequences is people, just skimming through, and there’s this idea of like, “Well, this is what I should do with Romeo and Juliet or with To Kill a Mockingbird, and it’s not that at all.” It’s just reimagining these iconic texts that we’ve been teaching for decades now in classrooms, and keeping them fresh and applicable to the world around us. So nothing is mandated as if it should be this, it’s just us, like good teachers, modeling possibilities. And what we hope happens is teachers are welcome to use whatever they want from it, but that it sets them on fire to really look at their syllabus, and throw the baby out with the bathwater and just start again with what these books that they’ve been teaching forever could do and how they could reflect the world today around them and their students.

John: And making those connections for students should make those texts come alive in ways that traditional instruction is not very likely to do. How did you select the specific social issues that you’re using for those connections?

Elizabeth: Yeah, it was hard, actually, in the last leg of it, there’s the part when you’re writing a book where you go, “I had an idea, not a book, leave me alone…” you know, there’s no way we’re going to get this done. By the time it went off to the publisher, we reached out to Rowman and Littlefield and said, “We’ve got an idea. What if we double the length of it? Turns out, we have five extra chapters.” And they said, “You can do a second volume, but we can’t do this this term.” We had to cut a lot we had. My favorite one that we cut, that I hope comes back in some sort of later iteration, is we had Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao paired with Woman Warrior, and it was going to be issues of immigration and first-generation versus second-generation issues. That’s something our student population is intimately concerned with, and all kinds of stuff. At the end, we were looking for things that were most globally applicable. Would you say that’s right?

Bill: Yeah, I think so.

Elizabeth: Yeah. It felt almost arbitrary, what landed, because for the past couple of years, it’s felt like everything is that important right now, so it was hard to narrow it down. I hope that there’s a second book in the near future. [LAUGHTER]

Bill: Yeah. I think at some point we realized that we were following a couple threads, one being otherness and one being abuse of power, and the issues kind of fall into one of those threads.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit more about otherness? That was something that I had picked up on as well. Can you talk about why otherness is important to explore in a writing or a literature class?

Elizabeth: Sure, it wasn’t something I encountered until my post-grad work. I started teaching when I was 23, and feeling my way through the dark, like all sorts of new teachers. I remember thinking, “Well, that makes sense.” I didn’t know there was a name for this sort of common denominator here. And then once I started reading more about it, and studying and writing about it, it just seemed like it spoke to so many things. So I often teach Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and that’s a really great one because it’s on so many levels, an issue of otherness. That didn’t make it into the book because I don’t think I could keep myself to a chapter talking about Beloved but that was the book I used to introduce it to with students, and it resonated so quickly and clearly to a roomful of teenagers. That feeling of implicit and visible power structures that were dominating their lives but slippery, and sometimes could not be held to account and they had all had a coach or a teacher or a friend group that was sort of living through othering one or many people, but they didn’t have the language for it yet. So it became this very natural framework for so much literature, not all of it, but so much of it could be taught through there. And what I loved about the framework is it created this humanity to these books that had been hard to get to. For instance, twitter, generally speaking, is very mad at The Great Gatsby recently. I don’t know if you guys have followed this, like, why are we still teaching this book? And I think those conversations are valid, and we should have those conversations, but my students who… we’re a title one school, they’re socioeconomically disadvantaged, they’re a majority immigrant population. They relate to The Great Gatsby from 100 years ago, and what they connect to at a gut level is that feeling of he’s done everything right, and he’s still being kept out of the clubhouse. Jay Gatsby is a hero and a fool all in one and look at how they’re othering him and it doesn’t matter that the houses don’t match, the yearning for your merit being enough to bring you in, does match and they still highly connect to it. They believe that it is then a tragedy that they are reading and they recognize it as a tragedy. And so that’s the sort of reimagining that we hope teachers start doing. As we get into these conversations, and school boards are going crazy about, don’t show this to my kid, and this is what’s wrong, and all of the sort of noise that is happening all of a sudden around education. What can students learn and how is it reflecting the world around them? That should be the first and the last beat of that conversation as far as I’m concerned

John: How do you recommend introducing the concept of otherness to students?

Elizabeth: Well, the exercise that’s in the book, and I like this one, is just a quick write, and I say: Write, not for a grade or anything, but just as clearly as you can, write about a time that you felt othered, that you felt like you were being excluded. It can be at a macro level, or a micro level, write it in first-person present tense, it’s happening right now, and focus on concrete details.” And they do and the roomful of teenagers tells their sad story about the thing that happened to them that changed their life, and sometimes we share out or sometimes I say, “Thumbs up if it was this, or just sort of those broad stroke things, and the room just sort of lights up going, “Yes, I too, have been wronged. I too have been excluded and it is tragic, and finally I’m seen.” And I have them flip the paper over and I say, “Okay, we’re going to do it again, this time, write about a time you othered somebody else, passively or actively, including but not limited to, you watched it happen, and you let it happen. Write about that.” And every time a roomful of 35 kids, it’s that, “oh no” kind of recognition, [LAUGHTER] passing their face, and they all have a story to tell about that too. And they never think about that story. And they never connect their participation in othering as also tragic. So it becomes this very natural discussion of “How can this be a universal experience? How can everybody go through it and recognize the hurt of it, and yet, simultaneously, everybody participate in it to another person? Why do we not learn this lesson? Why is this, throughout time and space?” You know, when we study Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, we’re going to see it and we’re going to see it in Junot Diaz, or whatever contemporary stories are in The New Yorker this week, there’s still issues of otherness. Why can’t people move past doing this to each other? And then that creates a sort of shared humanity around whatever unit we’re going into, and it seems to be pretty powerful for kids.

Bill: Something else we try to come back to a lot in the book is the use of language in the service of otherness and how different ways that language, from propaganda posters to a tweet, can be used to “other” groups of people, and the effect of that. Which just seems like something important for the kids to be able to recognize and be aware of.

Rebecca: And probably it’s something they hadn’t considered previously. I know that as I was reading through the examples, and although I’m not an English or literature teacher, I do teach in the arts, and I was thinking about all the ways that the same kinds of things can be done with other media.

Elizabeth: Absolutely, and that’s really the goal. I mean, I would love them all to be students of literature, and get their doctorate in it. I want them all in elbow patches standing at a lectern, someplace, loving it, but on the other hand, I would sure settle for the hundreds of kids we get to teach each year going out into their communities and recognizing when they are being manipulated, and when somebody has figured out a pattern to enact action, and that they can recognize that and then critically consider whether or not they agree with that or not, themselves, instead of being swept up in repetition or phrasing or syntax. Just because it gets said a lot doesn’t make it true, which is something they’re coming to.

John: Could you give us some other examples of some of the pairings between literature and contemporary issues.

Bill: Another chapter is on authoritarianism, and pairs 1984 and Animal Farm with that issue, and the idea behind that one is that 1984 is a book that we’ve taught for over a decade, but for many years we would teach the book through a literary lens. We would usually have some culminating assessment where the students write their own dystopian short story, or they do research on totalitarianism in the 20th century. Then around 2018, it just became apparent that we need to be looking at these leaders around the world who are just repeating exactly what is in this book, and students need to be researching that, and making those connections. I think the first time I did it, I did that version of the unit. It was right after Jamal Khashoggi had been killed. So we had kids presenting on that and using information that had come out that day in their presentation and connecting it to the novel.

Elizabeth: Yeah, it was really powerful because people were running up to Bill being like, “We need 15 minutes cause we’re reading this article, and we have to cross-reference it. So, they had to change their presentation because it was happening in real time. What a beautiful example of: “We have Orwell’s text, and we can still be English teachers teaching 1984.” We can still do our exercise on character foils, and the three-act structure and we can still discuss syntax and ironic juxtaposition and we can do all of the sort of English teachery things we need, but that does not mean we need to sacrifice how the art speaks to the world and how the world speaks to the art which is so much more engaging for students and arguably so much more important.”

Bill: We also have a chapter on genocide and ethnic internment in Night and Farewell to Manzanar and we have gender inequality in The Handmaid’s Tale, and then our last chapter is sort of more abstract. It’s taking To Kill a Mockingbird and Romeo and Juliet, and then looking at just the tragedy of growing up.

Elizabeth: I think that’s landed as my favorite, maybe primarily because when you’re an English teacher, you know you can count on having to do your Gatsby unit, and your Romeo and Juliet unit, and your Mockingbird unit. I had started to feel really stale in all three of those things and feel like, “Ok, this is the part where I do this tap dance… then they’ll say this, and then I’ll do that, and I’ll say…” and I love teaching, in part, because if it ever feels stale, you just get to recreate what the job is, which is great. But, this is a lens that I found, to begin with, with Romeo and Juliet, and it just made so much sense, the thing that kids will say is they’re just stupid. They’re not really in love, it’s lust. Why are we still reading the story and calling it a tragedy if it’s just two dumb teenagers? And, the conversation became: “But they didn’t know that. So does it matter? If it feels real to them, does it matter?” Some of the nonfiction that we paired was studies that said that for a teenager falling in love does the same thing to the brain chemistry as doing cocaine. That it feels like a high, that it creates a physical high to that extreme, and they were reading this biochemical research about brain activity in teenagers. And then it became this question of, “Well, what’s real anyway?” We can see this, because we have the prologue in the beginning, saying that there’s gonna be blood on the floor at the end. They don’t know that. They are right in their present tense, doing the best they can. Kids really appreciated the dignity that that gave things that they were experiencing in their lives right now. Because they might be going to math class, high on love cocaine, and they can’t learn statistics that day. I mean, that is what’s happening, it’s such a weird time to be alive, and to give them sort of the language to discuss how distracting and distracted and very real it is to them. And then the other thing we talked about was the secondary storyline in that play and Mockingbird is growing out of relationships, childhood intimacies, and we paid a lot of attention to Romeo and Mercutio, who are established as best buds in the beginning and the tragedy of Romeo just not confiding in his friend yet. He’s become a man who’s in love with a woman and partner there, but Mercutio cannot understand why truth is not being told… the betrayal of an intimate friendship as one person grows past needing that friendship as their primary relationship in their life. And I’m watching kids faces, just really soak it in because then the bell rings, and they go to lunch, and they live a manifestation of watching their friend go to the boyfriend and girlfriend and leave them alone at the table, and the pain of that. All of a sudden Mercutio picking a fight to prove his loyalty, it makes so much more sense. I’m not fighting with these kids who are below grade level, who are struggling with grammar and stuff. I do not have to decode the Shakespearean language, they can find it in that big fight scene, and it is moving them. So it wasn’t necessarily a social issue. But we wanted to put it in there as a universal experience. It’s both necessary to go through the tragedy of leaving childhood behind, but it is a tragedy, and something does sort of die and never come back. It would be terrible if it didn’t happen, but it’s got to happen. And then in the midst of COVID, and lockdown and going to school on Zoom, one of the tragedies for us was just watching all of these students and even our own children, recognizing the world was a scary place, and the stakes were high and losing some of their childhood as a result of it, because the world was closing in. So we wanted to include that chapter to give voice to that sort of unspoken tragedy of how do you stay a kid in this world during this time?

Bill: And another angle to that chapter is, Jim Finch is 12 years old and Juliet is 14 years old. So we’re usually teaching these works to students about that age, and just seeing those characters, particularly Jim Finch, just realize the ugliness of the world that the grown ups have given them and have created for them. I think that’s pretty relevant to our students as well. One of the connections we make in the book is to the students in Parkland.

Elizabeth: Yeah, we end the book with a discussion of the Parkland students, the survivors who went to school that day, and so many before them, and probably so many after them who are going to have to deal with this reality of this place of learning colliding with the world around them that is so adult and so unimaginable. They’re going to have to realize that the two worlds collide, there’s no getting out of that. We ended the book with them because it was this metaphor for what we think we need to give kids. Not a world full of tragedy, but an absolute belief that they’re ready to encounter the world as it is, and an absolute belief that they are smart enough to engage in the world around them today right now. That they are worthy of having a seat at the table. That they can recognize change that needs to happen, and that they have the power to enact change, and that the world needs to give them that recognition and that dignity. That the world needs more kids who are ready to encounter the sea of troubles, and [LAUGHTER] whether or not the kids are ready, the sea of troubles is waiting for them. So we’ve never had a classroom full of students that we didn’t think, “Oh, okay, we’ll be okay. Look, who’s coming.” You know, it’s the thing that makes it the best job in the world, hour after hour, just a whole new batch of wonderful kids walks in the door that you trust so much, and that you just want the best for, but sometimes the best isn’t waiting. So we really wanted to create a book that was for teachers, but also spoke to what we thought students needed and deserved. I wish that we could protect them from the tragedy of growing up, but I don’t think we can. So now we’ve got to trust that they’re ready to meet it and do everything we can in service of that.

John: And I think this book helped prepare them for that yourself.

Rebecca: Yeah, I really love the agency that is afforded to students throughout the book, and in the way that you’re even speaking about enacting some of these kinds of lessons in class.

Elizabeth: Yeah, I think that’s really important. We try to anchor everything on inquiry based, you know, not just to stand and deliver, but to give the foundation and then say, “Trust your brains, go find it. Show me what you got.” That’s the other part that just makes it great. I tell students, “We’re not doing language arts.” I mean, that’s part of it, but we’re studying fine art. And so, art speaks to your audience, and that’s going to change and evolve. Your reaction to the art is significant and important. By the end of the term, we’re always like: “Well, what did you think of it? Now, critique it. You have the language for it, and the ability to do that, like a scholar, and this art is for you. It’s not for you to recite what I told you it was about.” So that’s always my favorite part where they come in hot with their opinions about it.

Rebecca: So you’ve given us a lot of examples in a high school or middle school context. Can you talk a bit about how we might use some of these strategies in a college setting?

Elizabeth: Yeah. I teach it to a junior college as well. I think it’s almost a lens more structured for university study. So sometimes the content gets more easily absorbed and it’s much less awkward to discuss with people who are no longer living with their parents. So, for instance, I just wrapped up a Handmaid’s Tale unit at the college I work at. One of the tasks was to find… because we were still on online learning,you know, discussion boards and trying to keep it relevant and real time and everything… post an article from the last two weeks, anywhere around the world, where you see something “handmade-y” going on around the world. Something that sounds like it could happen in Gilead, or certainly Gilead would go: “We should try that.” And then we’ll have a discussion about it online. And everybody came up with everything, and I would love to say, “these were not domestic articles” …some of them were. And it created a lot of buy-in for “I’m taking my English 101 course. I’m marching through this thing I have to do for my degree, but at the same time, it’s a good example of a beautiful piece of art, so beautifully written, really compelling, and constantly evolving to reflect the world around us.” Students really got into it. I would have just scrolled past that story on twitter, I would not have even opened. It would’ve just been like another piece of noise to bum me out. But, then to engage with it and see it’s sort of global context was eye opening to them and that was really, really powerful. I think it’s weird the books we decide to teach at high school vs. college. It’s always seemed bizarre to me that Romeo and Juliet comes up when kids are freshmen. I mean, it’s very racy stuff. I’m comfortable with it, but you could also certainly teach it at university level. So we’ve tried to put in iconic books that you would get throughout the continuum of education to speak to teachers. We want it to be usable to teachers wherever they are. So there’s this sort of Farewell to Manzanar and To Kill a Mockingbird, but then there’s also One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Handmaid’s Tale and stuff like that that you wouldn’t see until you were older, and could speak to a number of issues. But, hopefully, teachers won’t feel like it’s written just for high school. I don’t think it is. At university, you have so much more freedom in your syllabus to really pick a lens and go for it. So I hope college teachers pick it up and give it a shot.

Bill: On the other end of the spectrum, Liz teaches at the college level, and she’s using a lot of this same stuff. She teaches Merchant of Venice and Handmaid’s Tale in her English 101. Then on the other end, I teach a weird school where we have middle school kids and high school kids. So I teach high school and middle school. So like, for example, our entire Night and Farewell to Manzanar chapter is actually an eighth grade unit. So I think we’ve got stuff for middle school, high school, and college level.

Elizabeth: Yeah, we purposefully did not put what grade each unit was used for, because we want teachers to imagine how it can reflect their classroom and their students. It’s weird to put it out there like “This is how we do it” because the whole point of the book is there’s an idea that nonfiction standards can be and should be met in the classroom, but it must be authentic, and it shouldn’t be superficial, and assuming that they can’t read or they can’t think. Let’s have it reflect the world and our current unit. So we wanted to make sure that we just modeled the idea, and our hope is anybody who purchases or reads the book is going: “You know what that makes me think of is this unit that I do that is not in this book, but what if I… fill in the blank…” and sort of empowers them to reimagine what the classroom can be in the 21st century, without leaving the art behind? The kids love the art and they need the art too, right, Rebecca?

Rebecca: Definitely.

Elizabeth: Yeah. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: That’s what I was thinking. Yeah. While I was reading the book I, and browsing through the various chapters, I was really in that space thinking, “Wow, this is a really great way to bring value to the arts, which often are devalued and a way to better communicate how the arts actually help us understand the world around us, because it makes it so explicit.”

Elizabeth: Yeah.

John: And I think more generally, this approach could be more productively used in pretty much any discipline so that people are not studying the content of their discipline in an abstract context, but relating it to things in the world around them and I think it’s something that we probably all should try to do a little bit more of.

Elizabeth: Yeah, we’ve been recently running some professional development workshops for other content areas of how to bring in current nonfiction texts, to discuss the content they have. People have been on board with it. I thought we were going to really struggle in the math and sciences, but it turns out, when you start that conversation, there’s so much. The problem is where’s the time and there’s only so many minutes and everything feels so finite, but the content of real-world applicability of these concepts in the sciences, and, I mean, climate alone. The teachers were really enjoying the idea of “the reason we learn basic chemistry is because it has these effects later on.” So I’m getting kind of excited to talk to a broader audience of educators about it, I think it could be very cool.

Rebecca: I also like kind of the opposite of that. Maybe a space that’s already very focused on nonfiction, and bringing in fiction as a way to explore through story and bring some of the concepts to life and see them in context. So sometimes we’re not always able to do something that’s actually in real life or have that specific example or it’s hard to envision that without maybe the story world around it.

Elizabeth: Absolutely.

Rebecca: Fiction can really help with that.

Elizabeth: Yeah, we have a team teacher in the history department that we work with a lot, and we’re constantly pairing up the history syllabus with the literary syllabus, and then doing units where there’s a commonly graded assessment in both classrooms and they have to demonstrate skills from both disciplines. The students always say they learned so much more when they took those sort of fake parameters off of “I’m in history class, and I do this, I’m in English class, and I do that.” When one starts reflecting the other, it really opens up the world to them and is the best learning that they get.

Rebecca: Yeah. So you’ve talked a little bit about some culminating projects and assessments that you’ve recommended in relationship to these literary pairings? Can you talk about maybe one other example?

Bill: Sure, some of our chapters just have a traditional essay as a culminating project or a culminating assignment, but one example would be our Night and Farewell to Manzinar chapter. It ends with an awareness campaign for what is happening to the Rohingya and to the Uighur in Myanmar and China respectively. So the the unit obviously, is about the Holocaust and it’s about Japanese-American internment in World War II. The students research those topics as they’re reading the books. Then of course, we read those books through a literary lens, but then it ends with looking at what is happening today in these particular countries to these particular groups of people. It’s a very interesting unit because I did it two years ago before the pandemic, and then I’m doing it again right now. In both cases, I was able to use articles that were published that day in class. Last week, we did an article that was published that day about the Rohingya suing Facebook for I believe, I think it was $150 billion for not suppressing hate speech enough, and leading to people losing their lives. The idea behind it is students create a presentation, create the visual aids for an awareness campaign on our campus, with the idea that most people don’t know about these atrocities that are happening right now in our world. And then they do it in class for a grade, but then when they go out. We get other teachers to sign up and they go to other classes in other disciplines and do the presentations. They do them at department meetings on department meeting days. They go off to different departments and do it for teachers. It’s a real awareness campaign. In the end, we have posters around the campus, and it’s a fun project. It’s real world-y, and it’s a nice alternative to the essay.

Elizabeth: Yeah, and it teaches advocacy and that their voice matters, and that they have information that the world needs to hear about.

John: One of the other examples, as you mentioned, in your book is abuse of power. How could you possibly have found any contemporaneous examples of that?

Elizabeth: You know, I’m telling ya… The problem was, what to put in and what not to put in. And like we said at the beginning, we pitched a two volume edition right off the bat, because how does one choose? In the text we included a chapter that uses One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and I chose that one because I remember seeing that movie, and weeping and absolutely knowing McMurphy was a hero, and absolutely knowing nurse Ratchet was a villain. But we started talking about it through the lens of, is anything ever going to happen to nurse Ratchet? Is a boss ever going to know what’s actually going on? What is in her HR file? Probably nothing but commendation. It’s a great text because it speaks to the experience of not having anything tangible to point to wrongdoing, but knowing in your gut, in your soul, that this is not on the up and up and that this is not right, that an abuse of power is taking place. So I would talk to my students about have you ever seen a teacher hunt a kid? From kindergarten to today, have you ever seen a teacher have somebody in their sight that is always getting in trouble, that will get called out for a thing that two people could have done five minutes before or five minutes after, but that kid’s gonna get nailed for it? And every single kid had had a coach or a teacher or a babysitter who they had watched pick on somebody they had power over. Then we looked at a lot of nonfiction articles and research about what power does to the brain. Which was something I was interested in learning about in the past few years… how heady that could be for people and how it often leads to corruption and a lack of empathy, and the inability to imagine the experience of others. We looked at that Stanford Prison Experiment that does show up in college textbooks right away, but my kids hadn’t seen it yet. It was new to them and they couldn’t believe how quickly people bought into pretend roles that a person and a person walk into a room and one becomes a prisoner, and one a big prison guard, and what people will do with a title and a badge. It spoke heavily to that. In the midst of writing that chapter, the George Floyd story happened. I mean, I had a draft of it, and again it sure isn’t the first time this has happened, it won’t be the last time it happens. There’s the tragedy of that. We spoke in my class about the group of people who are on the sidewalk, begging that police officer to get off of his neck… filming it, but nobody rushes him because he’s a cop, you know what I mean? How can he be completely outnumbered… the numbers are not in his favor… of people going: “You have to stop, you have to stop, you’re hurting him.” And because of who he is in society, versus who they are, they can’t save a man’s life. That happened after I had a draft of this. So when we talk about using the art to reflect the world. I didn’t have to bring that connection up, my students brought it up as soon as I opened that Zoom link the next morning. They knew they had just seen a Ratchet. They knew they had just seen a sacrifice, a human sacrifice, in the face of perceived concepts of power and they were moved by it in a way that I’m so glad they were. So we talked about them sort of experiencing it. When I ask them, if they’ve ever seen it, if they’ve ever seen a teacher hunt a kid, most of them have and the next question is, “Well, what did you do about it?” I have yet to have anybody say, I talked to the principal, I wrote a letter, I stayed after class… they don’t do anything, they let it happen… [LAUGHTER] because there is a perceived power structure, and nobody hands out a pamphlet on the first day of school and says: “Be quiet.” All have this implicit messaging that we get from infancy onwards. The other thing that I really like about that unit is we get to talk to kids about anger, which is not something that anybody ever does, and the righteousness of anger. Clearly the destructive qualities of it too. But, Cuckoo’s Nest is a story about people constantly being told to calm down and being called crazy when they get upset. That feels very relevant too, right now. Sometimes, we should get pissed and I think it’s okay to talk to students about that, no matter their age, that some anger exists for a reason, and that anger is a valid emotion. It can destroy things, and you have to be careful of it, but my God, if we can’t get angry at some things, then what are we doing here? Aren’t we all just sort of sedated? Again, this idea of starting from a place of really believing in the dignity and quality of our students, as people, and as people who are absolutely ready to talk about this stuff as adults, because the adult world is encroaching and has encroached, even if we’ve never given voice to it. So that, to me, stays sort of the goal, I think. I didn’t know I knew that when we were writing it but now with some perspective it feels like the goal of the whole text is to demonstrate how proud we are of the work that we get to do almost primarily because we trust the students can do it and trying to show other teachers to grant that grace to students as well and believe in them enough to equip them for that sea of troubles.

John: What was it like time writing this during the pandemic?

Bill: On one hand, you know, it probably benefited us on the amount of time we had at home to work on it. On the other hand, as we’ve talked about before, it’s a book where we’re trying to connect literature to the real world, and just so much kept coming at us in the real world. It just kept shifting these chapters, we’ve got these drafts on Google Docs that we’re just rewriting daily, as the situation underneath it keeps shifting.

Elizabeth: Yeah, our first book, Method to the Madness, was about getting kids just to write and critically think and sort of some strategies for that. And we had a babysitter who could come into the home and watch the children and then we would leave the home and sit at Starbucks for three hours on Sunday and go and go and go and go and then return to our home with our small children. At one point, I took a picture of Bill and I have our laptops sort of balanced precariously on our knees, and there’s like a kid hanging from the tree house and another kid pulling his leg, and I said, I hope it’s a book at the end. This is how this is going, one sentence at a time. Early mornings, late nights, slightly distracted. It’s a blur. I know, we wrote fast, and we were trying to both make it feel timeless and timely. But, we didn’t want it to not make sense five years from now for teachers that pick it up. But, I think everybody just experienced a time warp right? How long did it take? a month? 10 months? I don’t know. I know I was wearing the same sweat pants. [LAUGHTER] But, it was crazy. And then paired with that, just this real belief that we wanted to get it out there quick because whenever we went back to the classroom, we were going to assume that our experience would mirror everybody’s experience of “It can’t be the same anymore. We have to evolve into teaching through this.” So we wanted to get it into as many hands as possible, as everybody makes that weird adjustment.

Rebecca: We always wrap up by asking: What’s next?

Elizabeth: I was exhausted by the time we sent it off, but now I’m pretty pumped about how it’s being received. It’s so cool doing stuff like this, because, again, we work three doors down from each other and we come back to this house. It’s been such a shared experience teaching this stuff and writing about this stuff to see it out in the world and teachers all over the country really enjoying it and starting to use it. It makes me want to dig out that second volume and get all those chapters we cut out and I think I’m ready. I’m almost ready.

Bill: I think that the first book we did together came out in 2016. I think it took a lot and then when we were done, it was like “Okay, now we never have to do that again.”

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Bill: And then it took about two years and I was like “Oh well maybe we have ideas and we’ll do another one and then I guess you’re coming around to that point, again. Because I was after we finished this one, I said “Okay now we never have to do this again.”

John: It sounds like you have a good start at a second volume. So you have some momentum going

Elizabeth: Yeah, we’re not out of troubles yet. I haven’t come to the end of the list.

Rebecca: Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that list has a bottom. [LAUGHTER]

John: …a rising ocean of troubles.

Elizabeth: Indeed. Credit John with our next title. [LAUGHTER]

John: We really enjoyed reading your book and I’d love to see more of this coming out and thank you for joining us.

Elizabeth: Thank you for having us, this is really special

Bill: Yeah, thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

[MUSIC]

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

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

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

[MUSIC]

224. Student Mental Health

Faculty everywhere have been observing an increase in student reports of mental health issues during the last few years. In this episode, Katherine Wolfe-Lyga and Kyle Dzintars join us to discuss how faculty, counseling centers, and institutions can work together to better support our students during challenging times. Kate and Kyle are both New York State Licensed Mental Health Counselors. Kate is the Director of the Counseling Services Center at SUNY Oswego and Kyle is a Senior Counselor and coordinates the Counseling Outreach Peer Educators program at SUNY Oswego.

Transcript

John: Faculty everywhere have been observing an increase in student reports of mental health issues during the last few years. In this episode, we discuss how faculty, counseling centers, and institutions can work together to better support our students during challenging times.

[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 guests today are Katherine Wolfe-Lyga and Kyle Dzintars. Kate and Kyle are both New York State Licensed Mental Health Counselors. Kate is the Director of the Counseling Services Center at SUNY Oswego and Kyle is a Senior Counselor and coordinates the Counseling Outreach Peer Educators program at SUNY Oswego. Welcome, Kate and Kyle.

Kate: Thank you.

Kyle: Thanks for having us.

John: Today’s teas are:

Kate: Well, I’m drinking an offshoot of tea. I’m drinking kombucha.

John: Ok, that’s tea.

Rebecca: That is a first on the podcast.

Kate: Oooh, [LAUGHTER] yay.

Kyle:Nice. [LAUGHTER] I’ve got a nice Jasmine green tea.

Rebecca: Oh, that sounds nice. I wish I had that. But I do have a very nice Yunan jig, which is a black blend.

John: I think we do have some Jasmine green tea in the office, if you want to stop by sometime.

Kyle: There you go. [LAUGHTER]

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

Rebecca: Ah, back to an old favorite. So we’ve invited you here to discuss the growth in mental health challenges facing college students. Can you talk a little bit about this increased mental health issues that we’re seeing?

Kate: I’m glad you started with this, because I will tell you that this is almost a source of debate in the counseling center community because, in some ways, we do know we’re seeing an increased reliance on counseling. We’re having capacity issues, students are really utilizing us and asking for more and more. That said, we’ve asked them to do this. We’ve worked over time to reduce stigma, create new access points, find ways to connect with students and make it really accessible for them. In addition to that, students come out of K through 12 and they’ve always had somebody that they can drop in and talk to. It’s not necessarily the same intervention as a licensed mental health counselor might offer or a psychologist or marriage and family therapist or a multidisciplinary team. But students rely on confidential resources. And again, we’ve asked them to do this.

Kyle: I would add to that, too, because I think as it becomes more normalized, especially in younger populations, it’s easier for them to seek services that they know are available to them as they move into academics and college life and going through some of those transitions. And obviously, that’s a big change for a lot of people. So, yeah, the more we’ve talked about it, I think the more normalized it’s become and the more people will seek it out.

John: My that also have made it easier for people who might have had anxiety issues or other issues that might have prevented them from considering college to be willing to attend college, knowing that there’s more support.

Kate: I think that’s a really good point, John, because that is something that, just generally speaking, the folks who are coming to college are not the folks who are attending college 20, 30 40, or 50 years ago. And so, yeah, to that point, we do have people who are coming in with different kinds of stressors in their lives, certainly coming from different backgrounds… the academy, not necessarily being set up to meaningfully support those students. The adjustment aspect that Kyle had mentioned, there’s the normative adjustment, and then there’s almost like this systemic adjustment, that’s another layer added on there.

Rebecca: We saw the pandemic increase awareness of many things about our students over the past couple of years… weird to be saying a couple of years now, but it’s kind of where we’re at. So, things like poverty, unstable housing, food crisis, all kinds of things that weren’t visible to us necessarily before, but were still there. Are mental health challenges one of those things that maybe I’ve just become more visible?

Kate: I think perhaps. I also think that it kind of maybe ties to the tipping point aspect of things that just there’s so many stressors that we can adapt to. And then adding in the uncertainty of a global pandemic, which I think I feel pretty confident saying that everybody has experienced this profound sense of uncertainty that’s really destabilizing. And I think the impact of isolation and so you start layering these things on and they become, to some folks, insurmountable, at least with the coping skills that they already have.

Kyle: And I feel like a lot of those additional pressures that people are feeling… I think of students who are taking care of family members during the pandemic or who just have concerns about immunocompromised family members. There’s a lot more of that pressure that’s been applied that people are carrying into their normal activities that they would have been doing pre-pandemic. And I feel like that has made it so much more to carry on your own. And I think that’s led to a lot more conversations about mental health and us kind of acknowledging some of the systemic and societal factors that have played a role in people’s mental health, their anxiety, their depression, and how they seek support.

John: How does the rise in these issues due to the pandemic and many other factors that have been occurring… how does that affect student’s ability to learn and being successful in college?

Kate: I think a lot of people end up being familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and I think for some… maybe a little passe… but, I think there is this element of being able to look at some of our basic needs. And if our basic needs are being overburdened, or they’re deficient, and we’re just not getting them met, the ability to cognitively engage in the classroom, to be able to manage all the sensory information of what’s happening in the classroom… in addition to the whole idea that we shifted our students online in spring of 20, many of them continued throughout the following academic year with that mode of instruction, and then shifting back into the classroom and trying to manage… just, again, the adjustment aspect of it, those things increase the difficulty, of course.

Kyle: For sure, and I think it also has created so much to manage and keep organized for students. So I think of the students who moved online, then the class was supposed to come back in person, but then it moved to a hybrid, and just having to figure out all of the different ways to manage the changes, the expectations, and to keep up with all of it, while they’re still worried about their own safety, possibly family members, possibly holding a job. So it just becomes a lot that they have to juggle and keep track of. And you can see where organizing that and just mentally keeping track of all that becomes anxiety provoking for a lot of people. And it makes it difficult to focus and concentrate on specific tasks, because there’s just so much that you have to be attentive to at one time.

Kate: One other thing I’ll just mention, too, is so much coming down to where expectations meet reality, particularly this semester. Most of us return to in-person services, in-person learning. And I think the expectation was that we could resume some sense of air quote, normalcy. And I think most of us have found that very elusive. I think the uncertainty remains, it’s just about different things right now. And the impact of that it’s a heavy load.

Rebecca: I know that in my own interactions with students in the past semester, more so even than the first couple of semesters during the pandemic, students have just disclosed that they feel frozen, they just don’t even know where to begin and aren’t doing a lot of things outside of class because they feel very overwhelmed. What can faculty do to help students reduce anxiety, reduce stress, and find paths forward, [LAUGHTER] so that they do feel like they can manage and have a little agency in what they’re doing.

Kyle: I think for a lot of faculty members, it’s kind of just naming what everybody might be experiencing, I think we have to call attention to it and accept that it could be a normal experience for a lot of people in the room. And I think that eases some of the pressure and uncertainty that people might have, entering into a classroom. One thing that I’ll mention, I’ve heard from a lot of students that they expect themselves to be back to normal at this point, and they don’t understand why they’re struggling with motivation, concentration, with feeling like they can handle the work that they’ve been able to handle before. So I think just having classroom discussions, even at the start of a semester, that says things are different right now. And if you aren’t doing things up to the way that you’ve been doing them, or that you are feeling a lack of confidence or uncertainty, to just be able to seek support, reach out to a faculty member, just to acknowledge what’s going on. And I think being open to that, as a faculty member, is really important. But, I also think of just those little things that we can do in a classroom setting, maybe practicing some kind of grounding technique just at the start of class, let people get settled and feel like they’ve entered into a space that can be calm and settled and focused, because a lot of us are coming from different places, and students carry a lot of that busyness into those rooms and spaces. So if we can at least create a sense of calm, and let’s settle into this space, to be here and now, I think that can be really helpful.

Rebecca: Kyle, it’s really interesting that you mentioned that grounding activity. I’ve been teaching synchronously online, and students were really craving a way to transition into that space. And so we were just doing more social get-to-know-you kind of activities, or just ways to build community at the beginning of class. And in their end-of-semester reflections, many of them indicated that that was really helpful to them.

Kyle: Yeah.

Rebecca: …and they also mentioned the exact other thing that you said, which is acknowledging that many people are struggling with mental health and normalizing that. So both of those things students provided a lot of feedback to me on at the end of the semester. So it’s really interesting that those are the two things that you just brought up, Kyle.

Kate: And I think it’s so validating. In the classroom, generally speaking, the professor has the power in the room. They have the evaluative responsibility when they’re conducting the class. And having the person in power validate the experience: “This is really hard. This is really difficult…” …is just so affirming, I think as, well. So that normalization, but the validation too. And one other thing I’ll just mention that is connected to this is when students are exhibiting certain things and faculty maybe just aren’t quite as comfortable being able to have more social connection in the classroom and create some of those experiences. I think being able to participate in like a QPR training and be aware of useful language and referral sources and those types of things, can even help the instructor to set a tone in the classroom that they’re prepared to attend to the needs that come up in a different way.

Rebecca: Kate, for people that aren’t familiar with QPR, can you describe what that is?

Kate: QPR stands for Question, Persuade, Refer. And in January of 2020, SUNY Oswego was awarded a federal grant for suicide prevention. And it’s really about building infrastructure at the college to prevent suicide. So, one of the project goals was really to get as many people trained in QPR as possible. It’s a 90-minute training. We have 24, I think… 27 maybe… instructors across campus. So we have Associate Deans, department chairs, counselors, support staff, we actually have, across the line, QPR instructors, I think represented in every college and all but one division of the college. It’s really accessible. Some department teams have done it, some people have just elected to sign up for it. We have some students trained in it. So lots of opportunities, and folks can reach out to us in counseling, and we’ll get you connected. If you’re interested in training, we’ll get you connected to the person who’s coordinating the training for us.

John: That’s really helpful on the Oswego campus. But is that also going to be true on most other campuses? Is this a national program that is likely to be available many places?

Kate: It is likely to be available in many places. So QPR is a nationally recognized program. And it’s one of many programs that campuses may choose to sign on to for suicide prevention, and this like gatekeeper type of training. But the SUNY system also has the same kind of grant. It’s just at the state level one in partnership with the New York State Office of Mental Health. And so they’re also offering QPR online that’s available to other campuses, but many campuses have had it well established there as well.

Rebecca: I highly recommend it. I had to use it.

Kate: Yeah.

John: Most faculty, though, are not trained in addressing mental health issues, and students are referring to their concerns with anxiety and depression. What are the indicators that suggest that the faculty should refer that student to counseling? I’ve referred more students to counseling services this year than probably at any five-year period in the past because there have been so many students reporting that, but when should we be really concerned about serious issues (besides just a general suggestion of working with counseling)?

Kate: QPR certainly can be helpful at helping folks determine that, almost screen for that to some degree, I think when you recognize where your boundaries are… you know, so we’re all humans connecting with other humans in some form, of course, and when it exceeds the role responsibility and exceeds your comfort level, in terms of supporting the student, and you know it’s just outside of what you have the capacity to attend to. I mean, I certainly think that that’s a good time, I think referrals to the Dean of Students Office, sometimes they’re appropriate as well. What I would say with counseling, too, we are always willing to consult with folks. Our time is stretched thin. So in terms of the immediate response, we may not be able to offer that. But generally speaking, we’ll be able to speak with somebody that day about their concerns about a student and like, “Oh, how do I escalate this? Do I have a responsibility?” …some of those things that might go through someone’s head, we can help them work through.

Kyle: And I think a familiarity with resources that are available, because students might come with concerns that might not necessarily be counseling related, but could be addressed with other resources on campus. And I think sometimes that eases some of the pressure that a student might be feeling. So as long as faculty are aware of what those resources are, it makes it a little bit easier to refer in the right direction. I think of my own teaching experience as well and having students report increased anxiety or depression symptoms. And I feel like for faculty who don’t have their own experiences, maybe, in therapy or counseling, or don’t really know how to relate to the situation, it can be overwhelming or scary. So just being able to ask questions and check in with a student on a human level, as Kate mentioned, being able to just connect, so you can understand maybe where someone’s at… I think people are likely to share a little bit about what’s going on with themselves when they feel like they can trust you, you’ve built a good connection with them, but also knowing where your expertise and your skills kind of end. It’s okay to not have all the answers and be able to solve all of these issues for the students that you’re working with. So just being attentive, but also knowing when it feels uncomfortable or is beyond what you feel comfortable being able to manage… and I don’t want to underestimate the power of just someone feeling heard and seen, because I think that that is extremely important for a lot of students. And I’ll say even just from conversations with students, that teachers who have been upfront about struggling with their own anxiety and depression since the pandemic, has just eased so much of their own expectations of themselves, which, in and of itself, has been helpful for students. So even if that is just a small step, I think it does help at least students to feel less alone, but there’s a lot of power in just hearing someone out and helping someone to feel like someone else knows what they’re going through at the moment.

Rebecca: Do you have any advice about how to handle a referral? If you have rapport with a student, they disclose something, how should we approach like a handoff?

Kate: Really glad you asked that, actually, I think that’s a great question. I think my recommendation ends up being to be as transparent as possible, to try to lend credibility to whom you’re referring, being able to say, “Okay, Jane, you’ve said some things that I’m concerned about. And because I care about you, and I want you to be able to be successful, I want to ensure that I’m supporting you, and connecting you to resources at this time. So we can call together counseling services.” I think to the extent that people can do the warm handoff and walk people over, that’s ideal, but I also recognize it’s not always realistic. But that warm handoff piece, through email, through phone, walking folks over, I think is kind of the ideal situation when it comes to referring counseling. We, of course, have students who’ve either come to counseling here and didn’t have a positive experience, or they’ve had counseling in the past that maybe they were mandated to counseling, or they went as a child kind of against their will and those things. And so counseling leaves a bad taste in their mouth, and they’re not going to be willing to go. And I think in those situations, being able to even promote the idea of “Would you like to talk by phone with a counselor to walk you through alternative resources that may be available to you” …because we have a counseling center that recognizes there’s other paths to wellness, other than just mental health counseling.

Kyle: And even just asking, the basic question of “Who do you go to for support?” …is a great starting point, because for a lot of students, they have friends or family members that they felt comfortable talking with. And that might be just a good reminder to connect with the people in your life that you do trust already. And as a counselor who goes to counseling, being able to share positive experiences that faculty might have had on their own as well. So I think there’s always benefit in trying out the process. So, as a faculty member, just knowing what it’s like to go through that experience, to work on a goal, or to just seek out some support, it helps to ease those conversations, because you’re speaking from experience as well. And I know we all have our own different experiences, but sometimes that can be really helpful. And again, continue that normalization process of “This is what happens when we need some extra support and this is a resource that you can turn to.”

Rebecca: I know one other thing that I’ve faced this semester that I hadn’t in previous is some students with such significant mental health challenges that I’ve referred them to Accessibility Resources, and on some campuses that might be Disability Services for accommodations, and it’s something that those students had never ever considered. Do you have any advice about when to identify that path for students or helping students recognize that that might also be a support system that’s available for them?

Kate: I will say it’s tricky, because you end up in conversations around what’s behavioral, what are the things that are within people’s control and what’s not. And I think there’s obviously a space for that, where it is very appropriate for many students to be able to access and use accommodations based on diagnosis or condition. But I also think recognizing that a lot of times students need support and being able to use the power that they have to modify some of their existing circumstances to help promote or prioritize things differently. And, again, it’s a complicated question with a complicated response, I think. But I do think that, obviously, the referral to Accessibility Resources is appropriate for the exploration piece, especially when students disclose that they have a past diagnosis, a historical diagnosis, that perhaps they did receive accommodations in the past, but they wanted to try college out with some of those things. We now have the pandemic layered on top of it and all this other stuff. This is a really good time for them to consider re-engaging with those options.

Kyle: And I think also just in those classroom discussions, too, if there’s flexibility that can be permitted, I think it’s also good to be transparent about that. When faculty can acknowledge that there’s a lot of people who might be struggling, being able to make it clear where the flexibility might lie. I think that can ease some of the pressure that people feel where I know students who if they miss a deadline won’t hand in something where they might have gotten points, or even been able to hand it in late… have they had the conversation with the faculty member. So, just, I think making that as overt as possible can be really helpful. And I know that’s tricky as well in a classroom setting, depending on how you run a classroom and grading. But I think it can be really helpful for easing some of the pressure that someone might feel as they’re struggling and kind of coming to terms with what that experience might be. I think I’ve seen a lot of students this semester who have dealt with depression, and they have a diagnosis, they might be on medication, have never considered the accommodations piece, because it really is somewhat vulnerable to accept that I haven’t struggled before, but I’m struggling now, and accommodations might be really helpful for me. Sometimes that’s really difficult for people to sit with, and they don’t want to feel like they’re taking “advantage” (I’ll put that in quotes) of the system, even though it’s in place to help them.

John: Nationwide, there has been an increase in demand in counseling services, and I know, it’s certainly been true on our campus. What have you done to try to keep up with the demand in very challenging times.

Kate: We buckle our seatbelts and… [LAUGHTER] I’m just kidding. So we have been fortunate to have, I think, especially compared to some colleagues at other institutions, I think we’ve had a good degree of support at an institutional level here for ensuring that we have sufficient resources. It’s never enough. I think that’s just the reality. And I don’t think it ever will be, to some degree, I think we’ve tried to promote students being able to create connections with other support resources on campus, kind of at a foundational level. I think we’ve sent out a recommended or optional syllabus statement that people can put on their syllabi, just to kind of do that piece of acknowledging, naming, what’s going on, what’s been different, and being able to normalize some of these experiences and ensure that students know how to access resources. We unfortunately lost a staff person this semester, and are in the process of hiring a new person. But we have been able to bring in some per diem support. We’re also continuing to offer walk-in crisis, “Let’s Talk” which is like a drop-in counseling model. So it’s a very brief intervention. It’s happening in the library and outside of Lakeside dining, and just trying to make it really accessible for students. Those aren’t new, we’ve just tried to make sure that we had those sufficiently staffed. We also have looked at, towards the end of the semester, where we got to a point where we were really thinking we were probably going to have to go to waitlist again this semester, which we’ve only done once in the last six years, and we were able to avoid it by doing half hour initial appointments. And for some students, that was all they needed. And it’s unfortunate that they had to wait for that. But we’re exploring new models right now of being able to create more instant access for students. So trying to get them in within a few days, as opposed to those who are potentially waiting for two weeks.

Kyle: And from the outreach side, I think just doing more mental health education… so running workshops and programs, attending other clubs and organization meetings, just to get the skills out there. So the most widely requested program that we run is all about grounding techniques. And we did that for a few different organizations on campus, which I think was really helpful. And they walk away with some practical skills to help them through tough moments. So I think that’s one way that we’ve tried to engage students in maybe a little bit of a different way, where it’s not clinical services, not everybody’s looking to sit down with a counselor, not everybody’s open to that at this point, but trying to fill in some of the education and skills that they might be able to practice and alleviate some of that pressure. And then obviously, we know some of the research shows that peer connection is so vital for helping people feel supported and safe, and to learn from other people who are in their situation. So as faculty and staff, we’re limited in how much we can connect in that way. We can offer our experiences and our education and knowledge, but students tend to trust other students. And I think that’s a good place for some of our outreach… to move into the direction of expanding our peer educator program and allowing more students to come on board to connect with other students in positive ways. So our peer educator team, which is short for COPE, which is counseling outreach peer educators, they take a three-credit course, they learn a little bit about mental health education, they get a lot of practice in those skills. And then they run their own programming drop-in spaces for students to stop by… just to connect with other students. Because we know that isolation and loneliness is a huge factor in some of these symptoms that present and if we make space and experiences where someone might show up, and they might get a different experience than if they showed up to the counseling center, I think that’s kind of the direction I’m looking at for outreach purposes on campus. And it builds a sense of community. We’re all taking care of each other. And I think that’s really important. It shouldn’t just happen behind closed doors with one person. It can be something where we’re taking care of ourselves overtly in public spaces and feeling safe in that way.

Rebecca: Are there any strategies that you could share that faculty can then share with their students to help manage stress and anxiety throughout the semester?

Kyle: For sure. And I know you’d said before, you’ve been doing those grounding techniques at the start of class. And I do think that that is so important for just helping us in our bodies to settle. We are constantly off running from one thing to the next thing. And I know for myself, I don’t want to speak for anybody else, but I know that moving online made back-to-back meetings feel like there was no break. And I think students kind of felt that with their classes as well, it was really tough. So if we can at least introduce those moments, a minute, two minutes, where we just sit, settle together, bring everybody into the present moment, it can be really settling and help our bodies to just calm. So I think enough of those can be really helpful throughout the semester. But I think, for faculty, in their classroom settings, look for those activities that get people to connect with each other, to have little conversations that could be academic and educational, but they could also be some, just distressing, alleviating, how do we take care of each other? How do you take care of yourself? Have those kinds of conversations in the classroom to help people feel like they’re not alone in it. One thing I’ve seen is students look at other students, and they’re like, “They’re doing great, they’re succeeding, and here I am struggling, and I don’t understand why everybody else is doing great.” So I think if you provide space for other students to acknowledge that they might be struggling, too, it helps to alleviate that bigger pressure that someone might be carrying. But there’s a lot of grounding techniques. And I think deep breathing and being able to just bring your body to a settled calm state, especially when we’re in this, like, very big traumatic experience right now, we’re unsettled a lot. So encouraging students to practice those on a regular basis. Even before exams, I would say, maybe run a deep breathing exercise so that students feel present and calm, even in a nerve wracking experience. That’s where I tend to look at for those practical experiences in class.

Kate: I will also add that, I think, being able to reinforce messages that people are allowed to have fun still. They might have to find new ways to have fun. I think there’s that too. But being able to find ways to play and find ways to just have activities that you can enjoy. Students are identifying that they’re incredibly stressed about the academic workload and their ability to concentrate and focus. Helping support them and understanding that there is benefit to taking breaks and doing something that is working a different piece of your mind… that you’re getting a different need met, and then come back a little bit more refreshed and engage in the work again.

Rebecca: …and maybe sleep too? [LAUGHTER]

Kyle: Yeah, that’s always important. yeah.

Kate: Yeah, we can consider some, yeah. And I will say I’m hopeful that next semester, we can resume some sleep hygiene workshops. But I think… I could be mistaken… but I think the peer eds have also provided some sleep hygiene workshops as well.

John: Students aren’t alone in feeling this stress and anxiety. Would some of the advice you just gave about taking breaks and doing other things to work other areas of your mind be also useful for those faculty who are experiencing stress, anxiety, depression, and so forth.

Kate: Absolutely. I actually will say for how many community providers, private practitioners, are being tapped and have waitlists, I hope that that’s at least evidence that people have been more willing to engage, that it’s not necessarily about “I’m at a crisis level,” but it’s like, “Okay, I think I will benefit from support and it’s okay for me to ask for help.” I’m hopeful that that’s really what that’s evidence of. But I will say that I think I have had numerous faculty, staff, administrators, reach out to me asking for referrals to community providers, not to make a direct referral, of course, but who might I recommend? And I have no problem doing that. But I think to that point, John, that being able to know that, yeah, we have a responsibility to work and hopefully we can continue to, or resume, finding joy in our work and connection and meaning in our work, of being able to experience other aspects of our life too, that’s really important for us to maintain.

Kyle: I don’t know, at SUNY Oswego, they’ve been running some programs to get faculty and staff connected. So I know that there’s been some writing programs or ones that are focused on nutrition, like cooking, and recipes and things like that. So I think there are those opportunities to connect with other people on campus. If you’re feeling more isolated, and want to try something to help support yourself, learn some new skills. So I know some of those are occurring on campus.

Kate: And one thing we didn’t mention at all throughout this, it’s funny because we’ve been promoting it a lot in other ways is really the value of being in nature. We’re here in upstate New York on the shores of Lake Ontario. It’s a little harder to feel like you can enjoy nature in the middle of the winter unless you’re already an outdoor winter sportsy kind of person. But being able to go be in the woods. If you have an opportunity to snowshoe, you have those opportunities. Or if it’s a more moderate climate where you are, and you have the ability to just take a walk. There’s profound benefits to that. That’s really well researched and well documented.

Rebecca: I know last winter, my family spent a lot of time snowshoeing in our mountains of snow. [LAUGHTER] And it was a great way to do something together. We weren’t able to be inside together. So even extended family members would go on these adventures.

Kate: I think that’s awesome. And I also think, for people who don’t necessarily have the ability to do that with someone else, there’s so much sensory stuff that can help ground people and bring them into the present… you know, hearing the crunch of the snow, where you’re feeling the cold hit your skin, like there’s just so much available to you to help you just kind of reset yourself.

Kyle: And I know winter isn’t ideal for a lot of people in that cold is harsh at times. But it does activate our system in a different way. And it helps that reset process take place. So it can be difficult, but some of those moments are really important. And Rice Creek is a great place to start with that too. I mean, they have trails and a lot of spaces that you can adventure outdoors. And I know that they have snowshoes available. So if anybody’s interested, I’d say check that out.

Rebecca: I also really love, Kate, that you were mentioning finding fun in a different way. Some of us like to travel a lot. And I’m not doing that because I have a small child who’s not vaccinated. So the ways that I would normally enjoy winter… which is by leaving it. [LAUGHTER] We started this snowshoeing and then recently… I used to hate puzzles as a kid, but I’m finding them quite enjoyable right now.

Kate: I have to tell you, I have a little bit of nostalgia for when we initially went into lockdown. And we were really limited, and I have two kids who were school aged and we were trying to keep them so they weren’t on screens the whole time. While we’re on screens all day, we can’t wait to be away from them. But, I’ve romanticized a little bit of that initial lockdown period, because we were together as a family, we were really intentional about trying to make the best of it, and doing things like puzzles, as you said, and playing games and baking and just different things. There was so much value that I experienced from that, that I’m looking to figure out well, how do I juxtapose that with sort of resuming what my life used to look like at the same time.

Rebecca: One of the things I wanted to ask both of you about is an increase in suicide awareness, but also, during my classes, a surprising number of students disclosed through an anonymous form that they had considered suicide in the past month. And this was towards the beginning of the semester, which had me a high alert in watching students and then I also ended up having to use my QPR training and ask a couple of students whether or not they had been considering suicide and refer them to resources. So can you talk a little bit about suicide prevention and some of the things that we might need to or should be or required to attend to as faculty members?

Kate: So one thing that has come out as a result of a court case with MIT is the potential responsibility for faculty for failing to intervene with a student who’s disclosed suicidal intent, suicidal plan, that type of thing. And so I think the biggest thing is to be able, at the very least, to consult with someone. A lot of times we find that our disclosures are coming through, at least anecdotally, what I’m hearing from faculty when they consult with us, is that the disclosures are coming through email. And it’s hard because of time-sensitivity challenges in inferring what somebody means and some of those things related to email. So I think a lot of it ends up being about being very explicit. So I’m glad that you gave the example Rebecca of asking somebody if they’re thinking about killing themselves, because that explicit language doesn’t leave room for things to be unclear or someone to fail to demonstrate due diligence related to connecting somebody to support who may be at significant risk of harm to themselves. So I think again, explicit language being a piece of that, it’s very uncomfortable, and it doesn’t really stop being uncomfortable. But, I think we become more affirmed and confident about what we’re doing. And so again, QPR, or Safe Talk or Mental Health First Aid, there’s a lot of trainings that are out there on different campuses that will support people learning to have those conversations but again, knowing at the very least who you can consult with or who you can refer to: the counseling center on campus, the Dean of Students Office, potentially, those types of things I think are readily accessible. I think about adjunct faculty who might not know about resources on our campus. Oswego is a campus that has signed on to what’s called the ConcernCenter. Ours is branded as Concern Navigator, but it’s a great opportunity for people to kind of warehouse resources and information about where to refer students when you’re not necessarily familiar, but you can generally Google search within your campus website, what those resources are going to be. Additionally, I actually think this is going to be mandated at some point, but student ID cards are now being printed with crisis and suicide prevention hotline numbers on thebacks of them, in addition to the college counseling center phone numbers or website, so that’s helpful, too.

Rebecca: I didn’t know that. That’s cool.

John: We always end with the question, “What’s next?” …a question which has been on our mind a lot the last couple years.

Kyle: Well, I think from my outreach perspective, my clinical perspective, I think it’s continuing to find ways to support people and adapting to the situations that continually are changing. So I think that is something that we’ve gotten very used to, in trying to adapt to constant changes procedures in how the world is operating. But I think the more that we’re looking at building a sense of community around wellness and support, that becomes so vital in these times, because as the systems are changing, and having to deal with all of these changes, we still have a lot of people out there who are struggling, and a lot of people out there who are worried about people in their lives. So I think the more that we allow for that information to spread out and people to feel more confident asking those kinds of questions. So going through QPR training, for example, or just learning a little bit more about mental health in general, the more that they’ll feel confident to ask questions, to give support to people who might be struggling. And I think that’s kind of the direction that I’m looking at is how do we allow for more people to be a part of this helping process and to do it confidently, because I know a lot of people are worried about saying the wrong thing, or not knowing how to handle something. But I know a lot of students who are great listeners, and they are very supportive to their friends, and they care deeply, and they want to make sure that they’re doing a good job. So, I think that’s a direction that I’m looking at is: How do we build that even if it’s less formalized, structured, but just giving people the information and education that they need to make those decisions for themselves?

Kate: Yeah, and I’ll add that I think we continue to look at how we best meet our students’ needs. And I will tell you, I think we are on the verge of seeing a massive transformation in how we deliver these types of resources and supports on campus, because it’s not sustainable the way that we’re doing it. And I do think back to Kyle’s mention of developing community, I think figuring out how we all take some ownership in supporting student mental health, not necessarily through added responsibilities, because people have enough to do, we know that, but being able to figure out how does it dovetail with what people are already doing, or identifying the ways that people are positively contributing to the student mental health and doing more of that, or folks supporting their colleagues and being able to do that, and just having more conversations around that, about how we take the community-based, almost a public health perspective, on setting up our institutions in a way that really is addressing this need. Regardless of whether it’s warranted or not, the need is there. Is it because students have less coping skills? As we originally talked about, there’s a ton of debate about the causal piece of all of this, but the bottom line is, they do need our support. There’s evidence of that. They’re seeking it, and we don’t have enough of it to offer. So what are the other ways in which we can continue doing that? And how does everyone take some ownership of that?

Rebecca: Well, thank you both, Kate and Kyle, for your insights into what’s going on and some strategies to continue supporting our communities.

Kate: Thank you.

Kyle: Thanks for having us.

John: Thank you both.

[MUSIC]

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

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

[MUSIC]

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.

[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 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.

[MUSIC]

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

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

[MUSIC]

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.

[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 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.

[MUSIC]

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

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

John: Editing assistance provided by Anna Croyle.

[MUSIC]

187. Talking Tech

Student use of mobile technology can enrich student learning experiences, but can also interfere with the focused attention that is essential for learning. In this episode, Michelle Miller examine how we can talk to students about technology in ways that will help them become more efficient in their learning and professional lives.

Michelle is a Professor of Psychological Sciences and a President’s Distinguished Teaching Fellow at Northern Arizona University. Dr. Miller’s academic background is in cognitive psychology research. Her research interests include memory, attention and student success in the early college career.

Michelle is the author of Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology, and has written about evidence-based pedagogy in scholarly as well as general interest publications. She’s currently working on her newest book, Remembering and Forgetting in the Age of Technology: What the Science of Memory Tells us about Teaching and Learning in a Wired World, scheduled as part of the West Virginia University series on teaching and learning.

Shownotes

Transcript

John: Student use of mobile technology can enrich student learning experiences, but can also interfere with the focused attention that is essential for learning. In this episode, we examine how we can talk to students about technology in ways that will help them become more efficient in their learning and professional lives.

[MUSIC]

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

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

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer.

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

[MUSIC]

John: Our guest today is Michelle Miller. Michelle is a Professor of Psychological Sciences and a President’s Distinguished Teaching Fellow at Northern Arizona University. Dr. Miller’s academic background is in cognitive psychology research. Her research interests include memory, attention, and student success in the early college career. Michelle is the author of Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology, and has written about evidence-based pedagogy in scholarly as well as general interest publications. She’s currently working on her newest book, Remembering and Forgetting in the Age of Technology: What the Science of Memory Tells us about Teaching and Learning in a Wired World, scheduled as part of the West Virginia University series on teaching and learning. Welcome back, Michelle.

Michelle: Hi, it’s great to be here.

Rebecca: So good to have you back. Today’s teas are…. Michelle, are you drinking any tea?

Michelle: Well, I’m still on coffee. We have a three hour time difference this time of the year. And so I figure I’m entitled.

Rebecca: How about you, John?

John: I am drinking ginger peach green tea.

Rebecca: And I have golden monkey today.

John: …for a change.

Rebecca: It’s expensive. I only drink it on special occasions. I was like, we’re gonna get to talk to Michelle, today. I’m gonna make fancy tea.

Michelle: Well, coffee is the fanciest tea of all.

John: We’ve invited you here to talk a little bit about how to talk to students about technology and why perhaps you might consider talking to students about technology. You teach a course on mind, brain and technology, and you’ve also created the Attention Matters projects that we’ve discussed on an earlier podcast. Could you tell us a little bit about the mind, brain and technology class that you teach?

Michelle: Right. So this has been such an incredible privilege I’ve had, on and off. for several years. Now, back a long time ago, when I first applied for and was competing for the President’s Distinguished Teaching Fellowship honor and award here at Northern Arizona University, one of the things that we got to do as part of our application packet was to envision a dream course. And this was, gosh, around a decade ago that I did this. So the landscape of the research and technology itself was very different. But this is the course that I came up with to say if I could teach one thing, brand new, build it from the ground up, this is what I would do: something that would connect psychology, especially empirical research-oriented psychology, the role of emerging technologies in our lives and the incursions they’ve made into all of our lives, and blend that with some real practical advice and things that would be engaging to college students today at a variety of levels. And so it went in my packet. I was so fortunate to win the award and be chosen for it. And then I came knocking on the doors, and I said, but remember, there was this dream course, I actually was very literal minded. So I said, “Well, I get to teach this now, right?” And my department said “Well, oh, okay, yes, we can work that out.” And it originally was taught as a senior capstone, and it’s been taught in that form, again. Another time it had an incarnation as a freshman seminar, a first-year seminar, and right now I’m teaching it as a fairly large general elective upper division elective, primarily serving our psychology majors and our minors. And so this is a course that I’ve been able to dip in and out of throughout the years. And I actually quote one of the first cohort of students, I got some really choice quotes that I included in my last book, Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology. And this semester, I actually have students reading some early drafts of the book I’m writing right now. And so it’s really been interwoven throughout my professional evolution over the last 10 years.

Rebecca: It’s pretty cool that you got to ultimately teach the class and it’s been going on for so long.

Michelle: Indeed, it is, indeed it is.

John: What do your students think about the role of technology in social media, in their lives, as well as in educational environment?

Michelle: Well, right from the get go, when I got to first design this class, and actually be sitting with a cohort of students every week, and bringing up a new topic, we divided it up into: there’s technologies for learning; there’s the effects of technology on aspects of thinking, like cognition, and so on; there’s several weeks on social media, which we’re right in the middle of right now. So there’s lots of different kind of articulation points where different students can come in with opinions. And so it does really cover that really broad area. So right from the beginning, I was so struck by the thoughtful and sometimes unexpected things that students would say… unexpected meaning kind of counter to what are some real stereotypes about… first of all, that all college students are a traditional age in this kind of lifestyle where you live in a dorm and party on the weekends. And I think most of us know that today’s college students do not fit that mold, and they’re not all that age. But, even students who are in this younger age bracket, to have them really say… like one of the early exercises we do in the course, I asked them to sort themselves on a continuum. We did it on a whiteboard this time via video conference, but in a physical classroom, they’d actually stand on different ends of this… place yourself physically on this continuum: Do you love technology, you want it everywhere, can’t imagine life without it… you hate it, you want to go low tech. And students are really spread across that spectrum. And so many of them have thought… they’ve said, “You know, I noticed I feel a certain way after I’m on Instagram for a certain amount of time,” or “I’ve tried electronic textbooks and I personally prefer paper.” …that’s actually consistent with some of the surveys that have been done with college students as well. So they are varied, they’re rich, and they are very counter to the stereotype that younger people just want technology everywhere in their lives.

Rebecca: What is one of the biggest misconceptions about technology that your students bring up in class that you address?

Michelle: Well, there’s a complex of sort of some interrelated ones that dial into my specialty area, which is cognitive psychology. So naturally, I noticed those really prominently myself. And so those ideas that using technology is going to reduce attention span, it’s reducing even your ability to think. And then there’s a sort of a related set of issues around what has been in the past a very controversial and headline dominating issue, which is the issue of taking notes by hand versus on a laptop computer in class. And that research, in particular, not to go through all of it, but, while the original study that sparked that debate was well designed, the interpretation of it has been just stretched until it screams. That study doesn’t talk about the distraction issue, there’s a lot of things that aren’t addressed in it. But students have come away, they’ve heard this kind of very superficial version of that, by which laptops are bad, and they also have kind of picked up a folk belief that if you handwrite something, it sort of drives it into your memory automatically. And it does not work that way. In fact, if you read the original study, one of the things that they say is that in as much as laptop note taking can be less memorable, whatever you’re taking notes on, It’s because you’re less likely to paraphrase, synthesize, and compress down what you’re hearing. And yet we have other people, they’ve heard these people in the culture say, “Oh, well, if you want to remember something, sit down and copy it, get out that pen and paper,” and that’s not really an effective study strategy. So they’re a little surprised and they say, “Oh, wait a minute, there’s some nuance to that study, and maybe some others that didn’t replicate it.” That study wasn’t talking about distraction on a laptop, it was just strictly speaking about this one aspect of how memory encoding works. Attention span… I probably talked about it on an earlier podcast… This is not a concept that attention scientists usually use. And so right off the bat, that’s a little suspect. And there’s not really good solid evidence that fundamentally, attention is changing. So they’ve absorbed some of those things. And so they’re really delighted to really dig more into those. So I might assign them an editorial or something that ran in a popular magazine or a blog. And then we look at the original research they’re talking about, and we pick up on the discrepancies. It’s not that Mueller and Oppenheimer was badly designed, it’s just they were looking at some effects that don’t always hold up with replication. And that speaks to this idea that the effect size is maybe not that large. Not that, again, anything was wrong with their data, it’s just you have this now you see it, now you don’t quality with some of these effects. And that kind of tells you that maybe this isn’t the hugely overriding consideration. And subsequent studies too have talked about this storage function of notes. It’s neat to think that you remember as a function of note taking without having to go back and study. But in reality, that’s what we do with notes, we go back and we study them. And so here’s this big elephant in the room like, well, are they taking good notes? And if they’re not taking good notes that capture key points, that they are going to want to go back and study actively, then picking up a little bit here or there because it was more memorable during note taking is not as big an issue. So that’s a big like, “Okay, what have you heard? Let’s look at the original research.”

Rebecca: Having the opportunity to talk about these things with students is exciting. And I’m sure the students are really into it, because it connects to their direct lives. And diving into the research makes a lot of sense in the context in which you’re teaching your course within psychology. So it seems like a natural fit there. How might other academic fields adopt some of the ability to talk about these things in their own classes where maybe cognitive science is not or psychology is not, the fundamental underpinning of what they’re doing?

Michelle: That’s, I think, something that I think is really exciting and why I am so excited to be able to share with your Tea for Teaching audience is I’ve really come to believe that that maybe there is something that is more versatile here beyond just the psychology frame and just a senior capstone in psychology. And I think that this is where faculty creativity can come in. I think the fundamental things that I think are so promising… Well, first of all, this is just a topic that is really under discussed, and it’s under discussed in a serious way. It’s not like students have not ever heard anybody critique technology. They’ve heard that. They’ve heard, “Oh, it messes with their sleep that it messes with their social relationships.” They’ve heard a lot of this, but it’s kind of swept under the rug in a way or even treated as “what serious person would ever think about these sorts of things?” So, that said, this is something that, and it’s something that students are doing all the time, even pre-pandemic. Most students do use technology of one form or another and are on one or more social media platforms. And so this is in and out of their lives all day long. So I can only think that there are critical frames and key concepts within a variety of disciplines that could map onto this, even if a faculty member doesn’t have the opportunity, or the interest, to say develop a whole course. Well, perhaps this could be a vehicle for discussing, for example, experimental design. How do you set up a study to really get at things like “What are the impacts of heavy cellphone use?” You do have certain individuals who self select to use technology in a particular way. And that’s something that you see crop up again and again in the research literature. Or if we’re talking about our own personal relationships, classes that have a focus on health can perhaps use one of these sub areas as a springboard for discussion. And so this is just really what I found, is that students who might otherwise be very quiet or, when things are framed in a purely very divorced from reality academic way, they may hang back, but who doesn’t get hooked into a discussion of some of the impacts of technology on our life. So I think it can be a vehicle for those things. And I think that it might be a little bit of a stretch in, say, a physical sciences class where we’re really discussing empirical context. But even there, it can be folded into discussions of effective studying very well, as long as we don’t just have that, again, very superficial tech’s bad, just get rid of it all and do everything on note cards. There’s a lot more to it than that.

John: Students are going to be interacting with technology, not only in their classes, but in their future careers. So having them think about those issues can be a really useful thing to learn, no matter what discipline they’re studying,

Rebecca: It seems like a good hook. It’s something that everyone can relate to, in some context. I was doing an exercise in my own class not too long ago about storytelling, and how brands present stories around what they’re presenting to people. And I use Spotify and Pandora as the examples. I’ve never seen a class so excited, [LAUGHTER] because it was talking about this technology platform that they can connect to. So I can imagine, when you bring up social media or other things that they feel really connected to, it immediately is a hook to talk about anything more complex.

Michelle: Absolutely. And that’s precisely the kind of dynamic that I’ve seen. And if I could throw out a kind of a discipline-specific example, there’s a concept that I really started weaving in more of over the last few iterations of the class. And this is a concept from psychological sciences research and quantitative analysis that really can be very slippery. But it’s a big, big part of contemporary ways that we analyze data. And it’s a concept of mediators and moderators. And so it’s jargony… and essentially mediators, when you have a correlation between two things, and you want to know, does A cause B? Or is there something else in the middle does A cause B causes C, and we have these great techniques for untangling those relationships. And moderators, on the other hand, is the relationship or is the correlation stronger in the presence of a particular variable or for, say, a particular group of people than others? And so yeah, you read that in a textbook and you go, “oh….” and yet, it’s one of the things that we really… I mean, experimental design, and how we can interpret our data is just radically more sophisticated when we can just not say, “Well, these two things happen together, but for whom is this relationship stronger,” and so on? So there are a lot of studies on the effects of technology that have one or more of these involved. And yeah, it just clicks for students when they see it play out in this relatable domain. So, for example, we have a study that I incorporate really early in the course. It’s got a word in the title, “Technoference” in relationships. So it’s a study of your perception that your partner in an intimate relationship uses their phone…. and when you’re talking to them… [LAUGHTER I think, will have a little bit of recognition if we’re in a relationship. That’s part of contemporary relationships, right? And they look at overall well being and how that relates to being in a relationship where your partner’s on the phone all the time. Now, it’s not a perfect study. And that’s part of what we look at. It was only among women who were in opposite sex relationships, and there’s a lot of self report and all that stuff. But you can say that “Okay, now they have a mediator. It’s not that the phone itself is degrading your life’s wellbeing but here’s this chain of causality of when your partner’s using your phone all the time when you’re talking, then you’re not as happy in your relationship. There’s conflict and then your overall wellbeing in your life goes down.” And then, in that context, you go, “Oh, Okay, I get it. Here’s what a mediator is.” And then we can talk about moderators, we can say, “Well, what about individuals who are in same sex relationships? What about men? What about couples who have been together for 25 years versus those who just got together six months ago?” Oh, okay. Now we understand moderators. So yeah, similar to you, Rebecca, I’m just saying, once you bring in some of these things, is not just dropping in sort of pop culture, it’s really taking a substantive look at these things. But yeah, then you springboard into concepts that are otherwise just really abstract.

Rebecca: Do you have some examples of things about learning related to technology that we might be able to slip into any discipline’s classes? …some of the stuff about attention, or good study strategies, or anything that’s maybe mediated through technology, but would relate to anybody.

Michelle: Definitely, the relationship between attention and memory and learning. Now, like I always say, when I’m talking about these topics, memory is not the only important aspect of learning. Learning is not all about memorization. But we now know that when you remember more, we have a broader knowledge base in an area, you’re better able to think critically and think in some sophisticated ways in that area. So that’s all good stuff. So that’s one piece of it. And in order to acquire any new memories, pretty much, for practical purposes, you have to be paying attention. And this is what devices and technologies have been so well engineered at this point to take away from us. So yeah, when you talk about a life skill, you’re going to need this for the rest of your life, no matter what you do. We have to think about, alright, how do we kind of shepherd and be stewards of our own attention. And I think, from a teaching perspective, too, it’s not that we have to constantly entertain students to grab their attention back from whatever it’s wandering off on, or similar that we just have to stand up there and be like, “Well, you have to pay attention… unbroken for an hour and 15 minutes… and all violations will be punished.” There’s different paths between those, but just to share with students that “Yeah, using phones is probably not changing the way our attentional systems work.” They work the way they have for many, many millennia. However, there’s a lot more competition for that now. So having them think about what are their strategies going to be. For some students, they come up with very creative cold turkey types of situations or types of strategies. I had one student say that I put my phone in a dropbox outside at night when I’m studying, and if I want to use it I have to go out there, which may not seem like a big deal, but in Flagstaff, it could easily be three degrees Fahrenheit and ice falling out of the sky, it’s cold out here. So we have students who say, “Well, you know what, I’m gonna be a little bit more subtle. I’m going to use one browser for my classwork and one browser for fun and social media.” And it’s just a little subtle cue that kind of tells you, “okay, we’re in work mode, or we’re not in work mode.” It’s not as much prescribing the answers as getting students themselves involved in saying, “Well, here’s how I’m going to manage this.” So those are some of the things that we would share. And when it comes to learning strategies at work, I’m always going to be evangelizing retrieval practice in one form or another. Lots of ways that that can look… everything from a Kahoot! quiz to sitting and talking with your roommate to try to bat back and forth what you remembered. Lots of different things you can do but, it shows too, there’s a link between you have to put in some active effort for your brain to pick up on that information and store it away in memory if it’s going to. So yeah, there’s sort of a complex of interrelated principles and take homes, there.

Rebecca: The one thing that I was immediately thinking about when you said about phones being really good at taking away your attention. I immediately thought as a designer, what a great example of how to get someone’s attention? [LAUGHTER]

Michelle: Yeah.

Rebecca: …not only to think about how to manage attention and think about what you’re paying attention to, but how do designers actually manipulate that? [LAUGHTER]

Michelle: See… perfect. There’s a cross-disciplinary connection.

John: The importance of attention is a topic that I think all students recognize is a problem. But I don’t think they fully understand quite how much of a problem it can be. Or at least my perception is there’s still a lot of misperceptions about the ability of students to multitask effectively. And I know that’s something that you address a bit in your classes.

Michelle: I do. And a related project that we’ve discussed on some other podcasts is the Attention matters project and I’m happy to report that project is still just perking along like crazy. We still have lots of faculty who are involved with it. So to kind of give a little background on it. Attention Matters was a concept that came out of a great conversation I had with my very smart and dedicated colleague, John Doherty, who’s an instructional designer and a librarian here at Northern Arizona University. And I had been going around and trying to teach a little, almost guest lecture, roadshow for interested faculty to spread these ideas to students of how to study effectively and how to have a plan for not getting distracted in the middle of class and stuff like that. And we talked about it. And we put together an online module that can serve so many more students. This semester, I have several really smart research assistants, undergraduate research assistants, who are in this module, moderating it and helping it run. And for those who know what MOOCs are (massive open online courses), it’s a little bit like that, except it’s specific to our institution. And so, in this, it’s a way of reaching out to students, they oftentimes will earn a little bit of extra credit in their classes for faculty who really want to spread these ideas to their students. They work through these modules that do touch on some of these key ideas about… as far as multitasking, we tend to be very overconfident. You can’t learn by osmosis, you do need that directed attention. Instead of highlighting and passively hoping things soak in, get in there and do retrieval practice. There’s also a little piece of Attention Matters, by the way, that talks about driving safety, which was not really something we set out to do. But I feel like it’s, again, a relatable everyday example that people can say, “Oh, my gosh, I was in a bike accident by a distracted driver,” or “I’m very careful about this.” And students are very adamant, and have strong views that do funnel back to that idea of: if you let it, devices and distraction of all kind can really take over and create some serious consequences. So, that’s yet another way that we’ve been working to bring these ideas to students throughout the years. And yet another thing that’s given us a fascinating window into what students are already doing to cope with these things, and some of their unexpected attitudes and ideas about them.

Rebecca: The thing that a lot of folks are doing is they’re teaching remotely or trying to jazz things up in synchronous online classes is trying to play with the idea of gamification in their classes, which certainly comes from technology, and often from video games and then some experience around that. Can you talk a little bit about how faculty might use gamification in their classes? Or also how that works on students?

Michelle: Yeah, games and gamification has been such a topic for so long in how can we use technology for education? I know it’s funny, when I was doing research for Minds online, I actually went to a Musee Mecanique in San Francisco, as a sort of a background research. It’s this amazing Museum, that’s just whatever the technologies of the time were, and it goes back like 100 years, all these different games, physical games you can play there.

Rebecca: It’s a cool Museum,

Michelle: Oh, you’ve been there.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Michelle: Oh, my gosh.

John: I was too.

Michelle: People have used photography in games and gamification. They’ve used all these different ways of using tech to play. So this is not a modern concept. And so we’ve seen lots of attempts throughout the years to also harness it for learning… some more successful than others. It’s such a deep theme in those connections between mind-brain-learning technology. And so students, here too, they get pretty excited about it. And that’s a good thing for faculty who are looking to use games and gamification. Now it’s another where I think drilling a little bit below the surface is really beneficial. It’s pretty clear to me, from the research and literature so far, that what makes games effective, and what makes them so compelling, you know, elicits the time, effort and attention that you need for learning, it’s not the superficial stuff about the experiences, not the music, and it’s not just calling it a game. It’s not necessarily tacking points onto something, although points and scorekeeping is usually a part of most compelling games, for sure. But there’s deeper things about getting really rapid feedback, there’s the opportunity for friendly competition. And that’s something that I’ve really seen this year, because I’ve also been using quite a few quizzes and polls and things like that in my courses, too, that are remote, is that you don’t have to attach a grade to the game to get some students really into the idea of competition, while other students, there, it’s more anxiety provoking, or it’s just too much because they’re already in so many high-stakes competitive exams, where they can play for fun. And so those are some of the aspects that are important when people are thinking about selecting a game, setting up a game, bringing gamification in some way. It doesn’t have to all be cheesy, let’s make everything look like a video game. But really, that idea too, that mistakes are part of it. While we’re playing a Kahoot and you get an answer wrong, whatever, we’re doing something else in five seconds, and it’s not a big issue like a test question is. So there’s definitely that. And I would say, too, that students here as well, they can be a great source for insight. So talk to your students. Say “What aspects of this game are more appealing? less appealing?” and so on. And games and game culture too, this is something that I really get a sense that they’ve never had a serious, let alone academic, conversation about the role of gaming in their lives. Yet for many students, that’s an important part of their identity. It’s what they do to relax. It’s what they do to socialize now, quite frequently, especially with distancing happening. So, as weird as it might sound, let’s take games seriously. Let’s take games seriously as an important aspect of students’ lives. Let’s take it seriously as a road to learning. And let’s just keep exploring that because the more research that gets done, the more effective and beneficial features we find associated with games.

John: And the most popular games are those that students can work through. And no matter what their prior knowledge with that type of game, as you said, provides them feedback. And that feedback is targeted so that they can use that to improve and the level of the games are set so that it’s neither so challenging that they give up and get discouraged, but not so easy that they don’t have the sense of challenge. And that seems like a really good way of perhaps thinking about how we should design our classes in general, whether we include explicit gamification aspects or not, creating an environment that encourages students to actively want to engage with the material, and where they can see progress and see how they’re advancing. That is, in general, something that I think is a really important thing for us to contemplate at least in course design.

Michelle: Agree 100%, agree 100%. And that’s exactly what makes games compelling. What is about social media that makes people return to it again, and again, and again, hundreds of times in a day? And what features can we extract and adapt in the service of learning?

Rebecca: One of the things we talked about with Ken Bain last week was an example about the arts and how that might change someone’s thinking… an experience with a piece of artwork. So, I used that kind of example, to inspire a little activity with my students this morning. And I asked them, “Can you talk about a piece of artwork that has influenced your thinking?” And I gave them some categories. And I’m teaching an interaction motion design class, but I included visual art, but games were one of my categories. And some of the students put some really interesting examples about how certain games have gotten them to really contemplate interesting ethical questions, relationship questions, really interesting stuff. And they wrote really thoughtful responses. I had them basically write the name of the game and just a sentence about how it impacted their thinking. But there were some really thoughtful responses. And it was really almost surprising to me how deep some of those quick summaries of their experiences had been with games.

Michelle: Yeah, that’s perfect. And without the conversation, you wouldn’t have that window.

John: For many years, we’ve all heard lots of arguments from faculty about whether technology should be or should not be used in classes. The pandemic, to a large extent, has shut those down completely. And that’s been, for many of us, quite a bit of a relief not to have to deal with those arguments all the time. However, as we begin to move back into a more traditional onsite teaching environment where more instruction is taking place in regular classrooms again, what are some of the things that people may have learned about interacting with technology effectively during the pandemic, that may perhaps lead to improvements in how we teach our classes regularly?

Michelle: That is such a meaty question, and I think it’s one we’re going to see so much just rapid development of reactions. it ties into the whole question right now of what does instruction look like post-pandemic or whatever the next stage of the pandemic is? But yeah, what a good time to think about this. And you know, I can look at it too through the lens of faculty experience, I was kind of fortunate to have had my Zoom baptism completely by accident earlier in spring of 2020. Because I had set up this idea of having a lot of guest speakers in one class, and I got a huge response, which is wonderful, but I needed to bring them in. And I had always kind of said, “Well, if I’m going to Zoom, I’m going to kind of sidestep that. I’m going to let somebody else drive.” And I had to get over that really fast. And so I do think that it illustrates the value of some targeted, not totally strategically planned, practice with technology tools. And that’s just the kind of bedrock cognitive processes that, when you have something like being able to just run Zoom, or Collaborate or something like that, or have an online poll, your ability to do that while monitoring a classroom or answering questions, you got to have the practice in first, and our students are the same way. So we can think about, alright, whatever we’re going to have students interacting with or using or if it’s us that are using something, having that practice upfront and expecting that, once we’re on the other side of the learning curve, it looks very, very different. So that is one big part of it. On a much more conceptual or abstract level. I think that, this whole year, we’ve really needed to look at the students and their goals and why they’re there in the class in the first place, wnd why are they taking the course. That’s something I’ve written about in some of the shorter articles I’ve put out this year. I think the pandemic teaching was distinctive for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that you just can’t keep persisting with “Okay, I’m the learning cop here and I’m going to make sure everybody does things because I’m watching you.” At the end of the day. I found if my students… I hope they’re not, but yeah, they are in Zoom, they could be doing other things… they may be minimally attentive, and that is not good for their learning. And I do a lot of things to have a lot of different shifts in gears to bring in gamification. I’ve done a lot of things to do that. But ultimately, if the student wants to check out, they can check out to an extent. And I’m not saying I’m okay with that, but I think that we are going to be meeting students much more in the middle, instead of having a more adversarial relationship to their learning, I’m here to enforce what you have to know. I mean, we have to collaborate to have something like remote teaching the way we’re doing it, to have that work at all, there has to be more of a collaborative approach to it. So I know that that’s a very top-level conceptual type of answer. But I think that in a lot of things, we’re going to be saying, “Well, you know, what, if this is something that helps some students, and if I’ve talked to students about why they’re here, and they’re purpose driven, ‘I am here to actually learn and take something from this class because I need it for the next class.’” Well, that’s a great basis to springboard off of, instead of “how do I write the policy in my syllabus that will prevent any kind of behavior I see as undesirable.” And you know, so many people were already moving away from that, which I think is incredibly fortunate given what we’ve been through in the last year. But this may be, if not a tipping point, something else that pushes us more in that direction of saying, “Well, what are the policies there to do?” Yes, students have to pay attention to learn. And that is very, very clear during remote pandemic teaching, as well as everywhere else. But let’s maybe take some different approaches and have a different philosophy of how we get there.

Rebecca: One of the things that I also hear you hinting at Michelle is that during the pandemic, we’ve all had a lot to manage, we’ve had a lot of cognitive load. And so we have to prioritize, and we have to decide what’s going to win our attention. And so students have the same problem all the time, just like we have the same problem all the time, we’re just more aware of it now. They have multiple classes to balance, they might have family concerns, they might have jobs, and at some point, they’re making choices about what they’re going to attend to, and what they can’t attend to. And I think sometimes we always hope and wish that they’re attending to whatever we’re putting out in front of them. But that might not be the best choice for them at a given moment, based on the other things that are going on in our lives. And we just often don’t think of our students in that kind of holistic point of view.

Michelle: Oh, absolutely. That’s such an eloquent example of this way of thinking, and the things that we have learned and the shift in mindset that we may be on the cusp of. And that’s another thing that really underlies the approach to talking to students about technology that I’ve really come to adopt, which is the same-side instead of opposite-sides stance. Like you said, we do struggle with some common things. I’m caricaturing a little bit, but I think we’re playing off of an older mindset where it’s us, we’re were older, we’re in this position of authority, and here’s how we like to do things. And here’s this young generation, and they think, very alien to us, and they want to do something else, and we’re going to make them come over to our side… saying, look, we all get distracted. In class, I’m frequently saying, “Well, yeah, here’s something unpleasant that happened to me on social media,” even if I don’t tell them all the details. [LAUGHTER] The point is, yeah, I get misunderstandings and hurt feelings on social media, too. I end up in the social comparison that tends to be so toxic on places like Instagram. I get really, really distracted and sidetracked because I’m using the same computer for 20 different things all at once. And so let’s work together to see how we can address those challenges. And yeah, so I think that what you’re describing is, I think, a very healthy way forward.

John: Now that faculty have had a chance to get more insight into students lives, perhaps now faculty will be more understanding of those things in the future, because the classroom environment is somewhat separated from all that it was much easier to ignore those things and maybe faculty will be more likely to treat students as human beings, perhaps in the future.

Rebecca: Are you implying that the classroom is real life?

John: Well, maybe it may more closely resemble that as we move back into more traditional classroom settings.

Michelle: Yes, and I’m all for that.

John: We always end with the question, and it’s particularly relevant now, “What’s next?”

Michelle: As you mentioned at the top of our interview together, I am in the very final stages of completing the Remembering and Forgetting in the Age of Technology book. So I’m really excited to having that book be coming out in the not too distant future. And I’m really throwing myself into a brand new professional role, which is as the Co-editor of the Teaching and Learning Series with West Virginia University Press. Now, this series has just drawn so many dynamic thinkers with so many practical and also evidence-based ideas that we can all use in teaching and learning and so it was a tremendous honor to be invited to take that role on and I’ll be working with the other editor of the series who founded the series and launched it all, Dr. James Lang, who has just been tremendously influential in the area of bringing evidence-based effective pedagogical strategies to so many people in higher education. He’s been this tremendous leader in that area. His writing is also amazing. So what an honor to get to work with him and with West Virginia University Press. Stepping into that role has taken up a lot and it’s been wonderful already. So that is, for the most part, what’s next for me.

John: And I think we could say the same about your writing based on your earlier book, as well as recent comments that Jim Lang made on Twitter about how much he enjoyed the clarity of your writing and your exposition in this new book and how much he’s looking forward to that being released.

Michelle: Oh, thank you, that’s so nice to say and being able to teach students and to talk to students for so many years about these issues was the inspiration that gave me ideas to work with. So, it all comes around.

Rebecca: Well, thanks, as always for joining us, Michelle, and sharing some of your insights and some of the work that you’ve been doing.

Michelle: Oh, my pleasure. Thank you.

John: Thank you, Michelle. And we’re looking forward to talking to you about this book as it gets closer to coming out.

Michelle: Absolutely.

[MUSIC]

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

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

[MUSIC]