Center for Innovative Teaching & Learning – Page 68 – Just another way we support innovative teaching and learning practices

How Can You Help Your Multilingual Student Writers?

Posted on November 9, 2016 by John Paul Kanwit

Are you worried about how to grade multilingual student writing fairly? Do you wonder how to hold students accountable for correctness without punishing them based on language difference? Consider the following strategies to make your grading easier and more equitable for all students:

Design assignments to take advantage of cultural differences rather than punishing students for what they don’t know
Use the writing process in your course, including brainstorming, drafting, conferencing, and peer review
Explain explicitly what counts as plagiarism in your field
Use a minimal marking system that directs students to patterns of errors rather than spending time correcting student papers
Use a rubric that holds students accountable for grammar and mechanics but that also rewards them for their distinct ideas and ways of expressing themselves
Differentiate between idiomatic expressions, which often take a lifetime to learn, and true grammatical mistakes

Many of these strategies will be addressed in our workshop on “Painless Grading in Linguistically Diverse Classrooms” (12/2, 3:00-4:30 IMU Oak Room). Led by Katherine Silvester, Coordinator of Multilingual Writing and Assistant Professor of English, this workshop will focus on grading this semester’s final writing assignments, using rubrics, and attending to language issues.

The Campus Writing Program has several other useful resources, including consulting services for instructors. The tutors at Writing Tutorial Services (WTS) have extensive experience and training in assisting multilingual students. We also have several resources to come in the spring, including an additional workshop on multilingual writing by Dr. Silvester (date T.B.A.). On April 7, Michelle Cox, Director of the English Language Support Office at Cornell University, will visit campus for a talk sponsored by the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Program.

Are you interested in learning more about helping diverse student writers? Consider attending our winter workshops and events on such topics as addressing stereotypes and preventing plagiarism. Additional Resources: Responding to International Students’ Writing

Dreaming of an Ideal Way to Message Students?

Posted on November 2, 2016 by Kelly Scholl

You finish grading an assignment from class and realize there are 15 students who really missed the concepts. You don’t want to delay the lecture for this small percentage of students, but you also don’t want to leave them floundering. In the past you’ve made an announcement in class stating that anyone that scored less than 50% should come to office hours to spend some more time with these concepts; only to have no one show. Does this mean they didn’t want to come? Or that they had a conflict with office hours? Or perhaps they just didn’t realize they scored so low because they haven’t looked at their grades yet?

Has this ever happened to you? There is actually a tool in the Canvas gradebook to help you with this, and other similar, situations. The tool is called, “Message Students Who…” and can be found by hovering over the down arrow on any assignment in the gradebook view. (See image below). Once selected, you have the option to send a message to students who…

…haven’t submitted yet
…haven’t been graded
…scored less than __
…scored more than __

Each of these options have their own use and purpose. For example, messaging students who haven’t submitted yet might be to remind them there isn’t much time left for a submission and that you would like to see what they have produced. Messaging students who scored more than a particular score may be sent to encourage those students that have really been working hard and to let them know you are noticing their efforts.

Thinking back to the beginning scenario, sending a message to students who “scored less than __” , enables you to send an office hours invite to each student individually. If other students show up to office hours, no one will know if it’s because they also scored low or they just happened to come this time. In other words, students can attend without the stigmatism of others knowing they aren’t doing well. This also provides you an opportunity to ask them to schedule a time with you if office hours do not work for them. Because the conversation has already started, students are more likely to respond than to start a message on their own.

All messages sent through this tool are formatted in the same way. Once you have chosen the message format, a list will auto-populate with the appropriate students. You have the opportunity to remove anyone from the list at this time, if for example, there was a student that hadn’t submitted yet, but you had already granted them an extension. A sample message title will be populated, however is entirely editable. Then you are able to write what you wish in the message field. It is important to keep the content of the message generic and not identify students in any way. Once you have composed a message you like, you can select to “send message.” The message will be sent to all recipients individually, without any knowledge of who else received the message. In other words, it is very much like sending a message and putting all recipients in the bcc line of an email.

Students will get this information in their Canvas Inbox as well as any other location they have indicated in their notifications. (i.e. text message, personal email account, etc.) To see more about setting notification preferences, read the Students, Can You Hear Me? blog post from March. The CITL will be hosting several Canvas sessions in December for those looking to wrap up grades for the fall, those new to using Canvas this coming spring, as well as the Canvas One2One Sessions for those with specific needs/concerns. Questions before December? CITL is available to help year round, just contact us!

How do YOU Deal with Microaggressions?

Posted on October 26, 2016 by Joan Middendorf

Have you noticed students teasing other students in your class? Or students making jokes that may be subtle insults or racism, sexism, or homophobia expressed as compliments? These may be microaggressions.

Why do we care about microaggressions? They could cause students to disengage from the class, their classmates, and the discipline. People from marginalized groups can be subjected to frequent microaggressions from unaware individuals who don’t realize the results of their demeaning actions. Microaggressions can derail course goals and disrupt the teacher’s authority by making a joke for “good fun” at someone else’s expense.

Dealing with them is not about punishment or avoiding disagreements. It’s about helping students to see the viewpoints of others and to use disciplinary-specific ways of thinking. Further, leaving microaggressions unaddressed can have as much of a negative impact as the microaggression itself.

What microaggressions have you encountered in class? What was the underlying message and how did it make you feel? How do you deal with them? If you are not aware of any in your class, you might ask for anonymous feedback from your students to make sure the class environment is conducive to everyone’s learning. Let the commenting begin. If you would like to discuss any microaggressions you may be observing in your class or how to specifically address them for your particular situation, contact the CITL for a consultation.

Further Reading:
CITL Faculty Spotlight | Cara Maffini – Creating Inclusive Classrooms
Interrupting Microaggresions. Kenney, G.
Recognizing Microaggressions and the Messages They Send (Adapted from Derald Wing Su)

Activities that Engage Students

Posted on October 19, 2016 by Shannon Sipes

Active learning balances direct instruction (i.e. a lecture) with a student-centered activity. This approach emphasizes for students their role in their own learning. When students engaging in active learning exercises, they experience increases in:

Motivation,
Critical thinking,
Interpersonal skills,
Connections between previously learned and new material, and
Persistence.

To increase active learning in your courses, open the class session with a hook connecting old information to the new information you’ll be covering that day. Provide a pause for actively engaging with the material following every 12-15 minutes of lecture and end the class by summarizing the main points and helping students to make connections between the day’s material and their own lives.

Active learning strategies require students to listen and talk, write, read, and reflect. The graphic below (click to enlarge) provides some specific active learning strategies. For more on active learning with using CATs (classroom assessment techniques) as active learning strategies, visit the CITL website or contact us for a consultation.

16-10-19-verb-wheel-for-ala — Image Attribution: Matt Barton

Active learning is the 2nd of 7 principles for effective undergraduate teaching we have reviewed. Subscribe to the blog to be sure you don’t miss the other 5 principles, as well as other great topics on the CITL Blog this year.

Additional Reading | Lecture is not a Dirty Word, How to Use Active Lecture to Increase Student Engagement

7 Principles of Good Teaching Blog Series – by Shannon Sipes

Worried about plagiarism in your classes?

Posted on October 12, 2016 by Madeleine Gonin

Are you concerned that your students will plagiarize? Do you know that there are powerful ways to combat common reasons why students plagiarize?

Assignment scaffolding can help students avoid time management problems by providing intermediate deadlines to help them work toward a final project. Careful assignment design can help mitigate students’ feeling that they lack the expertise to complete an assignment. For example, asking students to apply course concepts to their own lives or to write to classmates as their audience is much less intimidating than explaining difficult ideas to a teacher who already knows the subject.

Sometimes students do not fully understand plagiarism or do not know how to cite sources. Use the plagiarism tutorial and test to help students recognize and avoid plagiarism. Writing Tutorial Services has guides for students. Because notions of plagiarism differ from culture to culture and even from course to course, be sure to explain explicitly what counts as plagiarism in your course.

Instructors report that using Turnitin acts as a deterrent, but can also educate students about proper citation and paraphrasing methods. Enable Turnitin in Canvas and connect it to individual assignments.

Librarians can help instructors design effective research projects and help students throughout the research process. A librarian can also help create a course guide to support students throughout the assignment.

To learn more, you can attend the Preventing Plagiarism Workshop at the CITL. Also visit the CITL website about discouraging plagiarism. Know a colleague who might benefit from this information? CITL encourages you to share this information with your friends and colleagues.

–John Paul Kanwit, Madeleine Gonin

Teaching the Election and Other Hot Topics

Posted on October 5, 2016 by Lisa Kurz

Because we’re in the midst of an election season, you’ve probably had some conversations (perhaps even heated discussions) about election-related topics with friends, colleagues or family members. Now imagine that same heated discussion arising in your classroom. How would you handle it?

trump_clinton — Image Attribution: Gage Skidmore via Wikipedia

This election has raised issues such as immigration, climate change, health care, the rights of LGBTQ people, race and the Black Lives Matter movement, and the “war on terror.” These topics are likely to be on your students’ minds, and therefore might crop up in a class discussion whether you have planned for it or not.

How can you as an instructor facilitate class discussions on “hot topics” like these? One point to keep in mind: your role as an instructor is to help your students understand the hot topic in connection with your discipline. A discussion on a hot topic as it relates to your course content might allow you to show how your discipline provides a way of understanding and analyzing the topic. On the other hand, discussion of a hot topic might arise spontaneously if some students feel strongly about it. In this case, your role might be to help them see the issue from a more objective point of view. Either way, a discussion of a hot topic (particularly one related to the election) provides you with an opportunity to help your students develop civic values and become better informed on current issues.

Interested in hearing more about teaching hot topics? CITL will be offering a brown bag workshop to discuss this issue. If you’d like to read more on teaching hot topics, see the CITL resource: Facilitating Discussions of Sensitive Issues.