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Exploring Teaching and Learning in Luddy Indiana University

Canvas Chat

Posted on by akesha

For a low-tech method that you can use outside of Zoom, perhaps for office hours, try the Canvas Chat feature. It’s not very complicated, but you can have it turned on in your class to use as an option for virtual office hours or for a quick full-class brainstorm. When enabled in the course Navigation menu, Chat is available for use by anyone in the class. Note that there is no direct messaging in Canvas chats. Everyone in the course can access the Canvas chat history and students cannot delete chat comments.

Here’s a link to Canvas’ chat overview page developed by UITS: https://app.teaching.iu.edu/tools/canvas-chat and here’s a short tutorial video about the chat function: https://vimeo.com/78177139
You can start a chat for office hours by saying something like “Hi everyone! I’m working through some of the practice questions you have in preparation for our upcoming quiz. I’m happy to answer any questions you might have. I hope you’re all having a productive afternoon!” If you turn on audio alerts, you will hear a ​tone if Chat is open in Canvas but is not the active browser window, allowing you to be available to your students while you continue to work on other tasks.
Another plus to using the chat function is that questions are kept in a semi-public space and out of your inbox. This way all students in the course can benefit from seeing the questions and answers, which helps them, and you (hopefully) don’t receive multiple emails about the same question.

Creating Recordings for Class

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Where possible, consider recording the first lecture (or two) for those that may be precluded from attending in class sessions due to illness or quarantine.The recording does not need to be professional or pretty, just have the notes and voice

There are a couple of quick options for recording while in class.

For example, you can use Zoom to share your presentation (if doing slides) or just point the laptop’s camera at the screen and rely on the laptop’s microphone.  A button on the bottom will allow you to record instantly.

Similarly, Kaltura can be used to capture your lecture: https://kb.iu.edu/d/apac#sched You can schedule KCC recordings to automatically record your recurring class sessions. To request scheduled KCC recording, go to kaltura.iu.edu and click Request Lecture Capture. When using scheduled recording, you’ll need to log into the classroom’s instructor computer. If no one is logged in, scheduled recordings will not occur. Students will be highly appreciative of even the effort to help them through this challenge.

Revisiting Learning Outcomes

Posted on by akesha

Learning Outcomes describe what you expect students to be able to do by the end of the course.  They are not just what is covered in the course, but rather what students should be able to demonstrate or accomplish based on the instruction they received.  Thus, learning outcomes normally include action verbs like solve, analyze, select, and justify, design, etc…
Learning outcomes should be specific and measurable.  The action verbs typically inform how one might measure the student’s ability to meet the learning outcome.  At the course level, there are typically 3-5 Learning Outcomes that cover much of the content of the course.
In a paper by A. Gomes and F. B. Correia, “Bloom’s Taxonomy Based Approach to Learn Basic Programming Loops,” 2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), 2018, pp. 1-5, doi: 10.1109/FIE.2018.8658947
Researchers organized a test, using the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, where all the questions were about the programming loop topic. Using a statistical analysis based on the grades students obtained on each question of the test, the authors concluded that the approach they followed has clear pedagogical advantages to weaker students, making them more confident and motivated and allowed teachers to use adequate strategies to each of the identified students’ difficulties. Section 2 of the paper discusses how this taxonomy can be applied to programming classes.
If you need help thinking about and writing learning outcomes, please let me know a good time to meet.

Book – Assessing Student Learning by Design

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If you have taken a course design course at the university level, you have most likely been introduced to the concept of Backwards Design: https://citl.indiana.edu/teaching-resources/course-design/index.html.  The backward design process asks instructors to structure student learning around assessments that are intentionally designed to provide evidence that students have achieved the course goals. This concept comes from the classic book Understanding by Design, written by Grant Wiggins (1950–2015) and Jay McTighe.
This year McTighe, in partnership with Steve Ferrara, has released Assessing Student Learning by Design: Principles and Practices for Teachers and School Leaders. (Updated from the 1998 version titled,  Assessing Student Learning in the Classroom, to addresses assessment of academic standards as well as transdisciplinary outcomes, such as 21st-century skills). Aimed at the K-12 and undergraduate classroom, their book intends to answer the question, “How can we help teachers use classroom assessments to gather appropriate evidence for all valued learning goals, and to use those assessments not just to measure learning but to promote it?”
Readers will learn how to practically answer this question ​using the Assessment Planning Framework. The Framework examines four different types of learning goals (knowledges, skills, processes, and understandings). The book provides straightforward explorations of different methods of classroom assessment and grading and is useful if you want to rethink some of your current assignments to ensure they align with the stated goals of the course.

Canvas Grading Tips

Posted on by akesha

The following tips are intended to help answer some of the most popular grading questions that come up at the end of the year. These tips may be new to some and serve as reminders to others.

(approx. 3-minute read)

If you are dropping the lowest score from an assignment group, for it to correctly drop the lowest score, all grades within that group must be graded items.

Any “ungraded” items (e.g., an item that does not factor into the final grade) will not be accounted for and will not be dropped. So, if you wish to drop the lowest quiz score from your pop-quiz assignment group, you will need to make sure that every item in your pop-quiz assignment group is being factored into the final grade. Learn more about how to enable drop rules.If there is a particular item in the assignment group that you do not want to be dropped according to the drop rule, make sure to list it as an exception to the drop rule. If there is an additional extra credit assignment in the same assignment group, you will need to make sure it is listed as an exception for the drop rule to work correctly or else students who do not complete the extra credit assignment will be penalized.

Ensure that there are no “hidden” assignments and all grades have been posted for all students.

Hidden assignments are not visible to your students, so they give your students an inaccurate view of their overall grade in Canvas. Any grades that have not been posted will not be factored into the final grade in Canvas, so if you have used a manual posting policy and have not posted all grades for all students, then your students’ final grades will not be accurate. Find out more about using of the “hide grades” for an assignment feature.

Make sure that all grade cells have a value entered in them, including entering in zeroes for unsubmitted assignments.

The final grade column will not be accurate if any cells are left ungraded. The Canvas Gradebook allows students to view their own grades and monitor their progress. Students can use the What-If Grades function to determine how well they need to do on future assignments to achieve their desired course grade. When grade cells are left ungraded (containing a dash) students with ungraded work see their final grade without any unsubmitted assignments factored in, which gives students an inaccurate view of their grades. Students can uncheck the “calculate based only on graded assignments” box on their grades page to see what their real grade will be.

canvas interface highlighting "calculate based only on graded assignments"

However, to prevent confusion and misunderstandings, we strongly recommend that you enter zeroes for all unsubmitted assignments. This way, students will see an accurate view of their grades without having to uncheck anything on their grades page.The most efficient way to assign zeroes to unsubmitted assignments is to use the Set Default Grade feature to set the default grade for each assignment to zero at the end of the term. It will allow you to automatically insert zeros for all students that haven’t yet received a grade for a specific assignment.If you are using the missing submission policy to automatically assign zeroes to missing assignments: Review each column in your gradebook to ensure that the missing submission policy did not skip over any assignments. Remember, this automated tool will not apply zeroes to unsubmitted “on paper” and “no submission” assignments. You must manually add zeroes to these items. We recommend using the Set Default Grade feature described above for any columns that need zeroes assigned.

For an excused or optional assignment: Make sure to mark “EX” in the grade cell for any student who was not required to complete the assignment.

Excusing a grade allows an assignment to be ignored while determining the final grade. You will need to do this for ALL students who were not required to do the assignment. If you do not excuse the grade and instead leave it as a “-” in the grade cell, then your student(s) will be penalized for not completing the assignment. Canvas will calculate the assignment as a zero for each student without a grade or an “EX” in the cell.

Make sure the extra credit you want to give students is factored in correctly.For clarification about adding Extra Credit to your course, please consult this article from Florida State University on managing extra credit in Canvas.

If you need to override the final course grade that has been calculated for a student, please consult this article from the IU Knowledge Base.

These grading tips were compiled from IU’s Knowledge Base, as well as The University of Chicago Canvas Support Team, and Florida State University Canvas Support Center. 

Mastery Grading

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Robert Talbert, Ph.D., Department of Mathematics, Grand Valley State University recently gave a talk (2021) on mastery grading. He explained that mastery grading aims to make grading a positive, useful, even enjoyable (?!) process by refocusing on grading for eventual mastery of well-defined learning targets rather than one-and-done assessments and points and focusing on instructive feedback rather than auditive point allocations. Campbell, Clark, and O’Shaughnessy, (2020), describe a grading system as a mastery grading system if it has these three features:

  • A clear list of objectives or specifications: Students have access to a list of objectives that clearly describe the important goals, types of problems, etc. in the class, or specifications that describe the characteristics of a successful submission for each assignment.
  • Assessment for mastery, not points: Student work is evaluated for mastery of specific objectives or for fully meeting specifications, typically using a binary scale such as “demonstrates mastery” or “not yet”.
  • Eventual mastery matters: Students have (or may earn) multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery of each objective or specification and are not penalized for failing to demonstrate mastery on previous attempts. Students typically have opportunities to revise or reattempt their work with complete forgiveness (online).

Ideally, students will have opportunities to demonstrate mastery in a variety of forms. These may include assessments that are timed or untimed, in-class or out-of-class, short quizzes or semester-long portfolios, etc. There are a few types of grading systems that can be defined as Mastery Grading Systems.  They include:

  • Mastery-Based Testing (MBT): MBT is a mastery grading style that focuses on tests or exams. These courses typically have 10–20 content-based objectives. In such a course, exams consist of one question per objective, possibly with multiple parts, and each question is graded for mastery of that objective. 

  • Standards-Based Grading (SBG): SBG refers to a broad category of mastery grading systems with the common theme that a student’s final grade is based entirely, or almost entirely, on demonstrating mastery of a list of objectives.

  • Specifications Grading (Specs):  For each assignment, the instructor provides a specific description (“specification”) of what a successful submission will include. Students have (or may earn) multiple opportunities to revise assignments or reattempt them in order to meet the specifications. This system can be used for some or all assignments in a course. See; https://iucat.iu.edu/catalog/17573382

Talbert recommends the following resources based on your level of experience with the topic. As always, please let me know if I can be of help to you as you explore these resources:

–

 Adapted from: Robert Campbell, David Clark, Jessica O’Shaughnessy, “Introduction to the special issue on implementing mastery grading in the undergraduate mathematics classroom”, PRIMUS Vol. 30 Issues 8-10 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1080/10511970.2020.1778824

 

Strategies for Preventing Student Resistance

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The following tip comes from Faculty Focus and the Cell Biology Education—Life Sciences Education website). Strategies for Preventing Student Resistance. When teachers try something different in the classroom and students resist, the teacher may back down. Often, this is due to fear of what will happen to their student evaluations and contract renewals. There is little doubt that the potential for student resistance in response to attempting a new teaching strategy is a widespread fear of many instructors. Even the rumor that another instructor who tried innovative approaches may have experienced student resistance could be enough to deter instructors from ever trying these teaching methods themselves.

While addressing student resistance in a classroom when it arises is no doubt a key concern for many instructors, preventing student resistance altogether would seem to be the ultimate goal. Here are several such teaching strategies, connected where possible to the research literatures.

Feedback Essentials

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As educators, we know the importance of feedback. Sometimes it can be challenging to figure out how to provide feedback that helps students understand what they did well and what needs to be improved, without demotivating the students.

In Seven Keys to Effective Feedback, Wiggins (2012), states, whether feedback is just there to be grasped or is provided by another person, helpful feedback has very specific characteristics. I have provided an abbreviated list below:

  • goal-referenced; Effective feedback requires that a person has a goal, takes action to achieve the goal, and receives goal-related information about his or her actions. I told a joke—why? To make people laugh. Note that in everyday situations, goals are often implicit, although fairly obvious to everyone. I don’t need to announce when telling the joke that my aim is to make you laugh. But in school, learners are often unclear about the specific goal of a task or lesson, so it is crucial to remind them about the goal and the criteria by which they should self-assess.

 

  • tangible and transparent: Any useful feedback system involves not only a clear goal, but also tangible results related to the goal. People laugh, chuckle, or don’t laugh at each joke; students are highly attentive, somewhat attentive, or inattentive to my teaching. video or audio recordings can help us perceive things that we may not perceive as we perform; and by extension, such recordings help us learn to look for difficult-to-perceive but vital information. I recommend that all teachers videotape their own classes at least once a month. It was a transformative experience for me when I did it as a beginning teacher. Concepts that had been crystal clear to me when I was teaching seemed opaque and downright confusing on tape—captured also in the many quizzical looks of my students, which I had missed in the moment.

 

  • actionable; Effective feedback is concrete, specific, and useful; it provides actionable information. Thus, “Good job!” and “You did that wrong” and B+ are not feedback at all. We can easily imagine the learners asking themselves in response to these comments, What specifically should I do more or less of next time, based on this information? No idea. They don’t know what was “good” or “wrong” about what they did. Actionable feedback must also be accepted by the performer. Many so-called feedback situations lead to arguments because the givers are not sufficiently descriptive; they jump to an inference from the data instead of simply presenting the data. For example, a supervisor may make the unfortunate but common mistake of stating that “many students were bored in class.” That’s a judgment, not an observation. It would have been far more useful and less debatable had the supervisor said something like, “I counted ongoing inattentive behaviors in 12 of the 25 students once the lecture was underway.
  • user-friendly (specific and personalized); Even if feedback is specific and accurate in the eyes of experts or bystanders, it is not of much value if the user cannot understand it or is overwhelmed by it. Highly technical feedback will seem odd and confusing to a novice. Describing a baseball swing to a 6-year-old in terms of torque and other physics concepts will not likely yield a better hitter. Too much feedback is also counterproductive; better to help the performer concentrate on only one or two key elements of performance than to create a buzz of information coming in from all sides.
  • timely; In most cases, the sooner I get feedback, the better. I don’t want to wait for hours or days to find out whether my students were attentive and whether they learned, or which part of my written story works and which part doesn’t. I say “in most cases” to allow for situations like playing a piano piece in a recital. I don’t want my teacher or the audience barking out feedback as I perform. That’s why it is more precise to say that good feedback is “timely” rather than “immediate.”
  • and consistent…To be useful, feedback must be consistent. Clearly, performers can only adjust their performance successfully if the information fed back to them is stable, accurate, and trustworthy. In education, that means teachers have to be on the same page about what high-quality work is. Teachers need to look at student work together, becoming more consistent over time and formalizing their judgments in highly descriptive rubrics supported by anchor products and performances. By extension, if we want student-to-student feedback to be more helpful, students have to be trained to be consistent the same way we train teachers, using the same exemplars and rubrics.

Orlando (2020) and Wiggins (2008), reminds us: Don’t dilute your message by confusing feedback with a pep talk. The student does not need a pep talk; they need information about the problem and how to solve it. Students want teachers who show a genuine interest in their success, and the combination of a clear account of their shortcomings and a clear description of how to address them will give students the support they need to succeed.

 

 

OCQs

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Among faculty, online course questionnaires can be a source of pride and satisfaction—and frustration and anxiety. As Bayraktar (2020) notes:  There is long standing evidence as well as many big-picture, philosophical reasons why course evaluations are problematic (evidence of gender bias and racial/ethnic bias, evidence that that students will give worse ratings to professors who benefit their learning in the long term and that students are not able to discern what actually makes good teaching, among other criticism)…Even for a faculty member whose evaluations are largely positive – and we know that the very happy and very unhappy students are more likely to respond – they simply are not useful. 
As Weiman (2017) explains, No matter how much we debate the issue, end-of-course evaluations count. How much they count is a matter of perspective. Both authors advocate for using the questionnaire to improve courses for the next semester and think about what should be changed or kept (more or less) the same by asking customized questions that are catered to better understanding the aspects of your course that you see as most relevant.
IU sends out Question Personalization Task instructions that allow you to add up to 6 personalized quantitative and 6 qualitative questions to your OCQ. You must submit them by November 11, 2021, for 13-week courses and November 28, 2021, for 2nd 8-week/16-week courses.
Marymount University offers this categorized list of custom OCQ questions that may be used to develop more specific questions that better relate to your course. https://www.marymount.edu/marymount.edu/media/Planning-Institutional-Effectiveness/Course%20Evaluations/Question-Bank.pdf aimed to address:
  • Instructor Responsiveness and Method
  • Course Content
  • Student Learning and Workload
  • Specific Types of Courses (i.e. labs, service learning, online courses)
  • Student Self-Evaluation Questions
Please let me know if I can help you develop questions as well.

Why pronouns are important for you and your students

Posted on by akesha

Stating our personal pronouns is a way for instructors to build inclusivity and trust in the classroom and facilitate conversations about gender and privilege with students and colleagues. Sharing pronouns is good practice for everyone, even if you feel that you have a visible gender identity.  It normalizes the practice of not making assumptions about gender based upon appearances. You can do this in a variety of ways:

  • Adding them to your display name in virtual meetings
  • Including them next to your name in e-mail signatures and syllabi (e.g., John Smith, they/them)
  • Using them in introductions (“Hi, I’m John and I use he/him pronouns, my research explores…”)

Providing an opportunity for students to share their pronouns with others helps to avoid misgendering mistakes, which can lead to discomfort, embarrassment, or trauma.  This is especially important since many governments and academic administration systems do not allow students easily update their personal information.  However, you should never force someone to share their pronouns, as that may force them to choose between revealing a part of their identity they do not wish to share or misgendering themselves.  When instructors model inclusive practices, many students will follow their example.  If it is not safe to do this overtly, you can ask students to write how they wish to be addressed on a notecard instead.

In Canvas you can use the New Pronoun Feature: https://blogs.iu.edu/citl/2021/01/27/qtip-canvas-pronouns/#.YYGBINbMJUM

Adapted from NIST and MyPronoun.org https://www.mypronouns.org/what-and-why

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