How I teach

A photo of me doing what I rarely do--lecturing

I was recently asked about how I teach. Obviously, teaching is something I do daily, and I do give it a fair amount of thought, but I’d never been asked this all-encompassing question before—or at least not for a long time. It got me thinking about how I actually do teach, and how I create a learning environment in which learners can learn.

How do I teach?

The person asking the question offered a few prompts to help focus my thinking. The following are my bullet-point responses to his questions.

What strategies do you use to get and keep students engaged in class?

• Active learning: What better way is there to learn, other than by doing, and learning from your mistakes while doing?
• Flipped learning: Let’s apply new knowledge and skills during class, when questions can be asked, and save the lower order of Bloom’s taxonomy for individual learning outside the classroom.
• Learner-centered teaching: Teaching and learning is about enabling the learner to learn, not about enabling the teacher to teach.
• iClicker learner response system: This and similar tools provide a great way to provide (anonymous, if desired) responses and feedback in the classroom.
• Check in surveys throughout the semester: Giving the learners opportunities to reflect on how their learning is progressing during the semester, and what you might be able to do to create a better learning environment can be powerful for both learner and teacher.
• Reflection papers: Like the check in surveys, creating opportunities for learners to reflect on what and how they are learning is powerful.
• Specifications grading (and exploring ungrading): Points are not the only way to represent what an individual has learned. I’ll even go further and say they may be a bad way to do so. I’ve found specifications grading to be a much better option and have recently been dabbling with ungrading. I've previously posted about specifications grading.
  

What strategies do you use to get and keep students engaged in community and to develop an identity within your class? (That is, to encourage engagement in campus life or contact outside class, i.e., studying together.)

• Pair-programming and group work: Have learners work together on a regular basis in class, and the relationships will inevitably flow to outside of class.
• Small group discussions: Taking time to share opinions and understanding with others—and listening to their point of view—opens a communication channel.
• Immersive learning: Learning while doing, and satisfying others needs in the process is a tremendous motivator.
• Expert of the Day: Asking learners to complete work on their own before class, and then serve as a teaching assistant during class helps reinforce their learning. It also provides multiple opportunities to interact with others.
  

What strategies do you use to lecture or otherwise deliver course content effectively?  

• I try to avoid lecturing! I’ve found that talking about a topic for an extended period of time seldom is productive. Learning by listening is not near as productive as learning by doing.
• Flipped learning: See above.
• Active learning: See above, again.
• Discussion (mostly Socratic): For teaching things other than skills, discussion is great—especially if I can avoid stating my personal opinions, but rather provide an environment in which the learners critically think about their own ideas and understanding, share that with others, and learn from others.
• Disability awareness and accessible Canvas course site: If you have challenges accessing the course site—for any reason—your learning opportunities are going to be diminished. Every learner deserves full access to every learning opportunity.
• Diversity, equity, and inclusivity: Understanding what others bring to the classroom provides opportunities to reduce or remove barriers to learning, as well as providing rich opportunities for all to learn.

How do you think about course design (syllabus, sequencing, assessment, assignments, activities, etc.)?

• I think about Understanding By Design (Wiggins & McTighe), but admittedly seldom am successful at fully implementing it due to the time I provide myself. I need to do better.
• I keep Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in mind: If I do something to help one learner, I likely will help many others.
• I tie course activities/learning outcomes to workforce competencies (NACE): Beyond content knowledge (which may become obsolete, given time), learners also need to learn and recognize non-domain transferable skills. Anything I can do to establish the relationships between class activities and workforce competencies will be a good thing.
• I have a very long, but “warm,” supportive, learner-focused syllabus: My approach is to incorporate useful (non course) content into the course syllabus in the hope that the learner will discover some other content while they’re looking for the first thing.
• Diversity, equity, and inclusivity, and having an accessible Canvas course site: See above.

How do you balance rigor with flexibility?

• Rigor is an interesting word! (See www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rigor.) Brief definitions follow:

1. harsh inflexibility in opinion, temper, or judgment: severity
2. the quality of being unyielding or inflexible: strictness
3. severity of life: austerity
4. an act or instance of strictness, severity, or cruelty
5. a tremor caused by a chill
6. a condition that makes life difficult, challenging, or uncomfortable
7. strict precision: exactness
8. obsolete: rigidity, stiffness

Based on those definitions, I’m not sure I want rigor. (I’ll admit I don’t have a better word at the moment, however.) Obviously, I do want learners to learn, and want a reliable way to measure that learning.

• Specifications grading: Beyond what I’ve said above, and elsewhere, Specs grading encourages learners to work on assignments and projects until learning occurs, rather than measuring the learning at one predetermined moment in time. I teach so others can learn, not so that I can assign a grade.
• Open/flexible assignments: Having flexibility in assignments can provide options to the learner, and greatly reduce the temptation to copy someone else’s work. If your project is different than someone else’s, you can’t do exactly the same thing. You can share ideas and learn from each other, however.

To what extent, and how, do you keep up with discussions in your field about pedagogy?

• Conferences: I attend and present at as many as I can. Some of my regulars include:

• SIGCSE (ACM Special Interest Group on CS Education)
• CCSC:MW (Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges: Midwest)
• Lilly Conference on College Teaching
• The Grading Conference

• Blog and Twitter: I tend to use my blog and social media to be reflective about my academic life and experiences. I also learn from others who do the same thing.
• Professional development:  I’m very fortunate to have a university that is focused on ensuring every faculty member has an opportunity to be the best they can be. I’ve taken advantage of many of these opportunities.

What are the most common barriers to learning for your students? How do you approach these barriers?

• Fixed mindset: If you don’t think you can do something, you’re probably right. I fight this by being supportive, encouraging, and affirming. I also strive to dd “yet” to their vocabulary, as in, “I can’t do it yet.”
• Life gets in the way: Learners often struggle because of “life.” I provide Oops Bits to the learners for them to “spend” when they need to submit something late or miss a class. I’m also flexible with due dates when learners have extreme circumstances occur in their lives.
• Lack of preparation prior to the course: Sometimes learners come into my class without a specific skill or knowledge. To help these learners, I often offer recurring/scheduled office visits. Depending on their need, I may also refer them to our Learning Center or online resources.
• Lack of preparation during the course: To encourage learners to continue to prepare for the course all semester, I administer reading quizzes, offer recurring/scheduled office visits, and refer them to our Learning Center or online resources.
• I tell struggling learners: I will work at least as hard as they do to help them learn the material, thus communicating that they must try, but I will be right there with them.

Let's share and learn

If I were to ask you how you teach, what would be your response? Would it be similar to mine, or completely different? What do you do that works for you and your learners? Please share; let’s learn from each other.

Lilly Conference reflections: 2019 edition

I recently spent three wonderful days at the 39th Original Lilly Conference on College Teaching at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. This is the fifth time I’ve been able to attend this conference and have been privileged to present at the conference all five times as well. As I said in my post last year, if you can afford the time and money, I highly recommend attending this conference which is held the weekend before Thanksgiving every year.

The last two years, I’ve talked about my experiences combining specifications grading with learner-centered teaching. This year I focused on just specifications grading, leading a three-hour pre-conference workshop and delivering a conference presentation. I've blogged about specs grading here and here. I also volunteered to host a discussion table during lunch on Saturday for the first seven people who signed up to eat with me and discuss specs grading. All three events seemed to go well with lots of participant interaction and positive responses from the participants.

I’ve said it before, but every time I’ve attended Lilly, I’ve come away from the experience rejuvenated. When you spend time in conversations with others excited and interested in finding the best way to teach, how can you not become excited yourself? The conference attendees are a very friendly group of people. One has a sense of attending a homecoming and getting reacquainted with old friends when one attends Lilly.

I always come away from Lilly feeling like I was trying to drink from a fire hose; there is so much good information received in such a short time. I’m still mentally processing this year’s insights, so I’m simply going to provide a list of very briefly annotated quotes I wrote down while listening to presenters. They are presented here in the order in which I experienced them.

• “If you believe the words in your video are important, why wouldn’t you want all people to have access to them?” (Brenda Jo Brueggemann) Seems like a pretty obvious justification for captioning to me.
• “On quizzes, include questions about the new material, as well as previous material.” (Sheri Stover) Retrieval learning reinforces previous learning.
• “Cramming works for a day. A week later, you’ve lost most of it.” (Sheri Stover) Spread out the studying if you really want to learn the material.
• “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” (Nelson Mandela) What more is there to say?
• “Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.” (Albert Einstein) If you can think, you can continue to learn.
• “Teaching is leading students into a situation in which they can only escape by thinking.” (Unknown) Sounds like a great situation to be in!
• “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of their tomorrow.” (John Dewey) As we learn of better ways to teach, we must adopt them.
• “In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” (Eric Hoffer) We must be life-long learners, lest we get left behind.
• “Engagement requires both motivation and active learning.” (Elizabeth Barkley) One of them by themselves is not sufficient.
• “Rewards and punishment is the lowest form of education.” (Chuang Tzu) Carrots and sticks don’t work as well as other approaches.
• “Forget the mistake. Remember the lesson.” (Unknown) Move towards a growth mindset.
• “Unpredictability can generate emotional learning.” (Mike Pinter and Peter Giordano) Shake things up a bit and get people’s attention.

Share your thoughts below. What quotes resonate with you? What ones raise questions? Do you find fault with any of them?

Image credits: All images by Dave Largent

Lilly Conference reflections: 2018 edition

I spent the last three days at the 38th Original Lilly Conference on College Teaching at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. This is the fourth time I’ve been able to attend this conference and have been privileged to present at the conference all four times as well. If you can afford the time and money, I highly recommend attending this conference held the weekend before Thanksgiving every year.

At my first Lilly (2013), I presented a poster with three of my colleagues (Rebecca Pierce, Lynne Stallings, and Petra Zimmermann) titled “Classroom Interaction Redefined: A Multidisciplinary Perspective on Moving Beyond Traditional Classroom Spaces to Promote Student Engagement.” We translated this into a journal article, which was recently published online.

In 2016, I talked about helping computer science students explore the issue of lack of diversity and inclusivity in our educational programs and profession. The last two years, I’ve talked about my experiences combining specifications grading with learner-centered teaching. I've blogged about specs grading here and here.

Every time I’ve attended Lilly, I’ve come away from the experience rejuvenated. When you spend time in conversations with others excited and interested in finding the best way to teach, how can you not become excited yourself? The conference attendees are a very friendly group of people. One has a sense of attending a homecoming and getting reacquainted with old friends when one attends Lilly.

Rather than try to detail everything I absorbed at the conference this year, I’m simply going to provide a list of very briefly annotated quotes I wrote down while listening to presenters. I’m not going into depth partly because I don’t have the time to do so right now, and partly because I’m yet to fully process most of what I experienced. They are presented here in the order in which I experienced them.

• “Get more sleep.” We have to have adequate sleep for our brains to make memories.
• “We can't solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them.”  Time to think outside of the box.
• “Give authority to students and be prepared to be amazed.” I’ve had this experience many times, as recently as a week ago with honors colloquium students.
• “Memorizing is what you do when something doesn't make sense.” To truly learn something, it has to make sense.
• “What would students do if we gave them wrong or missing instructions?” Should we do this to make them think and question?
• “Students must have past knowledge to which they can connect the new information we give them.” Our brains store new information by attaching it to previous knowledge and experiences.
• “Test for what you want your students to know a year from now.” If it’s not important enough that you want the student to know it a year from now, why test them on it? What does it matter if they know it now?
• “Peer feedback should be thought of as reciprocal teaching, not an evaluation.” This changes the nature of the conversation.
• “Flipped learning may not be evidenced by short term assessments gains but will be reflected in long term knowledge.” Learners can cram for a test and do well but are much less likely to remember it later. True learning is for the long term.
• “We can’t change what we cannot see.” If we don’t know there is an issue, how could we know it needs changed? We have to look and observe.
• “What are the things going on in our students lives? How might those things affect their learning? How could it change our teaching if we knew?” We must do more than simply teach content.
• “Everything we do is a rehearsal for the future.” Extremely few things are ever done only once. Always strive to do better.
• “Impatience is the enemy of empathy.” Take time to understand.
• “Grades should be indicative of the quality and quantity of learning.” The key here is measuring learning, not testing.

Share your thoughts below. What quotes resonate with you? What ones raise questions? Do you find fault with any of them?