Assessment and Evaluation

What is quality teaching and how can it be measured?

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Oct 2021 18:49:30 +0000

What is quality teaching and how can it be measured? Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/12/2021 - 12:49

Amanda McAndrew

ASSETT is supporting the Quality Teaching Initiative (QTI) for departments to examine how quality teaching is defined and update their practices for evaluating teaching. QTI focuses on three dimensions of instructional excellence: teaching that is scholarly, goal oriented, and inclusive. This year, departments will clarify standards and expectations, use multiple measures for evidence, and identify a discipline-appropriate scholarly framework by which to evaluate teaching. By undertaking this work, ASSETT and the College of Arts and Sciences are signaling that teaching is still a top priority at a research institution. And by supporting departments, we are providing the foundation for each unit to determine what great teaching is and how to assess it in their respective disciplines.

In ASSETT’s Faculty Fellows program last spring, we worked with 12 faculty members from 12 different departments to prepare them to lead and liaise with the QTI team as their departments create updated plans for teaching evaluation. To date, eighteen (18) units in A&S have formed working groups, scheduled meetings, and are beginning to inventory current practices. Of these, several departments have already made further strides in outlining their work for the year and are in the initial stages of examining peer review and self-reflection practices. The Geology department has developed an outline to guide their work for the year and has even invited another department along to learn about their process. The Program for Writing and Rhetoric and the History department have shared their peer review guidelines and processes in our workshops.

Currently, we are organizing several workshops and drop-in office hours to continue supporting departments in this important work. These are open to anyone interested in learning more about quality teaching, including graduate students. More resources are available on the QTI website. If you have any questions or would like to schedule a consultation, please contact one of the QTI consultants, Sarah.Andrews-1@colorado.edu, Heidi.Loshbaugh@colorado.edu, or Amanda.McAndrew@colorado.edu.

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Workshops on 3-D assessment with Melanie Cooper

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Apr 2018 21:47:43 +0000

Workshops on 3-D assessment with Melanie Cooper Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 04/19/2018 - 15:47

Instructors frequently grapple with questions about the impact of their teaching: What are students learning? And how well can they apply their new knowledge and skills outside the classroom? These perennial concerns are the focus of the Three-Dimensional Learning Assessment Protocol (3D-LAP) presented to the Faculty Fellows during a recent workshop co-sponsored by DBER and ASSETT.

The workshop was led by Melanie Cooper, Lappan-Phillips Chair of Science Education at Michigan State University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. The 3D-LAP was developed by Dr. Cooper and several MSU colleagues to assess students’ mastery of the three dimensions of science education identified by the National Research Council: scientific practices, crosscutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas. The fellows discussed how this model could be adapted for disciplines outside the sciences and how they could implement it in their own departments to assess the impact of pedagogical transformations on student learning outcomes.

“One important outcome of the workshop with the Faculty Fellows was the discovery that all of the essential disciplinary practices described and identified by scientists were applicable across the humanities and social sciences,” noted Andy Martin, Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and ASSETT’s Faculty Advisor. “This was a surprise to Dr. Cooper and underscored that we are all interested in advancing students' critical thinking skills using a core set of practices. This discovery suggests we could build strong bridges across disciplines that would strengthen the core liberal arts mission of the College of Arts and Sciences.”

In addition to the presentation to the Faculty Fellows, Dr. Cooper also conducted a workshop with the Physics Education Group and Learning Assistance Program during her brief visit to ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ.

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Dilling's Use of NB and Padlet to Increase Engagement in Environmental Studies Class

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 21:03:00 +0000

Dilling's Use of NB and Padlet to Increase Engagement in Environmental Studies Class Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 01/20/2016 - 14:03

Lisa Dilling is an Associate Professor in the Environmental Studies Program. She plans to use NB along with Padlet in order to improve engagement and active learning opportunities in a medium sized enrollment class. Dilling completed the Fall 2015 ASSETT Teaching with Technology Seminar.

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Teaching and Learning Challenge

The problem I wish to address is how to improve engagement and active learning opportunities within a medium-sized class (75 students). I would like to focus here in this intervention on opportunities for students to better identify the particular policy problem that energy policies are designed (or not) to solve, and engage the primary text of policy documents in order to practice building their critical thinking skills and their ability to see policy problems from multiple angles.

The course I am focusing on is an upper division environmental studies course (ENVS 3621; Energy Policy and Society) that counts as a cornerstone (all ENVS students must take one cornerstone, they have a choice) as well as a required class for the renewable energy certificate (meaning that students outside of ENVS are a significant proportion of the class). The class requires both basic mathematical skills as a support to analyzing policies, as well as an ability to think critically and analyze information. Enrollment is typically around 70 students.

Goal: In this technological intervention I am hoping to accomplish two goals at once: engage students in reading and becoming familiar with primary energy policy while simultaneously practicing identifying policy goals and mechanisms that will help them build skill before their final assignment. I also am piloting a second type of technology to use as simply a virtual class corkboard for posting links to energy articles and ideas about energy they want to share with the class.

Plans for Implementation

The class will use the NB online interface to review policy documents online in small groups and identify policy goal statements, problem definitions and mechanisms. Because there is always some interpretation for these items, having an online platform available where students can discuss these statements and offer interpretations in comments and interact with each will help them learn how to see the possibilities. Each group will be about 7 or fewer people and each person in the group will be required to offer one interpretation for problem definition, goals, and mechanism for the posted policy. A variation of this exercise will be for students to locate and post their own policy documents (or perhaps do this in class) to gain practice in the method. The Padlet technology is an additional technology that is solely designed to experiment with engagement allowing students to post energy media sources they find and sharing them among classmates, improving class engagement.

Learning Objectives and Goals: This technology will address the pedagogical problem of a larger class, many of whom are unfamiliar with primary policy document and how to infer a problem definition, goals and mechanisms. It will allow for practice and also address the problem of multiple problem definitions being correct, thus allowing for more than one voice (i.e. beyond the instructor) coming into the conversation.

The affordances of the technology allow for more students to gain familiarity with primary policy language and at the same time interpreting and engaging that policy language in their own analytical style. It addresses also the goal of improving critical thinking and being more precise about identifying policy problems and goal statements.

Indicators of Success

As I am only teaching the class now after the conclusion of the ASSETT seminar, I have not yet had a chance to observe or evaluate how this intervention will work in practice. One concern I have is about my own familiarity with the technology—having not used NB I myself need practice in using the online platform and seeing how it will go with the students. I have implemented a Padlet online as an experiment to see if students will post, given some encouragement by showing the collected material in class. I will likely pilot these as “extra credit” assignments in order to assess usefulness and address any glitches or use issues before requiring them as a “For credit” assignment.

For the NB-facilitated assignment I will assess its value through my own feedback forms as part of my mid-term and final feedback collected as part of every class. I will particularly compare answers to the following feedback questions on whether the class achieved the following learning objectives which I have used in previous years:

a) Goal: Apply critical reasoning skills to evaluate and select policy options for solving problems related to energy.
b) Goal. Gain working familiarity with policy mechanisms and their pros and cons for achieving policy goals in energy.
c) Goal: Conduct a policy analysis: Define the problem, assemble evidence, construct alternatives, select criteria, project outcomes, confront tradeoffs and make a recommendation.

Reflection

I have learned through this ASSETT seminar that there are a wealth of tools and online opportunities to experiment with. For myself, I will need to carefully evaluate the anticipated benefit of possible technologies for the pedagogical purpose that I am trying to achieve. I would rate myself as a “newbie” for many of these technologies and so giving myself time and piloting opportunities or chances to observe use in another class will help me see where the technologies are best applied with the least amount of “fear factor” on my part.

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Sparking Conversation with Padlet in Brown's Political Science Class

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 17:54:00 +0000

Sparking Conversation with Padlet in Brown's Political Science Class Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/12/2016 - 10:54

David Brown, PhD, is the Department Chair in the Department for Political Science and a research associate at the Institute for Behavioral Science at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ. Gale completed the Fall 2015 ASSETT Teaching with Technology Seminar. He implemented the use of Padlet in his Political Science class in order to bolster in-class discussions and share student's work.

[video:https://youtu.be/6UBNI--08k0]

Teaching and Learning Challenge

The problem that I wish to address concerns trying to encourage a substantive conversation with a large class regarding the problems and issues associated with data analysis. Although I’ve been successful in creating active learning assignments where students work on analyzing a problem, I’ve been less successful in collecting their work and using it to spark discussion in the class. I want to learn how to use technology to help generate a more fruitful conversation.

The title of the course is “Introduction to Research Methods”. It is an introductory statistics course with approximately 180 students (3 TAs). The class is required of all Political Science majors. Out of 180 students, approximately 100 are PSCI majors, 60 are business majors, and the rest come from ECON, SOCI, and IAFS.

The implication of not addressing the problem is a huge wasted opportunity for the students to learn important concepts from the assignments they’re given.

Plans for Implementation

The goal is threefold. First, I want to be able to hold the students accountable for the work they’re doing in class. Although the TAs and and float throughout the class as they’re working on an assignment, our eyes can’t be everywhere at once. Second, I hope by getting students involved in a discussion, the level of interest in the material will climb. My sense is that if they’ve invested in the work and have made an interesting discovery, sharing that discovery with the class will excite, motivate, and reinforce the work they’re doing. Finally, I want the discussion to turn toward issues that are central to the class. Wrestling with those problems in an assignment and sharing that with others will help provide concrete examples of how these problems come up when doing real data analysis.

In each assignment there are certain skills and concepts they have to master in order to complete in the assignment. In one sense there’s simply a test of their ability to execute code in a statistical package. In another sense, to complete the assignment satisfactorily, the student must understand the concept that is underlying the exercise, whether it is data description, regression analysis, regression diagnostics, or logistic regression.

The evidence that I’ve succeeded in sparking a discussion will be whether students become engaged in the process, actively participate and argue with one another. The other marker will
be that the deeper issues involved in the exercise will come front and center.

Indicators of Success

I wanted to get a large class on data analysis engaged in a discussion as students went through various projects that ask them to do data analysis. The class is an introductory statistics course with roughly 180 people enrolled. I have students in groups (around 40 groups). The students are asked each week to tackle a different problem. I wanted a good way for students to communicate with each other and me regarding their findings. So, I needed a means for them to present their findings in a quick and easy way that would allow me to then easily show the rest of the class.

My larger goal is to use this exercise to get students to critically think about the data and see how it relates to arguments they make all the time with little evidence.

I used a program called ‘Padlet’ for students to post to instead of the clunky D2L discussion list. I was worried that they would fill up the screen with their entries and that it would be difficult for me to spot the different contributions. I was also worried that Padlet would not really allow me to show (blow up) things nicely and that it would not really provide a good way to spark conversations. I would set up a discussion board before class and insert into D2L where they could drag and drop their work, identifying the group and including some analysis. Padlet helped tremendously as it provided a very easy way for each group to see what others were doing and to compare their work with others. In terms of the interface, Padlet was extremely easy to use and organize (it really required little if any preparation on my part and on the students’ as well).

Reflection

In short, Padlet allowed there to be an electronic conversation or presentation of everyone’s work. Showing how different groups attacked the problem. It set the stage for me to be able to discuss people’s work and perhaps to identify important problems what were introduced in the assignment. In terms of learning goals, it helped lay a foundation for discussing the problem and getting at the various challenges students confronted in the assignment each week. Perhaps the only pitfall of the program was that it didn’t automatically spark conversation. While it did make it easier for students to instantaneously share their work with the rest of the class and for us to identify it in class, I realized two important things: 1) I still needed additional time to analyze what the students had done and 2) I needed to do a better job of framing the assignments so that students would be cognizant of the deeper issues that they were dealing with like measurement, causation, etc.

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Gale's RAP Students Shared Visual Literacy Images Via Social Media

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 16:30:00 +0000

Gale's RAP Students Shared Visual Literacy Images Via Social Media Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/24/2015 - 10:30

Kendra Gale, PhD, is an instructor in the Communication and Society Residential Academic Program at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ. Gale completed the Fall 2014 ASSETT Teaching with Technology Seminar. She introduced a social media page into her class as a mechanism for sharing and discussing interesting images in the media.

[video:https://youtu.be/wXFiHMsT0MM]

Teaching and Learning Challenge

I teach introductory communication courses in the Communication and Society Residential Academic Program (Comm RAP). These are all course with first year students, taught in the residence hall in sections of 19 or less. The enduring idea of the courses is social construction through communication, i.e., how we communicate shapes our understanding of reality.

I used the Teaching with Technology Workshop to explore image delivery mechanisms for students in my Visual Literacy course. One of the goals of the course is for students to master basic vocabulary of semiotics, design, photography and film to use in the discussion of images. But learning a new vocabulary requires practice and repetition.

While I have literally thousands of images in my electronic archive, using them to create exercises for students has been a challenge. I use images on D2L for quizzes but the process of uploading and labeling images for that format is extremely cumbersome and inefficient. While I will continue to use the quiz function for quick learning checks, it is not feasible for uploading large quantities.

In the past, I have posted PowerPoint slides online with questions on the slide and answers in the notes section, created binders of images for students to peruse and practice and required students to create a portfolio of images examples for terms. All of these approaches are extremely labor intensive for me and the interaction is primarily one to one where I am providing feedback individually.

Plans for Implementation

Technology

The goal for using technology is to create a “space” for students to apply the visual vocabulary to a range of images. My vision was to create the equivalent of a “language lab” or sets of electronic flashcards for practice outside of class time.

The tool I choose to explore was a closed group on Facebook because:

Students are already adept at using Facebook so, unlike creating a blog site, there was no learning curve for a new technology;
It is a site they already visit frequently;
A closed group allows students to practice without all of their friends being notified every time they post an image or comment so it respects the boundary between academic and social life. But knowing their classmates would see the posts creates some performance expectation;
Posts and comments are dated;
It is fast and easy both to upload images and to comment on posts on Facebook.

Learning Exercise

Students were required to post 4 times, roughly once every 2-3 weeks, and to comment on at least eight posts from classmates. I provided a list of terms for select modules in the course (semiotics, intertextuality, camera terms, and design choices) and asked students to select one of the terms, provide a visual example of the term in use and briefly discuss how that particular choice contributes to a preferred reading of the image. I also required them to use images that hadn’t already been used. That compelled them to look at all the previous posts before contributing their own as did the requirement to comment on other posts.

Evaluation of the posts was based primarily on completion:

0 = no post or late post
1 = student posted but didn’t complete all the requirements or the post was duplicate of what someone else has already posted
2 = posted and completed all the discussion requirements

Indicators of Success

Assessment of the Technique

Student Self-Assessment

Students were asked about the Facebook posts and assignments in a peer evaluation of my teaching as well as in an anonymous end-of-semester survey. On scaled items students strongly agreed on the ease of use as well as the benefit of having additional examples outside of class (4.5 out of 5). There was less agreement on the number of required posts with some students suggesting that more posts be required in the future. Several also commented on the value of my comments in response to other students posts. They also appreciated the validation when I used their examples in class.

From my perspective, this was also successful as a formative assessment,

I was able to detect patterns of misunderstanding quickly and address them in class.
My feedback on individual posts and comments was visible to the whole group so the learning experience extended beyond the individual.

Unexpected Additional Affordances

Having students contribute images from their own lives provided me with a range of images to which I wouldn’t normally be exposed. It allows me to easily update some of my own examples, to incorporate their images into class discussion and to use the same image several times to help them understand multiple ways of analyzing an image. Analysis and commentary on images from their own lives helped connect daily experience with larger social discourses.
Generally the students who posted first were some of the more successful and high achieving students in the class. They set a high standard for the posts that followed. But that also meant that those who procrastinated until the last minute had to review all the previous posts. Often times, the last-minute-students are not as strong and I suspect the extra review was beneficial for them.
Since students mostly used their real names and faces in the profile pictures, it helped everyone learn the names of all their classmates.
Because they set their social media accounts to notify them via text when anything is posted, notifications about classmate postings helped remind the potentially less organized students that something was due soon. The immediacy of the social media platform also encouraged conversations to continue after and between classes.
Instant cross-platform connection also allowed students to post from both phones and computers. It seemed easier to post images from daily life when they didn’t have to download it from a camera to the computer and then upload it again.
Their comments to each other sometimes strayed away from discussion of the images, but I believe some of the light banter, commentary on each other’s musical preferences, etc. helped them bond more as a community of learners. They were generous with their praise of each other for posting unusual images, original photographs or enlightening commentary, and disagreed respectfully.

Reflection

Overall, using Facebook as a site for posting and commenting moved this class closer to the kind of learning partnership I would like in all my class. They help each other learn and I am learning from them as well.

The workshop also exposed me to several other easy to use technologies that I have adopted in other courses. In addition, the conversation with colleagues was enormously beneficial for troubleshooting problems, generating new ideas and tapping into collective expertise.

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Groupboard Virtual Whiteboard Connects Long Distance Students in Spanbauer's Class

Anonymous — Fri, 29 May 2015 16:30:00 +0000

Groupboard Virtual Whiteboard Connects Long Distance Students in Spanbauer's Class Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/29/2015 - 10:30

Scott Spanbauer in the Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences Department implemented Groupboard Virtual Whiteboard to connect with long distance students.

[video:https://youtu.be/EiK4Y30EnOU]

Teaching and Learning Challenge

My language teaching techniques are based are the communicative process--how human beings negotiate interpersonal communication through speaking, listening, reading and writing, and through this negotiation process, become fluent. It’s the way a baby learns language.

Although there are occasional constraints on speaking, listening and reading (such as noise, interruptions, and physical disabilities), my particular classroom configuration--with half of the students present in the classroom, and the other half connecting from afar using videoconferencing--software puts a serious constraint on writing as an in-class activity.

In a normal classroom, multiple students can easily and quickly write on a whiteboard or blackboard, the instructor can make written comments on and corrections to this output, and everyone in class can see all of this activity clearly in real time. This allows textbook-based group writing activities, fast-paced competitive exercises, or even a game of Pictionary.

In my classroom, half of the students are in a room with a whiteboard, and the other half are connected to the classroom via Zoom--a program much like Skype. Although I can show them the whiteboard (which requires some camera work), they can’t write on it. As a stopgap measure, I have asked remote students to write on a piece of paper and hold it up to their webcams. However, the writing is often small and illegible (because it actually is small, and because the video is not high-resolution), and there is also a delay involved with the video conferencing link.

I needed some sort of shared digital whiteboard that everyone in the class could see and write on in real time, with an input method nearly as fast and easy as writing on a whiteboard. And it needed to be handwriting, not typing. As numerous recent studies and articles point out, handwriting enhances learning in ways that typing does not.

My simple need is that handwriting be an equally privileged mode of communication in classroom activities, together with reading, speaking, and listening. One initial indicator of success would be that handwriting activities take place in the classroom on a regular, even daily, basis or that handwriting constitutes some percentage of activities over the course of the semester. More importantly, how does more in-class writing affect writing quality? Looking at quizzes, midterms, finals, journals, and other graded assessments that we already use, are students progressing in their adoption and use of grammar and over the course of the semester, or multi-semester series of classes? How do they compare with other classes or cohorts? In the case of this particular class, we are trying to replicate the normal face-to-face, paper and chalkboard based version of the class, so one would hope that the students’ writing skills would at least be equivalent to that of this control group.

Qualitatively, are students comfortable writing in Spanish day-to-day, comfortable enough to go beyond rote responses to prompts? Do they show creativity and humor in their writing? Are they having fun?

Implementation

After quite a bit of searching, CU’s ASSETT found a web-based shared whiteboard tool called Groupboard, which I began testing in my classroom late in the Spring 2015 semester. All of my students, whether in the physical classroom or connecting via Zoom, have the Groupboard app installed on their phones (it comes in iOS and Android versions), allowing them to write on the whiteboard using a finger or a stylus. Additionally, I project a larger version of the shared whiteboard to everyone via Zoom using my computer, and I write on the board myself using an iPad.

Our main hurdle was learning how to write on a touchscreen, and write small. In order to write small enough that multiple students’ writing could fit simultaneously on the whiteboard, the students needed to learn how to zoom in on just their area of the whiteboard.

Indicators of Success

Despite some initial clunkiness, after several days of practice, Groupboard had already met my criterion for acceptance: it is better than holding up pieces of paper to a webcam. A bonus benefit is that I now use Groupboard as my inclass whiteboard for explaining grammar, saving the time it took to change camera positions and move to the whiteboard. And just as I would on a real whiteboard or chalkboard, I can annotate and correct what students have written. But since they can clearly see what other students have just written in real time, they learn from each other, and just correct it themselves.

Reflection

I think that with time and practice, Groupboard will be something that we use in class every day. I have used it to replicating a game where we divide the class into teams that compete against each other to conjugate verbs or answer questions. Another activity is group story writing, where we collaborate on writing a paragraph. We’ve even tried playing Pictionary. Groupboard lets you upload game board background images, so the only limitation on the activities is the instructor’s imagination.

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Low Stakes Assessments Encourage Heisler's Human Anatomy Students

Anonymous — Wed, 06 May 2015 06:00:00 +0000

Low Stakes Assessments Encourage Heisler's Human Anatomy Students Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/06/2015 - 00:00

Low stakes assessments encourage students in Integrative Physiology Senior Instructor Ruth Heisler’s Human Anatomy class. Heisler created the assessments through support from the ASSETT Teaching with Technology Seminar. Watch her explain her tactic in her video below.

[video:https://youtu.be/Pu3KTaoH_Mc]

Teaching and Learning Challenge

Human Anatomy is historically viewed as a memorization course that requires little in the way of critical thinking. However, the repeating patterns and tissue organization of the body is actually very intuitive if one takes the time to ponder why our tissues are arranged the way they are. One of the biggest challenges I continue to encounter is moving students away from just memorization of the material, and instead developing their reasoning skill to help them deduce why a specific tissue type would be found associated with a particular organ.

Students who have generally managed to get through courses by memorizing and regurgitating information often have the most trouble in anatomy. They become frustrated that their tried and true method of studying no longer works in a course with so much content. We (myself and other instructors in the course) have tried multiple things to try and encourage students to move away from pure memorization. Some of these approaches have included weekly homeworks with questions that promote integration of concepts; in class activities; surveys on their study habits; and starting each lecture with a study tip. I have had limited success.

The big problem is how to create a learning environment that promotes understanding rather than memorization in a large course. Human Anatomy is full of terminology, organization of cells and tissues, and organ functions. The general content that we cover has been well established by faculty in our department, and is pertinent to what students are expected to know in upper division classes. Assessments have been designed to reinforce the key concepts. But the students who thrive in the course are those who recognize that memorization is not the best way to learn the material. Convincing students that there is a more effective and efficient way to learn the material is my challenge. I am looking for an intervention of study and learning habits.

Plans for Implementation

My study skills intervention will involve low-tech in-class activities designed to engage students in a more interactive study approach that I want them to develop; combined with a slightly higher tech requirement that they must upload the final product of the activity to the course D2L page.

First, let me talk about what the activity will look like. Once a week, at the start of lecture, I will ask the class to draw and label (to the best of their ability) an anatomical structure or tissue that was covered in the previous lecture. For instance, I may ask them to draw and label a cross section of the integument. I will give them 510 minutes to complete the task. The students will then have 24 hours to upload that drawing to the Dropbox in D2L. If they choose, they can add to their image after lecture and before submitting. I estimate there will be 14 of these activities throughout the semester, and they can upload any 10 of their drawings. My graduate TA will check the drawings and give a student 1 point if it is satisfactory. They can earn up to 10 points over the course of the semester.

The point per uploaded activity is designed to give them low-stakes encouragement to participate in the activities. A satisfactory drawing will be one that has a minimum number structures labeled. The number will vary depending on the assignment, and will be announced with each activity. The idea is to promote interactive studying and an understanding of how cells and tissues are put together; and hopefully create an “aha!” moment where they realize there are repeating patterns in the tissues and organs of our body. Drawing ability will not be graded; nor will we be able to check every submission for accuracy. (Although I would love to provide feedback to each student, with one TA at 4 hours each week and 250 students I don’t think it is currently feasible. If this proves to be a sticky point, I will try to address it in future semesters.)

The lecture period following each activity will begin with a submission that myself or the TA has deemed to be particularly well done, as a way to assist students who are unsure how to approach the activity. The point of this demonstration will be to both encourage students to add detail and really engage in the activities.

Indicators of Success

The big problem I want to address is one of changing study habits in anatomy. More specifically, how to change the learning approach of students who rely on pure memorization. The obvious indicator of success would be better comprehension of the material with less time allocated to studying. However, that is hard to gauge without knowing more about each individual learner. However, I believe there are other indicators that I can use to determine if an approach is proving successful for students in the course as a whole. Although mostly subjective, I believe observation of each of the following would be strong indications of success:

Positive attitude shift: I often hear from students how much time they spend studying anatomy to the detriment of their other courses. I believe that if they feel their studying is more effective and efficient, that the result will be a more positive view of the material and course as a whole.
Decrease in performance anxiety: The amount of material covered in anatomy often creates anxiety even amongst students who know the material well. If students feel they can more intuitively approach and engage with the material, the overall result should be less anxiety during assessments.
Increased engagement in lecture: Anatomy is very visual, and I rely on color coded graphics to present the majority of the material. Additionally, in a large lecture it is easy for students tune out the barrage of color coded images once they start to feel lost. I believe that if students had a better comprehension and greater comfort level with the material, that there would be a perceivable change in their engagement with the material. Rather than just having the first 2 rows of students ask questions, I would see a greater range of inquiry from the room as a whole.
Self confidence: My ultimate goal is to help students become confident in their ability to learn material, especially if they perceive that material as challenging. With the students I work with oneonone, a big change I see once the student has found a “better” way to study and learn, is a surge in their self confidence. I would love to see this surge happen in the class as a whole.
Higher scores: The ultimate indicator of success would be that students perform better in the class and leave with a stronger knowledge base to help them in their subsequent courses.

As a follow up at the end of the semester, I intend to send out a survey about study habits. Dr. Leif Saul has already prepared a survey that we used last semester after the first lecture exam. The survey was created using Google forms and administered via a Google doc link made available to the class. This worked well and I will start with the existing survey and revise it to better address the use of weekly drawing activities in the lecture. If he agrees, I would like Dr. Saul to administer the same survey to his class so we can have a comparison of attitudes from a course that used the weekly drawing activity and one that did not use it. I believe this could be a very powerful indicator of how effective the activity is in changing attitudes and reducing anxiety.

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3rd Annual ASSETT Teaching with Technology Symposium

Anonymous — Wed, 06 May 2015 06:00:00 +0000

3rd Annual ASSETT Teaching with Technology Symposium Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/06/2015 - 00:00

Jim Groom Presents at the 2015 ASSETT Teaching with Tech Symposium

"Digital Agency in the 21st Century," was the theme at the Third Annual ASSETT Teaching with Technology Symposium in April. The Director of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies and Adjunct Professor at the University of Mary Washington, Jim Groom, gave the keynote speech. Groom spoke about, and explained his involvement with, the Domain of One’s Own at UMW project. UMW gives each student and instructor the option of creating a domain that UMW hosts. Groom explained that UMW Domains recognizes and codifies the importance of digital agency for each and every learner on campus. After his talk, several instructors discussed whether we could bring such a program to CU.

Assistant Professor of Political Science Moonhawk Kim Receives the 2015 ASSETT Teaching with Technology Award

Also at the Symposium, ASSETT awarded the 2015 Excellence in Teaching with Technology Award to Political Science Assistant Professor Moonhawk Kim. Kim joined several other instructors at the Symposium in presenting a teaching with technology tool that he uses in his teaching. Kim uses open educational software Nota Bene that was created by MIT for collaborative reading. NB is an online annotation tool that allows students to better engage with content. Through NB, the instructor can assign articles for students to read and dedicate prompts for students to consider and respond to as they read. With NB, the instructor can better task students to consider their course readings with a more critical eye. Then, in class, students can use their annotations to participate in more productive conversations about their class readings. Students must find evidence in the assigned readings to support their ideas.

Italian Instructor Giorgio Corda Presents GoAnimate at the 2015 ASSETT Teaching with Tech Symposium

Several other ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ instructors and professors presented their teaching with technology projects at the Symposium. Italian Instructor Giorgio Corda returned to the Symposium this year to present a second time. In both years, Corda has presented an effective and engaging tool he uses in teaching foreign language in a hybrid format. Corda says that he believes hybrid learning for foreign languages is a unique approach that shows much promise for some of CU's student populations.

This year, Corda displayed examples of students' work from his hybrid language classes. Students used GoAnimate software to create avatar cartoon characters and place them in virtual social situations. Students meet and converse in Italian online with their peers through the personas of their selected Avatar characters. Students record their own voices speaking in Italian, and GoAnimate plays their voice along with animation of the selected avatar. It may look like students are meeting online through cartoons, but Corda said that when students respond to messages in Italian from their peers several times throughout the week, they access the new language more frequently than they would if they attended Italian class in person only. Corda says that he sees higher test scores among students who opt for his hybrid classes. Corda has completed ASSETT's Hybrid and Online Design Seminar and ASSETT's Teaching with Technology Seminar. He has received an ASSETT Development Award.

Ethnic Studies Instructor Jenny Withycombe Presents her Transition to Hybrid Teaching at the 2015 ASSETT Teaching with Tech Symposium

Instructor Jenny Withycombe of the Ethnic Studies Department also presented at the ASSETT Symposium this year. She also talked about her experience converting her traditionally formatted Ethnic Studies class to a hybrid model. Withycombe gives her students an option about whether to continue in the traditional in person classroom or to watch her lectures online and come to recitations in person. Withycombe has completed ASSETT's Hybrid and Online Design Seminar.

Sociology GPTI Joshua LePree Presented TweetBeam at the ASSETT Teaching with Tech Symposium

Also, Sociology Graduate Part Time Instructor Joshua LePree presented at the 2015 ASSETT Symposium. LePree talked about his implementation of Twitter and TweetBeam to support online discussions in the courses he teaches. Similar to Corda's idea of continuing conversations between students outside the classroom, LePree asks students to post pertinent articles on Twitter about topics they're learning about in class throughout the week. Students read and Reply to one another's Tweets. LePree's incorporation of technology into student discussions and homework has been well received. Students have nominated LePree for ASSETT's Excellence in Teaching with Technology Awards in multiple semesters.

The 2015 ASSETT Teaching with Technology Symposium enjoyed a successful turnout. Participating faculty and instructors from the Libraries engaged in discussions about the latest trends in digital agency and pedagogy.

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Gladstone's Digital Commons in Wordpress Supports Students' Engagement with Texts

Anonymous — Wed, 06 May 2015 06:00:00 +0000

Gladstone's Digital Commons in Wordpress Supports Students' Engagement with Texts Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/06/2015 - 00:00

��ý�Ļ��Ʒ Department of English Instructor Jason Gladstone enrolled in ASSETT's Spring 2015 Teaching with Technology Seminar to learn how to better support his students' engagement with texts in their Contemporary Environmental Literature and Media course. Gladstone created a Digital Commons space in Wordpress for his students to explicate various texts, and examine them more critically.

[soundcloud width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/298660543&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false"][/soundcloud]

Teaching and Learning Challenge

Problem. One of the major aims of an environmental literature course is for students to learn how different types of texts and media engage with a range of environmental concerns. An immediate goal of such a course is to introduce a range of such engagements to students. A longer term goal of such a course is to provide students with the capacity to assess such engagements outside of the classroom--in other words, to provide students with the capacity to ascertain how texts and media they encounter, “in the real world,” engage with specific environments and particular environmental concerns.

Accordingly, one of the key things an environmental literature course can do is to facilitate student’s active engagement in and collaborative responsibility for establishing, producing, and making use of the environmental contexts for the texts and media they encounter in the class. The “problem” I decided to take on in this ASSETT seminar was to think about how I could use technology to accomplish this goal.

The components of this problem are as follows:

Students search for information related to course texts/media.
Students compile and curate information related to course texts/media.
Students engage with information related to course texts/media.
Students engage with one another in relation to information on course texts/media.
Students build and share archive of information on course texts/media.

Plans for Implementation

Implementation. The particular course type I decided to design a solution for is a 3000 or 4000 level topics course in English. It would most likely be focused on “Contemporary Environmental Literature and Media” and would feature an enrollment from 2040 students. I will be using WordPress to produce a “digital commons” for the course. This digital commons will be an actively maintained online archive of student-produced “environmental contexts” for a set of the assigned course texts and media. I anticipate that the commons will be organized into three levels: (1) a single “commons” for the course consisting of links to (2) individual “sites” dedicated to the environmental contexts of individual course texts and/or media. Each of these sites will consist of (3) areas organized according either to the kind of information provided (i.e. historical, landuse, biographical, etc) or to the specific mediatype of the information (i.e. video, audio, text, organizational site, etc.). These areas will also include spaces for student annotations of the information they compile, and student conversation and about the compiled information.

Indicators of Success

Assessment Structure. In order to assess student participation in the production of the course’s digital commons, I plan to incorporate that participation into the assessment structure of the course. At the start of the semester students will be assigned groups, and each group will be assigned to a particular course text. Each group will then be responsible for building, maintaining, and presenting a site for their assigned text. The graded components of this assignment will have three parts (each designed to assess a different component of the problem).

In order to assess individual students' active engagement in establishing an environmental context for the course, each individual student will be responsible for uploading and/or linking to a designated number of sources (13?). Students will also be responsible for annotating and/or presenting these sources on their site.
In order to assess students collaborative responsibility in maintaining an environmental context, each student group will be required to present their site to the entire class during a designated class session. Ideally, these presentations will occur before the class sessions dedicated to a particular text.
In order to assess individual students ability to use the contexts they have generated, each individual student will be required to draw on the course’s “digital commons” to produce a final inquiry-based paper or project for the course.

Indicators. In order to assess whether or not the above problem has been addressed by my implementation of technology, I will need to work out a way of measuring students’ active engagement in and collaborative responsibility for establishing, maintaining, and using the environmental contexts for the course. In order to do so, I will need to:

Monitor and assess students searching, compiling, and curating of information related to course texts/media.
Monitor and assess students collaboration and interaction with each other in relation to the compilation and curation of information related to course texts/media.
Monitor and assess students' use of compiled and curated information in both in class conversations and out-of-class inquiry-based projects.

Overall, then, I will need to find ways of measuring and assessing the development of students’ dispositions towards and capacities to generate the environmental contexts for texts and media.

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Upping Conversational Interactions Through Twitter In Simonson's Communication Course

Anonymous — Wed, 06 May 2015 06:00:00 +0000

Upping Conversational Interactions Through Twitter In Simonson's Communication Course Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/06/2015 - 00:00

The Department of Communication and Media Studies's Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies Peter Simonson attended ASSETT's Teaching with Technology Seminar this past spring. Simonson designed an eight week conversation module across an online “civic commons” through D2L and a Wordpress site. He encouraged student engagement with Twitter conversations about the issues they had chosen to investigate.

[soundcloud width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/298660869&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false"][/soundcloud]

Teaching and Learning Challenge

The larger problem I am facing is how to design a 200‐person first‐year lecture/lab course on the topic of Conversation in a way that stimulates student engagement, teaches basic concepts, provides opportunity for the development of communication skills and doesn’t put too much strain on the five graduate teaching assistants in charge of the 19‐person lab sections. The core skills are tied to conversational practices of speaking, listening, and embodied interaction as well as critical thinking and basic argumentation; but the course opens out toward multiple media as both stimulants of conversation and channels through which it occurs publicly and in social networks. I want students to engage in conversation across media and internalize the “big idea” that communication helps to create the social worlds we live in and through. The course is one of four 8‐week modules that first‐year students will take‐‐the others being Storytelling, Images, and Information.

Plans for Implementation

Overall, I am looking to improve students’ abilities to: (1) recognize that discourse presented through news, social media, scholarly publications, face‐to‐face talk, and other forms of cultural expression are part of longer and wider conversations about issues marked by differing perspectives that have a history/unfold over time; (2) consider how that conversation is differently advanced across different media; (3) engage in that conversation themselves in ways that skillfully, intelligently, and ethically recognize issues, audiences, situations, and communication forms; (4) critically reflect on their engagements making use of key concepts for the course and with an eye toward what makes for a vibrant and diverse participatory democracy.

These interrelated goals point to a pedagogical problem insofar as students: often do not connect what they read or experience as audience members and what they say or write as communicators to larger social discourses; often do not fully recognize varied and competing perspectives on issues or the ways they can be expressed through affordances of different media and communication forms; and often do not participate in them as skilfully or reflectively as they might.

Indicators of Success

I’ll gauge whether students have made progress in achieving these outcomes through a eight‐week summative project in the course. Here are the main parts of the assignment:

Find an issue of contemporary concern that people are addressing in the news, through social media, and/or through other public media like music, film, or performance. (Goal: stretch yourself out and find an issue through which you might teach your classmates something and raise consciousness).
Investigate the issue, and chart key differences of perspective and opinion on it. (Goal: combine wide online search with thinking and talking about the issue to discover multiple ways of looking at it, experiencing it, and making arguments about it.)
Educate yourself on the issue, ask questions, explore how you feel about different aspects of it, and develop your own positions on it.
Find organizations that are dedicated to addressing the issue and bringing about social change through action, policy, and/or public opinion.
Participate in conversations that take place face-to-face conversations and through Twitter and other media as a way of investigating the issue, clarifying your views, and engaging with democratic publics.
Write an artful 1,500 word essay that draws attention to differing perspectives on the issue, helps readers to learn more about it, takes a stand, and potentially moves others to adopt your position and bring their beliefs or actions into line with it. The top two essays from each lab will be posted on the public website for Concepts and Creativity and earn extra credit for members of the Conversation Groups that the authors belong to.
Share the essay with members of your lab section and take part in a discussion led by another member of the class.
Reflect on the assignment in a 500 word essay that applies key concepts from the course to interpret your work as an effort to shape social reality through communication.

The summative project for the course will take place over the entire 8‐week Conversation module across both an online “civic commons” (formed through D2L and a Wordpress site) and through face‐to‐face meetings in lecture and labs. For the purposes of this post, I will focus on one dimension of it: student engagement with Twitter conversations about the issue they have chosen to investigate (#5 above). It is one of several ways to address the larger problem of students needing to recognize how public conversations about social issues cut across media and face‐to‐face talk; and unfold through particular turns/moments of participation that are variably intelligent, skillful, appropriate to the forum/occasion, and respectful of others.

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