Category Archives: Write6x6

Please Don’t Listen To Me!

What would you love to be able to do to improve yourself in relation to your job or to change your job? What are your dreams for improving your job, work/life balance and/or efficiency in your work?

What a question! Glad I’m not in an interview and this is my question!

My dream would be that the students all did their part. I feel very confident that if every one of my students did the homework all the time and asked question when uncertain and came to class always that very very few of them would not pass. We spend so much time and effort on talking about, researching, experimenting, dreaming up, new ways to teach and explain material and structuring curriculum and and and, but our student success rates change only slightly. When I begin a semester and I’m talking with the students the first day, it reminds me of the comic routine “Bill Cosby Himself”. It was a standup routine he did years ago. One of the stories he brings up is the kids “night” routine. He states that if the kids would just mind Mom there wouldn’t need to be any “beatings” tonight. If any of you have never seen this, you must. I’ve never laughed so hard in my life. I feel this way at the start of every semester. “If you students would just follow my advice you wouldn’t have to take me, again!”

 

Dream on…

Yes, we are singing again and again (you probably missed the second one because it is on another blog!).

Dream until your dreams come true…and you get to do some cool things on campus with your colleagues.

Yeah, so that one was a bit off melody! 😉 No disrespect!

I am not going to write about my dreams. Nope. I won’t be writing about lofty dreams of peace, or the elimination of poverty, or even meal times that don’t include my kids complaining about “vegetables again.” I am not going to do that. That discussion is worthwhile, but that is not what Steven is telling me to write about, and right now, I’m listening to Steven.

Dream until your dreams come true. In other words, don’t give up (thanks for that translation, Captain Obvious!). We can talk all day about how cool it would be to have virtual reality glasses in every classroom, or give every new student a brand new laptop when they enroll, or how great it would be if faculty members from all corners of campus regularly attended workshops in the CTLE, but we can’t go that big all the time. Don’t get me wrong, those are fun conversations to have, and sometimes they are useful or necessary; however, they tend to lead no where because often no first step is taken.

Really BIG first steps are scary. So are chocolate covered sardines.

source

Both happen. We may not know how, and we may not know why, and sometimes we may not like it, but sometimes BIG dreams do come true. And the coolest thing about it is that those big dreams come true the same way those “regular” dreams come true: take the first step. It doesn’t have to be a big step just because it is a big dream, it just has to be a step. We just have to work towards those goals one step at a time; we just have to dream on.

 

 

Everything Is Assessment

     True/False quiz. Final exam. Furrowed brow. Essay test. Ticket out the door. Socrative. Questions posed to students. Body language. Summary of lesson learned. Poll Everywhere. Reflection. Leaning in to see what a student has written. Conversation. An assignment. In class activities. A math problem. Writing a sentence. Types of questions asked in class. KWL. A team competition. Canvas course analytics. Research papers. Listening to students in groups. Student presentations. Quiz at end of class. Midterm exams. Benchmark tests. Observation. Self assessment. Think pair share. Clearest point, muddiest point. Projects. Conversation right after class. Office hours. Thumbs up, down, or sideways. Ranking from 1-5. Clarifying questions. Socrative discussion. 3-2-1. Conferencing.

 

MEAGs & Innovation of the Year

This week’s writing ideas for Write 6×6 center around how we as members of the college community have worked to improve student learning or ways we improve our own work with students or colleagues.

A nomination for the Innovation of the Year award was submitted for the Maricopa Engineering Advising Guides. An official announcement should be out next week to learn how our nomination fared.

Maricopa Engineering Advising Guides

During and after the great recession, I got more serious about my role in advisement and how to better help students looking for secure and meaningful careers.  I made an intentional choice to improve STEM advising because I researched and learned the increasing need for a modern workforce well versed in science, technology, engineering and Mathematics. It was important to me that our students had the best possible advising to aid their success in achieving jobs that would sustain them in the future.

One of the better ways I knew to magnify the quality and quantity of advisement was to streamline advising for engineering students. Engineering pathways are among the most complex and lengthy educational paths our students navigate. Mistakes, which are frequent, cost students and advisors time and money. Trust me when I tell you how much time it used to take to get it right.  Advisors had to use multiple source documents to provide accurate information and that took time and lots of print outs.

Building on the work of Paula Cheslik, GCC Engineering Faculty who had information sheets that showed students how their GCC classes transfer to ASU, I built a 2-page “Advising Guide” that efficiently combined four distinct source documents into one. Enhancements included information on course sequences, prerequisites, GPA requirements, and options for concentrations that maximize transfer success and keeping students on track to graduate.

The guides were used at GCC, reviewed by a host of people, and refined for three years before launching them Districtwide this past summer with the help from faculty and staff. Now every engineering student at any of the Maricopa Community Colleges has a guide they and their advisor may use with consistently accurate information. The companion “Tips for Success If You Want to Be an Engineer” helps students as early as high school be informed and ready for our engineering pipeline to ASU.

Hooray! I feel really good about creating a new, highly- beneficial resource with help from a diverse group of dedicated individuals committed to student success. Special thanks to all those who took time to be involved improving and implementing the guides and resources, especially Paula Cheslik, Bassam Matar, Dr. Karen Conzelman, Dr. Ibrahim Naim, Kathy Silberman and Jay Franzen.

You can view the Maricopa Engineering Advising Guides here!

 

Filed under: STEAM Tagged: Assessment, Write 6X6

 

Evaluation Plan for Faculty Can Be Fun. Really.

© Laura Strickland/MyCuteGraphics.com

So I’m a member of the Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) committee again this year. As a member of this committee, I have agreed to be a mentor for a probational faculty member that needs to comply with the RFP requirements. When I heard about these new requirements for probationary faculty, my first thought was, thank goodness I’m not probationary. I don’t want to have any part of that. Well, it turns out no one can really escape PAR. Even us old residential faculty, as all the newbies are required to have mentors. And with so many new faculty, pretty much everyone who is not new is a mentor.

The Maricopa Community College District implemented this new peer assistance and review model (PAR) for probationary faculty about 4 years ago. Faculty are considered probationary for 5 years. Under this new model, probationary faculty are assigned a residential faculty mentor to help guide them through the process to becoming residential (tenured). As part of the PAR, probationary faculty have the opportunity to document their professional growth, mentor evaluation, administrative evaluations, and student evaluations in a Google Sites template.

I actually ended up with two pretty awesome mentees. Both are excellent teachers and fun to work with. The best part is they make being a mentor fairly easy. I’m going to share my recent evaluation of one although evaluation isn’t quite the right word. It was more of an observation with feedback. Evaluation indicates the making of a judgment about the value of something; assessment. I’d like to believe all teaching has value, and it’s really not up to me to judge someone’s value or their teaching. I like to observe and then give feedback. Lucky for me what I’ve observed has always been inspiring.

Recently I sat in on an after class review session and the room was full. My first observation was how does that happen. Students stick around for a study session after class? The whole class was engaged. They were divided into groups of 2-4 and it appeared that they each had an assigned topic to cover. As the instructor called on each group, students were prepared with their information. Some reading from notes or slides; others reciting information from memory. My mentee was encouraging and peppered the whole class and group members with questions. Students volunteered answered. Whether they were correct or incorrect, they each received the same kind feedback that the answer was correct or incorrect. It didn’t seem punitive if the answer was not correct. Someone else was just called on to provide a different answer. The whole session was positive and encouraging. I was inspired, and I wasn’t even a student in the class.

It’s really good to see good teaching, but the best part is there is no one way about it. Every instructor brings her own touch to the classroom, and we can all learn by observing how others get the job done. Turns out that this whole PAR thing might not be such a bad thing after all.

 

Don’t Forget the Good Ones!

A coworker referred her neighbor to my swim class and I learned something from the experience that I should already know, but apparently I had been slacking on.

If someone does something correctly and they do not need corrective feedback, they still need feedback.

The neighbor, as it turns out, is an awesome swimmer.

In a class of 12 swimmers, it is impossible to have eyes on everyone at all times, so generally, the ones that need the most help are going to get the help first, and the ones who can swim well are given more trust to take direction and practice the skill.

My coworker reported that her neighbor didn’t think she was doing very well in my class, as I had not given her much feedback.

The light bulb went on. Awesome swimmers don’t know they are awesome swimmers unless you tell them they are awesome and then tell them EXACTLY why they are awesome.

Ever since that learning experience, I have been practicing my feedback skills with the highly skilled individuals. One technique I have found very helpful is to have them demonstrate a skill for their peers. It is such an ego boost for the student to be the role model for the group.

Assessment and evaluation is a continuous process. It does not just happen at finite points in the semester. It is a process that is woven throughout the length of the course, and every student should feel the drive to improve in relation to their own level of success.

So, in our efforts to help the beginners, we also must boost the experts.

 

Assessment

Assessment is tricky business. There are so many different options to use in trying to assess how much the students have learned. And I just have to say, that grading is not one of the favorite parts of being an instructor. I have been teaching for a long time. I have tried several different ways to assess the students in my courses. What I have found to have made the biggest impact on their learning of, and retention of, mathematics, has not been my change in how I assess, but how often I assess. It isn’t unusual, in mathematics, to have your pass rate fall within the (50-60)% range. After having assessed basically at the end of chapters, 16 years ago I switched to assessing every week in many of the courses I teach. These are major assessments not just little quizzes. After this change I noticed a pass rate that was 20 to 35 percentage points higher than before. Here is an example, my college algebra course went from 55% to 80% pass rates on average with just this simple change. I’ve tried collecting Homework, daily quizzes, collaborative activities, large group projects, working at the board, etc. and none of those had the impact that this did. The biggest change wasn’t necessarily that the students were learning more but that more students were learning. The big change I saw was that the withdraw rate went from around 40% to 10%. I don’t know if this will happen in every subject or every different course within a subject area but I have seen it work for all of the courses I teach (intermediate algebra, college algebra, pre-calculus, and calculus 1 2 and 3). Give it a try if you haven’t ever.

 

Life Lesson

Way back when, half a lifetime ago when I worked in a lab, I learned the lesson of follow through. Or to be more exact, I learned the consequences of not following through. Let me clear up your confusion by sharing some back history.

My mother and most of my family go to a doctor in my little hometown, I will call him Dr. Big Stuff.  I never cared for Dr. Big Stuff, I just couldn’t relate or talk to him, ever.  I think it’s important to be comfortable with and able to talk with your doctor, to share intimate details about yourself. Not going happen with Dr. BS.  I was a young adult when I realized I didn’t have to see him, I could choose to see someone else, which is what I did.  Dr. BS discovered this fact one day and he was never nice to me again, not that he ever was in the first place.  I worked in the local hospital and had many occasions to interact with him.  He treated me with barely veiled contempt.  Whatever.  The fact that my Mom and family were his patients didn’t give me a pass.  Nope, I had rejected him, HIM, and deserved his contempt.  Again, whatever.

One day I received a call from his office nurse who phoned in a lab order for one of his patients.  I quickly jotted it down, and instead of going to the front office and filing the order, I shoved the paper in my pocket, I would do it later.  Procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate.  I was a procrastinator from way back.  To be fair, I wasn’t such a procrastinator anymore and was very busy, running my fanny off that day, but I should have filed it right then and there.  I didn’t.

Back in the day we wore paper lab coats and they got gross, covered in all manner of body fluids.  Can you say DNA?  The following day I was wearing my shiny new, clean lab coat, going about my business when it hit me.  I remembered the lab order from Dr. BS that I had shoved in my pocket and neglected to file.  It was gone, still in the pocket of the lab coat I threw in the biohazard trash at the end of my shift.  Horror!  I struggled to remember the patient name and orders, but of course, that was also gone.  Nothing for it but to suck it up and phone his office to beg Sue (his nurse) to forgive me, pull the chart, and repeat the order.  It really was no biggie, not really.  So who do you suppose answered the phone when I called the office?  Why, Dr. Big Stuff, of course.  And heaven only knows why, I still question it to this day, but he was delighted to hear from me!  He was so pleasant and kind, downright cheery. Until I confessed my sin of not following through and throwing away his lab order. His voice got really flat and he handed me off to Sue as quickly as possible.  I know my face was burning with shame.  Seriously?  It was not a big deal, not really, an honest mistake, but it was a big deal to me.

What is it about shame that teaches us (me, for sure) some very valuable life lessons?  I need to search psychology books on this phenomenon, it’s kind of fascinating to me.  I swore that day to always follow through and try my very best to complete a task as accurately and quickly as possible.  And for the most part, I do a decent job with follow through.  When asked about qualities I consider most valuable in colleagues, I always reply with the practice of follow through, it’s right up there for me.  It tells me that my request and time is important, that the person who follows through cares about me and my needs.  Or the needs of our students and colleagues.

I learned a painful lesson that day, but it has stuck with me through all of these years.  I am grateful to Dr. Big Stuff.  He was a player in an interesting chain of events that reinforced a quality I hold most dear.  Our relationship has mellowed over the years and grown to one of mutual respect.  I email him for news of my mom’s health, and he always follows through, replying to me very quickly.  Thank you, Dr. BS, I appreciate you and all you do for my mom.  Thank you for teaching me this valuable life lesson.

 

Have You Filled a Bucket Today?

It is simple to say, “Be kind.” It takes more work to apply it. It takes even more work to synthesize it (Right, CRE Learning Community Colleague Sherry? I’m bringing in my Bloom’s here.). One way I think about crafting my skill of kindness is to think of myself, thanks to Carol McCloud’s work and my first grader, as either a bucket filler or a bucket dipper. A bucket filler is a person who practices kindness by proverbially filling people’s emotional buckets. The best way to fill a bucket is by being kind. Listen. Give a compliment. Show gratitude. Of course, the yang to this cheery yin is the gloomy bucket dipper. A bucket dipper is someone who empties other people’s buckets by saying or doing cruel things.

A moment of authentic kindness functions as a salve to soothe emotional shards of absolute grief, frustration, sadness, desolation. Despite this, research shows that our brains pack boxes of negative memories and associations, because of their impact, for safe-keeping more frequently than those that are positive. I believe that seconds of genuine kindness can reverberate, sink in, sponge through the bones eventually attaching themselves to our long term memory, and begin to overlap or push over and supersede the negative.

At the end of the day, we are in the work of helping people and doing what is best for students. When you have the choice to fill or dip, I hope you decide to fill and pass it on.

 

Video Investigations as Assessment

Photo by Cheryl Colan

Sian (left) and Merry (right) at SCC Tech Talks 2017

On January 27, I attended TechTalks at SCC and watched Geology faculty Sian Proctor and Merry Wilson present their talk Video Investigations: Students Presenting Their Understanding of Our World. From their abstract (scroll down the linked page a bit to read it in full):

Video investigations are a unique way of having students demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of complex topics and establish accountability in an online learning environment.

I love this idea for assessment in an online class. Merry assigns 4 video investigations per semester, while Sian assigns them weekly. Their students:

  • receive specific guidelines for each assigned video investigation
  • see an example video made by the instructor
  • get a link to the free Screencast-O-Matic.com
  • do not need to be given instructions on how to make a screencast – they figure it out on their own
  • create 1- to 5-minute videos to show knowledge, demonstrate mastery or reflect on course topics
  • embed their videos into Canvas Discussions to share with the rest of their class

Photo of presentation slide on the Design of Video Investigations

Sian and Merry had some goals in mind when they designed the video investigation assignment. One goal was having a way to be sure the students were actually the ones submitting the work in an online environment. A video submission goes beyond plagiarism detection via Turnitin, because you are hearing the student’s own voice, and possibly even seeing the student via webcam. Another goal was to cut down on grading time. You can grade a 5-minute video in 5 to 10 minutes, depending on how much feedback you write per student. Other goals included increasing student engagement and learning retention.

Being top-notch scientists, Sian and Merry gathered data about their students before and after introducing video investigations into the courses they teach. If my memory is accurate, they found students tend to report they enjoyed the topics where video investigations were assigned more than the topics that did not involve a video investigation. Students also felt more of a sense of community, because they saw and heard each others’ faces and voices as they shared their videos. The process of creating video also built up the students’ information literacy skills over the course of the semester.

Photo of presentation slide on Engagement and Literacy

I’ve used video in the classroom as a student and as an adjunct, and I can confirm that having students produce short videos is an excellent learning and engagement tool. If you would like to learn more, reach out to Sian and Merry, or contact me in the Center for Teaching, Learning and Engagement for more information.