Month: December 2019

Thinking

Reading for Restoration

Missy Alexander

Final exams are over.  Students have returned to families and work.  Faculty are turning in final grades and most are taking a minute to exhale as we complete the fall semester.  It always feels like a mad dash to the finish line, no matter how carefully we plan.  I suspect it is built into the very notion of end points in learning.  They are necessarily artificial, so they are always a little disconcerting. But, hooray, we’ve made it through another fall.

For administrators, the punctuation is a little different.  Our vacations do not necessarily align with the semester breaks, and no one understands what we do all summer (lots, but that is for another day).  We don’t have exams to grade (hard work, to be sure), nor do we have the elation that comes after they have been completed. For me, the middle of the academic year generally brings a moment of horror as I realize the number of  projects on my to-do list that are nowhere near done.  There are policy projects, accreditation projects, record keeping projects, software implementation projects, and the ever-present pressure to insure that our efforts at supporting students are working.  Sometimes December just feels like a moment for panic.

Despite that panic, the end of the fall semester does allow for a moment of reflection and re-evaluation of my goals.  I will take a look at that to-do list and take advantage of the opportunity to delete a few goals, restructure some others, and then enjoy a few days of uninterrupted efforts to complete the parts that I can do alone.  Yes, with most folks off campus for three weeks, I have fewer meetings and more time for sustained reading and writing.

But first, I will pause.  I might not have the whole mid-semester break, but I will depart for some quality rest and relaxation. It is time for a vacation during which I will mostly just sit still and read.  Some of the reading will be about education, some will be fiction, all will be in a lounge chair by the pool, beach, or on the balcony of my vacation rental.  And all of it will be restorative.

I have been thinking about reading lately, mostly because it is so hard to get sustained reading done during my general workflow.  Like students and faculty, I am immersed in deadlines, email, meetings, and desperate efforts to stay informed of daily crises or breakthroughs in my field. My inbox is continuously filled with updates about higher education, ads for new technologies to help me do things more efficiently (ha!), and reminders to follow up on ideas, requests, or new initiatives.  By the time I go home each night, I find my mind ready for a relaxing British police procedural and reading gets pushed aside.

When I go on vacation, I suddenly find myself with the capacity to read.  When I first get started, I actually feel my body relax.  I have logged off and given myself over to the book in front of me. Distractions are gone and so is the stress of trying to keep up.  There is no deadline for this book, just the pleasure of the journey.

It is interesting to observe that it doesn’t matter if I am reading about education or just enjoying a novel, the effect is the same.  I feel restored and even inspired.  When not trying to keep up with the everything-ness of daily life, ideas have time to emerge.  Some might be about the human interactions that are best revealed in novels. Others might be about learning or teaching, that arise from recent scholarship in higher education.  I enjoy the opportunity to let the ideas wash over me. With more than a day to consider them, the ideas might even have time to develop into plans.

We should never underestimate the value of the pauses that we have built into our education systems.  They are not simply vacations, they are the space to heal, settle our minds, and bring back new perspectives and attitudes to all that we do.  And, we should not forget the difference between reading for survival and currency, versus reading for inspiration and reflection.  The latter requires the unscheduled blocks of time that our breaks allow.

Of course, observing that means I’m already thinking about how we build more blocks of time into our regular lives, not just during breaks.  After all, I would like to support more inspiration and reflection. But for now, I’m letting it all go and focusing on selecting books to take on my holiday.  I’ll work on new ideas later.  So, happy holidays, happy vacations, and congratulations on completing another term.  I wish you all a restorative break. See you in 2020.

Growth Mindset, Innovative Pedagogies

Grades?

Missy Alexander

Last week I offered a perspective on student evaluations of teaching.  To summarize, I was advocating for a much more collaborative and developmental approach than the usual bubble forms support.  This week, I would like to suggest that a similar re-thinking of our goals should take place around the topic of grading.  Let me be transparent from the start: I would like to see us give up the letter grades that have been designed for ranking students and replace them with a much more developmental approach.

Years ago, my husband and I sent our children to a high school with no grades.  After having attended a traditional (and small) public school from kindergarten through eighth grade, they moved to a small private high school full of progressive learning strategies.  For my eldest, this was an easy switch.  Alex moved from a student who earned As and Bs, to a student who asked lots of questions, argued perspectives, struggled to be a better writer, and thirsted for understanding.  The small seminars were perfect for this kind of learner and Alex thrived.

For my second child, the adjustment was more complicated. Michael was not a student who thrived in the traditional structure and the same was true in the new structure.  However, the narrative evaluations that took the place of the summaries of the A, B, C grading system, helped to identify some patterns of learning that were covered up with simple grades.  For this, the switch was a benefit, even if Michael did not love the learning the way Alex did.

At the time that this was going on, I asked my students about the idea of abandoning grades in favor of narratives.  Their response: “How will you know who is best?”  Well, there it was, as clear as could be, grades are about ranking not learning. I assured them that it was very easy to determine who was best at working with the material we were discussing, but I was not sure what the value of that knowledge was to supporting learning.  I’m still not.

So, as my faculty are reading papers, administering final exams, and trying to sum up their students’ work in simple letter grades that are effective for ranking but not necessarily for learning, I am suggesting we just stop it.  Here is what I propose instead:

  1. This student has demonstrated sufficient understanding of the content of this course to warrant the awarding of credit and proceeding to a related topic at a more advanced level.
  2. This student has demonstrated sufficient understanding of the content of this course to warrant the awarding of credit and proceeding to a related topic at the same level.
  3. This student has not yet demonstrated sufficient understanding of the content of this course to warrant the awarding of credit.

Instead of ranking students, these categories will simply facilitate progress through the undergraduate experience. We will not lose any of the rigor we currently expect; indeed, it might encourage greater integrity in the evaluation. Instead of suggesting that a D represents learning of any kind, (I’m pretty sure it just means the student attended class), the focus is on the future.  Faculty will determine a student’s capacity to participate fully and successfully in subsequent courses.

Arriving at these non-grades still involves lots of evaluation of students.  Just like in the current system, it would be best if there were many assessments on which to base this decision.  Regular feedback is an important part of nurturing learning, and that work never gets easier. However, with this system, students are incentivized to keep trying, even when they are struggling.  With grades, a few early missteps and low scores can drive a student to withdraw, or worse, give up trying.  They see the low scores as holes they cannot dig themselves out of, and they are right.  Even if they do well later, those scores will be part of their final grades. Their ranks (GPAs) will reflect the struggle more than the learning.

In the system I have proposed, the process of learning does not penalize students for struggling. In other words, if students arrive at aha moments mid-semester and start to thrive, they will not be bogged down by earlier scores.  Indeed, the changes in understanding may actually reflect the capacity to learn in ways that are more predictive of success than the “good” grades ever were. It is a truly developmental approach to assessment.

Of course, this opens the door to all sorts of next questions about time, progress to degree completion, the notion of credits, and so on.  In addition, our culture is so devoted to ranking that this will probably never fly.  Still, for just a minute, I would love for all of us to think about learning instead.  Wouldn’t that be more fun?  I’m pretty sure it would be more productive for students and faculty alike.

 

 

Agency, Evaluation, Innovative Pedagogies

Reflection vs. Evaluation

Missy Alexander

Well, it is December and we are racing toward the end of the semester. As students complete term papers, prepare for final exams or presentations or performances, faculty are making room in the schedule for teaching evaluations.  These evaluations are generally short questionnaires that ask students to give an assessment of the effectiveness of the teaching they just experienced. It is an opportunity to give feedback, which is to the good, but most are constructed in a way suggests expertise where it does not exist (students are not instructional designers, nor will they have depth of knowledge of the discipline), and there is well-documented evidence that they reflect cultural biases throughout.  So, why do them at all?  Good question.

As currently constructed at my university (and at all of the universities where I have taught), there is little value in this exercise.  We have made the whole process about evaluation instead of about learning.  We have also cast our students as consumers, who then provide ratings (stars?) of our work, without really helping them reflect on their learning. What if we reimagined teaching evaluations as course reflections? Instead of using them to tally the effectiveness of a faculty member, they could become a mechanism for collaborative course construction. Instead of seeking an ill-informed critique, we could invite our students to share what they’ve learned from us and give us suggestions for future iterations of the course.

Here’s what it might look like.

Dear Students,

At the end of each semester, I gather information about your experiences in my classes so that I can get a better understanding of what is working well and what new ideas I should explore. Please take a few minutes to reflect on what you have learned in this class and then answer the questions below thoughtfully and honestly.

  1. What was the most interesting or most important thing you learned in this class?  

Why?

    • It provided a foundation for this or another class that I will take.
    • It connected to important topics beyond this course.
    • It helped me see things from a perspective other than my own.
    • Other (please explain).
  1. What was the least interesting or least important thing you learned in this class?

Why?

    • It was too foundational/I’ve encountered it in several other classes.
    • It seemed like a tangent that was not relevant to the class.
    • Other (please explain).
  1. Considering the course overall, were there ideas or assignments that you think will help you succeed in other classes at the university? Please explain your answer.
  2. Considering all opportunities for feedback on your understanding of the material (tests, quizzes, presentations, papers, group work, etc.), which did you find most helpful? Please explain your answer.
  3. Is there an opportunity for feedback on your work that you would like to see added to this course?
  4. Considering things like grading criteria, timing of assignments, or overall organization, do you have any suggestions that you think might improve this course?
  5. Do you have any additional comments that I should consider?

Thank you for your feedback and good luck in your studies.

What I like about this structure is that it invites students to participate in the evolution of the course, instead of asking for some kind of score for performance. By using the first person in the opening paragraph, the faculty are given agency, suggesting that they are fully committed to this dialogue with their students.  It also suggests that students are speaking directly to that faculty member, not some unknown administrator who will then evaluate the professor. 

Moving in this direction, faculty can use the information to learn how students are experiencing their teaching and respond as they deem appropriate.  For example, maybe the thing that students identified as unimportant, was in fact very important.  Perhaps some reframing needs to take place.  Or, maybe several students felt the need for a presentation to be included in the course.  Digging into why would be a good next step.  No doubt some students will ask for extra credit. If the answer is no, then being clear about why not might be a good thing to discuss in the next class.

I also like that this is a disaster for quantitative summaries.  While the current scales from 1 to 5 may be helpful for creating graphs and charts, and they do provide some sense of the instruction in terms of extremes (outside of university norms), in reality they do next to nothing for teaching.  Mostly, they inspire defensiveness. I’m not worried about losing those statistical summaries, because the extremes are easily captured in the syllabi, sample assignments, and peer observations. I’d rather cultivate the reflective practice that this qualitative approach implies.

As one of the people who reads faculty portfolios in their applications for tenure, I am most interested in seeing how faculty respond to student feedback. The most compelling thing that can be included in any tenure packet is a narrative about how one’s teaching has evolved and why.  Evidence of change over time should include sample complaints and sample praise found in these course reflections. If the examples are followed by explanations of how things changed as a result, then I feel confident that I will know enough to fairly review the candidate. I will also know that I have a professor devoted to good teaching.

Let’s drop the ratings model and focus on learning about our teaching. Let’s try to foster an environment where we take student voices to heart, without ceding our expertise.  Let’s listen carefully to concerns and ideas, and work to grow in our profession. Let’s be reflective educators.