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Week 13 had a more traditional feel to it. We decided that the content lent itself to more open discussion (e.g., imposter syndrome) and some engaged lecture (e.g., Thank-a-Prof data). And of course, we did some personal reflection and planning (e.g., assessment plan). These methods also aligned well with the learning objectives that day.

The use of PowerPoint in this class is limited to when we feel it can best further your learning. The beginning of today’s class involved quite a bit of new information for you that you may not have known about. This was a first-exposure to information about Thank-a-Prof, the SEIs, UCAT services, etc. It can be helpful for students to organize and prioritize this new information through visual representation and in this class it was with PowerPoint slides. We included slides that would help you visualize a concept such as the SEI question themes or the Thank-a-Prof table.

The Assessment Plan activity served 2 purposes. It was an example of an organizing matrix as described in Classroom Assessment Techniques by Angelo & Cross. With so much information being discussed and shared, students need a way to organize their thoughts and see patterns across topics. The matrix provides one tool to do this. The activity also provided an opportunity for you to jump start your next assignment. The Professional Development Plan asks you to incorporate the information in your matrix into the larger framework of professional development. It can be helpful for students to start a project or assignment in class, in the presence of the teacher and their peers, so they feel more confident in the direction it is taking.

As always, we plan very carefully for each class (goals, activities, non-content content, etc.) Pick one thing that we “did” today that you would like to reflect upon.

1. Identify one thing you’d like to focus on from today (you do not have to list out details).
2. Analyze why we did it that way.
3. Identify how it directly speaks to the content we read for class (examples from the readings, themes, etc.).
4. After these 3 questions are answered, then move on to what take-aways  you have from the class session – what would you like to implement in your own classes.

There are many things that you may want to reflect upon this week, particularly since there are really 2 weeks of material (weeks 11 and 12). Pick 1 (or 2 if you desire) things to focus on from each week (this week and last), and as you do that, make sure you do each of these:

1. Deconstruct what we did in class (think about it from a teacher’s perspective, not just from your student perspective).
2. Analyze why we did it that way.
3. Identify how it directly speaks to the content we read for class.
4. After these 3 questions are answered, then move on to what take-aways  you have from the class session – what would you like to implement in your own classes.

Need some more direction? Looking for examples or inspiration? Forgot what we did last week? Read the Week 10 and 11 Reflection from us! [This is more of a requirement than a suggestion, really.] There are hints embedded throughout that will guide you to some considerations from week 11. And it certainly provides some examples of how to do the first 3 things on the list above. We also encourage you to look through our previous posts/reflections for ideas. Don’t forget to check out your classmates’ previous posts.

Happy reflecting!

We engaged in a variety of discussions and activities over the past 2 weeks. Here are our thoughts on some of them.

Meta-Teaching: Let’s start with the exercise we did at the end of week 10. We asked you to create your own meta-teaching reflection question in pairs. Why did we do this? The goal of the reflections is to allow you space and time to think back on what we did in class each week, however, it seems as though many of you have been struggling to figure out what we actually want in these writings. By asking you to tell us traits of good reflection questions, we would get a better understanding of how you understand the exercise.

All of the example questions you created for that week focused mostly on how you would translate what we did in class for your own course, which is indeed one small aspect of the reflection we want you to do. It was enlightening for us. The exercise is similar to Student-Generated Test Questions. This is an activity or short assignment you can do with your students at any point (usually for no points, but sometimes teachers assign a grade for it). You ask your students to write good test questions for a particular content area. Maybe they write 1 or 2 or sometimes more, write them individually or in pairs, provide the correct answer or not. Lots of options. The purpose is that if a student can write you a good question, they likely understand the answer.

We also changed up the reflection for week 11. Instead of writing questions, we wanted to see if you could come up with good meta-teaching questions orally. We thought we could provide you our reflection immediately in class to help you see what types of things you could be writing about in week 12. The activity didn’t quite go as planned since we ended up letting you discuss a question that was not exactly about meta-teaching. However, it seemed like you needed that space and time to debrief, discuss, and share, so it was still valuable.

In case you were wondering, our answer regarding the main characteristics of a good meta-teaching reflection question are as follows:

1. deconstruct what we did in class
2. analyze why we did it that way
3. identify how it directly speaks to the content we read for class
4. after these 3 questions are answered, then move on to what take-aways do you have from class  – what would you like to implement in your own classes

Teaching Methods: The idea of using the class time as “practice” for meeting objectives is what drives most of how we decide to spend class time. We have been trying to showcase a variety of ways to have students approach a topic in class. If you have co-taught with us lately, you may have noticed that we try to steer us towards activities we have not done up to that point (“We have done a lot of pair work already, so…” “We haven’t done much open discussion yet, so…). It is getting harder to do as the weeks go by!

Week 10: Lang’s sections on the Testing Effect in a previous week have been quite influential. We like the way that he defines learning: Constant input is not learning. Learning happens when students try something, they fail, they get feedback, then they can do it better. Students need opportunities for retrieval of information they read.

This retrieval does not have be constant testing in the formal, summative sense. It can be formative, short, low stakes; it could be acheived in methods such as a small group discussion or application activity. The activity we did on the Google doc was an example of how you can provide an opportunity for students to retrieve information, practice using it, and synthesize large amounts of material. One of the goals of the exercise was for you to practice synthesizing many of the topics we have discussed to date (learning theory, student diversity, etc.). How do they all relate? How do they all intersect with the methods you choose to use in your class?

There are things that worked with this activity, and obviously others that fell short. The point of the activity was met, but perhaps there was too much focus on the specifics of how it played out for you as students trying to apply your knowledge (trying to remember specifics, tech issues). There were several layers to this activity (and all of them that we do in this class): (a) doing the synthesis work as a student, (b) consciously experiencing what it would feel like to your students if you did this kind of activity, (c) reflecting as a teacher on the purposes of the activity itself (the synthesis part we mentioned above) and (d) imagining ways that you could use the larger principles of the teaching method in your own class. That’s a lot of layers that we ask you to wade through. Hence, we have been giving time in class to reflect on all layers through the reflections. We recommend you reflect on this activity from a 10,000 foot perspective – not just as it was experienced as a student. What kinds of activities could you do in your own classes that allow students to practice synthesis?

Week 11: The handout assignment that was due was an example of an authentic assessment – one where there is a real audience (yourselves as current/future faculty) and a real purpose. It is really important to bring those assignments into the classroom in some way, letting everyone discuss or share their work. We did a virtual Gallery Walk. It forces all students to look at a lot of their peers’ work (virtually or in person), focus on a few of them in more depth, and then engage with it in some way, hopefully offering more insights to the student. We have seen teachers do this with end-of-term poster presentations, even last-day-of-class concept maps (as review of material or a closure activity).

We also wanted to demonstrate a technique for problematizing the topics we discuss. Remember in Perry/Nelson/Belenky’s intellectual development model, at some point some students will  learn how to play the game. They have figured out the answers, they know how you want them to answer on the test. We also know that few students ever get to the commitment stage. Additionally, we know that learning isn’t always easy; in order for us to really learn something we need to grapple with it, experience some cognitive dissonance about it, fail at it. One way to give students supportive and low-stakes practice with these learning processes is to problematize a situation. Complicate it, ask students to grapple with it, find alternative solutions. We tried to model this with the “throw a wrench” activity. Which of your content areas could benefit from a “wrench? and why? How can you create a safe learning environment where students will take intellectual risks? Where they can problematize? In other words, how do you get them past the dualistic stage where there is always a right or wrong answer to a place where they have to start believing in the “it depends” kind of answers to life’s questions? Is that possibly one of the great values of higher education – that we give students the tools to deal with the “wrenches” in our disciplines, our lives?

Focusing on what we have done today (e.g. jigsawing), how do you balance time needed with benefits of activity? How have the teaching you have used aligned with today’s examples? How would you use the new ones discovered today in your own class?

Given the content of your course, what new strategies could you see yourself incorporating, and what are some limitations?

What is one way you could implement a single strategy in your class? What is a strategy you have used before that you now have a label for? What have you called it in the past? What challenges do you anticipate students having? How do you overcome those challenges while maintaining your course goals or big rocks?

Everything we did today was done with goals in mind. Thinking about these goals, how might you use a strategy or method we’ve used today to help your students identify where they are along the stages of mastery and get them closer to unconscious competence? (p. 97 in HLW)

What might the benefits be of using methods used today in course you teach? If they seem unfeasible given the  nature of your course, what are some ways you could get those same benefits by adjusting the activities or choosing different activities?

An important exercise in learning new concepts and then transferring that knowledge to other contexts is developing good questions. For this week’s prompt, we ask that you create your own question about today’s class. What are the kinds of things you think we’d ask you today? Remember that care has been taken to design each aspect of the lesson today (hint: think beyond the activities). What is one question you’d like to pose about today’s class? Write your meta-teaching question below, then write your answer.

Here are some of the things we tried to take into consideration this week as we planned:

We wanted students to have more time to focus on their own courses at this point in the term. (Earlier would have been better, but Mother Nature had other ideas.) Now that you know each other more, we assumed you’d be more comfortable taking intellectual risks about your own teaching. We have also very mindfully try to make it clear that we are/have transitioned to a new stage in the course. Everyone should know where we’ve been, how it connects to where we are going, and the bridge between the two.

Talking about goals and objectives is old hat for us. This is not dissimilar to when you  teach content that you have taught numerous times. If it hasn’t happened yet for you, it will, trust us. Goals and objectives are components of our Course Design Institute so we wanted an activity that was different and hopefully refreshing for us. Teaching the same content in the same way over and over again becomes very stale.

We use the backwards design process for every aspect of this course. While planning our lesson we always try to come back to our main goals for the course. How will you be different after today?

Based on how timing has been working over the past few weeks, we decided to adjust our schedule so we give you plenty of time to talk about housekeeping items (added 5 minutes to this time from this week forward). We also wanted to include less content and activities in order to provide you with more time to work on your material and share with each other. We wanted to slow things down just a bit this week because for some of you, this is a challenging content day.

As we have mentioned many times, every goal, objective, activity, discussion, and teaching method used in this course has been purposefully designed. As you reflect this week, we encourage you to focus your comments on new things you’ve thought of to do in your future classes, not just writing about things you have already been doing. Challenge yourself to think outside the box, beyond your current practices.

Here are some items upon which to reflect, although you are welcome (and encouraged) to identify and reflect on other things about today’s class:

• How have we modeled the use of the backwards design process for this class? How can you communicate your own goals and objectives to your students? How explicit would you want to be about it, and why?

• Discussions are a great tool for learning and exploring a topic. However, it can be very difficult for students to identify the take away points from a rich discussion that has many facets. How have we created a structure around our discussions today (and other days)? What could you do to help students with this aspect of class discussions?

• We are in the middle of the term and it can be challenging to keep the momentum in the class going. How can you re-invigorate your course, your students?

• We have done several activities that have asked you to work with a person next to you or someone outside of your field. Today we asked you to work with someone similar to you. What are the effects of this? How can you reconfigure groups throughout the term (or should you?)