Blogging Pedagogy - Learning Record

Surveying Perspectives

Lindsey Gay — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 13:06:54 +0000

Author:

Lindsey Gay

Image Credit:

Lindsey Gay

As the semester winds down, I have been thinking about my students’ responses to my course topic. Death and dying are universal facts, but our various responses to them are far from universal. This week I asked them to complete a short, anonymous survey that summarized their individual responses to the different topics we covered and conversations we had.

This semester marks the third time I’ve taught RHE 309K: Rhetoric of Death and Dying (Summer ‘13, Fall ‘13, Spring ‘14), and it’s gone a bit differently each time. As the semester winds down, I have been thinking about my students’ responses to my course topic. Death and dying are universal facts, but our various responses to them are far from universal. As part of my students’ Learning Records, I asked them to reflect on their own perspectives on death and dying, and to chart how their perspectives or feelings change as the class progresses. “Perspectives” was in fact one of our central course strands, along with Analysis, Research, and Writing. From the very beginning, I assured my students that my goal with Perspectives was not to change their belief systems or their values, but to get them accustomed to determining where their own perspectives originate, how they are formed and influenced, what is valuable about them and why, and what influences their perspectives have in their own lives. This week I asked them to complete a short, anonymous survey that summarized their individual responses to the different topics we covered and conversations we had.

In their Learning Records, my students have often offered profound insights into their own ways of considering death and dying. They report that though they perhaps gave the subjects little or no thought prior to enrolling in this course, they have since found that death and dying are quite interesting topics. Some students realize that their views, whether liberal or traditional, were certainly not the only valuable ways of approaching these topics. Some students have been introduced to death and dying at young ages, having had siblings or parents pass away; in these cases, I have found that the individual may be either much more reluctant to enter class discussions, or much more apt to do so with the confidence that comes from personal experience.

In fact, my students this year have offered so many different perspectives on death and dying that I’ve found it hard to collate them. For my own course development skills, I wanted some way of generalizing their reactions. Were there any specific aspects of the course materials or topics that they agreed on? Did we as a group sufficiently address our Perspectives course strand--that is, did we respectfully, critically, and analytically engage our own experiences, feelings, biases, and beliefs? Admittedly, this idea came to me pretty quickly as I was looking over the day’s lesson plan, so I had to devise the survey only hour before class began. Depending on the results, I may reconsider the utility or worth of some questions.

The results (zoom in!) were interesting. Though I expected the students’ responses to the first seven questions (based on discussions during class and in their Learning Records), I found their responses to #8 unexpected. Some of our most spirited classroom discussions were about legislative or unusual issues, but those received low interest ratings. I wonder whether my ranking system (where 4 = highest interest) ended up being confusing. The responses to #9, where I asked students to tell me what they wish we’d discussed, were incredibly varied: subjects ranged from suicide, to death rituals in other cultures, to Halloween.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the results. I wanted to engage the students in a slightly different medium, which an online survey accomplishes. Mostly I just wanted a way of gauging their responses that was geared directly toward the course material, as opposed to the depersonalized Course Instructor Surveys they fill out at the end of each semester. I have also been fairly confident of the rhetoric-specific material I’ve presented in class, so I left that out of the survey. I thus confined the survey to purely topical issues of death and dying, rather than issues of rhetorical skill and practice.

A Case for Portfolio-Based Assessment

Tekla Hawkins — Sat, 11 Jan 2014 17:33:31 +0000

Author:

Tekla Hawkins

Image Credit:

Bill Watterson

As far as I know I’m the only instructor at UT-Austin using portfolio grading in a Literature course this term; I know for certain that future graduate-student instructors have been told they are not allowed to use portfolio grading in even their self-designed Literature courses going forward. I’ve heard various reasons why instructors aren’t allowed to choose their own assessment methods, but portfolio-based grading makes the most sense for my teaching style and philosophy, and so I’m taking this opportunity to explain just three of the reasons it makes teaching the course easier: reduced class preparation time, easier grading, and more appropriate and equitable assessment.

The reduced teaching preparation for each class may seem counter-intuitive given the portfolio system that I use--the Online Learning Record, developed by Peg Syverson. This system requires the students to make twitter-length observations about their own learning processes throughout the semester, and write self-evaluations at the middle and end of term. The instructor provides feedback on the self-evaluation at the midterm in addition to feedback on all work in the course. The reduction in class preparation time comes from reading the observations on an ongoing basis. I’ve set up our course wiki to notify me of changes, so each day I receive a digest of information that tells me exactly how the class is going. From an instructor’s perspective, this reduces almost all of the guesswork involved in teaching a class, and so is especially useful for teaching a new-to-them course. Instead of preparing for multiple class discussions that might emerge, ten minutes of reading allows me to focus on whatever the students have said they are struggling with or find especially engaging.

Providing good feedback and evaluations for each assignment becomes easier as well; through the introductory portions of the Learning Record, I have some idea of where the students are at the beginning of the term. Through their observations I know what they’re working on and struggling with, and so (again with just a few moments of review) I can provide focused feedback on particular issues for each individual student. Because the Learning Record is written, I don’t have to remember or look through multiple files to remind myself what the issues at hand are. Because the feedback isn’t grade-based, the students feel less pressured and criticized, and in my experience are more likely to do thorough revisions of their written work.

Assessment for the final grades via a portfolio system is more equitable than relying on an A-F assessment. At a foundational level, humanities are not the same as basic maths. It is nearly always impossible and inappropriate to assess reading and writing skills as if they could be judged via scantron, as multiple ongoing arguments have proved. The struggle against universal education and teaching has been ongoing for years, and the detrimental effects of “teaching to the test” are well-known.

And yet, for many classes and schools, a “traditional” ABC version of grading remains standard. There are many reasons for this, but one is considered to be the ease of grading. If you have hundreds of students, you can design tests and reading and writing assignments that can be easily graded via a rubric. Points per section of the rubric = points toward an A. It’s easy enough right up until you are able to get to know your students. Then it gets harder.

Like most students in my program, I was a TA for a large lecture section during my MA. Our E316ks are typically taught by experienced professors to classes of 200-300 students. The several TAs for these classes typically each lead two discussion sections, help design test questions, and grade all of the exams. UT-Austin has about 40,000 undergraduate students, and E316k is a general requirement, so about 4,000 students take the course each year. Inevitably, we have a very diverse student population, and they give us very different responses to instruction. Most teachers are familiar with the struggle of giving a student who has made a tremendous effort and huge progress a really poor grade because they are not performing in the same manner as their peers. Because I teach in digital classrooms, the variety of student experiences and abilities with technology – in addition to literature and rhetoric – is amplified even further. In addition to traditional essays my students use mind maps, wordles, Google Earth, and blogs. Each of these resist a cut and dry assessment, as DH scholars trying to get tenure are repeatedly reminded. Good instructors have many ways of supporting their students despite an A-F assessment system, but it becomes radically more difficult. The Learning Record ensures that each student meets a minimum standard, but can be evaluated on progress and development in multiple areas instead of just one.

Finally, I find the portfolio system most supports my teaching philosophy. My students are very smart. My job is to facilitate their learning; and the longer I teach the more I realize one of my primary goals is to find methods of teaching that celebrate and prioritize learning over knowing. The Learning Record is one of the ways I can ground each class in that methodology while still being transparent about my own authority over the group. Giving and receiving constant feedback builds community and ensures that a student’s performance and production over the a term is collaborative – between each student, myself, and the rest of the classroom. Prioritizing this idea is especially important when working with digital materials, which are designed to foster collaboration.

I frequently hear two objections to this kind of portfolio system; that students can more easily cheat, and that the classes we teach are supposed to be designed to introduce students to the English major, and so different assessment types will be confusing for the students. Regarding cheating, I can only say that my experience has been that it is very difficult to cheat on the Learning Record, and that as far as I know none of my students have tried. And while I think most courses should move away from an A-F assessment, I don’t think students are confused by having one or two courses use alternate grading methods. Below are quotes from Learning Record evaluations from students all over the grade spectrum:

At first, every time something new rolled around, I grew anxious because I was afraid of getting something wrong...throughout the couse, I have grown just to try...I don't let this fear of failure keep me from getting my work done anymore.

"I feel as though I am learning how to learn. This skill is ultimately better than anything any professor could teach me. I could forget [topic...] but it wouldn't be an issue because the learning record and this class have given me the tools to learn it again by myself."

"I started out literally AFRAID of going to class. Now I actually look forward to it and enjoy hearing everyone's insights on the readings. This course has allowed me to take on entirely new perspectives on learning."

I don’t mind being erased from the student’s evaluation; if I’ve helped them think critically about their own thinking, I’ve done my job. The portfolio-based system makes this easier.

Multimodal Writing: How Do We Assess New Media?

Rachel Mazique — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 00:35:39 +0000

Author:

Rachel Mazique

Image Credit:

"Multimedia Message" by rockcreek on Flickr

"Students should be able to both read critically and write functionally, no matter what the medium" (William Kist).

Last semester, I gave a presentation to a class of new Rhetoric and Writing instructors on my "Disability in Pop Culture" class proposal, experiences, and syllabus. Professor Mark Longaker introduced my class as one that works with disability and new media. Although I hadn’t thought of it that way, I realized that my pedagogy most definitely incorporates not only disability theory but also “new” media: whether within my lesson plans and clips pertaining to rhetoric/disability, in the design of my course—with our PbWorks wiki platform, or with the final major assignment I had students write: a multimodal argument. I was apprehensive about assigning this type of new media writing project, but, fortunately, resources abound. This blog post offers some of those resources I drew from and shares my method for assessing my students’ projects.

I have been working with The Journal of Undergraduate Multimedia Projects for over two years now, in a variety of positions, and this work served as my primary resource. The website includes information on the students’ project assignments and on the course. Professors often share their class websites, which means that this journal becomes a pedagogical resource as well as a publication venue. Professor Tanya Rodrigue’s class website inspired me to create a YouTube channel for my own class—even though my multimodal assignment prompt did not restrict the shape of the project to videos (as you can see from the links on the left of our homepage). From Rodrigue's class Tumblr, I came across a helpful article, “Between Modes: Assessing Student New Media Compositions.” I also drew on assignment descriptions and prompts from Professor Justin Hodgson and Scott Nelson.

The National Council of Teachers of English has a “Position Statement on Multimodal Literacies” including statements such as Kist’s, which begins this blog post. Another quote that I took to heart and found exemplified in a TED talk by a 12-year-old was:

"In digital forms, students, even very young students, are often more literate in the technical aspects of digital production than many of their teachers. Many students are frequently exposed to popular technologies, have the leisure time to experiment with their own production, develop the social connections that encourage peer teaching and learning, and may have access to more advanced technology than is available at school. The 'definitions' of multi-modal composing may be written by educators, but they will most likely have first been pioneered by these young people."

Hence, I strongly encouraged my students to collaborate on these projects, to learn from each other, and I happily learned from them. Working in the Digital Writing and Research Labs also means that I had our Visual Media Specialist, Scott Nelson, for support. He came to one of my classes and led an iMovie workshop; he also addressed copyright flags and takedowns on YouTube. Thanks to all of these resources, I felt much more confident about assigning this multimodal project; I also planned for three weeks of class time so students could work together. This time helped alleviate the concerns of the “low-tech” students who were anxious about this project. All of my students proved to have a tech-savviness that they (in some cases) did not know they had. Most were excited about writing in multiple modes. In short, they all relied upon/developed their digital literacy skills.

Teaching and assessing student work via The Learning Record portfolio system (which I explain more in-depth in previous blogs and lesson plans) allows me to assess work not solely based on the final technological project, but on how well it meets the requirements of the assignment, shows development and research into writing in new digital modes, and effectively presents an argument.

After the revision stage, I commented on student progress by synthesizing the comments of three of their peers on how persuasive the project was and whether the revisions following peer review were substantial. The instructions were as follows:

If you have reviewed this project during peer review, answer both questions below.

If this is your first time viewing the project, only answer the second question.

1. Did your peer substantially revise the project? Or, did your peer attend to your feedback and improve the overall project? What improvements stood out and were effective? What still needs improvement?

2. Were you persuaded by the argument? Describe how the argument persuaded you to think or feel a certain way. Or, does it successfully convince you to do something? How did the elements of rhetoric (logos, ethos, and pathos) work to persuade you? Or, how did a lack of attention to certain rhetorical elements (logos, ethos, and/or pathos) result in an unconvincing argument?

This method proved effective because it allowed me to see common threads in feedback and to elaborate on points where students left off. Following the advice of Madeleine Sorapure in “Between Modes: Assessing Student New Media Compositions,” I evaluated projects not only on how well they met the requirements of the assignment, but also on how well they created rhetorical impact via “productive tension” between modes (from the visual, to the textual, to the auditory). In sum, my evaluations via the Learning Record grading system strove to avoid imposing a method of assessment from print essays and, rather, to connect evaluation to “everything else in the course, from the assignments themselves to the readings, the class activities, and the software we use” (Sorapure 2). In my classes, the course goals for development in research, the writing process, presentation, argumentation, and digital literacy all came together in this final project--allowing students to display their skills and to work through the essential learning dimension of confidence and independence.

The Teaching Record

Rosen — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 00:50:23 +0000

Author:

Stephanie Rosen

Image Credit:

Erica Bryan

In the Learning Record, I tell my students, change is a requirement. If you don’t change, you fail. The Learning Record, an alternative grading system designed by Professor Peg Syverson at UT, provides the structure for monitoring change and the vocabulary for describing it, thereby aiding students in their process of self evaluation. The six dimensions of learning describe six ways to change: in knowledge and understanding, acquiring new vocabulary and conceptual frameworks; in skills and strategies, adopting new practices of reading, writing, learning; in confidence and independence, replacing passivity with initiative; in creativity and originality, attempting the unexpected; in use of prior and emerging experience, applying know-how to new situations; in reflection, looking back to place work in the broader context of learning, learning in the broader context of a holistic understanding. With six ways to change, it’s fair to say that if you don’t, you fail.

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Besides, I believe that change is a requirement for success inside and outside of the classroom. This semester, inside the classroom, I’m fulfilling that requirement by using the Learning Record to monitor my own progress as a teacher. Like my students, I began the semester by writing a reflection on my prior experience, my established skills and strengths, and my concerns and goals for this class. As the semester advances, I make weekly observations on my teaching. And now, at midterm, I look back and provide an interim evaluation. The “Teaching Record” has been a welcome and productive addition to my teaching practice as it helps me direct change, self evaluate for my teaching portfolio, and make productive use of my after-class thoughts and feelings.

At my midterm reflection and evaluation, I notice that some goals I set initially have fallen by the wayside. While I wrote early on that I aimed to “get the best out of every student,” I realize now that I can push further some class members who are largely silent during discussion. Furthermore, I notice that this unmet goals lines up exactly with the student feedback on my teaching I’ve received. When I met with students individually at midterm, some complained that a few students don’t participate, and asked me to do more work to include all. As I move forward in the second half of the term, the Teaching Record has helped me identify where to focus productive changes, and helped me realize that I’ve created a classroom where my students and I share a vision of the ideal discussion dynamic (even if I haven’t yet created that ideal).

At the end of term, just like my students, I’ll repeat this process: reflecting on the entire semester, noting where I’ve met my goals and what I’ve changed, and evaluating my development as a teacher. This final review will not only help me understand what has happened in this class, it will also be useful for the purposes of building my teaching portfolio. My end-of-semester Teaching Record can serve as a standalone self-evaluation and as notes towards revising my teaching statement.

In the meantime, the Teaching Record serves as a productive outlet for all my post-class thoughts and feelings. An electrifying discussion, or a flat one, can hold my attention long after class ends. The Teaching Record gives me a place to focus that attention: in writing a brief observation and reflection on the day’s meeting, theorizing its outcomes, and noting what I’d like to repeat or change next time.

One of the most rewarding parts of the Learning Record is seeing a student really take control of their development, taking it exactly where they need it to go. I see this as a student’s observations accumulate, as they exceed requirements, as they get more creative and more committed. When the Learning Record really works, a student becomes one of his own best teachers; his teacher becomes a collaborator. Now that I’m working with the Teaching Record, I’m changing the ways I’m teaching myself, and becoming a better student of pedagogy.

Encouraging Class Participation with Google Docs

Rachel Mazique — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 18:35:40 +0000

Author:

Rachel Mazique

Image Credit:

Salman. "Google Docs VS Microsoft Office Web Apps." Techtoggle. 15 July 2009. Web. Sept. 30 2012.

Classroom dynamics can vary widely from one group of students to the next. This fact has really struck home now that I’m teaching two sessions of Rhetoric and Writing: “Disability in Pop Culture.” I walk into both classes with the same lesson plans, with (one of) the same interpreters, and with the same kinds of technology available. Many variables are different; different buildings, different classroom space (in terms of size), one interpreter is different, different days, different time of day (although both take place in the afternoon).

However, the biggest difference is the group of students themselves. Both classes have a range of upper classmen with a few sophomores. One class has a good number of journalism majors, but both classes have students with a wide range of majors and educational backgrounds.

Because I assess students using The Learning Record, I know from their background information (interview and reflection), that many students in one class prefer to listen rather than speak when learning new ideas or grappling with new concepts. In the class that took about four weeks to open up and have a rolling discussion (or one that doesn’t require my constant prompting) many students are self-professed introverts. Now, because The Learning Record requires “outstanding participation in all course activities” for an “A” grade, the hesitation to participate in class discussions becomes a concern for those students who learn best by listening—or those who have a fear of speaking in class.

In order to have a class document of students’ questions and thoughts on their assigned reading, I planned an in-class activity in which students would write their questions on a class wiki page—for all to see. As I’ve mentioned in a previous blog, our course work is conducted almost entirely on the wiki (excluding class meetings, office hours, and required reading in the form of printed text). This class document would also serve as an informal work sample (in the language of The Learning Record) documenting evidence of their reflective learning and critical thinking processes. However, my original plan to use a wiki page for the activity did not go as planned, as PBWorks does not allow for more than one typist at a time.

This, however, became what my colleague, Cate Blouke, called a “happy accident in the classroom,” as I quickly checked to make sure that all students had a gmail account, then added a link to a Google Document titled “Questions …” to the wiki page I had intended students to write on. Google Docs does allow for multiple writers at once; students, by way of experimentation (first-time experience for everyone) developed their Digital Literacy as they quickly navigated this new format and learned how to save their own space on the document and personalize it with their preferred font, font size, and color.

Having students work on the Google Doc allows everyone to see each other’s questions; it allows me to monitor their progress without peering over everyone’s shoulder or walking around to quickly check computer screens. I can stay in one place and observe their writing process—with all the backspaces, highlighting, rewriting, pauses, and self-correcting that goes on. Google Docs also allows me to quickly intervene if a student is not quite following instructions. I also get a better idea of the time it takes students to write and can easily see when most students are done writing—as activity quiets down on the Google Doc. (Without this document, students may appear to be busily working online, but they may have jumped to a different web page or activity once completing the given task.) Having all their questions as a starting point also helps guide the discussion, and the document allows us to return to past questions that are not answered in one class. The digital archive functions as collective class memory; we will not forget because it is saved online.

In these first four weeks of the semester, after our first “happy accident,” we have used Google Documents three times. The first was for their questions on the reading, the second time was for a collaborative class resource page on instances of “disability” in pop culture, and our most recent encounter was for a quick workshop on their individual research questions.

As useful as the tool has been to me as an instructor facilitating learning and working to make the best use of our class time, what I’ve found most interesting have been the student Observations on the use of Google docs during in-class activities.

One student wrote,

“I noticed the class seems much more comfortable using technology to interact with each other. Also, all the questions that were written on the google doc, while similar, all offered a unique perspective on how people interpreted the readings. (digital literacy; Creativity, originality, imagination)”

Another wrote of his difficulty with using this new format and of his strategy for adapting to it,

“In class today while we were all brainstorming on the Google Doc, I observed that it was extremely difficult to type information on the page because it was bouncing all over the place with everyone typing at once. To solve this I typed my comments on a seprate word proccessor and copied them in. Digital Literacy &prior and emerging experience”

A third indicated that she liked being able to participate via Google Docs (I should note that this student does not generally speak up during in-class discussions):

“In class today we used a google document to express any questions or reflections we had about the readings we have been assigned to read outside of class. This type of class participation allowed me to write my own reflection and also allowed me to see what were my fellow classmates reflections and questions about the readings were as well. (Skills and Strategies, Independence;Digital Literacy)”

One observant and introverted student (who also puts good effort into pitching in when he can) noted that the digital format for class participation allows for greater “accessibility:”

“I noted that the majority of students are still shy and don't contribute much in discussion, myself included. I did notice that working on a Google Doc simultaneously allows for more easy and accessible sharing of ideas though. (Presentation, Knowledge + Understanding)”

All four of these observations came from the class that has (up until our most recent meeting) been generally quiet and reserved during discussions. The student dynamic in the other class—which is much more vocal—did not seem to view the use of the Google Doc as an alternative mode for participating or accessing class discussions. Their observations focused on the pragmatics of the Google doc (observations along the lines of: "my reading notes allowed me to remember my questions and thoughts on the readings, so I knew what to write on the Google doc;"and, "the collaborative resource on disability in pop culture allows us to see how disability really is everywhere—even if we haven’t noticed it on our own").

However, those two comments also tell me that the Google Document has a pedagogical value when used in the classroom. When asking students if they have any questions, few, if any, may speak up. Open-ended, on-the-spot questions often leave students speechless. On the other hand, when asking students to write their questions, they know they are being observed “on paper” so to speak, so they are much more inclined to generate a question to demonstrate that they have, in fact, completed their homework. Last, collaboration in online spaces allows students to “see” each other and to realize that everyone has something to contribute.

First-Year Writing and the Learning Record: At Midterm

Kendall Gerdes — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:44:53 +0000

Author:

Kendall Gerdes

Image Credit:

Adapted from Openclipart

It’s just past midterm and my students in first-year rhetoric and writing (RHE 306) have just submitted Learning Record portfolios. I adopted the Learning Record model as developed by UT’s own Peg Syverson, outlined at http://www.learningrecord.org.

I have thoroughly enjoyed giving comments on student writing without having to weigh it carefully on the letter grade scale. Once at the midterm, and once again at the final, students will be asked to write short arguments citing evidence from other parts of their Learning Record portfolios. They may cite interviews they conducted with someone close to them on the topic of their own literacies; they may cite a journal of observations they’ve been keeping throughout the semester on what they learn from class and course work; they may cite comments I’ve given or that they have received in peer review; finally, they may cite their own work, comparing early drafts and revisions, to show evidence of specific improvement.

I asked students to organize the evidence they select in terms of the goal-domains of our course: rhetoric, the writing process, research, presentation and digital literacy. And, I ask them to analyze this evidence in terms of several dimensions of learning (from Syverson’s framework, http://www.learningrecord.org/dimensions.html): skills and strategies, knowledge and understanding, use of prior and emerging knowledge, reflection, and creativity and imagination. I showed my students an exhaustive sample focused on a single course strand and asked them to be much more highly selective than the sample: only choose to include the most persuasive analyses in your work.

On the basis of their evidence and analysis, students must request from me a single grade (not a range), making reference to a set of evaluation criteria that describe student performance in each letter grade range. Students are permitted to mix criteria and ask for plus/minus grades, and I think this gives them a chance to see how their strengths and weaknesses span several grade levels. It points out what they are already good at, what they ought to work on, and what seems to be holding them back. I also ask them to include a plan for improving their performance in the remainder of the semester.

The first blush of grade requests are fascinating. Students have tended not to blow up their self-evaluations; most are honest and modest about their own performance. I encouraged them to think of honesty as an appeal to ethos, designed to get me to trust their judgment. Though some requests offered minimal justifications in terms of the evaluation criteria for the course, most were extremely careful. Even students whose writing has been unsatisfactory, and who have displayed frustration trying to understand my comments, produced insightful reflections on their own performance that illustrate a capacity to write arguments that certainly exceeds the capacity portrayed in earlier papers.

I’m excited to sift through them all and write my responses to students because I believe that the midterm exercise is equipping them with rhetorical skills that will pay dividends on their remaining assignments. I also believe that most students have succeeded at diagnosing their own challenges and articulating both a desire and a plan for improvement. They are learning to think about their course work rhetorically, as arguments toward their final grade. And best of all, they’re learning to think of their grades as directly related to what they learn about rhetoric and writing—not as the subjective result of a soft or harsh teacher, but as the earned product of their own best efforts and estimations.