The Teaching Record

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

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Stephanie Rosen

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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.

Blogging Pedagogy - evidence-based learning

The Teaching Record

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Encouraging Class Participation with Google Docs

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