Teaching Thursdays

Teaching at State Schools: Two Case Studies

February 4, 2010 · 1 Comment

This week, Teaching Thursday is joined by a guest blogger, Dallas Deforest.  He offers two case studies that compare his experiences teaching at two different universities in Ohio. As the number of adjunct faculty increase across the country, more and more faculty will share Dallas’ experience of teaching at multiple universities simultaneous. While this undoubtedly presents simply technical challenges (two different types of students, different academic calendars, different faculty and student expectations), as Dallas’ post notes, this will also present opportunities to deal with larger pedagogical and theoretical issues that teaching at one place for many years will often obscure.

Dallas DeForest, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, Ohio State University

Last fall I was an adjunct instructor at Wright State University in Dayton, OH, in the Classics department. I taught one section of their Greco-Roman Civilization course to approximately 75 students. It was a welcome change for me, since I had taught only Western Civilization I in the history department at Ohio State University previously. Western Civ.—an absurdly structured and outdated course in 21st century academia—can grow tiresome fairly fast, so I welcomed the opportunity to teach a more focused course in my field of “expertise.” The experience was, on the whole, a good one. Many of my students were hard-working and interested in the subject matter, and I was able to prep and deliver a course that I hope to have the opportunity to teach in the future.

In many ways, WSU and OSU are similar. Both are public institutions; both offer graduate degree programs (WSU mainly masters level with a few Ph.D. programs; OSU the whole gamut); both have study abroad and honors programs; both have a litany of social groups and extracurricular activities for the students; both have good research libraries (Dunbar and Thompson); both have comparable in-state tuition rates; and both draw their students overwhelmingly from Ohio.

But there are important differences, too, especially in admissions policies and the student body (and its size: c. 12,800 vs. c. 40,200 undergraduates). WSU maintains an open admissions policy for all who meet a series of minimum requirements. For Ohio residents a 2.0 GPA, 18 ACT composite or 840 SAT critical reading and mathematics score and a college preparatory curriculum are necessary; for non-Ohio residents a 2.5 GPA, 20 ACT composite or 960 SAT critical reading and mathematics score and a college preparatory curriculum are required. OSU uses a closed admissions policy. The academic backgrounds of the student bodies are also markedly different:

Standardized Tests:

Average, middle 50%:       WSU          OSU

SAT math:                        430-570     590-680

SAT critical reading:         440-550     540-650

SAT writing:                     N/A           540-640

ACT:                                 18-24         25-30

High School Class Standing: WSU      OSU

Top 10%:                           14%           53%

Top 25%:                           35%           89%

Top 50%:                           65%           99%

Yet perhaps the most glaring difference comes in freshmen retention rates and overall graduation rates:

                                         WSU        OSU

Freshmen retention rate: 70%          92%

% graduating in 4 years:    18%          51%

In 5 years:                         37%          74%

In 6 years:                         41%          75%

(data may be found here, here, here and here.)

For my classes at Ohio State it has been fairly easy to judge the abilities and limits of my students, and I’ve framed my course content appropriately around these (as I see it). The student body is relatively uniform in terms of its academic background, which is due, in part at least, to the admissions policy. I typically have a couple of standouts in my classes, a couple of poor performers, while the majority consists of average B-level students. Most are full-time students, aged 18-22.

Planning and executing my course at Wright State was more challenging, for several reasons (though the faculty at WSU were very helpful from the start and I structured my course based on their recommendations—reducing my assigned readings and eliminating the major writing assignment I have in place at OSU). First, there are the differences in academic skills and backgrounds noted above. WSU also has a much higher part-time student population compared to OSU (16% to .08%) and many of these students are adult learners; many students in my class were going to school part-time (or full-time) while maintaining full-time jobs, for example. Several approached me at the beginning of the quarter to tell me that, because of work, they would have to miss 40-60% of the course altogether. No such thing has ever occurred during my 6 years of teaching at OSU, where there are few part-time students and the adult learners are, generally, taking courses for fun after retirement. Many more missed between 25-30% of class because of time conflicts with work or family. It is difficult for me to gauge the academic level of this group of students because they missed so much class time, but they didn’t generally do very well in the course, despite my efforts to help them through it.

I also had some students who seemed wholly unprepared for college course work. Most of these were standard college freshmen, aged 18 or 19, who were the products of poor primary and secondary schools systems (my theory, at least). Some in this group attended class only sporadically, even skipping exams and quizzes, while insisting upon maintaining their enrollment in the course (often vociferously via email); others attended regularly and worked hard. This lower tier of students had tremendous trouble digesting concepts, remembering basic factual information and comprehending the reading assignments. I spent many of my office hours with those who attended regularly, working slowly through the reading assignments and course material. But nothing in my graduate education had prepared me to teach (basic) literacy skills effectively (which is, sadly, what was often needed in these cases). My sister-in-law, who has a Masters in education with a focus in literacy studies certainly could have done a better job. Yet there I was, and suddenly this was a part of my job, for which I was neither qualified nor prepared. This group of students struggled throughout the course, though the ones who attended all passed. Again, this isn’t something I’ve encountered at OSU.

Yet alongside these students, which represented approximately 1/3 of my class, were those who compared well to an OSU class: average B-level students, and also some very elite students, who could excel, in my opinion, in just about any college setting. The latter were presumably recipients of WSU’s merit-based academic awards, which by the numbers demonstrate that these students are at or above average when compared to OSU students.

My experience at Wright State left me with a lot to think about. First, although we tend to think of state schools as a monolithic category of sorts arrayed against private schools, this is a false understanding of the college system. State schools vary widely in nearly every conceivable academic category and in the composition of their student bodies (something which is probably obvious to many, but still isn’t fully reflected in our discussions of the academic system). Teaching at one could be markedly different than teaching at another and could require an entirely different skill set. My WSU class ran the whole gamut: elite recipients of merit-based awards all the way down to students with minimal literacy skills—a range that simply isn’t present at OSU. How does one teach effectively to such a group? How does one make sure the course material is sufficiently rigorous and meaningful for the elite students but also manageable for the those toward the bottom of the class academically (esp. for those who are trying really hard but were the products of poor primary and secondary schools systems)? I attempted to do this by varying the level of my lecture material, mixing readings and making some optional, and providing numerous options for students to answer on my exams. But I’m not sure this really worked at all, nor am I certain what I could have done differently, which forced me to think about the implications of open admissions policies, academia’s response to the needs of adult learners and whether college teachers can (reasonably) be expected to offer the remedial instruction some students require when they arrive on campus. Can we realistically be expected to be both “Professors,” with a capital P, and basic literacy instructors, making up for the failures of the secondary school system? Are open admissions policies related at all to poor graduation rates? Is course content diluted to an unacceptable degree as a result of this? As the need for adult retraining increases in a 21st century knowledge-based economy, are the nation’s universities in a position to meet this demand? I don’t have the answers to any of these questions, but I’d love to hear what people think about them.

→ 1 CommentCategories: Dallas Deforest · Teaching Experiences

Faculty, Teaching Technologies, and the University of North Dakota

February 1, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Lori Swinney, Director of the Center for Instructional and Learning Technologices (CILT), University of North Dakota

In my role as the director of the Center for Instructional & Learning Technologies (CILT) at the University of North Dakota I have the privilege to work with an incredible team of professionals whose primary focus is to help others learn how to use technology. Our mission is “to collaborate with the University community to provide support for students, faculty and staff in the pursuit of innovation and excellence in teaching and learning with technology”. Our webpage, listing the services we offer is located at http://cilt.und.edu.

Initially, about 15 years ago, our Center was established to support faculty integrating technology into teaching and learning. We created a warm and safe environment to introduce faculty into the new world of teaching with technology. The thought of changing the way one taught a course after 20 years of teaching was a little scary for some faculty and like falling off a cliff without a net for others. Our goal at CILT was to introduce little changes, make it fun, and, to use an old adage, “teach the faculty how to fish”. We didn’t do the work for them, we showed them how by teaching workshops, hosting forums, and celebrating successes by showcasing faculty examples.

It worked and UND started the journey into a new world of teaching and learning with technology. We have seen many changes over the past decade. In classrooms, the old desk in the front went away and was replaced by a Smart Teaching Station and the classroom became “smart”. Overhead projectors got dusty because they were replaced by digital projectors mounted on the ceiling. Chalkboards became interactive whiteboards so instructor notes and diagrams could be saved digitally and sent to the students.

We also saw changes in students. Students are bringing laptops, PDAs, smart phones and netbooks to class. They want to get their course information online; syllabus, handouts, faculty contact information, and most important – grades. They want help with how to use the technology, how to plug in their headset, what laptop to buy, how to order an electronic textbook, and how to post their assignments in the Learning Management System (LMS).

Have these changes affected the way faculty design, develop, teach and assess their courses and how our Center supports teaching and learning at UND? Higher Education, as an institution, has always moved very slowly. Technology seems to have sped things up. The New Media Consortium and the Educause Learning Initiative have collaborated since 2004 to publish the annual Horizon Report. The report describes the top six emerging technologies thought to have a significant impact on teaching and learning. Three of the key trends noted in this year’s Horizon Report 2010; mobile computing, open content and electronic books when looked at together point towards significant changes in how faculty teach. Students want to bring their electronic devices to class (virtually or face-to-face) and read their textbooks online. Faculty can share their teaching materials with colleagues and use, with permission, others’ content in their courses – open content. What a change from 10-15 years ago when it was difficult to even get an instructor to share an electronic copy of the syllabus.

Not all faculty are embracing these changes. There are so many unique and diverse needs that vary by the discipline, faculty, and student. What works for an instructor teaching political science may not work for his colleague in the same department. The same applies to the students. The changes have affected everyone, some adjust quickly, some struggle, and some will not change. I recently received a call from a new parent inquiring whether his daughter will be able to use electronic textbooks for her courses. He was concerned about the weight of carrying all of the books around campus. When checking with her instructors I found a mixture; electronic texts, hard cover books, handouts and library articles, some traditionalists and some innovators.

An example of how technology can help UND meet the changing needs of students is the explosion of online courses. Students want the flexibility to take classes without having to come to a classroom or even to campus. We have seen a significant increase in the number of online courses offered and student enrollments in the past two years. Some faculty embrace these changes and some believe the traditional face-to-face model of teaching is the only way their course can be taught. CILT’s role is to work with faculty to help develop the course in a different way so that it can be taught online. We have staff with degrees in Instructional Design & Technology who partner with the faculty to create online courses. Faculty report after going through the process of designing and teaching their first online course, they find themselves changing their traditional course by adding some components from the online section.

Technology has become such an essential tool in the teaching and learning process both inside and outside of the classroom. CILT recognized the critical need to provide support for more than just the faculty and has recently expanded its services to include students and staff. We have also increased our support hours into the evening and on weekends. We, in higher education, are moving into the 24/7 access and availability arena that the consumer market already provides for its customers. This is one of the bigger challenges I see for CILT. How do we provide the appropriate level of support that is needed for faculty and students? Is it more time, 24/7? Is it more staff, no waiting time? What is appropriate for us to do for the student or faculty, do we teach them to fish or do we fish for them? Many of the support calls we receive ask us to “just do it for me”, is this right? How do we keep up with the new technologies and make current recommendations? Our challenge is to provide the right amount of support and incorporate the most appropriate technology tools so that both students and faculty can focus on the teaching and learning, not on the technology.

→ Leave a CommentCategories: Lori Swinney · Technology

The Panopticon and Online Teaching

January 21, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Bill Caraher, Department of History, University of North Dakota
Crossposted to Archaeology of the Mediterranean World

In a blog post a few months back dedicated to the topic of online teaching, I mentioned an observation by Mick Beltz, a regular contributor to Teaching Thursday. He suggested that teaching online captured some of the essential characteristics of M. Foucault’s panopticon as outlined in his Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this metaphor, Foucault used Jeremy Bentham’s vision of the panopticon to describe modern society. The panopticon is an architectural form, most famously used for prisons, where an observer stationed at a central point can see into a series of cells. The people in these cells can always see the observation post (although they do not know whether they are being observed), but cannot see into any of the other cells. In this way they are together, yet isolated from one another In practical application, this means that a warden can observe the behavior of all the inmates almost simultaneously while the inmate cannot observe each other’s behavior.

For Foucault, the pressure of constant observations implied specifically in the panoticon, but functioning elsewhere formed the ideal environment for maintaining the kind of discipline introduced in the prison, the factory, and even the modern school. For Foucault, this kind of internalized discipline produced by the fear of being constantly observed, ensured that society maintained a degree of conformity sufficient to keep the engines of capitalism moving. The panopticon and its culture of observation were part of Foucault’s analysis of discipline in modern times and part of a greater goal of the modern state to produce “docile” bodies .

The parallel between the panopticon as a physical building and the experience of teaching (and presumably taking) an online course are quite striking. First the observer, in this case the faculty member, can observe student behavior through a comprehensive array of statistics as well as submitted work. The individual student, on the other hand, has almost no view of the faculty member, except for when their work is evaluated. At the same time, they have only limited abilities to observe the work of other students and rarely would know when another student is being particular successful in the class or struggling. In a classroom setting, of course, students can interact freely with one another both before and after class and encode their behavior in ways that make it difficult for a faculty member to observe, much less understand. Even during class, verbal and non-verbal cues from the blatant — like laughter at a particularly innane comment by a fellow student — or subtle, like glances at one another or eye-rolling or even the frustrated figiting that occurs when a class runs over, provide clear modes of communication between students. Moreover, students can use these techniques to force a dialog with even a reluctant faculty member. The classroom dynamic presents a formidable and almost irresistible check on unfettered faculty authority.

The removal of this opportunity for spontaneous, collective action certainly removes a key aspect of the faculty-student dialog from the classroom setting. Moreover, the realization that one is being constantly observed initiates and conditions the student for a world where companies like Google see everything from your mundane search patterns to your house to your financial, personal, and religious identities. The conditioning of students to be observed in an online environment prepares them for a world where companies and governments constantly gather information and construct identities for individuals which are so subtle, varied, and complex that they exceed the individual’s ability to understand or realize them.

The impact of this environment on teaching as a profession is significant. While the “teacherly” gaze has always been one of any number of treasured weapon in the teacher’s arsenal (able, when deployed successfully, to bring to order even the most disruptive student), it now has the potential to become the single most powerful tool for conditioning behavior. We can observe when a student comes online, how long they stay for, what they look at, as well as the what they produce. With only a little exaggeration, we can say that the student study habits, reading behavior, and analytical practices are de-mystified and can be placed in direct correlation to student performance on evaluated work. In effect, the barrier that has long separated the mystical process of learning from the work of evaluation has come down.

The advantage, then, of online education is that it conditions students to become the docile bodies in our information age and to accept our individuality as a commodity in the information economy. The documented life is the commodified life.

→ Leave a CommentCategories: Bill Caraher · Online Teaching · Technology

How to spot a bad professor

January 14, 2010 · 2 Comments

Bill Caraher, Department of History, University of North Dakota (via Anne Kelsch)

This past week one of the blogs hosted by U.S. News and World Report published a short list of ways to spot a bad professor (via Anne Kelsch).  Two former university professors, Lynn F. Jacobs and Jeremy S. Hyman write for the blog giving some kind of authority. 

Here’s a short summary of their list:

1. The professor is boring.

2. The professor is bummed out.

3. The professor doesn’t give out a syllabus—or hands out a one-paragraph syllabus that is just the course description from the Web.

4. The professor isn’t clear about the requirements and how much they count.

5. The professor assigns an undoable amount of work—or no work at all.

6. The professor has incredibly petty rules.

7. The professor can’t fill the whole class period.

8. The professor seems unsure about the material.

9. The professor presents the material in a confused way.

10. The professor never involves the students.

First, it is probably important to realize that this list is designed to attract hits to their blog as much as to advise students.  Once we accept that, it is hard not to think that the list has some merit.  I think I would flee from a class if a professor showed any number of these traits.  More troubling, however, is the assumption that this kind of behavior is widespread on university campuses or at least common enough to make a list. 

There is also the issue of how to determine whether a professor is boring or whether a particular workload is “undoable”.  Petty rules and honest insecurity about material are likewise in the eye of the beholder.  Big classes often require some rules that would appear petty in a seminar environment.  For example, I tell my students that I am not particularly offended if their phone rings during class (and most of our students here at UND know that this is rude), but I am offended if the student answers the phone.  This kind of explicit statement is hardly necessary in a seminar environment.  On the other hand, I’ve found it productive to admit in a seminar that I struggled with a particular text.  This can often put a student at ease when confronting a very challenging text.  I am not sure that this strategy would be as effective in, say, a large lecture course.

The real question, I suppose, is not whether a list like this is good or not (after all, who would want to be taught by a “bummed out” or confusing professor?), but what are the basic assumptions about good teaching (or being a good professor) in this list. 

→ 2 CommentsCategories: Anne Kelsch · Bad Professors · Bill Caraher

Holiday Reading

December 10, 2009 · 2 Comments

Each long holiday break, I find a couple of books that I would not ordinary read and make them a priority. This gives me a chance to get a new perspectives on old problems or to see what all the buzz is about for a book outside my primary (and increasingly narrow) field of research interest.

This winter, I plan to read:

S. Fish, Save the World on Your Own Time. Oxford 2008. This books caused such a buzz last spring and summer that I was actually embarrassed not to have at least skimmed it.
M. Auge, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. Trans. J. Howe. Verso 1995. Mostly because I am going to spend about 65 hours in airports this break and airports are quintessential non-places.
Cyril of Scytholopolis, The Lives of the Monks of Palestine. Trans. R. M. Price. Cistercian Press 1991. The real question is what can’t you learn from 6th century Palestinian monks.

So, let’s crowdsource a reading list for this winter break. What will you be reading this holiday season?

→ 2 CommentsCategories: Bill Caraher · Books

Three Thursday Thoughts on Teaching: 1. Lexical Analysis

December 3, 2009 · 2 Comments

Dexter Perkins, Department of Geology and Geological Engineering, University of North Dakota

Lexical analysis is a tool used by computer scientists to analyze code by reducing it to tokens equivalent to specific blocks of text. These blocks can be analyzed to find out how important they are (how often they occur), and what the connections are between them – thus providing guidance to software developers and engineers. A lesser used application of lexical analysis involves analysis of text.

Data bases, articles, blogs, syllabi . . . whatever . . . can be analyzed to see which words and phrases are present and how they are related. So, lexical analysis is a tool that may be useful in linguistics, and could conceivable reveal interesting information about authors, teachers and bloggers. As best I can tell, however, this kind of application is done mostly for fun – although I have not broken into the linguistics research to make sure.

A friend of mine decided to try using lexical analysis to look at his evolution as a teacher. Perhaps, he says, it can tell us something about student learning as well. To start in this direction he created Wordle images (http://www.wordle.net/) of his syllabi for his introductory geology course, comparing 1997 and 2009. The results are below, and I bet you can figure out which one is which! The question, he asks, is whether this or other applications of lexical analysis might be useful for faculty development or in some other way to analyze teaching and learning. What do you think – aside from the fact that the graphics are pretty?

image
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→ 2 CommentsCategories: Dexter Perkins · Lexical Analysis

Three Thursday Thoughts on Teaching: 2. More on Cheating

December 3, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Matthew Cavalli, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of North Dakota

I have come across examples of cheating in several of my courses at UND (freshmen through graduate students). The infractions ranged from copying homework solutions to plagiarizing text from references. I generally take the approach of immediately assigning all involved a ‘0’ and cc’ing the Department Chair on an email to the students expressing my disappointment and reminding them about the unacceptability of academic dishonesty. The student responses have generally been sheepish acceptance of the consequences by all involved or a visit from one very contrite member of the pair explaining how they copied the other member’s work without their knowledge. In the latter case, I will generally give the unknowing partner’s points back. Initially, I didn’t have anything explicitly stated in my syllabus regarding academic dishonesty. I started putting in a short statement about a year ago and discussing what might constitute academic dishonesty during the first class period. It seems to have reduced the occurrences of cheating. Or else the students have learned to be more skillful in hiding them…

For more on cheating check out these other posts…

→ Leave a CommentCategories: Cheating · Mattew Cavalli

Three Thursday Thoughts on Teaching: 3. Are You Running Out of Time?

December 3, 2009 · Leave a Comment

William Caraher, Department of History, University of North Dakota

Here’s a final post on our Three Teaching Thought Thursday.  I often have trouble communicating the notion of time to students.  For example, it is hard to convince them how long it will take to, say, write a paper.  The notion of a timed test is also a challenge as, without fail, a student will tell me that he or she ran out of time.  E. P. Thompson in “Time, Work Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” (Past and Present 2 (1967), 56-97) suggested that this is because students are one of the groups who still exist in pre-capitalist modes of production (p. 73).  Time and its accompanying “work discipline” have not extended their grasp to embrace the docile student body.  Instead, they proceed with their studies as artisans or crafts-people, taking every opportunity to enjoy life and then frantically working to complete piece-work goals.  This is even more challenging for an online class where the relationship between the overseer and the artisan is the most attenuated.  The only motivation, in this case, is the distant and somewhat mystical end of the semester.  This clearly will not do.  As part of our job is to complete the process of transforming our fun-loving artisan class into good capitalist automatons, I have discovered a simple trick to impart a sense of foreign (to them) urgency to my online class: a countdown timer.   I’ve put one up over on my blog since I couldn’t figure out how to put it up here.  This timer installed easily on my Blackboard page.

This one doesn’t let you set the hours so according to this countdown timer, grades are due at midnight on December 22nd.  It doesn’t hurt to get them in early, right?

→ Leave a CommentCategories: Bill Caraher · Time

Happy Thanksgiving Thursday

November 26, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Thank you to all our readers and contributors for making Teaching Thursday so successful. We’ll be back next week!

→ Leave a CommentCategories: Uncategorized

Teaching (with Twitter) Tuesday

November 24, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Bill Caraher, Department of History, University of North Dakota

The Chronicle of Higher Education this weekend ran a story on Teaching with Twitter.  Aside from its appealing alliteration, the story presented two case studies of faculty who use Twitter in the classroom. One was from a consumer science class at Purdue and the other a history class at University of Texas at Dallas.  Both used Twitter as an official back channel for their classes providing students with another opportunity to ask questions, interact with one another, and archive these remarks (organized through twitter hashtags) so that students could return to them later.  The faculty members report more or less positive experiences from setting up these Twitter back channels, although the Chronicle story and the faculty members themselves admitted that there was some risk involved.  Students could, for example, use Twitter as a place to snipe at the professor or other students in a semi-anonymous setting.  On the other hand, Twitter could serve as a platform to engage students more fully in the classroom experience — especially students who are too shy or reserved to speak out.

Longtime readers of my blog know that I experimented with Twitter in a graduate seminar.  In my experiment, I hoped to encourage the students to “read actively” and tweet their impressions of the various books as they read them.  These impressions could range from quotes to questions, visceral responses, or even complaints.  I had hoped that the Twitter feed would make the exercise of reading — typically an intensely private, personal, and reflective time, into something that was public, social, and dynamic.  The goal was to break down some of the intellectual isolation (first year graduate) students sometimes experience when reading a challenging text and encourage them to formulate ideas while reading to break through the tendency to read a book passively. 

Using social networking applications to increase student engagement is an interesting example of how technology as technology can engage students in new ways.  My History 101: Western Civilization class this fall is relatively large (150 students) and meets once a week, at night, in a large theater style room.  The basic content driven lectures are available online (here).  The classroom time focuses on “primary source” texts (i.e. texts from Antiquity and the Middle Ages), recapping the major points in the content driven lecture, inclass writing assignments, testing various models for understanding the past, and informal question-and-answer sessions that focus, generally, on more difficult concepts.  I playfully refer to the classroom time as a live concert environment and the podcast lectures as the studio album.  While this can produce an exciting, improvised, and responsive environment, the class tends to become dominated by a relatively small faction (10%-20% (i.e. 20-30) students). 

Many of the students in the class are freshman from smaller high school who find the large classroom to be a very foreign and maybe intimidating environment. At the same time, as Monica Rankin points out, many students are comfortable with the social-networking environment native to Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter.  The plan would be to use the familiar and more intimate environment of the social media to bridge the gap between the student and their classmates (and teacher) in the large lecture-style classroom.

Do any of the readers of this blog use Twitter in the classroom?

→ Leave a CommentCategories: Bill Caraher · Technology · Twitter