Category: Course Design

Using Course-Level Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) to Structure a Final Portfolio Assignment

Helen Bittel

treasure map and compass

This assignment grew out of a recent overhaul of my British Literature II survey course using backwards design to shift emphasis from coverage of material to student learning. It also aims to better engage the increasing number of nonmajors taking the course for General Education credit, students for whom the purpose and value of studying literature is often not self-evident.

In this final portfolio assignment, students first take each of the four Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs), choose one or two artifacts demonstrating their competency, and write a paragraph explaining how the artifact shows their achievement of the outcome. The artifacts can come from either graded work (low- or higher-stakes assignments) or from in-class work (small group activity answers, exit tickets, personal course notes). Then, they write longer answers to two additional questions: one “big picture” question that the SLOs were designed to help them answer and another question about their own individual learning.

[Editor’s note: A wide variety of online solutions are available for the creation of digital learning portfolios, starting with a simple Google Doc or Microsoft Word file. For more sophisticated options, instructors may want to consider asking students to build portfolios using Google Sites or Wix.com.)

Student responses were strongly positive across varied majors and skill levels; they reported feeling less stress and more control than with a traditional final exam, presentation, or literary analysis paper. Nobody who followed the instructions earned a poor grade, nobody plagiarized, and nearly everyone successfully connected their individual efforts to our shared goals. They were also relatively easy to grade, since for each item, I only needed to evaluate two criteria.

In addition, the SLO-driven final portfolio:

  • Implicitly requires students to review everything they did over the semester—in class and at home— in light of what they now know and can do and to demonstrate cumulative learning
  • Levels the playing field, in terms of majors and nonmajors. The portfolio requires less knowledge of disciplinary conventions than traditional assessments, and working directly with SLOs is familiar to many pre-professional majors.
  • Fosters metacognition, a habit of mind that supports learning well beyond a single course.
  • Gives students significant choice in how they demonstrate their learning and unique perspective, and thus ownership of the project
  • Makes visible both how course activities are connected to each other through the SLOs and how the work of the course is connected to the big picture of college learning

Helen Bittel is Director of Center for Transformational Teaching and Learning and Associate Professor of English at Marywood University. 

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA. Public domain image courtesy Steven Johnson.

3 Tips for a More Inclusive Syllabus

Simuelle Myers

When creating a syllabus, it is important to make sure that course goals and expectations are clear. However the syllabus can also be a place to get students excited to learn and to signal that your course is an inclusive environment. The following tips provide three simple ways to create a more inclusive syllabus and start your course off more positively from day one.

Start with a Welcoming Message

Why is this course interesting? What skills can students hope to gain? How does this course relate to their everyday lives? The answer to these questions can spark students’ interest and prepares them to explore the content of your course. Before jumping into the technicalities of grades and policies, create a welcome message or expand your course description to include reasons that students should look forward to engaging with course content, and you as the instructor. For students who may be new to college or nervous about your course, this can help to alleviate some concerns before the course even begins

Bonus tip: consider what aspects of your course or field that you found the most interesting, this can be a great place to draw inspiration for communicating its value to students.

Use Student-Centered Language

Instead of writing course goals as if they were simply for the professor or the course catalogue, write them for the students. Statements such as “at the end of this course you will be able to” can communicate the importance of the student in the learning process. It also implies an expectation of engagement, and speaks to each person in the class directly as opposed to referring to everyone in the course under the general category of “student”.

Bonus tip: When writing your syllabus, imagine that you are speaking directly to one student and describing what their journey through the course will look like.

Create an Inclusive Teaching Statement

Also known as a diversity and inclusion statement or a respect for diversity statement, an inclusive teaching statement signals explicitly that your course is inclusive of all students. An inclusive teaching statement should express the course climate you strive to create and invite students to be active participants. Many statements also encourage students to reach out to the faculty member if they have any concerns about the class and invite suggestions students may have to make the class better. See a few examples here.

Bonus tip: Students with disabilities pay close attention to how the disability statement is presented. If you are using a standard disability statement, consider expanding this to include language that lets students know that your goal is to support them.

Remember, a syllabus can be more than a contract! Instead, consider how it can be an important tool to communicate the value of inclusion, diversity and student success and add a positive start to your semester.

Simuelle Myers formerly served as Assistant Director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching. She is now Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer for Delaware County Community College.

Developing Globally Competent Students

Stephanie Fiore

A number of years back, I participated in a Globalization Teaching Circle (later renamed the Marco Polo Collaborative) with a cohort of thoughtful colleagues who were interested in enhancing our students’ global competencies. We asked ourselves, what does it mean to have globally competent students? We represented very different disciplinary backgrounds – from political science to music to architecture and everything in between – and the discussions were energizing and productive. Together, we developed a framework of Global Learning Goals that would help us define and guide our vision, one that I believe is even more important today.

Marco Polo Collaborative Global Learning GoalsWe want to prepare students to comprehend, communicate, and participate responsibly in a globalized world.Knowledge (influences attitudes and shapes practices)Acquires basic knowledge of the world. Demonstrates knowledge of the beliefs, values perspectives, practices and products of other culturesUnderstands our interconnectedness, the way we influence and are influenced, including knowledge of contemporary and historic global issues, processes, trends, and systemsUnderstands one’s own culture, assumptions and attitudes within a global comparative contextUnderstands that alternate perceptions and behaviors may be based in cultural differences, but that cultures and attitudes are neither static nor monolithicAttitudes (structures practices and influences apprehension of knowledge) Willingness to consider the beliefs, values, perspectives, practices of other cultures as worthy of study and thoughtWillingness to negotiate tensions between homogeneity and hybridity, individual and community, and structure and agencyDevelops a sense of responsibility that extends beyond self to community, country and worldAppreciates the language, art, religion, philosophy and material culture of different culturesPractices (enables new knowledge and development of attitudes) Uses knowledge, diverse, cultural frames of reference, and alternate perspectives to think critically and solve problems.Engages with people in other culturesActively seeks exposure to other culturesUses foreign language skills and/or knowledge of other cultures to extend access to information, experiences, and understanding

I share this framework as a way to help you think about how to help develop globally competent students. But, of course, the big question is, how do you operationalize this in your classrooms? Ask yourselves: how you can bring in voices and perspectives from other cultures? Can you look at the issues you discuss with more than one lens? In what ways can you help students stand in the shoes of those different from themselves? Can you provide access to other worldviews on contemporary issues and problems? Can you introduce case studies, literature, research that enable students to engage with international perspectives? Think about one opportunity you can add to your class this semester, then add another next semester – incremental changes are key to reworking curricula with the goal of developing globally competent students.

An easy way to start is to engage this week with International Education Week activities being held right here at Temple University. Check out the Global Reach, Global Teach website for information on all the events happening this week. For your convenience, we’ve listed a few faculty events below. Check out also the International Collaboration Program that allows you to invite guests from our campuses abroad to your classrooms. 

Stephanie Fiore, PhD, is an Assistant Vice Provost at Temple University and Senior Director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

Teaching Through Emotional Fatigue: Strategies for Student Well-Being

Kyle Vitale, Linda Hasunuma, Cliff Rouder & Janie Egan

Student mental well-being has been significantly impacted by COVID-19 and the public health measures implemented to mitigate it. The prevalence of mental health symptoms is high among college students nationally, as it was prior to the pandemic too. According to an Active Minds survey, nearly 75% of student respondents indicated that their mental health has worsened since the pandemic began. Students reported feeling stress and anxiety, disappointment and sadness, loneliness and isolation, among other concerns.

As the pandemic continues, it is also reasonable to assume that mental health concerns will persist. Most of us are spending more time in front of screens than ever before, and it can be exhausting. This, on top of the stressors of COVID-19, the 2020 presidential election, collective efforts for racial justice, and any other issues that students and their families are facing may result in emotional fatigue, leading students to “check out,” e.g. avoid the camera, miss assignments, or skip class. Sarah Cavanagh also reminds us that anxiety appears to disrupt student performance by hijacking part of one’s working memory, leaving fewer cognitive resources to direct to the problem at hand (The Spark of Learning, 184).

Students may deeply appreciate when instructors acknowledge that this context has an impact on academic performance. Huston and DiPietro (2017) found that after major national crises or tragedies, students found it meaningful when faculty acknowledged the crisis or event–even if faculty are not experts on a particular issue. The most recent Active Minds survey also indicates that students are adapting in some key ways like being supportive of others’ mental wellness and feeling optimistic about the future.

Here are seven strategies that can support your students’ well-being and performance:

  • Talk openly about self-care strategies. You don’t need to be an expert, but acknowledging that we are all trying to do our best to take care of ourselves may help students feel less alone in the struggle to find balance. Self-care is about regularly prioritizing our well-being. A basic framework to start with is to build routines around sleep / rest, food, movement, and “you” time (things that help you feel like yourself). For instance, at the beginning of class, ask students to share in the chat box one way that they are taking care of themselves, or one thing that’s helping them feel good about themselves this week. Just as it helps students to encourage self-care, we can also model these practices for students, which in turn ensures that we are taking care of ourselves.
  • Encourage students to access support resources. Normalize help-seeking behaviors and direct students to the university’s virtual services. Check out the campus resource guide in the Student Safety Nest Guide to Support Student Well-Being. The Wellness Resource Center has a schedule of programs to provide students with information and skill-building around mental well-being, as well as alcohol and other drug education, interpersonal violence prevention and sexual health. There are also two recorded programs available for students to access any time. Additionally, Tuttleman Counseling Services is providing comprehensive virtual mental health services to students, including a variety of group opportunities and the Resiliency Resource Center Online. They’ve also created a kit to help students cope with election stress.
  • Be flexible with due dates and instructional methods. If you check in frequently with your students, then you’ll be better able to assess how students are progressing toward completing assignments and projects or assess their readiness to take an exam. Is it possible to move that exam date or project due date back one class period without compromising essential components of the class? Let’s not abandon the high standards and expectations we have for our students, but rather let’s adopt and promote the message that says you are here to help them meet these standards and expectations with compassion and trust. In addition to due dates, you might revisit your instructional methods themselves. Consider carefully a balance of synchronous class time — e.g. time spent with students practicing skills and discussing concepts — with asynchronous activities — e.g. reading, discussion posts, recorded lectures — that reduce time spent in Zoom sessions.
  • Consider your Zoom camera practices. A variety of factors can lead students to feel uncomfortable with their cameras on, including insecure housing, a need for privacy, poor internet connection, social or virtual fatigue, and more. Forcing these students to be in sight can further exacerbate existing emotional fatigue, whereas being empathetic to alternatives can provide needed rest. Consider a policy that strongly encourages cameras on, invites accomodation for valid exceptions (which need not always be shared), and uses approaches that engage all students regardless of camera. For those students who are regularly on camera, invite them to turn their cameras off periodically, suggest that they move their screens further away, and remind them that they can hide their self-view. For long class sessions, build in some short breaks so students can walk away from Zoom completely.
  • Build in additional check-ins. As multiple stress points assail us all, students will appreciate additional check-ins. Consider opening your next class with the question, “so, how’s everybody doing?”, or reach out individually via email. Remind students of your office hours and offer yourself as a safe individual to discuss stress or workload. Students will also appreciate “landing strips”: moments in class to pause and summarize content, poll student comprehension, and offer extra time to sit and grapple with a particularly difficult concept. At this point in 2020, assume burnout and an immense cognitive load. This extra time recognizes that students may need additional support than might be typical. Consider other strategies too for checking in with your students.
  • Watch for warning signs. If you see a change in behavior (a student who is consistently attending class suddenly stops attending, written work shows troubling themes, erratic behavior in class, sudden emotional outbursts in class), consider speaking with the student privately and, if warranted, referring them to appropriate campus resources (the Care Team, for instance, is available for faculty who may have concerns about students). For immediate help, you can contact Tuttleman Counseling Service or the Temple University Police Department.

These strategies are good teaching for any and all seasons, and we hope you consider adopting or keeping them once the various dust storms settle. That said, they are particularly appropriate now as we all experience emotional fatigue, and showing care for your students will help them find the intrinsic motivation to finish out this term with strength and courage.

Kyle Vitale is Associate Director of Temple University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching (CAT). Linda Hasunuma is Assistant Director of the CAT. Cliff Rouder is Pedagogy and Design Specialist at the CAT. Janie Egan is Mental Well-Being Program Coordinator for Temple’s Wellness Resource Center.

Best Practices for Zoom Breakout Rooms

Jeff Rients

The breakout room features available in Zoom meetings allow us to craft learning experiences for our students that incorporate small group work. This allows students to test out new ideas and compare their learning to that of their peers. Importantly, this work blossoms in the lower-stakes environment of the small group, because individual students do not feel the same level of scrutiny and social pressure they face in front of their peers and the instructor.

Although breakout rooms are functionally analogous to small group work in the traditional classroom, they differ in some substantial ways. Perhaps the most important difference is that it is impossible to overhear what is happening in other small groups. Although the host of a Zoom meeting can visit each breakout room, you don’t receive any clues regarding student progress (or lack thereof) in the other rooms. Your ability to “read the room” is reduced in comparison to patrolling the room during in-person small group activities. Here are some strategies you can use for better oversight and overall improvement of your breakout room activities:

Clarify instructions

Sometimes breakout room activities don’t work out as planned because the students arrive at their room and don’t know what to do. Whenever possible give written instructions that you share via the File tool in the Chat window. You can also put these instructions on a slide and review them orally before sending students to the breakout rooms. This gives students a chance to review the task and ask questions before they leave the main meeting. If your activity has a hard time limit (and most activities should) include that on the instruction sheet and use the timer option when you set up the breakout rooms.

Keep lines of communication open

Remind students that they can use the Ask for Help button in the breakout room to reach out to you. You may also want to remind students that they can leave their breakout room and come back to the main room to ask a question. You can also use the Broadcast a Message to All tool to send short reminders or clarifications out to all rooms. (But keep in mind that such messages don’t stay up for long, so you may wish to broadcast important information more than once.) And don’t forget that both the host and co-hosts can visit any room they want, though co-hosts must be manually placed in a breakout room by the host first before they are able to move among the other rooms.. You could even appoint some students as co-hosts with the task of checking in on the breakout rooms.

Encourage accountability

Perhaps the easiest thing you can do to energize students in breakout rooms is to create activities that require some sort of reporting out to the instructor and/or the rest of the class. The simplest approach would be to call on students after the activity, asking them to share their results. (This technique works best when you warn the students ahead of time that you are going to do this; you can also put this fact in the instructions you share.) Another approach is to create a worksheet that each student must complete and hand in via the Canvas Assignment tool, with a deadline set for the end of the Zoom session. Or you can build the activity around a Canvas Quiz that the students work on together while in the breakout rooms.

Vary activities

Sometimes student participation wanes simply because they are used to the routine of the classroom. A new breakout room activity that requires different skills for success or that poses a new challenge can re-activate disengaged students.

Temple instructors needing additional assistance with breakout rooms or other educational technology issues are invited to visit our Virtual Drop-In Ed Tech Lab, a Zoom room that is open 8:30am-5pm Monday through Friday. There you’ll find our ed tech specialists ready to help you, with no appointment needed. Alternatively, you can make an appointment for a one-on-one consultation with a member of either our pedagogy or ed tech teams. We’re here to help you!

Jeff Rients is Senior Teaching and Learning Specialist at Temple’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

Make a Plan to Handle Hot Moments

Stephanie Fiore

Unexpected “hot moments” in a class can arise anytime and can be stressful for faculty and students. When unexpected conflict and incivility occur, faculty often feel unsure how to handle the situation, so planning some strategies now can help you feel better prepared to navigate these moments. This is especially important in our particular moment with a major election around the corner, social justice conversations a part of everyday life, and COVID-19 making all of us tired and less able to cope with stress. Here are some strategies to help you bring these moments to a more productive conclusion:

Know your own triggers. If you think in advance about the strong feelings you might have on certain issues, you will cope better in the moment. Practice some small moves (deep breathing, counting, an emotional center) that you can deploy in the moment.

De-escalate the situation. Whether it happens through planned course discussion or through casual student conversation, if tensions start to rise in your classroom, it is important to first lower the boiling point.

  • When conflict arises, you may address the issue immediately if you feel prepared, or tell the class that you are tabling that conversation until the next class meeting. You may wish to defer the conversation to provide the space you need to strategize your approach or calm your own strong feelings.
  • Before opening up discussion, refer the class back to the guidelines for civil conversation you created together.
  • Assist students in clarifying comments that have sparked conflict. Students are often not practiced in articulating perspectives with which they may be grappling, or responding effectively when their views are challenged. Try asking: “What do you mean when you say X?” or “I heard Y. Is that what you meant to say?”
  • If the conversation is primarily between two students or a small group, inviting others who have not yet spoken to voice an opinion can direct dialogue back to the entire group and grant you greater control as the facilitator.
  • Validate thoughtful contributions to the conversation, even if they are challenging or contrary. Remind students that their questions and thoughts are important and worth sharing and listening to. 
  • Discourage comments that seek to devalue a point of view. Acknowledge, when appropriate, that a widely-held view has been raised: “Many people share this perspective. What might their reasons be?” followed by “Why might others disagree or object to this position?”
  • If there is a student or group of students who seem particularly disturbed by the situation, arrange a time to meet with them separately as soon as you can after the incident. This will give the student(s) an opportunity to share with you context that may not immediately be apparent to you.

Use It As a Teaching Moment: Remember that your role as an instructor is important in these moments as you can teach students the importance of reflection, listening carefully to all voices, and critical thinking. Here are some simple activities that can turn “hot moments” into teaching moments:

  • Quick Write – Pose a question or prompt to your students and give them a few minutes to construct an answer. Or ask students to write down their feelings and opinions about the topic at hand. This creates a reflective break that gets the entire class involved and gives students time to sort their emotions and thoughts.
  • Think, Pair, Share – Students take time to think about a question or prompt and then are put into pairs or small groups to explain their answers. Finally, the entire class comes together to share what groups have discussed.
  • Circle of Voices – After being given a moment to reflect, each student in the room or group is given a few minutes to share his or her answer without interruption. The key is, nobody can reply to another answer until everyone has spoken. Once the “circle” is complete, the floor is open for discussion.
  • Fact Finding – Help students sort out facts, opinion, evidence, and questions about the topic by having students list what they know, what is in question, and what they need more information on. Then make a plan with students to find out what they need to know.

Follow up: Talk outside of class with the students most directly involved in the moment, to show your commitment to their success in the course and to help them learn from the experience. If you feel that a student has crossed a line in a conversation, take some time to discuss the incident with them about ways to manage these kinds of conversations in the future.

With some advance planning and strategies ready in your teaching toolbelt, “hot moments” won’t have to be quite so stressful for you or for your students, and you might succeed in deepening their learning.

Adapted from University of Michigan, Center for Research on Teaching & Learning: Responding to Difficult Moments, Vanderbilt University, Center for Teaching: Handling Difficult Dialogues, Lee Warren, Derek Bok Center, Harvard, Managing Hot Moments in the Classroom

Next topic in the Teaching, Learning, Justice and Inclusion blog series:

November 9: Supporting Students in a Time of Anxiety

Stephanie Fiore, PhD, is an Assistant Vice Provost at Temple University and Senior Director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

Injustice, Elections, & COVID: Effectively Handling Highly-Charged Class Discussions

Cliff Rouder & Kyle Vitale

Highly-charged discussions around current events can make students from a variety of backgrounds and points of view feel silenced and alienated in class by other students or even by a professor. But if thoughtfully handled, they can be highly productive for students, teaching them how to listen empathetically and actively to other points of view and even collaborate across them, giving them practice in critical thinking, and creating new connections to course material.

Whether your course naturally includes highly-charged topics, or you decide to have a discussion in response to a controversial current event, preparing for these moments can ensure they are enriching rather than distressing. Preparing for difficult class discussions requires us to think deeply about our goals and teaching approaches for students in these moments, while reflecting on our own feelings, biases, and motivations so that we can model and promote desirable behaviors.

Here are some important considerations and strategies to help set class up for productive discourse

  • Note Upcoming Discussions. It will be helpful to let students know they may be engaging in discussions that elicit strong feelings, opinions, and discomfort. Clearly communicate how you will help students “get comfortable with the discomfort” and help them see the benefits of such moments for their intellectual and emotional development.  This strategy can begin with an email pre-semester or open discussion in the first week, supported by messaging in your syllabus and repeated orally throughout the semester.
  • Develop guidelines for civil discourse. At the start of the semester, have students collaboratively generate guidelines for class discussion. These guidelines can be posted on Canvas and referred to throughout the semester. Sample guidelines include: listening without interrupting; not turning the conversation into a personal attack; and avoiding inflammatory language. You’ll be surprised how much tougher students can be about these guidelines than you might be, and how much more buy-in you’ll get when they have contributed to the established rules.
  • Check your baggage at the gate. Before engaging in these types of discussions, reflect on your own biases and triggers. How might you respond verbally and non-verbally to a contrary statement / point of view about which you have strong feelings? Work on modeling desirable skills: show students what it means to actively listen and how to ask clarifying questions. Review some non-verbal skills that demonstrate caring and compassion, and compare the effects to non-verbal expressions of intolerance and anger. If anyone’s feelings cannot be managed effectively in the moment, it may be better to table the discussion and return at a later time.
  • Give students opportunities to practice. Early in the semester, start with discussion topics that are low stakes and won’t trigger strong emotional responses. This allows students to get to know one another and practice listening, evaluate another perspective, and navigate differences of opinion. For instance, you might begin with a reading that (students can evaluate through competing explanations. Whether you have in-person, live, or asynchronous courses, pair work and discussion boards can help students practice listening or reading each other’s takes on a topic. Online, you can use Zoom breakout rooms or private chat to get students speaking with one another. At the end of these discussions, remember to ask students what they learned from the process.
  • When It’s Go Time. The following active learning strategies can serve as a vehicle for practicing and engaging in civil discourse on difficult topics:
    • Start with prompting activities. Rather than throw a difficult topic wide open, lead into discussion with exercises or questions than help students warm up, sort out their thoughts, and confront their initial reactions. A 1-minute reflection paper before discussion can help students order their thinking. Questions that start with a third party, like “what did x source have to say on this topic?” or “where does this topic currently fit in the national landscape?” give students time to find their feet. A variety of other strategies exist for designing questions that engage students critically while helping them to manage their passions.
    • Consider structured discussion techniques. These strategies structure discussion to ensure fairness, inclusivity and focus. In the Circle of Voices activity, each student gets a chance to speak uninterrupted for 30 seconds to 2 minutes, depending on class size. In Circular Response, each student is required to build their comment from the prior comment, or at least address it constructively before adding their own thoughts. In Snowballing, students debate a topic in pairs, then pairs join one another, becoming progressively larger until  the whole class reunites. This approach helps students learn that discussions can be developmental as it pivots to incorporate new ideas. Make sure that students also get opportunities to practice the skills they glean from structured discussion in more open discussion scenarios.
    • Own the difficulty by setting up a debate. Some topics may be best served through debate, where students are invited to take sides and argue, but interact through established rules. Debates work best when students are asked to reverse opinion and consider opposing views. Check out these guidelines for ensuring an effective debate experience.
    • Be prepared for tension. There is always the possibility that a difficult discussion gets out of control. In these “hot” moments, the following strategies can help: remind students of your class discussion agreement; affirm the emotions in the room while rerouting the energy through further questions; ask students to write their thoughts quietly for a moment; in the Zoom environment, remove a student who is overly aggressive or violates policies. Many other strategies also exist for managing these hot moments.

If you’d like to develop a game plan with a CAT faculty developer, or if you would like a developer to sit in on a discussion to give you feedback, don’t hesitate to book a consultation. With some thoughtful planning and some practice, incorporating difficult discussions into your course can be a highly successful pedagogical strategy and may not be that difficult after all!

Cliff Rouder, Ed.D., is Pedagogy and Design Specialist at Temple University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching. Kyle Vitale, Ph.D., is Associate Director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

Designing Writing Assignments to Defeat Cheating

Jeff Rients

Designing Writing Assignments to Defeat Cheating

Although plagiarism detection tools can assist instructors to catch cheaters, a better alternative is to design writing assignments that discourage such behaviors in the first place. On top of that, each of the techniques discussed below can result in better writing from all students, not just those who might be tempted to cheat. By adopting three simple principles, not only will you find yourself dealing with fewer plagiarism cases, but you’ll also provide more opportunities for your students to become better writers!

Establish a baseline

Early in the semester ask students to write a page or two. This assignment should be low stakes, either for no grade or worth just enough points to incentivize participation. No research should be required for this piece. Instead, it can be either a response to an initial reading or an autobiographical essay describing the student’s relationship with the course content.

An assignment like this provides you with two important things. First, you’ll have some vital information on the students’ preparation for your course which can help you tailor your lessons for them. Second, you now have a sample of the student’s writing. If you find yourself investigating cheating down the line, you won’t need to analyze the suspected writing against some database. Instead, you can pull out this piece from the start of the semester to see if the grammar, punctuation, vocabulary, and other elements of styles match up to the suspected piece.

Use checkpoints

Some instructors place unnecessary focus on the final product of the assignment, as if that were the only object worthy of the instructor’s attention and feedback. Instead, cheat-resistant assignments consider writing as a process, a series of steps, each of which merits its own scrutiny and feedback.

To achieve this sequencing, many instructors will find it necessary to cut down on the total number of final deliverables. Instead of, for example, students producing three papers over the course of a semester, you might have them write only one or two final products. In turn, what previously you might consider to be “the paper” becomes the last link in a  sequence of submissions.

A typical example of sequenced assignments might be something like the following:

  1. Each student writes a very brief proposal of the topic they wish to write about.
  2. Students then create an annotated bibliography or other evidence of their research process.
  3. A rough draft of the paper, or at least a substantial portion of it, is then submitted.
  4. The final draft of the paper completes the process.

Going through each step with your students will result in better final drafts, as it allows you to intervene earlier in the process. You can, for example, warn off students who select overly broad topics in their proposal. Or you can steer students towards better avenues for research if you see that their annotated bibliography is weak.

Additionally, this method makes it easier to see when a student makes a sharp left turn. This allows the instructor to look for things like a sudden deviation from the proposed topic, the reliance on research outside what appears in the bibliography, or a final draft that looks nothing like the first draft. None of these are necessarily proof of cheating; they could be evidence that the student is taking the project seriously enough to make major revisions before the final submission. However, if this major shift also produces writing that is stylistically different from your baseline as described above, then you know that you have a situation worth discussing with the student.

Prompt explicit revision plans

Sometimes when we write feedback for our students it can feel like we are sending it out into the ether. Whether what we have to say reaches their ears and whether they actually respond to it can be a mystery, especially if we only communicate feedback to them at the end of the paper-writing process. Feedback shouldn’t be about looking back at what students did wrong. Rather, proper writing feedback looks ahead to what students can do to make sure they succeed at their next writing task.

In the case of a sequenced writing assignment as described above, the feedback from the proposal should be written with advice for the research needed for the bibliography. The bibliography feedback should be aimed at what the student does in the first draft and the first draft feedback should inform the final draft. This is the difference between condemnation and critique; your feedback should be about equipping the student with what they need to succeed in the future.

Don’t assume that the students will take up your feedback and incorporate it in later steps. Instead, the incorporation of that feedback should be an explicit component of completing the assignment. You may even want students to hand in a short narrative of how your feedback from the previous assignment was used to shape the current one. This creates a formal relationship between steps in the assignment.

With such a relationship established, it becomes much easier to spot unusual writing activity from a student. If you suggested a particular strategy for the next assignment in the chain and instead they adopted a completely different approach that also seems significantly more sophisticated than the baseline writing assignment, you may have reason to suspect something has gone wrong. Of course, your suggestion may also have sparked a new, and different, idea in your student. You’ll need to use your discretion to determine the nature and cause of any drastic changes.

Ultimately, we need to be open to the possibility that the student has made significant progress as a writer since you last checked in with them. That is, after all, the point! That’s also why open and clear communication about your expectations for student behavior is important. By adopting these three principles, you can build writing assignments that not only discourage cheating, but that also help students improve their writing skills. And isn’t that why we are assigning them papers in the first place?

Jeff Rients, Ph.D., is Senior Teaching & Learning Specialist at Temple University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

Four Ways to Cultivate Community in your Online Class

Cliff Rouder

We all know how empowering and motivating it feels when we’re part of a community working hard toward a common goal–perhaps now more than ever. That feeling of connecting and belonging; having a voice and knowing you’ll be heard; knowing you’re supported and supporting others: this is what community can feel like in an online course. But community is more than a feeling. Indeed, the research tells us that these are key ingredients to student success in your course, and by extension, to retention in the major and in college.

Understanding that community can look different depending on class size, here are some ways to build that foundation early on:

1. Make your goal of creating community transparent.

Tell your students the reasons why it’s important, what you will do, and what you expect them to do, to help build that community. You might even make this one of your course goals. By the end of the semester, what will students need to demonstrate to know whether they’ve met this goal, and how will you get them there? Perhaps it will be through successful collaborative work. Perhaps it will be through participating in discussion boards. Consider these other ideas below.

2. Build in different ways of presenting content and demonstrating competence.

If we proactively do this, then we will have met the learning needs of as many students as possible, which can reduce the need for individual student accommodation. Think about representing content via audio and visual means in addition to text. Think about alternative assessments besides exams and papers. We call this proactive approach to course design Universal Design for Learning, or UDL. As always in course design, we start with our course goals first and then work backwards to design assessments and learning activities.

3. Build in social opportunities for students.

How about creating a space where students can connect on a social level? Think of them gathering around the water cooler to talk about non-course related topics. Can you connect them to former students who are now working in their fields of interest? 

4. Personalize and humanize your online classroom.

There are many ways you can do this:

  • Welcome them into your home space. Show them your pet, your child, your environment, and encourage them to do the same. Be mindful though that some may be hesitant to appear on webcam, so encourage, but don’t require. Students can always use their audio, the Zoom chat tool, discussion boards, or photos if they don’t want to turn on their webcams.
  • Ask them to come to virtual office hours. You’ll be amazed at how a 10-minute “getting to know you” session can decrease their hesitation about coming to you for assistance. Then, check in frequently with the whole class in your synchronous or asynchronous sessions.
  • Do some interesting ice-breakers. Try on for size “Three truths and a lie,” or “What are you binge-watching?” This gets students talking about themselves, but also comparing their experiences to their peers.
  • Have them send you the pronouns they use and be mindful about using them. Everyone has a need to feel validated and this is a simple step that can greatly assist some of our most vulnerable students.
  • Create guidelines together for communicating respectfully when their points of view differ. An online course is an artificial space where the rules of interaction don’t always seem obvious. Inviting the students to participate in setting the ground rules for civil discourse gets them involved in building community from the ground up.
  • Purposefully connect course content to their lives and future ambitions. Remember, your course does not exist in isolation, but it can feel that way to students. Always look for opportunities to connect your course to recent events, their past experiences as students, and/or their personal and career aspirations.

With just a little effort–and some humanity–you can create a community of learners in your online course. As always, the CAT is here to help you in this endeavor, so don’t hesitate to book a consultation with one of our amazing faculty developers or educational technologists at catbooking.temple.edu. We’ve also compiled a great collection of resources to help you design your online course, which you can access at teaching.temple.edu/design.

Cliff Rouder, Ed.D., is Pedagogy and Design Specialist at Temple University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

Bringing Mindfulness to the Classroom

Wellness Resource Center

Mindfulness is becoming more popular in American culture. As the large body of research about its benefits continues to grow, increased attention has been paid to integrate mindfulness into educational institutions, from K-12 schools to colleges and universities.

What is mindfulness, exactly?

Mindfulness is the capacity to be aware of the present moment (rather than getting caught up in the past or future); it is both innate and a skill that can be honed through regular practice. Mindfulness can be practiced by bringing focused attention to the present-moment experience with kindness and free of judgment. The more we practice this skill, the better we can become at recognizing our thoughts, emotions, and bodies and better manage stress. Even a couple of minutes per day can help someone (especially students with busy schedules) prioritize their well-being. Mindfulness can be practiced formally through meditation exercises, and also informally during regular daily activities by bringing attention to the present moment experience. Anything can be done mindfully, from eating to moving and even washing the dishes!

Organizations and researchers have found many benefits:

How can mindfulness be useful as an instructor?

The American College Health Association found student well-being impacts how they are showing up in the classroom. By acknowledging their lives outside of academics and taking a “whole person” approach, we can cultivate a community where students feel more open to take care of themselves as a way of supporting their goals and well-being.

It is important to consider how mindfulness shows up in your own life. Having your own mindfulness practice can benefit your well-being and performance as an instructor. It can also help you integrate some of these approaches and strategies into your classroom. Mindfulness can be quite personal; how much you share about your own experience is always at your discretion.

How can mindfulness be implemented?

There are a few things to note about your approach to bringing mindfulness to your classroom:

  • Explain why you’re introducing this to your classroom and relate it back to the course (e.g. when students are well, they do better in class).
  • Make it accessible. Use simple, neutral language to avoid jargon or terms that may not feel as relevant to students. For example, students may be more receptive to the term “mindfulness” rather than “meditation.”
  • Make it optional. It’s important for folks to be open to mindfulness and approach it with curiosity. If it feels forced, it probably won’t go well. Let’s students know that it’s an invitation and not a requirement.

You can integrate mindfulness and related approaches by:

  • Taking a few mindful breaths together at the beginning or end of each class.
  • Setting aside 5-10 minutes to do a guided mindfulness practice together as a class. You can find free recordings online.
  • Including assignments that align with a mindfulness approach.
  • Acknowledging that you care about student well-being and providing periodic reminders about self-care, especially during high-stress times of the semester.
    • Remind students that grades do not define their worth and that they deserve to take care of themselves.
      • Students can take care of themselves by building routines around food and meal times, sleep and rest, movement or physical activity and leaving even a few minutes of “you” time to do things that help them feel well.
    • Spending a minute or two talking about this at the beginning of class can be a helpful way to cultivate community in your classroom. It can also serve as a reminder that self-care is important for well-being, and can benefit their academic performance.

Encourage students to access mindfulness resources on campus:

The Wellness Resource Center (WRC) is Temple University’s health promotion office. The WRC offers a variety of intentional learning opportunities to promote well-being and cultivate community. Services include peer-led workshops, campus-wide events, staff and faculty training, wellness consultations, and safer sex supply sales. Learn more about these services and how to request programming at wellness.temple.edu or connect with the WRC on social media (Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook) @BeWellTU.Image credit: “Body of Water and Sunlight” released under Creative Commons CC0 (public domain) by PeakPx.com.