During recent semesters many attending college have used social media to share their thoughts on pursuing an education during a pandemic. We went to Reddit, where Temple students were already sharing their stories, and asked for anonymous quotes that we might pass on to you. In this EDvice Exchange entry we’ll be sharing a selection of these posts, to highlight the lengths to which some of our wonderful Temple instructors went as well as how those efforts impacted their students. We extend our heartfelt thanks to these faculty members and the others like them who worked so hard over the last year.
“Dr. Talissa Ford was super understanding about some of us not wanting to be on camera or not being able complete work because of personal reasons.”
“Israel Vasquez is another great professor. Take literally any of his classes and you won’t regret it. He modified his Scene Analysis class in respect to social distancing and the isolation that we were living in. Even when personal issues came up he always made time for us.”
“Professor Michael Klein. I took his honors Soundtrack of the Apocalypse Class and he was super flexible. He didn’t want the class to stress anyone out at all, so he gave out extensions and limited reading assignments in favor of doing more scene analysis in class so that the homework was never oppressive. Even on the final paper he sent us a canvas message the day it was due (after the two day extension he gave us) saying not to stress anyone out but the final paper is due today, so if you have it ready by five that would be great. Felt very little pressure in his class. If you have the opportunity to take a class with him, especially in the foreseeable future, do it. Super chill and super flexible.”
“Professor Roth in psychology. She would take time every class to ask how we are doing and would remind us every class to make time for self care. I loved how on the last day she said ‘I don’t like saying ‘goodbye’ because it sounds so formal, so see you all later.’”
“The man, the myth, the legendary Prof. Mike Hughes. Incredible morale booster and source of motivation. Ended every class with ‘Your friends care about yous, your family cares about yous, and I care about yous.’Genuine gem.”
The theme we pick out from these and many of the other quotes we’ll be sharing is simple: good education begins by acknowledging that students aren’t simply learning machines, but rather our fellow human beings. When we cultivate an ethic of care where we treat them with kindness and respect, great things can happen in the classroom.
One last thing: See a colleague mentioned above? Consider sending them a quick note of thanks for going the extra mile. Instructors need words of kindness and encouragement, too!
We are almost at the end of an incredibly unusual year, one that caused no small amount of stress, exhaustion, and sense of loss, but which we hope also engendered creativity, agility, and a heightened sense of empathy. All of these by-products of the sudden and persistent changes we have experienced over the past year—whether negative or positive ones—can lead to burnout. It takes an incredible amount of effort to push through exhaustion and loss; it also takes an incredible amount of effort to be continually creative and empathetic with others.
In her Temple Talks video, Self-Compassion (It Feels Weird, Right?), Dr. Annette Willgens from the College of Public Health reminds us of the importance of practicing self-compassion, especially in times like these. Professor Willgens points out that it takes practice – and stillness – to become aware of our own self-criticisms and then to become more compassionate with ourselves. I like especially how she emphasizes that, while we may continue to strive for excellence, perfection is not attainable, and exhorts us to “make the ordinary the new extraordinary.”
This past year, we’ve understood even more clearly how imperfect teaching can be, perhaps even should be. When done well, responsive teaching requires that we constantly assess how our students are learning, make adjustments and then tweak our approaches yet again. I often tell faculty that there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution for teaching, because the situational factors of each class—things like class size, time of day, modality (online, hybrid, in person), type of course (required, intro or capstone, honors), chemistry of the students in the class, whether there is a pandemic going on—affect us and our students, sometimes changing the dynamics of a class in profound ways. This is why the course you have taught successfully a number of times can suddenly feel harder than it ever has, even in “normal” times. Add to that the unexpected switch to online learning this past year. You were learning how to teach online, continually trying new things, refining ideas that almost worked, and seeking solutions for failed experiments, all while ramping up support for students grappling with their own uncertainty and inexperience in the online space.
So give yourselves a pass if you’re exhausted and you can’t wait for the last day of the semester to come. My greatest wish for you, my dear colleagues, is that you are able to find some time to practice self-compassion, breathe, and regain the energy we all need to move forward.
After you have regained some of that energy, an important next step is to take time to reflect on the past year’s teaching experiences with a critical eye and then to ask yourself: “Where do I go from here?” Resist the urge to fall back onto old ways of doing things in your classrooms and letting everything you have learned fall by the proverbial wayside, even if you are going back to in-person teaching. These reflective questions will assist you in discovering how to forge a new way forward that leverages the best of old and new experiences. If you are teaching this summer and feel that you have no time to carve out time for this exercise, consider that even a few minutes to reflect in this way before planning your fall semester can make a difference in decisions you’ll make about your course.
What are some realizations you came to about your identity as an instructor and about your students? Are those realizations still pertinent as you move forward? If so, how will they affect your actions?
Did you make changes to your teaching methods or teaching tools in order to teach online? What did you discover in making these changes? Are there elements of those changes that you would like to retain moving forward? How will you operationalize them in a new teaching environment?
What did you learn about community and connection during this year, both with students and with colleagues? How might you want to bring what you’ve learned to bear on your learning environments moving forward?
What changes did you make to your class policies? Might you want to retain some of those changed policies moving forward if you found they served student needs better? How can you balance supporting student needs with managing your own professional and personal needs?
Did you make changes to your curriculum or to your classroom practices in an effort to create a more equitable, inclusive, and just space for learning? Which of these changes made a real difference for your students? Is there more work to be done in this respect?
What did you learn about how events happening outside the classroom influence what happens in the classroom? How did these events present opportunities and/or challenges in teaching? How will you interact (or not) with current events in future classes?
And remember that we are here all summer to talk through your ideas with you in one-on-one consultations. You can also get timely help with educational technology questions at the Virtual Drop-In Ed Tech Lab.
A final word from all of the CAT staff to you. We admire the work and thoughtfulness you put into teaching this year, and the care for your students that we observed time and time again. We also appreciate the collegiality you have shown to us this year as we worked with you to navigate uncertainty and constantly changing needs. This connection with faculty is the foundation of the CAT’s mission, and helped us to keep going in sometimes overwhelming times. Here’s hoping for some moments of rest, reflection, and connection this summer for all of us.
Stephanie Fiore is Assistant Vice Provost of Temple’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching
Going to college is an exciting opportunity for every student; It’s a time filled with pride and hope. Imagine how strong those feelings must be for our first-generation (first-gen) students, that is, students whose parents either did not go to or did not graduate from college. You might be surprised to learn that, according to the 2020-2021 Temple University Fact Book,16% of our students had neither parent attend college, and 31% had neither parent graduate.
Along with feelings of pride and hope, however, some of our first-gen students may feel a sense of apprehension not knowing the “rules” of college that generational knowledge brings, and may face academic, economic, and emotional hurdles as well. For instance, Kamina Richardson, faculty advisor to Temple First (the first-gen student org) and a first-gen college student herself, explains that first-gen students are more likely to be caregivers of the home, so they juggle the goals of an academic education along with family obligations. (To hear firsthand from the students themselves, check out #FirstGenTempleMade.)
Temple helps our first-year, first-gen students acclimate to campus culture with a host of resources. In addition to the Temple First student club, Temple offers the powerful First to Fly program, including a glossary of terms with links to resources.
Let’s look at what faculty can do in our learning environments to build on these efforts and welcome our first-gen students.
Send a message of welcome pre-semester and create an inclusive learning environment. It is important to introduce yourself, connect with them as a human being, and assure them at the start of the course that you have designed a learning environment that they can succeed in. If you were a first-gen student yourself, let them know! Throughout the semester, serve as a model by sharing how you felt as a first-gen student and your experiences and advice navigating the college experience. Be a resource for them by familiarizing yourself with campus resources.
Learn about students’ individual assets and needs and respond accordingly. In getting to know all of your students, why not do a pre-semester survey? Ask questions that assess demands on their time or other barriers to learning such as their access to technology. Find out their comfort level with things like negotiating Canvas, coming to student hours (aka office hours), and with the content of your discipline. Then find ways to meet students’ needs, wherever possible. For example, because many students work or help their families in other ways, flexibility with due dates makes a real difference. Work with one of our research librarians in your field to investigate whether there are open educational resources that can reduce the cost of materials for your course. One way we can “see” our first-gen students is by explicitly asking them. Be sure that you describe exactly what you mean by first gen so they can answer accurately.
Make what you’re asking them to do (and why!) transparent. Help your students see the value of the course. That means writing and articulating clear, meaningful course goals and coming back to them throughout the semester to continually link them to the “what” and “why” of your course content. Organizing your Canvas course in a logical, consistent way, providing rubrics, and giving motivating and frequent, actionable feedback are other ways you can help students see the “whats” and “whys” of your course.
Provide opportunities for students to learn from and get to know each other. To reduce feelings of isolation and marginalization, be sure to incorporate multiple and varied activities that enable students to work together, everything from think-pair-share activities all the way up to sustained semester-long projects. Providing a class Zoom room where they can meet without you is another great way to build those connections.
Help them become self-directed learners. We often think students already know–or should know–how to take notes, study effectively, and reflect on and adjust their learning strategies when what they’ve tried isn’t working. So with your guidance, take some time to have them share effective note-taking and study strategies with each other. Use exam wrappers (aka cognitive wrappers) to help them formatively reflect on their performance and develop a plan for improvement.
You’ve probably noticed that all the strategies above will work for all kinds of learners, not just first generation students. In our in-person and virtual classrooms, we can take a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) approach to help everyone succeed. UDL asks us to consider how we can provide students with multiple ways of accessing and learning content, expressing their understanding, and engaging with you and their peers. Taking a UDL approach means that you’re proactively creating a course and learning environment that provides benefit to as many students as possible.
November 8 is National First-Generation/College Celebration Day. Watch for information from Jennifer Johnson, Assistant Professor in the College of Education and Human Development and Juliet Curci of the College Access Community of Practice group, who are spearheading various events in celebration of Temple’s first-gen students.
As always, if you’d like to learn more pedagogical strategies and educational technology tools that can benefit our first-gen as well as all students, reach out to a faculty developer or educational technology specialist for a consultation or email us at cat@temple.edu.
Cliff Rouder, Linda Hasunuma, and Jeff Rients are staff members of Temple University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.
When there is a major national event, such as the Chauvin trial and verdict or the mass shootings in Atlanta and Indianapolis, students may look to us to provide greater context and perspective as they process these difficult moments. Students appreciate when faculty acknowledge what has happened. Acknowledgement can come in many forms, and can range from a moment of silence or allowing space for written reflection to class discussions (Huston and DiPietro 2017). Even if you are not an expert on the issue or it feels like it is outside of your discipline, your acknowledgement of the event and the emotions around it signals to your students that you care about them. Engaging students in discussions about these events can deepen learning and contribute to your students’ intellectual and emotional growth as they consider perspectives different from their own, and learn how to engage in these dialogues in a productive way. To prepare for these deeper discussions, we recommend that you make a plan and create ground rules with your students for respectful discussion together. To make space for these critical conversations with your students, we offer some helpful practices about how to prepare for them and manage any hot moments that may arise in our Equity Blog Series.
We also recommend directing your students to resources at the Wellness Center and, Temple’s Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Leadership (IDEAL). IDEAL has several programs such as their Black in America series and Timely Topics, for those seeking deeper conversations and community on matters related to race and justice. Please see their latest email in response to the Chauvin verdict for more information.
If you would like to discuss any of these issues further and think through how you can create brave and inclusive spaces for such conversations in your classes, we invite you to make an appointment with one of CAT’s faculty developers for a one-on-one consultation.
Linda Hasunuma and Naomie Nyanungo work at Temple University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.
The Student Feedback Form can be a valuable source of information about your teaching and your courses. As often it can be a site of frustration, confusion, and irrelevant non sequiturs. How do you read your SFFs with an eye to learning about your teaching? We at the CAT would like to share a few approaches that can help you cut through the noise, find that helpful information, and even laugh off those cruder moments.
Read for patterns
The SFF is an inherently subjective object: students typically fill them out with their own personal experiences of your course in mind. While that doesn’t invalidate their observations, it does mean handling them with care. In this context, it makes more sense to look for patterns, where multiple students signal a shared experience about your course. Most of us have experienced that one student who had a terrible time and lets you know about it in the SFF. That single student’s strong language says far less than two, ten, or twenty students arriving at the same conclusion.
So, read for patterns. Do multiple students comment on course organization, or how accessible you are? That probably means a majority of students found you and the course to be clear. This kind of reading is broad, not deep: you resist getting mired in a single comment and instead survey your responses and start picking out keywords or subjects that recur. Make a list of those subjects, and only then return for deeper reading. This approach ensures you maximize your time with material that obviously deserves attention (either for compliment or revision).
Read for ideas
SFFs are not a statement of adequacy. We’ll repeat that so you can read it out loud to yourself and anybody nearby: SFFs are not a statement of adequacy. Research indicates that students sometimes respond to questions for a variety of reasons having little to do with your teaching ability, and of course, SFFs are not built to include evidence and citation. It is therefore best to enter them with an eye toward small ideas for improvement, rather than with your self worth on the line.
Do students share anything they wish they’d seen more of? Do they mention (and remember, look for those patterns) activities they liked? Are there any particularly kind and thoughtful comments that offer suggestions for changes to in-class activities or assignments? Treat these not as personal critiques, but as free advice for you to consider and (maybe, if it makes sense) adopt.
Read for humor
The internet has made us all familiar with the dangers of the “comment section,” and we have seen some crazy things in SFFs: professors accused of knowing nothing, ruining a major, and picking the wrong career. There are only two possible responses to such claims: believe them, or laugh them off. Comments like these prey on our innate insecurities, and almost always come as one-offs, not patterns. While they can hurt and be difficult to forget, keep in mind that they are almost always groundless and operate on an emotional, rather than curricular, level.
So, find a friend and laugh it off! Tell someone “they just have to hear this.” Have a party where you try to beat each other for the funniest, oddest, or worst comment out there. We promise that the moment you hear those statements hanging in the air, they’ll lose their power and you’ll find them easier to dismiss out of hand. If no one comes to mind, reach out to us — we’d love to share a chuckle with you!
Keep it in context
Remember that SFFs are just one perspective on your teaching. Many others exist including peer observation, your own reflections, more informal conversations with students, or asking a CAT staffer to come visit. SFFs are not comprehensive, and should be digested in concert with other evidence for a fuller picture of your ongoing development as a teacher. As always, the CAT is here to help: if you’d like us to help you decipher your SFFs, feel free to make an appointment and we’d be happy to read them with you.
Kyle Vitale, PhD, is Associate Director of Temple’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.
Direct instruction on effective study strategies and concrete feedback about the quality of learning
The consequences of fixed or growth mindsets (Dweck, 2006) have been a powerful influence on thinking about teaching and learning. Dweck found that successful students have a growth mindset and advocates using teaching strategies that promote a growth mindset.
Individuals with a growth mindset believe that expertise emerges from practice. Students with a growth mindset perceive difficult tasks as opportunities to stretch and learn new skills. They try tasks that challenge their current level of skill and accept the risk of making mistakes as an opportunity to learn. Constructive feedback from mistakes helps them improve.
In contrast, students who believe talent is an innate characteristic have a fixed mindset and avoid challenging tasks. Students with a fixed mindset fear that mistakes made on a difficult task expose their lack of talent. They believe that mistakes expose their weaknesses and reveal that they are overreaching or studying the wrong discipline. Students who believe performance depends entirely on talent prefer tasks for which they are confident they will excel. When learning gets difficult or they make mistakes, they tend to give up.
Dweck notes that many teachers and students falsely claim to have a growth mindset (Gross-Loh, 2016). Because a growth mindset is the socially correct attitude to espouse, people believe they ought to subscribe to a growth mindset. However, their behavior suggests that they believe performance is really determined by fixed talent. Instructors with a false growth mindset place too much emphasis on rewarding effort and too little emphasis on providing specific guidance on effective strategies for completing challenging tasks. They may fail to provide diagnostic feedback about errors to guide future efforts. Dweck argues that teachers who subscribe to a “false growth mindset” offer empty praise for effort as a sort of consolation prize, given to students they believe lack the talent required to perform well on a task. They fail to provide the constructive feedback students require to correct errors and improve learning. Empty praise for effort without constructive feedback perpetuates the notion of talent and promotes a fixed mindset.
What actions will nurture a genuine growth mindset?
The hallmark of a genuine belief in a growth mindset is students who seek challenging tasks that stretch their skill. They risk making mistakes to obtain beneficial feedback from difficult learning experiences. Their persistence and effort are rewarded with personal growth and development of expertise. Thus, although effort and persistence are necessary, they are not sufficient to achieve benefits for learning. Students need more.
Complex learning seldom occurs in one trial or through a single insight. Expertise, particularly expertise with cognitive skills (critical thinking, professional writing, problem-solving) develops when practice is repeated over time. Persistence is important and must be encouraged. But persistence is effective only when combined with practice guided by formative feedback from a skilled expert.
Instructors who want to encourage a growth mindset and develop expert skill in their students need to offer more than praise for effort or simply give “lip service” (empty endorsement) to adopting a “growth mindset.” They must offer specific, concrete, constructive feedback to guide future efforts and correct errors.
Teach students about specific study strategies that are known to be effective. Don’t simply encourage students to persist, try harder, or study longer. Too many students believe (erroneously) that spending more time studying (exerting more effort) will improve their learning. They waste time re-reading, highlighting, and engaging in mechanical rote repetition study tasks that produce little benefit for long-term retention. Instead, advise students to change the way they study and adopt strategies known to produce good long-term retention. Dunlosky et al. (2013) identified six strategies that have been shown to produce superior long-term retention, based on substantial laboratory evidence. Sumeracki and Weinstein (2017) created a one-page, open access infographic that describes these six strategies. Instructors can distribute this infographic to their students as a course handout, discuss it in class, and refer to it again when advising a student who is struggling in class. The infographic describes the following strategies: retrieval practice (using self-tests), elaborative interaction with course content (posing and answering “why” and “how” questions), practice distributed over multiple sessions, interleaving practice on different topics, frame abstract content in terms of concrete examples instead of memorizing textbook definitions, and use multiple methods (visual, verbal) to represent and encode information.
Provide specific formative feedback about the nature of errors in performance. Describe concrete actions students must take to correct errors and produce more skilled performance. Students need more detailed feedback than simple identification of errors (what they did wrong). They also need to know what they should do. Describe new strategies students should use and the actions they should take to correct errors and meet expectations for skilled performance.
Resources
Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14, 4-58. https://www.doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266
Dweck, C. S. (2006/2016). Mindset: The new psychology of success (updated edition). New York: Ballantine Books.
Claudia J. Stanny is the Director of the Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment at the University of West Florida.
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.
Faculty often ask us if there are ways to have students work more equitably and effectively in team projects. In our 2018 STEM Educators Lecture, we had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Elisabeth (Lisa) Stoddard discuss the work she and her colleague, Geoff Pfeifer, have been doing at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) to minimize bias and stereotyping in undergraduate student project teams. Her discussion generated interest in our TU STEM community. We know this work is relevant and useful for all disciplines that utilize team projects for deep learning, and thus we are delighted to share an overview of their work with our whole faculty community.
The Issue
We know that student group projects can be a valuable experience for students. However, even with an equal distribution of work, they may not always be equitable. This can be especially true in disciplines where underrepresented and marginalized groups might be stereotyped as not being capable enough to handle the project. Consistent with prior research in STEM fields, Stoddard and Pfeifer reported that in WPI’s required first-year interdisciplinary project-based learning course pairing one STEM and one social sciences professor, women and students of color more frequently experienced their ideas being ignored or shut down, being assigned less important tasks, dealing with an overpowering teammate, and having their work go unacknowledged or claimed by others.
The Approach
Stoddard and Pfeifer employed an equity-based approach using asset mapping originally developed by Kretzman and McNight in 1993. In essence, asset mapping gives students the opportunity to get to know their and their team’s strengths, interests, identities, and needed areas of growth related to the project. But it goes well beyond that. Asset mapping is just the initial step of a process that enables students to take a deeper dive into bias and stereotyping as they evaluate their own behaviors and the dynamics of their teams. In a paper presented at the 2018 Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity Conference, Stoddard and Pfeifer shared quotes from their students that spoke to improved teamwork by overcoming stereotypes, minimizing task assignment bias, and building student confidence.
As a way to operationalize asset mapping, Stoddard and Pfeifer developed this toolkit containing three modules that include the tools, activities, assignments, and rubrics needed at different times of the semester. Here is an overview of these modules:
Module 1: Individual work. Before teams have their initial meeting, students complete a series of self-assessments about their discussion, presentation, problem-solving, and conflict resolution styles. They then create an asset map. (Students are given a sample asset map and a free asset map-making tool.) Students also choose three areas for growth as a result of completing the course or group project. Having reflected on all of these, they are then asked to write a short critical reflection essay that addresses specific prompts.
Module 2: Group work. Teams then meet early in the semester to get to know each other’s assets and growth areas, and complete a group chart that maps these to each task/skill required for the project. Each task can have multiple members working on it, with some using assets and some developing assets.
Module 3: Individual and group work. Beginning about halfway through the semester, students are given readings about equity and bias and individually work through a set of questions to assess how the team is functioning in terms of equity and productivity. The second step is a team processing activity to assess what is going well on their team and where their team may be struggling in terms of team dynamics, including whether assets are being used and opportunities for growth are being made available to all. The final step is an individual essay reflecting on whether or not they and other team members are using their assets and creating opportunities for growth, and the effects of bias and stereotyping that may have occurred on their team dynamics.
While there are real benefits that can accrue from this process, Stoddard and Pfeifer recognize that for some students, overcoming biases and stereotypes does not happen as a result of one classroom experience. They see this as a first step in a longer process, and thus recommend that these experiences happen at different times throughout a student’s course of study.
We invite you to explore with your program faculty how you could incorporate this equity-based approach into your curriculum. As always, don’t hesitate to reach out to a CAT faculty developer for assistance. Added bonus: Assessing the impact of asset mapping on team dynamics would make a great research project if you are looking to do scholarly work in the area of teaching and learning (better known as the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, or SoTL), and the CAT is here to help you with that as well!
Cliff Rouder is Pedagogy and Design Specialist at Temple University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.
A culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy provides opportunities for students’ own family experiences, cultural heritage, intersectional identities, and unique lived experiences to be sources of strength and knowledge in their learning experiences. Gloria Ladson-Billings (1995) developed the concept of culturally relevant pedagogy to show how educators can help close racial disparities in educational outcomes. One of her key insights was shifting from deficit- to asset-based models to draw upon the different lived experiences of minority students.
Culturally responsive teaching practices value students’ personal experiences and cultural backgrounds as strengths and assets (Gay, 2018, p.32). Building on Ladson-Billings’ work, Geneva Gay finds that teaching practices that give ethnically diverse students learning experiences that are more relevant to their lives, deepens their engagement and learning (Gay, 2010). These practices help create learning experiences that are more affirming, validating, and representative of the lives of students. Culturally responsive teaching also involves examining ourselves as educators for our own cultural biases, the class climate, the nature of relationships with other students and the instructor, and the course content.
Why It Matters
Attempting to understand other cultures, particularly those at play in the lives of your students, prepares teachers to be alert to the differences at work in classrooms and to respond with care and empathy. For example, how many religious observances require fasting which might impact the performance of some of your students? Beyond making appropriate accommodations for religious holidays, culturally responsive teaching recognizes that the ways students interact with adults and authority figures, what constitutes appropriate gaze or eye contact, vary across cultures. Consider the simple act of speaking up in class – teachers grading students on participation need to consider the possibility that interjecting or volunteering one’s opinion will come more easily to some than others based on culturally learned habits.
These teaching approaches are relevant and more necessary than ever because of the well-documented change in undergraduate demographics. According to a new report by the American Council on Education, Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education: A Status Report, students of color made up just 29.6 percent of the undergraduate student population in 1996, increasing to 45.2 percent in 2016. The greatest increase was in Hispanic and Asian students. And this change is not going away: the National Center for Education Statistics says that students from ethnic minority groups make up 50% of the pre-K-12 population, our future college students (Pew 2019).
How to Be A More Culturally Responsive Educator
Culturally relevant pedagogy helps teachers nourish a student’s sense of belonging which are critical for motivation, engagement, and learning outcomes. Who your students think they are matters, so why not ask them? A simple pre-course survey can invite students to share more about their backgrounds and provide a pathway to a one-on-one conversation.
Another way consists of thinking about your syllabus as a message as well as a roadmap. What message does it send to students of different cultural backgrounds? How do your course content, activities, assessments, and policies reflect an asset-based understanding of the diversity of your students? As you think about your syllabus and course design, consider going through these exercises, adopted from Jenny Muniz’s Culturally Responsive Teaching: A Reflection Guide:
Reflect on One’s Cultural Lens – How does your identity and your students’ identities shape your values and perspectives?
Recognize and Redress Bias in the System – Do your course content and policies address bias at the individual and systemic levels?
Draw on Students’ Culture to Shape Curriculum and Instruction – Do your assignments allow your students to see themselves and others? Do you evaluate your materials for historical accuracy, cultural relevance, and multiple perspectives?
Bring Real World Issues into the Classroom – Is your course content relevant to your students’ lives and communities?
Model High Expectations for All Students – Be aware of negative stereotypes and how and to whom you communicate your expectations.
Promote Respect for Student Differences – Is your learning environment safe, affirming, respectful and inclusive of all students?
Communicate in Linguistically and Culturally Responsive Ways – Reflect on your verbal and nonverbal communication, reduce communication barriers, and be respectful of other communication norms in the cultures your students come from.
Gay, Geneva. Culturally Responsive Teaching : Theory, Research, and Practice. 2nd ed. Multicultural Education Series (New York, N.Y.). New York: Teachers College, 2010.
Ladson-Billings, Gloria. “But That’s Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy,” Theory Into Practice, 34, no. 3 (1995).
Muniz, Jenny. Culturally Responsive Teaching. New America. Washington, DC 2018.
The unique backgrounds, experiences and perspectives that international students bring to the class can enrich the learning experience for everyone in the class. However, if the students do not feel a sense of belonging in the class, they are not likely to share their stories and perspectives. In this blog, we share some practices that will help you foster a welcoming learning environment for your international students. Please note that while the focus of the blog is on international students, the strategies discussed will foster a sense of belonging for students from all backgrounds.
Being aware of our own assumptions is the first step in supporting a sense of belonging in international students, as they will often guide our interaction with them. Some assumptions we make about international students and their learning can do more harm than good. Here are some examples of assumptions we should try to avoid and what we can do about them:
Language proficiency/Accents: While some international students have limited proficiency in English and will need your support, it is important not to assume that students with non-US accents are unable to articulate or produce high quality work. It is also important to keep in mind that the great diversity in the international student body comes with a wide range of proficiency with English, so do not assume all international students are English language learners. To these students, statements such as “oh wow, your English is so good” or “when did you learn to speak English so well?” are actually not compliments. In fact, they can be seen as condescending.
Culture: Don’t assume that everyone should understand US specific cultural references (e.g. pop culture.) Be sure to explain and clarify, and if appropriate, invite others to share examples in other contexts, if they are comfortable doing so.
Quiet participation: When international students have low participation in class discussions, do not assume disengagement. They might need some time to process language or new information. They may also feel shy about speaking aloud in a large group setting. Providing opportunities for brief reflection, small group or paired discussion, and alternative ways to participate can benefit not only international students but domestic students as well. You can support their learning by using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Principles (multiple ways for engagement, assessment, and providing information). You could, for example, provide closed captions during videos, or record lectures, put oral prompts on a slide, ask them to share their ideas or thoughts in different ways, use polling in class to check for understanding.
A welcoming environment is where students feel valued, cared for, and a sense of belonging. It is the foundation for active engagement and participation for all students, including international students. Here are a few things you can do to create a welcoming environment for your students:
Be transparent: Communicate in both oral and written form that you value all perspectives and voices in the classroom. You could, for example, explicitly say at the beginning of every class that ‘every single person in this class’ is welcome in this space. Provide clear expectations for class conduct and class participation. This is particularly helpful to international students who may be coming from educational backgrounds that are vastly different.
Get to know your students: Your students will feel cared for when you are genuinely interested in them as individuals, and not just as international students. Ask your students to complete a survey at the beginning of the semester to get a sense of students’ backgrounds and interests, and any information they would like to share to help them engage better with the class. It is also a good idea to invite students to meet with you during your office hours before they need help.
Learn your students’ names: While it is understandable that it may be difficult to pronounce names that are unfamiliar to you, your students will appreciate you making the effort. If you don’t know how to pronounce a name, ask the student to help you. This article explains why it is important to learn your students’ names and offers helpful strategies for learning names.
When taking class attendance, some teachers will ask only students with names unfamiliar to them ‘where are you from?’ While often well-intentioned, this question does not create a welcome environment for international students (or other students from underrepresented communities). For the student who is asked this question, the message to them is ‘you are not one of us.’ To foster a welcome environment, you should learn the names and allow the story that comes with those names to emerge organically in the course of the semester.
Invite students to share their perspectives without singling them out: Singling out is when a teacher asks a student to speak for their race, religion, nationality or any other identity group. For example, asking an international student to respond to a question like ‘how does this work in your country or global region?’ puts the student in a position where they have to represent an entire country or region. You should instead frame discussion questions that invite all students to share their perspectives and experiences. This article provides helpful suggestions for engaging with international students in ways that would make them feel welcome.
Finally, learning in a diverse classroom prepares both domestic and international students to become global citizens. Creating an inclusive and welcoming environment can help us overcome learning barriers and bring all students together. If you’d like assistance with making your course more inclusive and welcoming, please contact us at cat@temple.edu or make an appointment with one of our pedagogy specialists.
Hleziphi Naomie Nyanungo and Emtinan Alqurashi are Director and Assistant Director, respectively, at Temple University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.
As we continue to tackle the ongoing challenges of teaching remotely, one of the sticking points in some online classrooms is the use of AI proctoring solutions such as Proctorio to maintain academic integrity. While preventing cheating in online, closed-book tests is a challenge, students, faculty and technology experts have pointed to practical and ethical issues with this type of solution. Students on a number of campuses have objected to the use of this software and some universities, such as University of Illinois Champaign, University of British Columbia, and California Berkeley, have banned use of the tool.
What are the concerns?
Commonly cited concerns include:
Privacy – The electronic surveillance of their homes and the encoding of location information can make some students feel vulnerable, and critics have questioned how secure the data collected is. Where does this data go? How long is it retained? Who has access to it?
Anxiety – Test performance tends to go down as anxiety levels go up and for some students simply knowing they are being electronically scrutinized increases their anxiety level. Students may also worry that they will inadvertently do something (talk to themselves while taking an exam, for instance) that will flag them as cheaters.This creates a situation where the effort expended to catch cheaters actually penalizes some of the students acting in good faith.
Technology Access: Proctoring solutions work on the assumption that all students have access to the technological tools needed to participate, including a stable wifi connection, a laptop or desktop computer, and and a working webcam (and a quiet space in which to work, free from activity that might set off flags in the system).
Equity – Algorithm-driven proctoring solutions treat some students whose bodies do not conform to an ideal as inherently suspicious. The tool has had difficulty recognizing students with darker skin tones, for example, and the normal movements associated with certain motor neuron diseases can be read as suspicious behavior.
What Can I Do to Address These Concerns?
So given that there are legitimate concerns about the use of this software, how should we as instructors respond to them? As with so many pedagogical issues, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, we’d like to suggest a range of possible moves you can make:
Review your use of Proctorio – Perhaps the settings (there are lots of options!) don’t need to be as stringent as the defaults. Apply an ethic of minimal invasiveness to your use of this tool. Consider not using a room scan before beginning the test to reduce privacy concerns. If you do use room scans before the exam, definitely do not interrupt an exam to do an additional room scan later in the exam period.
Talk to your students – Make sure you have a clearly articulated policy as to what constitutes cheating. Talk to your students also about the importance of academic honesty. Research shows that a timely reminder urging academic honesty works! Reassure the students that any activity flagged by the algorithm as suspicious will be individually reviewed by you before any action is taken.
Offer another assessment option – Many instructors already offer alternative assessments to students when they can’t be at a scheduled examination or when other exigencies arise. Consider making another assessment available to students who object to the use of online proctoring.
Review the Proctorio report carefully – if you are using Proctorio simply as a deterrent but never reviewing the reports that the tool provides, you are misusing the tool and should look for a different method to manage assessments. Please review the reports carefully before making decisions about whether students are cheating in your class as students are often flagged for behavior that does not constitute cheating.
Reexamine your assessment plan – In last year’s transition to emergency remote teaching, many instructors found the easiest path to success was to simply recreate their usual assessments in an online environment. Consider instead going back to your learning goals for your students and build assessments that take advantage of the online environment. Working online, students can do research-based tasks or demonstrate higher-order thinking skills beyond simple recall and procedural knowledge questions. Here are some resources to help you think about alternatives:
If you’d like further assistance with reevaluating the use of online proctoring in your course, please contact us at cat@temple.edu or make an appointment with one of our educational technology or pedagogy specialists.
Hleziphi (Naomie) Nyanungo is the Director of Educational Technology and Jeff Rients is Senior Teaching & Learning Specialist at Temple’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.
