How to Read Those SFFs

Kyle Vitale

Read for patterns, ideas, and humor

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.

Two Strategies that Promote a Growth Mindset

Claudia J. Stanny

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.

Gross-Loh, C. (2016, December 16). How praise became a consolation prize. [Interview with Carol Dweck.] The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/12/how-praise-became-a-consolation-prize/510845/

Sumeracki, M. A., & Weinstein, Y. (2018). Six strategies for effective learning. Academic Medicine, 93, 666. https://www.doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000002091

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.

Asset Mapping: An Equity-Based Approach to Improving Student Team Dynamics


Cliff Rouder

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.

How You Can Be A More Culturally Responsive Educator

Linda Hasunuma, Ph.D.

How You Can Be A More Culturally Responsive Educator

What is Culturally Responsive 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.

If you would like to learn more about how you can apply these frameworks in your own classes, we invite you to set up a consultation with a Faculty Developer at the CAT.

References:

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.

https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/reports/culturally-responsive-teaching/

Linda Hasunuma is Assistant Director of Temple’s Center for the Advancment of Teaching.

#You are welcome here: Helping International Students Feel A Sense of Belonging in the Classroom

Hleziphi Naomie Nyanungo and Emtinan Alqurashi

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.

Resources

Hleziphi Naomie Nyanungo and Emtinan Alqurashi are Director and Assistant Director, respectively, at Temple University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

Using Proctorio Thoughtfully

Hleziphi (Naomie) Nyanungo and Jeff Rients

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.

Supporting Students During Wellness Week

Kyle Vitale & Jeff Rients

The CAT would like to share some classroom strategies that instructors can adopt to support student mental and physical health. These strategies revolve around four central pillars adapted from Rebecca Pope-Ruark that can help prevent burnout and energize students: Purpose, Compassion, Connection, and Balance. We invite you to peruse the strategies below and consider what approaches you might adopt now or start preparing to implement as we move forward in the semester.

Purpose

So what? As the semester wears on and the number of assignments due grows across all their classes, students will begin to ask themselves “why should I give a damn?” Consider recording a video or speak to your students during synchronous sessions in ways that recontextualize the course and class activities and articulate their short and long-term value. Or, build an activity where students tease out why what they’re learning is of value to their personal and professional lives, or to the society in which they live.

Revisit course goals. Remind students of your course goals, i.e., you will be able to do all these awesome things by the end of the semester, and here’s how doing them will help you for the rest of your lives. Reconnect what they’re learning to the course goals you outlined at the start of the semester and note which ones the students have already achieved.

Compassion

Check in with students. Mid-semester is a good time to check on how your students are doing. Ask them to do a short- write activity where they answer simple prompts like “How are you doing?” or “What help do you need?” Follow up with individual students who report struggles.

Anonymous and informal channels. Anonymous and informal channels can support students who feel pressure about speaking with instructors, or who have sensitive information to share. Zoom or Canvas offer anonymous response features if you’d like to collect feedback about particular assignments or the course. Additionally, you can provide opportunities for informal chats with you by arriving early to your Zoom course or staying after. Also, remind students regularly about your office hours and warmly invite them to visit.

Campus resources. Review the resources we have on campus for students who may be struggling academically, emotionally, and physically, and help students connect to those resources.

Guidelines for discourse. Help students create guidelines for civil discourse in your class or revisit them if you have already been using a set of guidelines. Remind them that these guidelines exist so you can learn together, making room for all voices in the room while finding productive ways to discuss difficult topics.

Connection

Create community. Build new and existing bonds among your students by making space for them to share interesting or unexpected parts of their lives outside of class.You can participate as well.

Share your own experiences with learning. Where did you struggle in your courses when you were a student? Share how you overcame your own struggles in learning so students understand its value in the learning process.

Record a mid-course re-introduction. This would look a lot like your initial introductory video for the course, but in it you would celebrate how far your students have come and outline your vision for the rest of the semester.

Ice-breaker activities. We usually use these at the start of the semester, but a fun activity that encourages social interaction can support the wellbeing of students any time of the year, and help deepen the exciting community you have all been developing.

Balance

Be alert. We know the midterm season can be stressful for students; how much more so with the additional daily effects of Zoom fatigue, isolation, and COVID-19? Be on the lookout for tell-tale signs of student burnout and withdrawal like uncharacteristic silence or lower energy. Ask students, privately, how they’re faring, and know the campus resources that may help.

Be wary of busy work. Ensure that you regularly explain to students the purposes for your assignments. Small, formative assessments are highly valuable; at the same time, revisit your assignments and ensure they are streamlined, remain relevant and aligned with course material, and leave enough time for effective grading and revisions as expected.

Be flexible with due dates. Due dates matter and teach self-regulation; at the same time, pandemic life calls for even more grace than may be typical. Approach late assignments by assessing student well-being to the best of your ability, offering extensions if helpful, and asking how you can further support them.

Revise towards flexibility. Revisit your course policies and workload. Are there places where you can build in choice and flexibility without lowering your standards? Students might choose from an array of possible final projects, or appreciate some shifted deadlines.

Please don’t try these suggestions all at once! You as the instructor are best qualified to judge which of these options will do the most good in your class. Whatever route you take to help the students find renewed purpose, experience compassion, reconnect with each other, and/or find their balance will help sustain them through the second half of the course. As always, the CAT is here to help if you want to talk through how these options might manifest in your class. Schedule a consultation or reach out to us at cat@temple.edu<. The Wellness Resource Center also offers a variety of services and opportunities to support student mental and physical health.

Wellness week is about you, too! Stay tuned for our faculty wellness tips coming soon!

Kyle Vitale, Ph.D. is the Associate Director at the Center for the Advancement of Teaching

Jeff Rients, Ph.D. is the Senior Teaching and Learning Specialist at the Center for the Advancement of Teaching

Fostering an LGBTQIA+ Inclusive Learning Environment

Cliff Rouder

This blog post has been adapted from an article in Faculty Focus written by Cliff Rouder titled, Seven Ways You Can Foster a More Inclusive LGBTQIA+ Learning Environment.

In this time of social unrest and physical disconnection from our students, we need to be especially mindful of creating inclusive learning environments. For all students–especially those from underrepresented and stigmatized groups–feeling that sense of belonging matters. That includes students who identify (publicly or privately) as LGBTQIA+. Creating an inclusive learning environment gives all students the chance to challenge biases, critically think and respond in a productive manner, and succeed academically.

In 2011, Temple University contracted with a national leader in conducting higher education surveys to assess the LGBTQ (as it was then abbreviated) climate on Main Campus. Members of the Temple community were invited to participate, and 2,693 surveys were returned.

Here are some positive results from this 2011 survey:

“The vast majority of respondents would recommend Temple to an LGBTQ prospective student,” which appears to jibe with the general finding that “more than three-quarters of all respondents felt comfortable or very comfortable with the overall climate at Temple.”

So why the need to foster a more LGBTQIA+ inclusive learning environment?

Because…

  • Despite some proactive measures Temple has taken to address the need, including the preferred name rollout (see the bullet point under Modeling Inclusive Behaviors below), our and other campus and classroom climates are not as welcoming and inclusive as they can be. A 2012 article about the survey in The Temple News reported that, “13 percent of respondents said that they had experienced ‘offensive, negative, or intimidating conduct that interfered unreasonably with their ability to work or learn on campus, and 18% said that they had seen or heard actions that created an ‘offensive, negative, or intimidating working or learning environment’ on Main Campus.”
  • Intolerance, hate and violence persist, and depression and suicide are still at disproptionately higher rates than for heterosexual counterparts.
  • Living a lie every day by hiding one’s identity is stressful and exhausting. Deciding who to tell means repeatedly facing the possibility of rejection, ostracism, and potential violence. For those students who have started to live their truth after leaving home for college, having to return home for online learning could mean going back to hiding who they are.
  • All of these realities can be exacerbated if one’s LGBTQIA+ identity intersects with an identity from another oppressed minority group. They can also be exacerbated by an intersecting identity in a community/group that has historically marginalized people who are LGBTQIA+.

What steps can I take to create a more inclusive learning environment for students who identify (publicly or privately) as LGBTQIA+?

  • Include an open-ended question in a pre-semester survey, such as “What would you like me to know about your identity, background, or needs?” That gives students the opportunity to share whatever they’d like you to know about interacting with them in class. 
  • Familiarize yourself with terminology. Language is constantly evolving. For example, queer was used as a slur against people who were LGBTQIA+, but has more recently been reclaimed by some, but not all, in the LGBTQIA+ community. Remember that it never hurts to ask a student first. If you do use a word inappropriately, humbly correct yourself on the spot. Then help correct others, if need be, in a positive manner.  
  • Assess your own classroom climate for indicators of implicit bias (aka microaggressions–words and behaviors typically not intended to be hurtful but that nevertheless marginalize others) and explicit bias (overt expressions of prejudice) about gender and sexual orientation. Think about the language you and your students use. The well-meaning greeting, “Good morning, ladies and gentleman,” excludes people who don’t fit into the female/male gender binary. Are you addressing marginalizing language, and if so, how? 
  • Serve as a resource.
  • Model inclusive behaviors.
    • Put the pronouns you use on your email signature. Doing so signals to students that you are sensitive to identities outside of the gender binary. 
    • Refer to students by the pronouns they may indicate. Stay tuned for more details about Temple’s upcoming rollout of the new pronouns option within TU portal and Canvas! The new rollout will allow students and you to identify their pronouns more easily, and that will help you use them and get them right! In addition to being able to see what pronouns your students use, you might also encourage them to rename themselves in their Zoom window so that they are not misgendered by fellow students. Note that different plural pronouns like “they” are now commonly used in place of the singular “her” and “him” to refer to an individual who does not identify as female or male. 
    • Refer to students by their preferred first name. Students at Temple now have the option of providing their preferred first name to be used instead of their legal name in Canvas and on course rosters. They may also choose to include both their preferred and legal name, in which case use the preferred name.  
    • Assess your course content. Incorporate LGBTQIA+ history, current events, and people who have contributed to your field into course content and assignments where applicable. If you identify as LGBTQIA+, consider whether self-identifying would support course content and be a resource for your students’ learning. Remember that there can be risks as well as benefits to sharing this part of yourself, and thus should be done thoughtfully. 

To learn more about creating an LGBTQIA+ inclusive learning environment, watch this video created by the CAT’s 2018-2019 Faculty Learning Community members and featuring Temple faculty, students, and administrators.

Clifford Rouder, Ed.D. is the Pedagogy and Design Specialist, Center for the Advancement of Teaching

The Zoom Black Box Blues: Building a Flexible Camera Policy

Kyle Vitale & Jeff Rients

The question of whether or not to require that students keep their Zoom cameras on during synchronous online classes can be fraught. On the one hand, we use faces to help gauge participation, presence, and even the flow of conversation. On the other hand, a variety of legitimate concerns can keep students from turning their cameras on. As we enter a new semester, here are some ideas and strategies for crafting a course policy that respects your students’ needs while ensuring effective and rigorous class participation.

Let’s start by acknowledging that students have a lot of good reasons for turning off their cameras. These reasons can range from social (anxiety over being constantly seen by the rest of the class) to familial (sharing a small room with other zoomers) to technical (Zoom optimizes bandwidth, so turning off the camera may be the only thing keeping them in class when using a subpar internet connection). It is better to assume good faith on the part of the students. They logged into the Zoom room, after all, so let’s find ways to honor that decision.

Zoom is a communication tool and we recommend using it to communicate! Talk to your students. If the array of black boxes on the screen is impacting your ability to teach, discuss that fact with the students. As with all things, relate to them as human beings first. You might provide a flexible camera policy in your syllabus, and be sure to discuss your camera policy throughout the semester.

Also, please keep in mind that a live camera is not necessarily evidence of student engagement. Have you ever been in a meeting where you appeared more attentive than you actually were? Even in physical classrooms, presence does not always equate to attention. A robust participation policy will ensure engagement more than any hard rule about camera usage. Also, consider that the Zoom classroom is not a perfect recreation of a traditional classroom. Prior to the COVID lockdown, we did not spend our entire class time looking every single student in the class directly in the eyes from mere inches away. Now we spend all day doing exactly that! Meanwhile, we have no idea what students are looking at on their own screens.

With these facts in mind, you can take some simple steps to mitigate the issue. First of all, ask students to add a profile picture. This can be done by going to the profile section of zoom.temple.us or, in a live meeting, using the video settings tool to navigate to the profile settings. Some smiling faces, even still pictures, may help you feel more comfortable teaching in the Zoom environment.

Second, begin Zoom sessions with a breakout room activity. Students are more likely to turn on their cameras when doing a small group activity like discussing a question, reviewing prior material, or completing an activity. Some of those students may leave their camera on when they return to the main room, and regardless, students will have had a chance to warm up to class time.

Third, consider warm-calling. This strategy lets students know that they are expected to participate during class. In warm-calling, students reflect quietly on a question or chat together, before the instructor randomly calls on names. While reducing stress by giving students time to sort their thoughts, this strategy also maintains the expectation that students be focused and attentive to class lecture or discussion.

Fourth, practice screen rest. For long synchronous classes, consider a “screen break” or encourage all students to turn their cameras off during a reflective moment. This practice helps students suffering from Zoom fatigue and can reenergize everyone’s focus and attention.

Finally, we acknowledge that different types of courses require different levels of camera use. An acting instructor, for example, needs to see the faces of students performing a scene. If you need cameras on, make your case to the students. Explain how the camera helps them achieve the learning goals of the course. Specify when cameras must be on–such as when giving a presentation–and when it is okay to have them off. Review this policy with the students early in the course, remind them of it regularly, and incorporate these rules into your syllabus. Whatever approach you take to Zoom, make sure the students know what to expect from the beginning of the course.

The resources below offer more ideas for navigating Zoom camera policies. As always, feel free to reach out to the CAT with any questions!

Kyle Vitale and Jeff Rients are Associate Director and Senior Teaching & Learning Specialist at Temple’s Center for the Advancement of Learning, respectively.

Opening Doors: Promoting Equity through Accessibility

Hleziphi Naomie Nyanungo, Linda Hasunuma

When hearing the term ‘accessibility,’ many immediately think about accommodations to meet the needs of specific individuals or groups, primarily those with disabilities.  While related, accessibility and accommodation are not the same. According to LaGrow, ‘accommodations are reactive solutions to address special cases. Accessibility is a proactive solution to providing equal access for all.’ The word “proactive” is essential here as accessible learning spaces are intentionally and thoughtfully designed and delivered so that all students have access to the tools, resources, and support they need to be successful. In Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto, Kevin Gannon (2020) invites teachers to think of access as a feature of our pedagogy by asking the question: ‘Do all of our students have the same degree of access to us, the course, the material and to learning? (pg 74).

Accessibility promotes equity by making it possible to engage students who would otherwise be pushed to the margins. Take, for example, a student like Tanya (name has been changed). Due to COVID safety restrictions, she lost her job as a waitress, and now lives with her grandmother, mother, and sister. The only place she is able to get her work done is in her car. A course designed to provide flexibility and options will allow Tanya to access course content and participate in activities in a way that works best for her situation, and increase her ability to be successful. You may have students in a course you are teaching this semester who are in situations similar to Tanya’s, and are having to navigate barriers such as internet connectivity issues, availability of computers and technology, health matters, the demands of work and family, and more.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and the Peralta Equity rubrics provide guidance for designing and evaluating your courses for equity, inclusion, and access. UDL Guidelines and the UDL Progression Rubric can help instructors create more inclusive and accessible learning experiences. UDL asks us to anticipate our students’ needs instead of putting the burden on the student to request an exception. We can provide options or pathways that benefit everyone, including those who may need accommodation, thereby potentially lessening the need for individual accommodations. For example, captioning tools may benefit students who may have a hearing impairment, but can also benefit English language learners who process information differently as well as those who must attend class in a space that is not private. 

The Peralta Community College system’s Peralta Equity rubric was developed to close gaps in learning outcomes in online courses and promote more inclusive and accessible online learning experiences. The rubric consists of the following areas:

  • addressing students’ access to technology and different types of support (both academic and non-academic); 
  • increasing the visibility of the instructor’s commitment to inclusion;
  • addressing common forms of bias (e.g., image and representation bias, interaction bias); and 
  • helping students make connections (e.g., between course topics and their lives; with the other students).

Drawing from these two frameworks, we offer some recommended strategies as well as some simple things you can do right now to make your courses more equitable and accessible. 

  1. Get a sense of who your students are and what they may need. A good way to do this is administer an anonymous survey at the beginning of the semester that asks students about their needs and well-being. The ‘Who is in the Class? Form’ is a good example of a survey with questions related to factors that may impact the students’ learning experience such as internet connectivity, disability and health concerns, work and family obligations.
  2. Offer low tech alternatives: Students may not have the same access to stable internet connectivity, computers and other technology tools. It is important to keep this in mind as you assign readings and activities. See this article for low-tech ways for teaching online.
  3. Use low-cost or open source instructional materials, where possible: The increasing cost of commercial textbooks can be a barrier to students. Consider low-cost or open source high quality educational materials. Visit Temple University Library OER page for guidance.
  4. Be flexible and provide students with options: Consider ways to adapt your course to meet the needs of your students. CAT’s Agile Pedagogy resource page offers some guidance for being flexible in your teaching. 
  5. Design for accessibility:  Take advantage of the accessibility options (e.g. automatic captioning in Zoom) available in the technology used for online teaching. While typically designed to accommodate people with disabilities, these accessibility features provide great options for everyone. ‘Accessible Teaching in the Time of Covid-19’ highlights accessibility features in educational technology tools.

If you feel overwhelmed by the prospect of applying these frameworks to your courses, we recommend a simple approach where you think about one thing you could try from either rubric. Consider Tobin and Behling’s (2018) Plus One strategy from “Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education.” Pick one strategy to implement in a course you are currently teaching.

Good teaching means honoring and recognizing the full diversity of our students, and the accessibility mindset offers us a way to design learning experiences that benefit all learners. The principles and strategies shared here can help you create more equitable, inclusive, and accessible classrooms that help all students succeed. If you would like to  learn more or think through how you can use these approaches in your own teaching practice, please make an appointment for a one-on-one consultation with one of our faculty developers or Ed Tech specialists at the CAT.

References:

Addy, T. M., Dube, D., Mitchell, K., & SoRelle, M. (2021). What Inclusive Instructors Do: Principles and Practices for Excellence in College Teaching. Stylus Publishing, LLC.

Gannon, K. M. (2020). Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto. West Virginia University Press.

Tobin, T. J., & Behling, T. K. (2018). Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education. West Virginia University Press.

Hleziphi Naomie Nyanungo, Ph.D. is the Director of Educational Technology at the Center for the Advancement of Teaching

Linda Hasunuma, Ph.D. is the Assistant Director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching