Teaching International Students Abroad

Stephanie Fiore

Dymaxion Projection World Map

This fall, some of the international students in your classes may be located abroad in their native countries because travel restrictions have prevented them from coming to campus. Your international students are an asset to your class, bringing important diversity of experiences, cultural perspectives and learning methods. They are also eager to participate in the classes at Temple University despite the situation that has prevented them from coming to Philadelphia. Thinking intentionally about the barriers they may face and the contributions they may add to class can help all your students gain from this complex situation. Communication with your international students is key in helping them overcome challenges these conditions may pose to their learning. Here are some issues you may encounter and suggested strategies to overcome them. 

Time Differences

If your students are in a different country or some US states, they may be in another time zone, sometimes as much as 13 hours different from Philadelphia time. This difference may hinder their ability to feel engaged in your class, especially if you hold synchronous class sessions that meet when it is the middle of the night for them. How can you help them participate and engage with your class community? 

Strategies That Can Help:

  • Make sure you ask your students at the beginning of the semester if they are in a different time zone. We recommend administering a short ‘get to know you’ survey to the entire class in which you ask students where they are currently located. 
  • Solicit students’ ideas for how to participate effectively in class.
  • Record your synchronous Zoom classes to allow students to access your class content at a time that makes more sense for them. This strategy will also allow all of your students with technological access or illness issues to access your course content asynchronously.
  • Make sure to have all of your course materials (syllabus, assignments, required and additional reading) available in Canvas so that students can access them at any time.
  • If you are doing active learning activities during your class time, offer an alternative way to complete work for your students in a different time zone. This alternative may look different than the in-class work but should accomplish the same goals.
  • Consider time differences when setting deadlines for assignments or when setting up times for exams. If a specific deadline is important, make sure all of your students understand ahead of time how to plan, and check in individually with your international students to ensure deadlines make sense for them. 
  • If assigning group projects, determine if you can form a group of students who live in similar time zones in order to facilitate more seamless collaboration. If students in different time zones must work together, encourage them to use effective collaboration tools (such as Teams or Canvas Collaborations) in order to communicate without having to have in-person meetings.
  • If you have scheduled virtual office hours, provide alternatives that are convenient for students in different time zones, or provide an asynchronous way for them to reach you.

Inability to Access Technology

Internet connectivity and access to technology tools could be an issue for some students both in the US and abroad. Stable high-speed internet and access to equipment such as webcams or laptops may not be available to some students, which makes it difficult for them to participate fully in remote synchronous class sessions. For other students, the issue is not internet connectivity but internet restrictions. China, for example, has restricted access to websites and applications that include Zoom and all Google applications (including Gmail) that are widely used for teaching, as well as YouTube, Twitter, Dropbox, Skype and more.

Strategies That Can Help:

  • Remind students, especially new ones, to complete the TUID Photo Verification process in Portal Next Steps. Having a verified photo on file will allow IT Help Desk to provide expedient assistance. 
  • You can test to see if particular domains are blocked in China using a site like Comparitech. First, however, a simple conversation with your students to identify any barriers to learning they face can reveal sticking points and additional insights you might not otherwise have known. 
  • Zoom may not work in certain countries, which may make it impossible for students to attend your Zoom session and to watch your Zoom recordings. Teams, a collaboration software with similar capabilities, will also work in most countries and is available to the Temple community. However, remember that the most important thing, particularly during this time, is to make sure students can reach your course goals, not that they all reach those goals in the exact same way. Talk to your students with these issues and brainstorm together how to help them.
  • Some websites, social media, and streaming platforms are also blocked in other countries, and some sensitive content may also be blocked. Ask students to review class material and let you know which ones they cannot access. In some cases, you may be able to download content and post it directly to Canvas. Post videos to open directly in Canvas rather than requiring students to download videos.
  • If students need alternative methods for receiving and delivering materials and class assignments, consider whether email will help. ITS is working to migrate overseas students’ email accounts from Gmail to Outlook 365 in order to allow them access to email. Regardless, it is essential to communicate with them through your Canvas course announcements and messages.
  • Students with slow bandwidth or limited allowance of bandwidth are likely to experience slow logins, page loads and forced terminations. For synchronous online sessions, allow students to participate without video, which will increase their bandwidth, and remind them to be present through chat or voice participation. 
  • In certain cases, students may be able to join Zoom by phone if they are having connectivity issues. Be sure to provide the complete information for the Zoom session, including how to connect to your Zoom session by phone. Note that this may not be possible in some international sites, and the phone call may have a fee attached. Check with your students if calling into your class is a possibility.
  • Think about bandwidth when selecting course materials such as videos. Students with low or limited bandwidth, whether in the US or abroad, may not have easy access to this material, so consider alternative ways to deliver any essential video content (audio transcription, outline, key points). 
  • Check the technology needs for your assignments and assessments. For instance, if you use a proctoring solution that requires a webcam and a laptop, find out if your students have access to that equipment. If not, consider offering alternative assessments for those students or, better yet, provide alternatives for the entire class.

Sensitive Topics

Students may be in countries or communities where certain topics are not safe to discuss. Depending on the country, students may be reluctant to engage in conversation about topics that may be sensitive to their government or community for fear of retribution. 

Strategies That Can Help:

  • In the first week of class, invite students to review topics on the course syllabus and flag any topics that could potentially be sensitive. 
  • Remember that even writing to you about flagged content can prove unsafe, and students may also be reluctant to discuss any barriers publicly in class. Invite your students to speak with you privately (at a time that works for their time zone) to discuss any issues they might anticipate.  
  • Work with your students to find creative alternatives that allow students to engage with the class content without compromising their safety. You can still, of course, teach the content you were planning to teach in the class, but perhaps your student can write about less controversial topics that will not jeopardize their safety.

The essential key to helping your international students abroad or students in another time zone is communication. Talk to students and work together to find solutions. 

References:

Cox, Michelle. 2020. Guidance for Faculty: Getting and Staying Connected With Int’l Students. John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines, Cornell University. Retrieved from: https://knight.as.cornell.edu/guidance-faculty-getting-staying-connected-intl-students

The Writing Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 2020. Teaching International Students Remotely [Blog post].  (n.d). Retrieved from https://writingcenter.unc.edu/faculty-resources/teaching-international-students-remotely/

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

Dymaxion projection world map by Justin Kunimune published to Wikimedia Commons and released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Image resized and cropped.

Self Care for Faculty: Four Ways to Cope When Teaching in Hard Times

It has been a difficult challenge for faculty to convert their face-to-face courses to online instruction and begin preparing for a reality unlike any that have faced. An added burden is that faculty are doing so at a time of such strife, with a pandemic prompting an unprecedented global lockdown, and heightened frustration over injustice. The past few months have left many feeling anxious, stressed, and exhausted. As we look forward to the fall, here are four ways to cope:

1. Take care of yourself

You’ll know best what self-care looks like for you, but there are some steps that will benefit anyone. Get enough sleep. Make an effort to eat healthily. Go for walks, if you can find a route without too many other people. Take some time away from your laptop and phone (read a book, call a friend, meditate, bake something!); it’s important to unplug when you can.

2. Reach out to a colleague

One thing lost when campus closed has been regular contact with colleagues. Teaching can be lonely work in the best of times; it is really hard in isolation. A sense of community can help keep you afloat. Make the effort to get in touch with a fellow faculty member, see how they’re doing, and compare notes on how you’re weathering the crisis. 

3. Set clear work limits.

Remember to separate your work life from your personal life. End your day when you normally would. Don’t answer emails all day and night. Think about setting up a particular space in which to work and then walk away from it to play with the kids, walk the dog, or just kick back with Netflix. Working remotely does not mean working all the time!

4. Check in on your students.

It’s a good bet that your students may be feeling disconnected and worn-out too. Even a single email that expresses care for your students, and asks them how they’re doing, can signal to them that they’re not alone. Think about being flexible and responsive to their needs in whatever ways are possible. Show students that you care about them and that you understand that this disruption might have sent them for a loop.
 

Stories from the Online Teaching Trenches

Deborah Cai

Deborah Cai, Senior Associate Dean and Professor at the Lew Klein School of Media and Communications, shared this message with us. The original version was sent to the chairs and senior staff at Klein, but we thought it was so compelling that we asked her if we could use it for this blog post. Thanks to Deb for allowing us to share, and thanks to all those at Temple like her who are so thoughtful about the current situation.

I have spoken with a number of students over the past several days to see how they are doing. All of the students – from highly motivated to average – talked about being overwhelmed with the transition to online learning, to living with family members (who also need to use the computer and internet). Several students have had family members or friends either hospitalized or die from the virus. One student is home with her family of four; she is the only one who still has a job. Another just made it back to his home in another state from Philly just a few days ago—his parents had been traveling and he didn’t really have anywhere to go or a way to get there. Another said she can only get internet in a park down the street from her house (I sent her the link about Comcast offering free internet to low income students). And most of the students have five classes to manage—not just one or two. I’m sure you are hearing similar stories from your own students.

When I looked at my gradebook over the weekend, it seemed 13 students (out of 60) had not been turning in assignments. I wrote to those students. Over the next three days I heard from (or met with during virtual office hours) all of those students, every one of them grateful for someone checking on their welfare and every one of them talking about how difficult the transition has been. Some are getting back on their feet, others are figuring out which courses they should drop because they can’t keep up. But every one of the students talked about their struggle of having fallen way behind across their courses.

I want to share with you some of their concerns, which I hope you will pass on to your faculty:

  1. In the transition to online learning, some faculty have replaced substantive content with busywork assignments. The students expressed frustration because the increase in assignments has made time management even more difficult, especially when this increase in assignments is happening across three or four courses.
  2. Further, students said they feel like they are not learning anything from these busywork tasks. Several students said they are now doing more work, but they are learning less in some of their courses. One student commented that, out of five courses, he is only still learning substantive material in two. He did say those other three were classes mostly outside of their major—but not completely.
  3. The students really appreciated when faculty members have been flexible about when assignments are due, allowing for late submissions, and focusing more on whether the work gets done than meeting a hard deadline. Some of the students are scrambling to now catch up after a rough couple of weeks moving to online courses. They are especially appreciative when faculty extend deadlines without penalty and when their instructors have worked with them to find ways to help them catch up.
  4. Several students said that some faculty members are very slow to respond to emails, at a time when hearing from their instructors is more meaningful than ever. In a time of uncertainty and isolation, they asked if faculty could be urged to be responsive on email.
  5. Like most of you, I’m holding virtual office hours for my students. At first, two students came. Then three. And this week seven. Just to chat. Just happy to connect. Several have lamented losing the energy and motivation and encouragement they get from being in a classroom setting, hearing lectures by professors passionate about their subject, interacting with faculty and students regularly in the hall.

As we all know, right now is a tough time for many of our students. A focus on learning and on social support is more important than hours of work or deadlines right now.

Please be active in checking on whether each student is still active in their classes. While there are many students who have been active in virtual class engagement, there are also many students that have gone missing in action all together. The University has encouraged us to reach out to those students to make sure they are safe and not at risk. If you do not hear back from specific students after several attempts, please inform your chair and/or dean right away who those students are. Temple has a process in place for reaching out to them, and we would want to employ that process right away.

I want to add that, with all of the supposition that online learning will take over in the future because of the current transition to online due to the virus, talking to students paints a very different picture. The students I’ve been talking to said they are energized by the classroom, by being on campus, by being around others who are excited and motivated to learn and to teach. They can hardly wait to get back.

[Editor’s Note: If you have students missing in action, even after you have tried reaching out, or you are aware of students who are facing an immediate crisis, please contact the CARE Team. Instructors in need of assistance teaching online can schedule a consultation appointment with a member of the CAT team.]

Send us your Stories from the Online Teaching Trenches. We would love to hear about your experiences. Stories can be sent to cat@temple.edu.

True Grit!

Stephanie Fiore

[The following article first appeared in volume 50 of the Temple University Faculty Herald.]

What a wild ride the past weeks have been! The Center for the Advancement of Teaching (CAT) was in the middle of providing support to Temple Japan and Temple Rome to move their instruction online when the call came from the Provost’s office with a simple message: “Get ready for main campus!” I’ll admit I didn’t sleep well that night, anticipating already the enormity of the task ahead, the challenges that our faculty and our team would face, and the very real responsibility to make sure we could provide an education for our students. Subsequent participation in university-wide committees tasked with making what seemed almost impossible actually happen introduced me to all of those people on the front lines responsible for health, student services, information technology, emergency management, human resources, communications, and so much more. Our university is a complex ecosystem and the number of decisions to be made on a daily basis were (and are) staggering.

But at the heart of this effort is academic continuity, and that means you, our faculty colleagues, who had to shift to an online learning environment in just a few weeks time. By extension, that meant us, the CAT team of 13 faculty developers, educational technology specialists, and operations experts, whose job it would be to guide that process and lend support. I am daily amazed at the genius, resilience, and patience of the CAT staff during this crisis. In one week’s time, we created the REMOTE: Resources for Emergency Online Teaching website, developed and launched workshops and webinars to assist faculty in thinking about how to teach online and how to accomplish their classroom tasks – such as discussion, lecture, and assessment – online, trained faculty on ed tech tools such as Zoom and Voicethread, and began an email campaign to direct faculty to resources and to push out even more advice and guidance on a regular basis. We also scheduled our staff so that they would be available for consultations with faculty from 8:00am until 10:00pm every weekday and from 10:00am until 2:00pm on Saturdays and Sundays. We went out to schools and colleges, as needed, to consult with groups of faculty challenged with teaching in special contexts. We joined Tyler faculty in thinking about how to conduct studio teaching online, CST faculty in deciding which assessments would work best online, Boyer faculty in brainstorming ways to teach music and dance online, Engineering to figure out how to allow students to complete their capstone projects, and so much more. We hoped that this suite of services would sustain, encourage, and support faculty to make the move to online teaching, support them when they felt worried and incapable of achieving this, and reassure them that they were doing everything they could. It might not be perfect online teaching, but it would do the trick.

Through all of this, we have seen remarkable creativity, thoughtfulness, and effort on the part of our faculty. From the faculty who never use technology in their classes and so had to learn from the ground up, to the faculty who figured out how to teach ceramics, labs, media production, or acting online, to the ones who had to figure out what to do about students in field experiences or student teaching assignments, faculty have shown their dedication to student learning, their own ability to learn and grow, and their true grit. I am astounded at what I have seen and so incredibly proud. You have made this happen, my friends, and you should pat yourselves on your exhausted backs.

As we move towards the Summer I online classes, we’ll be partnering with the Office of Digital Education (ODE) to provide Canvas course templates and other tools to give you a leg up in designing online courses from scratch. And, of course, the CAT will be here with even more information, training, and support as you take on this new task. Designing an online course in its entirety will give us a chance to take a moment to think about what worked and didn’t in this emergency situation and pivot accordingly. As always, the CAT will be there to help you pivot. Look for new webinars in April on designing and delivering an online course.

Thank you again for all of the hard work you have done to complete this semester. As you continue this unprecedented journey, think about joining us for a casual check-in session every Friday at noon Around the Virtual Faculty Water Cooler: Sharing Our Experiences with Online Teaching. I have met so many of you in these past weeks, and hope to meet the rest of you at the (virtual) CAT.

Stephanie Fiore is Assistant Vice Provost of Temple University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

Wise Feedback: Using Constructive Feedback to Motivate Learners

Devshikha Bose

open books

How many of us have thought about giving useful feedback to our students and fallen short? Moreover, how many times have we given what we thought was extensive feedback, and seen no improvements in student performance? Or that some students were utilizing our feedback while others did not? How can we provide constructive feedback which will be useful to all learners in that it serves to both instruct as well as motivate students? One way might be to provide “wise feedback.”

What is Wise Feedback?

Wise feedback is targeted feedback which conveys high expectations, the instructor’s genuine belief that those expectations can be achieved by the student, and provides concrete information to help the student meet the expectations. Here, “wise” does not necessarily mean smarter or better. Instead, wise feedback refers to psychological interventions which are attuned to how people make sense of themselves, others, and social situations which may affect their learning.

How do I provide Wise Feedback?

“I am giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them.” or “The expectations in this course are high and I know you can do great work. The feedback here is designed to help you get there.” Using this framing when providing feedback to your students helps to build trust, signal belonging, and combine high standards with the assurance that people can reach them. Obviously, simple assurances and trust in the abilities of others are in themselves not sufficient to guarantee success. It is therefore essential to also include constructive criticism, clear pathways/specific directions, and guidance on how students can achieve success.

Who can benefit from Wise Feedback?

While all students can benefit from wise feedback, studies have shown that students from cultures which have traditionally suffered from race-based stigma, seem to get additional benefits from wise feedback (Cohen, Steele, & Ross, 1999; Yeager et al, 2014).

Communicating high expectations and providing students with the support to meet them is crucial. Students can thrive when they are challenged. But they need to understand the expectations, know how to meet them, and feel that the instructor believes in their capabilities.

References

Devshikha Bose is an Instructional Design Consultant at Boise State University’s Center for Teaching and Learning.

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. Image from pxhere released to public domain under Creative Commons CC0 license.

Put the Library Where Your Students Are Learning

Olivia Given Castello and Nicole DeSarno

The Course Navigation link to the Library

The library is a critical learning support for college students, but the challenge is to make students aware of all the library provides. Since many students are learning partially or fully online, Learning Management System (LMS) integration is a handy way to bring library resources and librarian help to your students where they learn: in your LMS course.

Integrating library resources into the LMS can make your students more successful by giving them easy library access. Linking to library content within a course has been shown to increase students’ use of materials. Including information about library services gives them access to learning support when and where they need it, in a way they can refer back to throughout the semester. This can be especially useful for connecting the library to distance students and hybrid online learners, many of whom seldom visit the library in person.

LMS platforms can connect automatically with systems used by academic libraries. Two common ones are Research Guides and Course Reserves. There are also simple best practices you can follow when linking to library resources that will improve your students’ connection to the library.

Research Guides

Research guides are librarian-authored web pages recommending library resources to help students get started on research for particular disciplines, courses, or assignments. At Temple University, research guides are automatically integrated into the LMS via the “Library” link, an item in the default Course Navigation menu located in the left-hand column of Canvas courses. When clicked, this link shows a matched guide from Temple Libraries’ Research Guides system. The guide shown varies depending on the Canvas course. In most courses, the Library link shows a generic guide that highlights commonly sought information and tools, such as building hours, book and article search, a chat widget for live librarian help, and an online scheduler for research appointments. 

In courses where a faculty member works with a librarian to create a course-specific research guide, that guide is shown. In our pilot study at Temple, we learned that students engaged most with the Library link when it showed a course-specific library research guide! 

Having library resources in the LMS helps students build research skills and get help, and automatic integrations like Temple’s Library link bring these resources to students without any extra work for the faculty member.

Beyond automatic integrations, faculty can also manually add smaller portions of research guides in other areas of a course. Once you identify a single box or page from a larger research guide that would help your students, you can manually embed it in the area of your course content where students will find it most useful. At Temple, this type of content can be added to Canvas as an “External Tool.”

Course Reserves

Another common library integration concerns course reserves: high demand materials related to a specific course that you can make available to students via your library. E-reserves are downloadable in the LMS, while physical reserves are available for short term lending at the library. 

At Temple, faculty members can add the Course Reserves tool, which is separate from the default Library link, to Canvas’ navigation menu in the course Settings. You then request items be placed on reserve from within the tool by adding new requests or importing Reserves items from a previous semester. Library staff see and process the requests, and arrange any necessary document scanning, purchasing, or other additional steps. Once processed, the active reserve items show in the Canvas course.

Persistent links to library e-resources

Academic libraries offer many types of content that you can integrate directly into the LMS as course materials: articles, ebooks, videos, databases, and more — but use persistent links, not the URL in the browser window. A persistent link (a.k.a. durable link, stable link, permalink) is a URL that connects directly to a specific full-text source in a library database or electronic subscription. Using the persistent, library-linked, URL ensures all students (on-campus and off) can access the source. These links are stable over time, and they also eliminate the need to worry about potential copyright issues since students will be directed through the institutional login page if necessary for access. Different databases offer varying options for getting a persistent link to an item, depending on their interface. 

At Temple, persistent links can be added to Canvas as an “External URL.” Intentionally linking to library e-resources is the way to make optimal use of your library’s collections. It also creates a bridge for students to library research support services, since many library e-resource platforms include embedded librarian help.

Want to get started connecting to the library in your LMS?

To explore options for integrating the library into your LMS course, contact your institution’s library staff. Librarians will consult with you on how to integrate library resources, and can let you know what automatic integrations are available on your campus.

At Temple University, start at our guide to embedding library resources in Canvas. It includes step-by-step instructions and short video tutorials on the options described here. Contact your subject librarian to discuss the best library resources for your class, request a course-specific library guide be created, or change what shows on the Library link in your course. Consider adding a librarian to your course in the Designer role. We are happy to help with library-related Canvas options. Have other questions? Need additional help? Email us at asktulibrary@temple.edu!

Olivia Given Castello and Nicole DeSarno are members of the Learning & Research Services unit of Temple University Libraries.

Award-Winning Teachers Offer Wisdom

David Gooblar

CAT Teaching Awards Luncheon 2020

It was at the end of a fascinating hour, an hour in which some of Temple University’s finest professors shared some of what made them such great teachers, that Stephanie Fiore, the Assistant Vice Provost of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching, asked one final question. “What words of wisdom would you offer to other professors who want to improve their teaching?” 

The occasion was the Center for the Advancement of Teaching’s annual luncheon to celebrate Temple’s award-winning teachers. The guests of honor were the 2018-19 recipients of the Great Teacher Award and of the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Awards for Distinguished Teaching. Also present were a number of Temple faculty and staff eager to hear what these excellent teachers had to say about their approach to helping students learn. 

The responses to that last question were instructive in their variety, underlining that there are a number of ways to become a great teacher. 

For Matt Wray, Associate Professor of Sociology, there’s an important distinction between teaching content and teaching students. “As graduate students, most of us were trained to teach content—theories, concepts, terminology, research methods and findings, and so on.” But just because a professor knows all of the content does not mean that students will learn it all. To focus on students “takes more time and patience and understanding. Above all, it takes sustained dialogue with students and active listening on our part to hear what it is students know, what they don’t know, what they want to know, and how they know that they know it.” 

Lawrence Kaplan, Professor of Medicine and an Associate Dean for Inter-Professional Education at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine, also counseled a focus on students. But Kaplan was careful to note that he guarded against assuming that all students wanted to follow the same paths that he followed. “My responsibility in medical education is to help students become the best physician that they want to be—not to turn them into me.” He aims to “help each student’s individual self-discovery,” and admitted that he loved to see “the light bulb moment when they see how the details of what they are studying is applied in the care of patients.” 

But chasing such moments can lead professors to try to do too much, warned Nancy Morris, Professor of Media Studies and Production. Morris reminded professors that sometimes wanting students to know everything can come at the expense of depth. “I think in general we all want our students to grasp the full breadth of class themes, to be well-versed in all class topics, and to engage with a range of readings that provide different approaches to class topics. But attempts at breadth can be counter-productive.” The solution, Morris said, was often to take material out, “in order to make class time not feel rushed, to not have to sacrifice exploration for superficial ‘coverage,’ and to encourage students to delve into readings rather than (at best) skimming them.” 

For David Schuff, Professor of Management Information Systems, the question made him think of how he conceives of a course’s full progression. “I try to think of a class as having a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. That helps me focus on the content that is essential to the ‘story’ and eliminate the rest.” He’s found that thinking of a semester as a story—with a narrative pay-off—helps students stay engaged for the whole course. “Students can see how each piece of content in the class serves the end goal (i.e., what I want them to be able to do when they finish the course).” 

There was a lot of nodding, both in the audience and on the dais, as these professors gave their answers. Judith Litvin Daniels, Associate Professor and Vice Chair of Education for Anatomy and Cell Biology, noted that such effective approaches to teaching weren’t magic bullets. “Becoming a good educator takes time,” Daniels reminded us. It takes years of trial and error, of paying attention to teaching as a discipline, to reach the heights of these award-winning professors. “If one has the passion and devotion to imparting knowledge, and if one is self-aware, then in time one grows into an accomplished educator.” 

If there’s one thing everyone at the event agreed upon, it’s that such commitment is worth it. As Wray noted, “it’s not an easy path, but the rewards are pretty great.”

David Gooblar is the Associate Director for Temple University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching and author of The Missing Course: Everything They Never Taught You About College Teaching (Harvard University Press 2019).

Are Your Lesson-level Learning Objectives S.M.A.R.T.?

Paul Blaschko

S.M.A.R.T. goals

There are many ways in which in-class instructional time can seem overwhelming, especially to first time teachers. During my first TA experience I remember opening up a word document with the intention of writing up an agenda for the first week’s discussion. I kept staring at the document like it was a vast open prairie, or an empty stage in a sold-out theatre. The time and space I had seemed expansive, full of possibilities and opportunities, but also shapeless and unstructured. In that moment, I found myself wondering: how am I supposed to fill every moment of face-to-face instructional time with meaningful, interesting, and valuable content, and how am I supposed to know after the fact if I’ve succeeded in this goal? In this post, I’ll argue that you can go a long way towards answering these questions for yourself by carefully crafting S.M.A.R.T. learning objectives, and by using these objectives to design and implement daily assessments.

First off, a learning objective is a brief, descriptive statement of one thing that a student will take away from a day’s lesson. They are typically determined by (and fit into) the broader “learning goals” that you set in your syllabus at the beginning of the semester, but are more specific, concrete, and active. Examples include: “By the end of class, each student will be able to distinguish between examples of substances and accidents, and to give an intuitive definition of each.” You might have just one learning objective for a class period, or, if you have more time or if the objectives are less ambitious, you may break it down into two, three, or even more. (For more helpful information on learning objectives, and the difference between a learning objective and a course goal, see this helpful handout. For a taxonomy of different kinds of learning objectives, and how to incorporate these into your course prep see this handout on class prep from the Kaneb Center.)

S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym often associated with productive goal-setting in general, and I forget where I even first came across it (see here, here, and here). The acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-focused, and Time-bound, and I find these criteria immensely helpful in crafting good learning objectives. I won’t go through detailed descriptions for each criteria (for such descriptions see the links above), but to get an intuitive sense, consider the following two objectives:

  1. By the end of class students will be able to analyze philosophical texts well.
  2. By the end of class, students will be able to isolate Singer’s “Obligatory Giving” argument and distinguish its major premises, and give one reason why they agree or disagree with each premise.

Objective 2 is clearly better along each of our five dimensions.

S.M.A.R.T. objectives can help structure in-class time in at least two ways. First, they can help you determine what information you need to present and what sorts of activities you need to have your students engage in, and what to prioritize in the distribution of class time for any given meeting. If objective 2 was one of your objectives, for instance, you’d need to make sure to leave time for the students to read and mark-up a paragraph of text (3-5 minutes), share their thoughts with a neighbor (2-4 minutes), and collaborate on reconstructing the argument as a group (5-8 minutes). If you have three or four other objectives for that day, you might think about simplifying the task, or about giving them a little more help along the way.

The second way S.M.A.R.T. objectives can help you structure in-class time is in a more global, semester-level sense. S.M.A.R.T. objectives — if crafted well — naturally give rise to concrete assessment mechanisms (they are, after all, Measurable, Results-focused, and Time-bound). To expand upon our example: you could ask your students to write down the premises and conclusion of Singer’s argument on a half-sheet of paper and turn it in. If pressed for time, you could cold call on three students and ask each to offer a premise and a brief reason to agree or disagree with it. If the objective and content are crucial to the course as a whole, and directly related to your overall learning goals, you might hand out a worksheet at the end of class, or have students take an online quiz to ensure that they’ve attained proficiency. This feedback is an invaluable resource in helping you to determine where to spend valuable future class time.

As college instructors, we get precious little face-to-face instructional time with our students, so it’s important that we structure the time we have effectively. S.M.A.R.T. learning objectives can help us to do that, and in a way that isn’t overwhelming or overly time consuming. Moreover, I’ve found that pairing my objectives with daily assessment mechanisms, and even using the process of designing such mechanisms to clarify and evaluate these objectives, allows me to foster a more “communicative” classroom experience; i.e. one in which I’m getting feedback from the students that I can use to create future objective-based learning goals that are responsive to their needs.

Links and citations:

“Goals vs Objectives.” University of Iowa Information Technology Services, Office of Teaching, Learning, and Technology. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2017. https://teach.its.uiowa.edu/sites/teach.its.uiowa.edu/files/docs/docs/Goals_vs_Objectives_ed.pdf

“Articulating Learning Goals: A Path to Increased Efficiency and Improved Student Performance.” University of Notre Dame, Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2017. http://kaneb.nd.edu/assets/75457/learninggoalsho.pdf

EDITOR’S NOTE: Looking for more learning design-related EDvice? Check out our Course Design Series!

Paul Blaschko is the Assistant Director at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study.

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. Image by Dungdm93 released under Creative Common Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en.

Humanizing the Large Lecture: Why It’s Important and How to Start

Angela Bricker

lecture hall

For years I had the standard “come talk if there’s a problem” statement of bonhomie and support on my syllabus. I stated it explicitly at the first class meeting. And no one ever came.

I’ve been thinking about inclusivity in teaching in the context of my large (150 students) lecture. I have participated in a lot of really fabulous CAT seminars, courses, and workshops, and have been exposed to so many wonderful ideas, but let’s face it – lecture halls are not designed for much interaction between students or even, if we’re honest, between student and lecturer. So how do we develop human relationships in a large-scale situation?

It’s difficult to look beyond the limits of the situation, but it’s important to try because the student pool represents a deep resource of experience, a lens through which they can understand the course material and, if you manage well, help each other to understand it as well. Students often are unwilling to share from their own experiences in a large lecture format, and there is no chance that will happen if they are not comfortable interacting with the lecturer. Interaction isn’t automatic, and it can’t happen without trust.

As a result of participating in the Provost’s Teaching Academy, I designed what I now call the Index Card Exercise. I distribute index cards on the first day of class and ask students to take five minutes to write their preferred name, pronouns, and what they are most excited about for class. Like most large lectures, it’s mostly a captive population fulfilling a requirement, so I figure any attempt to limit the adversarial relationship between student and course material (and instructor) is worth the attempt. The final question I ask is: “Is there anything I should know about that might impact your ability to succeed in this class?”

It turns out there’s plenty that students want me to know. I’ve had students with babies, recovering from cancer, taking care of elderly relatives, working full time to pay their bills – in short, students in my class are experiencing a lot of life while they also try to keep up with a full course load. Most of them don’t want to appear to be asking for a favor and would never approach me, and many state outright that they don’t really expect anything, but because I ask, they tell me.

The benefit to me of this exercise is that I am more aware of their struggles, and I’m reminded of their humanity. The benefit to them is the proof that there is substance behind my claim to concern. I may not be able to match every name with a face, but I read those cards and I remember nicknames when we email. I reach out to students whose circumstances seem particularly precarious. And the students respond. I’ve never had a student express their preference for a non-cis pronoun, but quite a few have made a point of conveying their surprise and approval that I ask. Suddenly, with those four questions, I become approachable and relevant.

It’s tough to imagine ways to find common ground with students in a large lecture, but it’s important to try. With my science background, I have to fight daily against the notion that teaching in active ways, employing new pedagogical ideas, is simply babying the students. Building a relationship with them helps on so many levels, though: I see potential problems in time to be proactive, I enjoy teaching more, and I start with the students’ trust that they can come to me early and work with me to avert disaster. Does it work all the time? Of course not. Like all of teaching, there’s an element of trial and error; sometimes a great idea just doesn’t work out. You can tweak it next time, or you can abandon it in favor of a different exercise, but the important thing is to keep actively building those bridges. Even a failed exercise, if you practice transparency about what it was meant to achieve and how it went wrong, can foster a supportive learning environment where students can achieve significant personal and academic growth.

Angela Bricker is Assistant Professor in the Biology department of Temple University’s College of Science and Technology.


Image by Theonlysilentbob from Wikipedia Commons, released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. Image cropped from original version.

Building Relationships with Students

Laurie Friedman

Shaking Hands

“All change happens through human relationships.” This is a central value of the social work profession, embedded in our Code of Ethics and weaved through our curriculum. The importance of relationships has been an integral component in my effectiveness as a therapist, a manager, and, currently, an educator. Students come to us with a myriad of personal, professional, and educational experiences, skills, and goals. Developing relationships with students allows us to know our students as human beings who have responsibilities and experiences outside our classrooms with thoughts and emotions that are connected to how they learn in our classrooms. Relationships increase our ability to support students’ learning and remind us of the joys of teaching as we forge deeper connections with fellow humans. Ingraham and colleagues (2018) found that the relationships between students and faculty is a fundamental factor in students’ success in undergraduate nursing programs.

Investing in relationships takes purposeful effort, the first of which is creating a supportive environment where students feel valued and respected. Granitz, Koernig and Harich’s (2009) conceptual model of faculty-student rapport consists of approachability, caring and shared ideas/values. More specifically, I have found this means sharing aspects of my own life outside of the classroom, including my interests, commitments, and mistakes. We can forget how intimidating our titles, with a plethora of letters after our names, can appear to students. Reminding students we were once in their seats–that we, too, have personal lives–is central to developing relationships that facilitate shared learning. Smith (2015) notes he found balancing sharing aspects of his personal life enhanced his effectiveness as a teacher.

Gremler and Gwinner (2000) note we develop rapport with students when we establish personal connections and share enjoyable interactions. Following are more specific suggestions we can integrate into our on-campus and online classes.

Start at the beginning

We never get a second chance to make a first impression, which speaks to the importance of our communication with students prior to the first class session.

  • Embed a 3-4 minute introductory video within our course Canvas site. These videos can include information on how to address us, why we enjoy teaching this class, tips for success, and a bit of personal information about our interests and hobbies outside of academia. The videos decrease student anxiety about the course and assist them in seeing us as approachable.
  • Send a welcome email to students at least one week before the start of class that invites students to contribute to the course syllabus and share information on challenges they are facing (i.e. caregiving responsibilities for family members, physical/mental health concerns, upcoming personal commitments) and how we may be able to support them. These invitations signal we are cognizant that they have lives outside the classroom which often impact their learning, and that learning is a social, communal experience. Using inclusive language signifies that all students are welcome in our classrooms.
  • Incorporate aspects of a promising syllabus. The syllabus is our learning contract; its language and tone communicates an invitation to students to join us on a common endeavor over the course of the semester.

First day of class

A quick google search yields an abundance of resources for first day of class activities, for both online and campus based classes. Ice-breakers do just that, breaking down barriers and forcing us to engage with one another. In larger classes, we can use small groups to engage students with each other, and circulate among the groups. I find that ice breakers also yield nuggets of information we can tuck away and, as the semester progresses, we can use these nuggets to demonstrate to students that we care about them and their learning as individuals. Introductory discussion boards on the learning management system, where students respond to a specific prompt, can also facilitate this process. I take notes on students’ interests and review them before each subsequent class as a reminder of what students have told me. This includes notations of who is caring for a mother in chemo, who has experience working in a hospital setting, and who noted she doesn’t know anything about policy. For example, this year a student mentioned in class that she enjoys rock climbing. When I happened to listen to a podcast about adventure-based social work, I made this connection and shared it with her.

Learn Names

Depending on our workload, we may hundreds of students, which can make learning names even more challenging. Yet, knowing our students’ names aids us in making connections between the individual emailing us and the individual participating in our class. Using names signals that we have taken the time to recognize the person as an individual with a unique set of experiences, knowledge, and skills to contribute to our class. Ice breakers that entail students’ sharing their names are helpful on the first day of class. Additionally, I have found using table tents the first few weeks of class to be incredibly helpful, where students write their names on both sides so they, too, can learn each other’s names. Since the table tents are there, I use their names when I call on them in class or invite them to share their name when speaking.

I also make a habit of arriving to class, in person or online, 10 minutes early and remaining present during breaks so that I can have mini-conversations with students. In small or large classes, these individual touch points afford me another opportunity to connect with them individually, which helps in remembering their names. I also have found that making notes about the pronunciation of students’ names, and when their preferred names don’t match what’s on the roster, is integrally important. I keep the sticky note with these notations with my class notes, so they are easily accessible.

Ongoing

Relationships need to be cultivated over time. While we are not our students’ counselors, caring about their learning coincides with caring about them as human beings. Lang (2016) notes that “emotions, attitudes, and other attributes intersect with both teaching and learning” (p. 161). In short, caring matters. Students who sense this are more likely to reach out to us with questions. I’m consistently reminded about how my small actions are meaningful to students and build the foundation for us to have deeper, more honest conversations about their progress and learning. For example, I had a student mention that she was moving from New York to Philadelphia over the summer break. When I asked if she had settled in the following semester, she noted how important this was to her. Another student in an online course commented during class that she was nervous about seeing her first client in counseling, doubting her ability to be a social worker and generally unsettled three weeks into the semester. I followed up with an email and we arranged a 15 minute phone call the following week. I then mailed her some old counseling materials I had sitting in my office. She sent a message thanking me for my time, sharing how useful the materials had been, and specifically noted she appreciated I cared enough to send them.

We teach because we believe in the importance of our disciplines’ content and our students’ abilities to apply the knowledge and skills into their lives outside of our classroom. To support them in this process, it’s integral we remember, our students are human beings, with complex and diverse lives. We need to treat them as such when we teach them.

References

Granitz, N., Koernig, S., & Harich, K. (2009). Now it’s personal: Antecedents and outcomes of rapport between business faculty and their students. Journal of Marketing Education. 31(1).

Gremlin, D., & Gwinner, K. (2000). Customer-Employee rapport in service relationships. Journal of Service Research. 3(1), p. 82-104.

Ingraham, K., Davidson, S., & Yonge, O. (2018). Student-faculty relationships and its impact on academic outcomes. Nurse Education Today. 71, p. 17-21.

Lang, J. (2016). Small Teaching. Josey-Bass. San Francisco, CA.

Smith, B. (2015). The evolution of my rapport: One professor’s journey to building successful instructor/student relationships. College Teaching, 63(2). P. 35-36.

Laurie Friedman is Assistant Professor of Instruction at Temple’s College of Public Health and a Faculty Fellow at the Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

Public domain image from pxhere.