Design Your Course for Significant Learning! A Step-By-Step Guide

Stephanie Fiore

The first time I taught, I was a first-year graduate student assigned to teach a section of an upper-level multi-section Italian Cinema course. I had never taught before, and certainly didn’t feel that I possessed the expertise to teach upperclassmen about the subject. The faculty fed me notes from their lectures and handed me the syllabus I would need to follow. It was the usual syllabus with a list of policies, a schedule of topics—i.e. the list of films that we would discuss—and the dates of two midterms and the final exam. There was no explanation about why the course was structured in this particular way (except that it was chronologically organized by date of film) nor was there any instruction on how to teach it effectively. I muddled through as so many do when we begin teaching in higher ed, but I must admit that I had little idea what the overarching goals of the course were and what I was hoping my students would achieve by the end of it. I knew only that I needed to do a lot of research on each film and then ask interesting questions to get a discussion going, focusing on some of the salient points from my research. 

My experience is not unusual. The truth is that very few of us are provided guidance in graduate school about designing courses that will lead our students to what L. Dee Fink calls “significant learning.” As Fink explains it, “for learning to occur, there has to be some kind of change in the learner. No change, no learning. And significant learning requires that there be some kind of lasting change that is important in terms of the learner’s life” (Fink, 2013). But how to achieve that significant learning? This summer’s EdVice Exchange Course Design Blog Series offers a step by step guide to Fink’s Integrated Course Design model in order to lead you and your students towards that significant learning experience we all wish for. 

In Fink’s model, we begin by considering the situational factors that define the learning environment in which we are teaching. Then we start designing our course, starting with learning goals. This is a meaningful change from the content-first way we often plan our courses (What content do we have to cover? What order is the textbook in?), shifting our focus instead towards the learning goals we hope our students will achieve. We then identify assessments that provide evidence students have reached the learning goals, and activities that provide the practice students need to achieve mastery. This is not a linear process but instead an integrated one in which goals, assessments and activities work together to provide the significant learning we seek. We will discuss each of these elements of course design in greater depth as we move through the series, providing time between each piece for you to apply what you are learning to your course(s). 

EdVice Exchange Course Design Series:

Part 2: Considering Situational Factors  

Part 3: Articulating Meaningful Goals

Part 4: Aligning Assessments with Goals

Part 5: Developing Teaching Activities

Part 6: Implementing Your Course Design  

This year, I taught a similar course to the one taught years ago. Using Fink’s model, I designed the course by focusing on the goals I wanted my students to achieve. Of course, I wanted them to develop an appreciation for Italian culture and film. But I also wanted them to develop analytical skills for critically discussing and writing about film. I wanted them to explore the complex interactions between film and its historical, cultural, and political context. I also wanted them to learn how to build new knowledge through productive and collaborative discussions. By clarifying for myself exactly what the learning goals were for the course, I was able to design learning activities that would get them there and assessments that would provide evidence that they had indeed achieved those goals. Student self-assessments at the end of the semester reflected their own awareness of having experienced significant learning. They spoke about formulating new ways of thinking that challenged their previous perspectives, looking at stories as an expression of culture, and learning to critically analyze film through an understanding of historical, cultural, and political factors. One commented, “discussions allowed us to practice analyzing these films, and hearing what other people noticed broadened our perspectives of not only the film itself, but the director, their choices, and the process of filmmaking.” The important thing to notice here is that designing our courses for significant learning means both we and our students understand where the learning journey is taking us and how it will fundamentally change us along the way. That is a powerful outcome for any one of us!


Interested in reading more about designing courses for significant learning? See L. Dee Fink’s Self-Directed Guide to Significant Learning.

Stephanie Fiore, Ph.D., is Assistant Vice Provost at Temple’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

To Do Next Year: Build a Teaching Community

Stephanie Fiore

When I speak with faculty about the importance of creating community around teaching, I often reference a wonderful essay by Lee Shulman, professor emeritus at Stanford University and past president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. In the essay, Shulman talks about his belief as a junior faculty member that he would conduct research in solitude, but enjoy a vibrant community in his teaching life. He quickly realized his mistake: “What I didn’t understand as a new Phd was that I had it backwards! We experience isolation not in the stacks but in the classroom. We close the classroom door and experience pedagogical solitude, whereas in our life as scholars, we are members of active communities: communities of conversation, communities of evaluation, communities in which we gather with others in our invisible colleges to exchange our findings, our methods, and our excuses.” In fact, we often teach our classes without any collegial input, feedback, or intervention. When a class doesn’t go well, we may complain about it to a trusted colleague at the proverbial water cooler, but we don’t evaluate our beliefs about teaching or the teaching methods we use in any real way. Even peer review of teaching is often a checkbox exercise devoid of meaningful feedback or plans for improvement, especially when done as a required element of promotion or contract renewal.

Perhaps we like it this way. It’s uncomfortable to receive feedback that might require us to consider alternative ways of teaching, or realize that what we have been doing for years needs to be refreshed. And, by the way, it’s not super comfortable to give feedback to colleagues either. The upshot is that we may struggle alone with lessons or whole semesters that don’t go as planned, with students that we are having trouble inspiring, or with SFFs that are less than stellar. It can be a lonely place.

One of the most positive developments that came out of the pandemic was a renewed surge of professional development in which faculty were able to examine their own practices and, together with colleagues, imagine new strategies for teaching. Faculty in our workshops engaged with each other, hungry to get information and learn new methods for reaching their students in this new, unfamiliar online world. While discussing any number of teaching questions in breakout room activities, faculty got involved in such deep conversations and engaged in such generative support of each other that they didn’t want to come back when we closed the breakout rooms. We joked that Zoom should create a “reject” button so faculty could refuse to return if they didn’t want to leave those rich conversations behind. For some faculty, this was the first time they had had an opportunity to really think about their teaching with colleagues, other professionals who also wanted to discuss teaching. As one participant wrote in our post-workshop survey, it “blew my mind.” In fact, we often hear that participants found some of the most meaningful aspects of our workshops to be hearing from other faculty about their own experiences, and discussing specific examples related to the teaching question at hand.

As we’ve begun slowly to return to in-person teaching and a more normalized routine, it is so easy to fall back again into pre-pandemic isolation. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Just as Lee Shulman calls us to make teaching “community property,” I urge you to put on your fall to-do list the establishment of intentional ways to continue to connect with colleagues in order to discuss teaching, unravel sticky problems, and celebrate the triumphs along the way. That might mean setting aside a “talking about teaching” hour every month over coffee with a trusted colleague, carving out a piece of your departmental meetings to share interesting teaching ideas or to ask for feedback on an innovation you are planning to implement. It can also mean creating a constellation of like-minded colleagues that can act as a cohort of support for each other or organizing a structured peer review of teaching protocol to ensure you get periodic feedback on direct observation of your teaching. It can also mean attending CAT workshops and events where you’ll have the opportunity to engage with an interdisciplinary group of faculty to delve into pedagogical explorations that will enrich your teaching.

Community is way better than isolation. So put on your to-do list for fall that you will take a first step towards finding a community of teachers committed to teaching excellence. And remember, as always, that the CAT is part of that community.

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

Jumpstart Student Engagement and Curiosity with ABC

Meg Van Baalen-Wood

Early in my first semester of grad school, a mentor introduced what was then a counterintuitive teaching strategy: Activity Before Content, or ABC. The strategy is simple: have students explore concepts and ideas before presenting them with new content. For example, before introducing a new concept, ask students to define it, drawing from their experiences and expectations: What do they think it means? What does it remind them of? How have they encountered it in previous situations?

ABC can be used with equal impact in both face-to-face and virtual learning environments.

Why use ABC?

ABC has many advantages. Among them, it

  • Engages students in active learning 
  • Enables students to retrieve existing information and make predictions about new information
  • Provides opportunities for students to review what they know, or think they know, before piling on new information 
  • Creates a preliminary foundation for new content
  • Encourages students to share both knowledge and questions with their peers
  • Fosters a classroom community that values socially constructed knowledge
  • Positions you as a collaborator and member of the classroom community, rather than a sage on the stage 

How does it work?

Many familiar teaching strategies lend themselves to ABC, for example, 

  • Write or project a question on the board for students to answer before class begins. Using a polling application (e.g., PollEverywhere), share responses as they accrue in real-time or immediately after everyone has responded, so students can see what their classmates are thinking. As a class, discuss the responses; be sure to explore any misconceptions/outliers as well as correct responses.
  • Start class with a one- or two-minute freewrite. Discuss students’ responses as a class or in small groups before sharing them out with the entire class. In online classes, leverage asynchronous discussion threads for these small group explorations.
  • Create a low-stakes quiz that students complete in small groups at the beginning of class. Provide a few minutes at the end of class for groups to revisit/revise their answers after you’ve presented and discussed the content.

Once you get started, you’ll think of many more ways to pique your students’ curiosity, engage them in active learning, and create a vibrant classroom community with ABC. 

Meg Van Baalen-Wood is from the Elbogen Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Wyoming.

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

What’s New in Zoom?

Denise Hardiman

As you are aware Zoom regularly delivers new versions to fix bugs and release new features. In order to stay up to date it is important that you check for and install updates on a regular basis. Personally, I check for updates at least once a week. To check for updates you can go to the Zoom program on your computer, click your profile picture in the upper right corner of the window that appears, and select “Check for Updates” from the drop-down menu. Keeping your Zoom up to date ensures that you have the best audio and video experience possible.

Let’s take a look at some of the more recent enhancements!

Blur My Background

Did you ever turn on your camera to start a class session and notice that the background is a bit messy or that you forgot to set a virtual background?  Well Blur My Background is now a one-click feature. You can quickly blur your backgrounds, without needing to go to your Zoom client settings. The Blur My Background option is available from the start/stop video menu in the main toolbar, the 3-dot menu on the user’s video tile, and by clicking anywhere on your video image.

Add video to waiting room

No one enjoys sitting in a Zoom waiting room anticipating a meeting to start.  Why not give your participants something to view. You can add a video to your waiting room in the web portal. Participants in the Waiting Room are able to view the video while they wait for you to allow them into the meeting. This might be a good feature to consider if you are using Zoom for office or student hours. You will still have the ability to use the default screen or a logo/description. More detailed information about the waiting room feature is available from Zoom Support.

Save custom gallery view order

Are you frustrated with your students’ profiles not being in the same place for every class meeting?  It is hard to get to know them and remember their names. Now you can save the customized gallery view order for use in later class sessions that are part of a series of recurring meetings. In the future session, that custom gallery view order can be reloaded and participants’ videos will be arranged in the custom order, with any new participants appearing in the bottom-right corner. The custom gallery view will be saved and be available for other meetings in this series. Note that only one custom gallery view order can be saved for each meeting series.

Zoom Focus Mode

While teaching via Zoom have you ever felt that your students were paying more attention to other students than they are paying to you? Focus Mode is for you! This feature keeps students focused by only showing them their video and your (the host) video, which will help students to stay attentive or work on their tasks without being distracted by others and their tasks. This feature gives you (and your co-hosts) a view of all students’ videos without students seeing each other.

Once Focus Mode has been started, participants in focus mode will only see the video of the host, co-hosts, any participants spotlighted by the host, and their own video. Participants shared screens will be visible to the hosts and co-hosts but audio will be heard by all participants in the room. The Focus Mode basically reduces the visual stimulation.

If you need further assistance or just want to try out some of the features with someone else, please visit our labs at the following locations

  • Virtual Ed Tech lab (on Zoom)
  • Main Campus (Tech Center, Suite 112)
  • Health Sciences (Student Faculty Center, 2nd Floor)

The virtual and main campus labs are open Monday to Friday 8:30am to 5:00pm, and the HSC lab is open Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 8:30am – 5:00pm. To schedule a one-on-one appointment with an Educational Technology Specialist or a Faculty Developer visit our CATbooking page.

Denise Hardiman serves as Educational Technology Specialist at Temple’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

Navigating the New Information Ecosystem: Helping Students Thrive in the Digital Age

Dana Dawson, Caitlin Shanley and Stephanie Fiore

The most common forms of information literacy education in recent decades have focused on developing our students’ ability to find sources and use them effectively and ethically in support of a thesis. The development of skills related to source identification and evaluation for scholarly purposes is undoubtedly an important outcome for college-level studies. However, the revised Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education, developed by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), Trudi Jacobson and Thomas Mackey’s work on metaliteracy and numerous studies conducted by Project Information Literacy have shown the need for a revised approach and provided new tools for addressing information literacy. Given the volume of information our students are exposed to on a daily basis, it is critical that they graduate with an enhanced awareness of how the information ecosystem works, how emotion influences the information we believe and act upon, and how investigative skills used for scholarly study can and should be applied in our everyday lives. Here are some approaches to consider for your own classroom.

Metacognition

Metacognition involves reflecting on our cognitive processes and developing an awareness of how we think and learn so that we can adjust our behaviors on the basis of what was effective. Applying metacognitive strategies allows our students to take control of their educational process and make connections between prior knowledge and course content. The metacognitive process for learning involves an iterative cycle of planning, monitoring and evaluating one’s learning with focused self–questioning at each stage.

This same metacognitive process can be used to develop a reflective stance on the information we’re exposed to in our studies and everyday lives. To help our students become more critical and reflective consumers of information, encourage them to apply the tools of the metacognitive process to their information consumption. In order to improve information literacy, students can ask themselves questions such as::

  • Planning – What sources have I selected to read/watch/listen to and why? Will I look at multiple sources on an event or topic? Why am I reading about/watching/listening to this?
  • Monitoring – What kinds of information are more likely to appear at the top of my feed? How am I feeling as I read/watch/listen to this? Do I agree with the information being presented because it has been verified or because it aligns with what I already believe? Am I investigating claims before forwarding them to others?
  • Evaluating – Did I spend more time on certain types of sources than others? Whose information was I more likely to believe and share with others? Were my efforts to investigate sources and claims using other sources successful?

Ask good questions

Generalized skepticism is among the challenges instructors face in relation to information literacy and “I’m just asking” is one of the most potent tools for spreading distrust of substantiated information. However, learning to ask good questions for the purposes of investigation and verification is a foundational skill for scholarly study and conscientious consumption of information. Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana’s Question Formulation Technique is a strategy instructors can use to prompt students to not only generate questions but reflect on and prioritize the questions that will generate the most productive investigation.

Lateral reading

In a small but provocative study comparing the website evaluation strategies of Stanford students and history professors with those of professional fact checkers, Wineburg and McGrew found that fact checkers applied two strategies neither students nor faculty immediately went to – “taking bearings” and lateral reading. Rather than evaluate a source by digging deep into the source itself (for example, applying the CRAAP test), fact checkers started by learning more about the website or source and then opened new tabs and found additional sources to investigate claims and sources on the website as they read content on the initial site.

SIFT method

The SIFT method combines elements of metacognition and lateral reading into a simple mnemonic for evaluating claims.

  • Stop
  • Investigate the source
  • Find better coverage
  • Trace claims to their source

Connect classroom activities with everyday life

Our students come to our classrooms with some awareness of how information is manipulated and with strategies for finding and evaluating sources. However, the very human tendency to compartmentalize information means that we need to be proactive in connecting what happens in the classroom with the strategies applied outside the classroom. If you assign a research paper or project, start with a reflection on how students find information in their everyday life. Use analogies such as crime scene investigations or learning more about a possible romantic partner to encourage deeper thinking about how we ask questions and seek additional information. LaGarde and Hudgins encourage instructors to have students use personal devices such as cell phones to do some searching to help make the connection between search strategies learned in the classroom and those employed in everyday life.

Inoculate against mis/disinformation

Finally, recent research on protecting against mis- and disinformation has suggested the efficacy of “inoculating” students against future exposures. Strategies such as explaining misleading argumentation techniques, demonstrating how content is designed to manipulate emotion and showing how certain types of content are more likely to be prioritized on platforms students access can reduce the influence of misleading information going forward. Sites such as Bad News Game can be used to help students understand how platforms and content creators play on our emotions and pre-existing beliefs to increase viewership and readership. Lorenz-Spreen et.al. have also shown that such interventions in combination with self-reflection on aspects of our personality or behavior that might be targeted is particularly effective in boosting one’s ability to detect manipulative strategies.

Additional Resources

Sources

  • Downey, A. (2016). Critical Information Literacy : Foundations, Inspiration, and Ideas. Library Juice Press.

Dana Dawson is Associate Director of Teaching and Learning at Temple’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

Caitlin Shanley is the Coordinator of Learning & Student Success at Temple University Libraries.

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

Advance Organizers: Setting the Stage for Learning and Retention

Dana Dawson

Advance Organizers title card

The Advance Organizer is a tool you can use to focus student attention during lectures, improve retention of course content and connect new information with prior knowledge. Advanced Organizers can take a variety of forms from brief expository overviews to help students make meaning of course content to graphic representations that provide a framework for information.

Overview

As an expert in your field, it can be hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone new to the information you’re sharing. The connections between content delivered in separate lessons, how a theory applies to a specific case or even the meaning of frequently used terms in your discipline may seem so obvious to you that they don’t require explicit explanation for your students. Ambrose et. al. point out that one important way in which expert and novice learners differ is in the density of connections among concepts, facts and skills. Research on learning has shown that students retain more of what they learn and for longer if they connect new information with prior knowledge and have an organizational schema, or knowledge structure within which to fit new information. 

In addition to giving students a framework within which to fit new information, Advance Organizers help students focus during lectures, whether given in-person or delivered in a pre-recorded format. The duration of a student’s attention span will vary for a variety of reasons, but research suggests that we should anticipate attention lapses and intersperse listening to videos or lectures with frequent activities to bring attention back to the content, integrate low stakes opportunities for students to self-assess understanding and highlight key points and takeaways. 

Types and Examples

Expository organizers are used primarily for new and unfamiliar learning material. For example, Dee Ann Gillies tested the use of expository organizers in the form of short statements outlining unifying concepts related to information presented during lectures with students enrolled in an introductory course in medical surgical nursing. The study found improved learning and short-term retention of material. 

Narrative organizers use a story structure to convey information. A story might illustrate something about course content through analogy or by turning key concepts into characters and building detail and narrative to help students recall key information (see, for example, Sketchy’s study guides sketchy.com). 

Know-Wonder-Learn (KWL) is an advanced organizer that helps both instructor and student access background knowledge. Students are asked to complete the first two columns prior to instruction and to share what they have written. The final column can be filled in for reflection or submission.

(https://teaching.vt.edu/content/dam/teaching_vt_edu/resources/Advance%20Organizers.pdf)

Graphic organizers constitute the biggest category of Advance Organizers and can take a wide variety of forms, including tables, venn diagrams, flow charts and concept maps. They can be used to help students see connections between concepts, the steps in a process or sequence of events or simply to organize students’ thinking before, during or after instruction.

Examples:

(Barkley, Elizabeth F.. Interactive Lecturing: A Handbook for College Faculty, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2018: 242. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/templeuniv-ebooks/detail.action?docID=5254245.)

Implementation

Advance Organizers can be distributed in completed form or as blank documents that students complete before, during or after instruction. The SmartArt options in PowerPoint are helpful for creating graphic organizers that suit your specific needs. You might assign students to work in pairs or small groups to complete the Advance Organizer or compare notes. They also can be used in your syllabus or Canvas course to provide students with an overview of the material to come. For additional information on the use of graphic organizers in syllabi, review the CAT workshop recording of The Interactive and Graphic Syllabus here. 

Additional Resources

Dana Dawson is Associate Director of Temple University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

A Game-based Approach to Teaching Calculus: Implications of the Research for STEM Courses

Cliff Rouder

On March 16, we were honored to have Dr. André Thomas from Texas A&M University as this year’s STEM Educators Lecture guest speaker. Dr. Thomas is an Associate Professor of Practice in the College of Architecture and is the Director of the LIVE lab at Texas A&M. He is also the CEO of Triseum, a small spin-off company of the LIVE lab. 

Dr. Thomas shared his experience with the process of creating and testing a video game to help calculus students master a conceptual understanding of limits–a fundamental concept students often struggle with early on and that is essential for success in the course. Calculus is required for several STEM majors, but with a national failure rate (defined as a grade of D, F, or Withdrawl) of 34% for Calculus 1, it is often a barrier to students’ success in their intended major and career. 

Dr. Thomas began by reminding us that when we are very young, we learn by playing games, but this element of play disappears as the educational approach shifts to sitting in rows and listening to lectures. Games are a medium for learning just like books, and thus they do belong in the classroom and are indeed currently being used in STEM courses nationally and internationally. However, completing the game isn’t what’s most meaningful; rather, it’s enabling students to take a deeper dive–to spend more time on task–through a medium that this generation of students has grown up playing and enjoying.

The process of designing a video game to teach calculus began for Dr. Thomas and his team by pinpointing the really complex and challenging subject matter that a game might help students master and identifying specific learning objectives. Many iterations later, with input from an interdisciplinary team of students, subject matter experts, game designers, instructional designers, and assessment experts, they developed the game Variant Limits. Receiving feedback from students was essential; successful game creation requires a thorough understanding of what students look for and find pleasurable in a video game experience. 

Variant Limits puts students in the role of a female explorer in a 3-D world who lands on an abandoned planet and has to figure out what happened using their conceptual understanding of limits to overcome certain obstacles in that world. At the end of each segment of play, there’s an assessment for students to reflect on what they did and how it worked. To learn about the effects of Variant Limits on students’ grades, we invite you to listen to the Zoom recording of Dr. Thomas’ talk in our CAT Workshop archive.

The process of designing the game and researching its impact on student learning taught Dr. Thomas two key lessons: 

  • STEM faculty have to get out of the mindset that their mission is to weed out students who are not performing well. Rather, they need to embrace the mission of helping more students succeed. 
  • Helping our students recover from suboptimal performance and failure is crucial. STEM faculty are conditioned to shy away from failure, but we should be encouraging students to learn from the failure and try again rather than to quit. A video game like Variant Limits does just that. It gives students the opportunity to productively struggle, fail with no real world consequences, and then learn, try again, and get to 100% mastery. 

Creating and maintaining a video game is a large undertaking that requires time, as well as significant collaboration and funding, and may not be feasible or even advisable for faculty to attempt. As an alternative, he suggested the use of existing games, for example, repurposing TIC-TAC-TOE from a competitive game to a collaborative game that might be useful in teaching a concept in their course. Even better, students might develop a game themselves in small groups, and then ask another group to improve upon it. This reinforces the real-world practice of collaborating and building on another’s idea rather than throwing out that idea and starting from scratch.

If game-based learning (GBL) has piqued your interest, be sure to sign up for our 3-part workshop beginning Wednesday the 23rd titled, Level Up! Learning with Games and Gamification. GBL can be a useful pedagogical strategy for any course!

If you’d like to keep the GBL discussion going, post a comment on our new Faculty Teaching Commons. What are your thoughts about–and experiences with–GBL? Inquiring minds want to know!

If you’d like assistance incorporating GBL into your courses, one of our faculty developers or educational technology specialists are ready to help. Make an appointment here or email a CAT staff member directly.

Feedback that Nourishes Mind and Heart

Cliff Rouder

I’ll never forget the feedback I received from two professors when I was an undergraduate (and here, I’m quoting them): “You missed the point of this question–badly!” and “Pretty good about what Sewall thought; totally baffling about why.” The first gem was on a practice question to help me prepare for the big essay exam. We call this formative feedback, where there’s an opportunity to put into practice the feedback we’re given. The second gem was feedback on a big essay; we call this summative feedback coming at the end of a unit or instruction. It’s designed to be evaluative and typically counts for a significant portion of the course grade. 

Did either of these gems accomplish anything except deflate my motivation? The answer is a resounding NO for those of you playing at home. Now fast forward a couple of decades. As a conscientious instructor early on in my career, I’ll never forget returning students’ papers on which I must have spent 50 hours providing massive amounts of feedback, only to watch a few students crumple up their papers right in front of me and shoot a 3-pointer into the trash can. Woah!

The feedback we give to students–what it focuses on, how it’s expressed, how much we give, and how frequently we give it–can have a positive (or in my case above, negative) impact on motivation, and thus, on learning. Do I remember getting feedback that was motivating? Absolutely. Try this one on for size and take a moment to reflect on how it differs from the less than helpful feedback above:

“I like where you’re going in this paragraph because you’re leading me to your main argument. What I’d like you to think about is how to better connect it to the prior paragraph.”

Okay, now here’s something I can work with. I was on track with the second paragraph but needed to make a better connection between the first and second paragraph. I could do that.

L. Dee Fink, a noted teaching and faculty development consultant, uses the acronym FIDeLity to describe characteristics of useful feedback. 

F=Frequent

I=Immediate

D=Discriminating

L=Loving

The last two are not self-evident, so let me explain what he means by “discriminating” and “loving.” “Discriminating” feedback targets the most important areas for improvement. By “loving,” Fink refers to the spirit in which the feedback is expressed, i.e., wanting your students to improve rather than wanting to demoralize or discourage (see again the two pieces of feedback above). While the feedback I gave in my early teaching career was meant to be loving, the sea of red ink calling out every little thing I found positive and negative was hardly that–nor was it discriminating. Lesson learned.

At this point you may be thinking, “Yeah, yeah, this all sounds good, but in the real world, I teach large lectures and don’t have endless hours to give FIDeLity feedback. Besides, students don’t seem to use my feedback anyway, so nice try.” Both are legitimate concerns, so let’s look at strategies for giving FIDeLity feedback in the real world. 

  • Rubrics to the rescue! Providing students with a grading rubric along with the assignment gives them a roadmap for success. It also saves you time on the back end by streamlining the grading process and minimizing the crafting of individualized feedback. There are different types of rubrics you can create, and you can even create and use them directly in Canvas. And to kick it up a notch, consider providing examples of a strong and weak assignment along with the grading rubric, and let THEM practice grading! 
  • Peer review! You don’t always have to be the one giving feedback. Incorporate opportunities in class and outside of class for peer review. By assessing others’ work, students improve their ability to diagnose issues in their own work. However, keep in mind that you will need to provide guidance for students on how to understand your rubric’s criteria and give constructive and “loving” feedback. 
  • Tech can help! Providing audio or audiovisual feedback in Canvas Speedgrader is quick, more personalized, and helps students zero in on the two or three most important areas to work on. Creating polling questions in Canvas and Poll Everywhere can help students self-assess, and enable you to identify gaps in knowledge and give global feedback to the whole class.
  • Look for patterns! There are usually themes among the errors students make and in what they did well on a particular assessment. Share those with the class rather than commenting on them to each student individually.
  • Ask for accountability! Have students demonstrate they’ve used the feedback you do provide. Have them include in a brief statement how they incorporated your feedback the next time a draft or similar assignment is due. 

Okay, your turn! Let’s keep this conversation going by posting to our new Faculty Teaching Commons. Go to TUportal, click on your Faculty Tools tab, then click on the Faculty Teaching Commons link. How “FIDeLity” is your feedback? What are the feedback techniques you’ve found effective? Inquiring minds want to know!

As always, if you’d like assistance with giving feedback to your students, one of our faculty developers or educational technology specialists are ready to help. Make an appointment here or email a CAT staff member directly. 

Faculty Teaching Commons: A Place for ‘Teacher-Talk’

H. Naomie Nyanungo

Last week a colleague shared that students in their class wanted to engage in discussions on the Ukraine situation. Did you observe the same in your classes and what, if any, adjustments did you make to allow for this conversation in your classes? Are you interested in talking with other instructors about what they are seeing in their classes and the strategies they are using to support and engage with students. We now have a university-wide forum, the Faculty Teaching Commons, where faculty can connect with other faculty to share experiences and exchange ideas and resources for enhancing teaching practice. The CAT launched the Faculty Teaching Commons (the Commons) earlier this year as a space for faculty to engage in discussions on topics on all things related to teaching.

You probably already have spaces where you talk to peers about teaching. For example, conversations with colleagues in your department or program or participation in discipline-specific online communities or listservs. The Commons offers an opportunity to engage with instructors from all disciplines, campuses, rank and tenure across Temple University. As a large institution, the nature of the issues and topics that arise in our classes will vary widely. The cross-disciplinary nature of the Commons will undoubtedly lead to a rich exchange of ideas and resources because something that may apply in one discipline or setting may not apply to others.

Topics or questions discussed on the Commons can be general teaching issues/strategies, or specific to certain teaching contexts. For example, a recent post asks this question: What is the ‘rule’ or practice around sharing poll results or jamboards (like a screen shot) after students have completed them? I am certain that this is something that some of us do but have not really thought about it. (By the way, there is an answer to this question shared on the Commons.) In addition to asking questions and sharing ideas, faculty can also recommend articles and other resources related to teaching.

To access the Commons discussion forum, log into TU Portal, click on the ‘Faculty Tools’ tab and then click on ‘Faculty Teaching Commons’ as shown in the screenshot below.

In addition to the online Faculty Teaching Commons, the CAT invites you to attend  the next Faculty Teaching Commons Live session: Wednesday, March 16 | 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM, Hosted in Person in TECH 109 (Details Here)

Please join us at the Commons Live for discussion and fellowship with your Temple colleagues. We’re the host, but the agenda for the discussion is set by you, the faculty!

We look forward to seeing you in the Faculty Teaching Commons!

H. Naomie Nyanungo is Director of Educational Technology at Temple’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

Checking for Readiness to Move On

Michael Johnson, Brigham Young University

Not all students in a class will master material at the same rate.  This tip discusses techniques for verifying that your class is prepared to learn new concepts, as well as ideas for helping those who fall behind.

Even though everyone’s learning journey is very personal, much of the university learning experience takes place in the context of a community and within the constraints of a semester or term schedules.  At times, some members of that learning community may not be ready to move on to the next stage of learning.  As teachers we sometimes move on, leaving learners behind, and sometimes these learners never catch up.  Without stifling those who are ready to move forward, it is possible to pause and verify that everyone is prepared to move on.

What can we do to ensure that each learner is ready to proceed on the learning journey?  Here are several ideas to consider:

How do you identify who is being left behind?  Simply ask the students what they understand

Approach 1: Invite students to do a think-pair-share

Ask students a question.

  • Give students appropriate time to formulate a response.
  • Have each student turn to another to share his/her response.
  • Randomly call on various students to share their responses with the entire class.
  • From a sampling of responses, determine if the students are ready to move on.

Approach 2: Conduct class instant polling

  • For instant in-class polling, use a classroom response system like i>clickers, Top Hot, TurningPoint, or other tools available at your institution.
  • For outside-of-class polling or surveys use tools like Survey Monkey or Qualtrics, etc.

Approach 3: Invite students to complete one-minute papers

  • At the end of each class period, invite learners to answer questions about the experience (e.g., “What is the most significant thing you learned in class today?” or “What is still confusing about what was covered in class today?”)
  • Collect and review the responses to determine who is ready to move on and who needs additional instruction.

Once you’ve identified who is being left behind, what can be done to help them?  Provide additional learning opportunities

Approach 1: Use low stake quizzes 

  • Low stake quizzes are worth few or no points.   
  • Low stake quizzes can provide opportunities for students to demonstrate learning.   
  • Significantly, electronic quizzes have the advantage of automatic grading and automatic feedback. 

Approach 2: Model and practice

  • Explain a concept or model a process that students need to master. 
  • Then break students into teams to practice, following your example. 
  • When the class comes together, select a sampling of students to demonstrate what was learned. 
  • Provide immediate constructive and confirming feedback.

Everyone has the potential to learn, even though he may represent the proverbial “last wagon.”  Teachers can use a few simple practices to help each student make steady progress in their learning.

Additional Resources

Angelo, Thomas A. and K. Patricia Cross. Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993)

Davis, Barbara Gross. Tools for Teaching 2nd edition (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009)

McKeachie, Wilbert J. Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers 10th edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999)

Michael Johnson is from the Center for Teaching & Learning at Brigham Young University

This article is released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).