Teaching Science Seminar: Hands on Learning

During the first Teaching Science Seminar of 2012, graduate students Jennifer Taylor and Morgan Thompson, in Chemistry and Molecular and Cellular Biology respectively, discussed the highlights of the 2011 National Science Teachers Association Conference in New Orleans, LA and shared a hands-on activity.

One of the sessions they attended that raised discussion was about using argument papers in science classes to encourage students to apply the writing skills they have learned in other disciplines and to encourage critical thinking.  Some faculty participants in the Teaching Science Seminar use similar assignments in first year seminars but there were questions about how something like this could be used in more traditional science classes.

Most of the session was spent with participants working in pairs or groups of three to experience the hands-on lesson created by 3-D Molecular Designs acting as students engaged with the “Insulin mRNA to Protein Kit©.”  Participants discussed the possibility of replacing a more traditional laboratory experience with the hands-on modeling activity to reinforce the central dogma of molecular biology.  The kit also seems like a great outreach activity that graduate students and postdocs could bring to a local school classroom to give our future faculty more teaching experience with a vetted lesson.

Focusing the Research Question

Laura Braunstein (Library), and Karen Gocsik (Institute for Writing and Rhetoric) facilitated this session on focusing our students’ research processes. At the start, everyone present introduced themselves and shared a question about or challenge they’ve encountered in teaching students research. Those topics/challenges included helping students develop questions of an appropriate scope, finding a balance between instructing students on the writing process and giving them time to practice their writing, and guiding our students in identifying topics that are of interest to readers (not just of personal interest to the writer).

We then divided into pairs and, with Laura Braunstein’s guidance, worked through a very effective activity based on one developed by Aimee Bahng, Assistant Professor of English. This activity, “Levels of Questions,” provides a scale by which to rate “levels of arguability” of research questions.

• Level 1: Questions that can be answered with knowledge you have right now.
• Level 2: Questions that can be definitively answered with scholarly research.
• Level 3: Open-ended quesions to which an answer can be proposed based on scholarly research but that cannot be answered definitively.
• Level 4: Questions that cannot be addressed with scholarly research, either because of lack of evidence or because they ask something that cannot be answered by citing evidence.

In our pairs, we used the scale to rate a list of sample questions we had been given. As level 3 questions are the ideal level for student papers, being that they are debatable, we rewrote all the level 1, 2, and 4 questions to meet level 3 criteria.

When we reported out, we found that many of us had rated our questions differently. Some of these discrepancies were due to disciplinary differences. “How did language evolve?” is a level 2 question in some disciplines, while in others it may be a level 3 question (and perhaps even a level 3 question that needs to be narrower in scope, depending on the course.) We noticed that sometimes subtle changes in vocabulary moved a question from one level to the next. Some rated the question “Should parents be worried about giving their children too many vaccines?” as a level 2, while some rated it a level 4 due to the use of the word “worried”.

The discussion was lively and interesting. All present seemed to be in agreement that the activity is a valuable tool to use in classroom instruction.

After completing this activity, we looked at a student paper on “The Great Gatsby” from a past WRI2-3 class. Karen Gocsik introduced us to a strategy for helping students hone their research questions in their writing. Referencing Aristotle’s topoi, she explained to us how she aided a student by asking her “What question is each of your paragraph’s answering?” By doing this, we (as had her student) saw that some whole paragraphs answered level 1 questions such as “What are the personal attributes of the female characters in the Great Gatsby?” By reading the paper in this way, we saw that each paragraph of the student’s paper addressed a level 1 question….until the very end. The student’s closing sentence was, in fact, a level 3 question. Her conclusion was actually the ideal starting point for her paper.

In summary, this was an engaging, thought-provoking, hands-on session–the kind I like best. I encourage you to look at the adaptation of Aimee Bahng’s assignment, and considering using it, or modifying it, in your classes.

Teaching Sciences Seminar – October 13

The Teaching Sciences Seminar on October 13 was an informal discussion with Dean of the College, Charlotte Johnson, and Inge-Lise Ameer, Associate Dean of the College for Student Academic Support Services. The goals of this session were for Charlotte and Inge to meet the science faculty and for all in attendance to discuss the role student support services plays in promoting student success in the sciences at Dartmouth.

To facilitate this discussion, attendees were provided with the following readings, which focus on the latest research on first-generation college students, stereotype threat in education, and new research focusing on how to shrink the college minority gap.

• Cushman, K. (2007). Facing the Culture Shock of College. Educational Leadership, 64(7), 44-47. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
• Ferenstein, G. (2011). How to Shrink the College Minority Gap. Fast Company. Retrieved October 17, 2011, from http://www.fastcompany.com/1741530/shrinking-the-minority-college-gap-for-free.
• Steele, C. (2010). Conclusion: Identity as a Bridge Between Us. In Whistling Vivaldi: And other clues to how stereotypes affect us. (pp. 211 – 219). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Dean Johnson opened by outlining her vision of anchoring students in the intellectual life of campus and the importance of connecting what goes on outside of the classroom with what occurs in the lecture hall or lab. In particular, she noted the importance of building the faculty/student relationship outside of class and ensuring that the work of the Dean of the College feeds into and augments the Academic experience.

On the topic of student recruitment and retention in the sciences the message revolved around expectations and modeling. Students who have the opportunity to engage with and be mentored by diverse faculty and graduate student populations have a greater likelihood of success. Students are also more likely to thrive if they perceive that they are held to the same high expectations as others and that faculty are invested in their success. The key is to communicate this in a way that does not threaten a student’s identity.

When asked how a faculty member might address diversity issues in class without threatening student identity, both guests suggested faculty use silent signals such as

• Letting the entire class know that you are aware of the variety of differences among the students experiences and preparation leading up to this class and that you are invested in each student’s success in the class.
• Creating working groups, study groups and teams with a range of diversity in race, gender, experience, knowledge, etc.
• Crafting critical feedback to include statements of encouragement and directing student to the support services available at Dartmouth.
• Engaging the student in academic pursuits outside of class.
• Communicating directly with Student Support Services at the first sign that a student may potentially need support.

Many faculty in attendance voiced a desire for improved communication and involvement between the Dean of the College and the faculty when it comes to student support and recruiting in the sciences. From the conversation that ensued around this topic it was clear that both Charlotte Johnson and Inge-Lise Ameer are committed to a developing a collaborative relationship with faculty in advocating for student success at Dartmouth.

Cornell Interactive Theatre Ensemble (CITE) – It Depends on the Lens

The Cornell Interactive Theatre Ensemble (CITE) once again visited campus to present a couple of workshops. On October 5th, DCAL hosted “It Depends on the Lens,” a workshop exploring the topic of unconscious bias in employment search committees.

Our facilitator, Tine Reimers, began by asking attendees to watch a DVD scene created by CITE actors displaying the last 15 minutes of a faculty search committee meeting. Five faculty members of varying tenure status discuss a pool of six candidates for the position. Following the viewing, the search chair, David Delay (played by CITE Director and actor Dane Cruz), entered the room to take questions from workshop participants about the behavior of members of the committee and that of even the chair himself, and also provided addition information about the search process up to the start of the video.

The video and the discussion that followed helped to highlight a number of issues related to unconscious bias. At the very least, all people are proved to have certain stereotypic unconscious biases that can affect their decision making. However, through awareness activities, we can reduce reliance on these biases to conduct effective searches. The interactive theater approach gives participants an external view of the situation, encourages self-reflection, and helps to expose these biases.

What can be done? Some of the strategies recommended include:

• devote adequate time to the search process and to meetings
• avoid premature ranking of the applicants
• read candidates work rather than relying solely on support materials
• be transparent with the criteria, ensuring that it is the same for men and women
• consider using a candidate evaluation form

Stereotypic biases disadvantage women more than men but both men and women are prone to biases regardless of how well-intentioned and non-sexist the individuals are. Biases can be reduced, however, and this CITE workshop provided a number of tools to help. The discussion was lively and interesting, and an accompanying handout provided additional resources for participants to take away.

We look forward to CITE’s next visit to Dartmouth.

Smart Pens and Learning

The May 17, 2011 session of Teaching With Information Technology (TWIT) was dedicated to presentations and discussion of LiveScribe Smart Pens for use in teaching and learning. Andy Van Schaak from Vanderbilt University and one of the developers of the LiveScribe Smart Pens joined Jon Kull from Chemistry to detail the wide variety of purposeful applications of this technology in higher education.

Jon Kull explained how he used a Smart Pen to completely re-design the way he teaches Chem 5, a first-year course in general chemistry. He has long been a devoted user of the chalkboard when lecturing in Chem 5, but he wanted to experiment with a way to deliver his lectures between class meetings and use the valuable face-to-face class time to focus on students’ questions and solve the longer, more complicated problems that he never had time for during his lectures in the past. Since these were the kinds of problems more likely to appear on his exams, he wanted to clear classroom time to devote his students’ energies to working together on those problems.

After considering several kinds of lecture-capture software, he settled on the Smart Pen because it allowed him to lecture in much the way he always has—by writing and talking his way through the material. Sitting at home, he wrote with his Smart Pen on specially designed paper and talked as he wrote. The pen recorded his voice along with his writing, diagrams and formulas, kind of like an asynchronous chalk-talk. Then he posted his pencasts, in 10-15 minute segments, on Blackboard and assigned students to read and listen to a set of these pencasts as preparation for class. Kind of like reading the play before going to a Shakespeare class. Students then came to class with specific questions about the pencast lectures and valuable class time was now available to really concentrate on the problems that most troubled them.

Smart Pens, according to Any Van Schaak, were designed with student users in mind, but Professor Kull managed to apply the technology to allow him to do the kind of excellent teaching he is known for in a more efficient and effective way!

Smart Pens were designed for students to take notes and capture lectures and discussions as they did so. The pen allows students to playback whatever portions of a lecture they wish just by tapping on their notes, or by reading the notes and playing the audio on their laptops. On a laptop, pencasts boasts an excellent search tool, even for really bad handwriting! Accompanying software also allows for text conversion, insertion of other digital material and instant sharing of notes among students. Applications for blind and hearing-impaired students, as well as students whose disabilities make note-taking difficult or impossible, abound. Imagine a team of excellent note-takers in every class sharing their notes along with an audio recording indexed to the notes!

Van Schaak also demonstrated how to use the Smart Pens for commenting on student papers with voice recordings to supplement brief notes. Students can actually hear an instructor’s comments, complete with voice inflections and a more personal touch. Finally, Van Schaak previewed a new use of the pens as a very easy-to-use and inexpensive alternative to a tablet computer, allowing an instructor to write on the special paper and have the writing digitally projected—like a white board that doesn’t require you to turn your back on your students!

Using Multimodal Resources in Student Research Projects

In this session, which was co-sponsored by the Library and the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric (IWR), participants explored the the challenges faced by students and faculty when integrating audio, video, images, and text into student research. Karen Gocsik, IWR faculty, shared that a student of hers once wanted to use two YouTube videos in a paper he was writing on house churches in China. The videos he selected were personal videos that appeared to be made by members of the churches, and they showed scenes that contrasted sharply with each other. Karen shared some of the problems these videos presented:

• How does one understand the content of the videos? How do we sufficiently contextualize them in order to read them accurately?
• Are the scenes shown in the videos representative of house churches in China, or are they anomalies?
• How could the student incorporate the clip in his paper, similar to a block quote from a textual source, rather than just citing it as evidence?

The workshop participants contemplated these, and other questions, about incorporating multimodal sources into research papers. During the discussion, we looked at the Journal of e-Media Studies. This  freely available online journal, which is published at Dartmouth, incorporates text, audio, video, and still images in its articles in unique ways. (Example.) Participants discussed the benefits and drawbacks of this type of publication, and the ways these methods might be effective employed in the classroom.

Lastly, in an academic tradition that relies heavily on writing as the means of communication and assessment, do students have the technical and intellectual skills to effectively incorporate multimodal sources in their research? And, likewise, do faculty have the skills to assess them?

A Blueprint for Intercultural learning: What Students Do and Don’t Learn Abroad and Why

April 12, 2011

Sponsored by the Office of Off-campus Programs

Lilli Engle, founder and Director of the American University Center of Provence, brought some pretty sobering evidence to this program: unless we design very interventions with very clear goals, students on study abroad programs DO NOT develop strong intercultural skills and DO NOT achieve fluency in target languages. It is not enough to expose students to another culture, or place them nearby another culture. Students must be led through a process of deliberate reflection on their exposures and experiences or they can actually regress in intercultural competence.

Using an instrument called the Intercultural Development Inventory, Dr. Engle has been measuring her own students’ development of intercultural sensitivity for several years. She also presented data collected at Georgetown University using the same instrument. The instrument measures students’ progress from a monocultural mindset towards a multicultural mindset over the length of a study-abroad program.

Engle got results similar to the Georgetown study. In short, sending students abroad or taking students abroad, even setting them up with host families will not help them develop intercultural sensitivity unless we can manage the level of challenge they feel and structure reflection exercises and experiences for them to help them process the challenges they meet.

Quoting from Nevitt Sanford’s Self and society: Social change and individual development (New York: Atherton Press) Engle pointed out:

• Without sufficient challenge, learners abroad are bored and don’t learn.
• When there’s too much challenge, learners abroad are overwhelmed and don’t learn.
• Learners abroad learn most effectively when they benefit from intervention that facilitates an appropriate amount of challenge.

Study-abroad programs come in all shapes and sizes—language programs, service programs, programs with host-families, programs where students enroll in universities abroad, and those that simply move Dartmouth classes abroad. Regardless of the type of program, “Students abroad who received cultural mentoring in groups ‘often’ to ‘very often’ showed the greatest increase in intercultural learning.”  Students who received no intentionally designed cultural mentoring quite often regressed in their level of intercultural sensitivity, and men regressed more than women.

Class Visits and Peer Evaluation, April 7, 2011

Facilitated by Colleen Boggs, Associate Professor of English, this program was designed to address the paucity of direct measures of teaching effectiveness, as well as to discuss how faculty colleagues can contribute to formative assessment of our teaching. Good assessment practices suggest that a variety of measures provide better assessment data then using only one. Dartmouth’s practice of using only one measure uniformly across the college – student evaluation of teaching forms at the end of each term – and an indirect measure moreover, begs the question: is this sufficient and reliable data to help us continually grow as teachers?
In an effort to encourage faculty to take a more proactive stance with regards to teaching evaluation, the participants in this session worked on creating:

• A set of generally agreed upon standards for evaluating a colleague’s teaching in a particular course
• A set of procedures for reviewing course materials, visiting class meetings and reporting evaluations

Through group work and discussion, the following draft of standards and procedures were created, with the understanding that as a “work in progress” participants and others will have opportunities to add and refine.

Standards for evaluating our colleagues’ teaching

• Course goals should be well articulated
• Course design should promote student learning (well-paced, help everyone meet the course goals)
• Students understand what they’re expected to do and why
• Class activities are well designed to achieve course goals
• Are students willing, eager and engaged?
• Are instructions clear?
• Is language used appropriately?
• Is their enough opportunity for students to make mistakes, get feedback, and try again?
• Is there sufficient opportunity for dialogue?
• Is the technology well-suited to the course goals?
• Is there a variety of interaction—student/instructor and student/student?
• Class activities well suited to instructor’s teaching style
• Is the class/course design student-centered? (Focused on what students do)
• Does the instructor get students to do meaningful work?
• Does the instructor hear student questions and respond accordingly?
• Is the instructor willing to balance “coverage” to address students’ questions?
• The assignments/assessments are well-structured for feedback and review as part of the process; they build logically in steps and take advantage of feedback along the way
• The assessments are clearly aligned to the course goals
• Assignments simulate the professional activity in the course’s discipline; they feel authentic to the discipline
• Instructor provides opportunities for students to reflect on the class’s strategies and learning experiences
• Students leave the classroom with clearer understandings of important concepts

Procedures
Guidelines for Peer Reviewers: Peers observers should:

• Understand the overall design and aims of the class before visiting a class session (pre-observation meeting)
• Have access to all course materials including the course BlackBoard site, if applicable
• Take account of the issue of “observer interference”
• Negotiate common understanding with instructor to be observed about the standards for evaluation and any specific things on which they want feedback
• Have an after-visit de-briefing
• Encourage formative evaluations as well as summative evaluations
• Provide for reciprocity in observation and evaluation
• Include specific notes and examples in their feedback and evaluation
• Provide follow-up and evaluation report in a timely manner
• Provide evaluated instructor meaningful opportunities to have a voice in the evaluation

Re-Thinking Our Response to Student Papers

At today’s workshop, “Re-Thinking Our Response,” IWR faculty Christiane Donahue and Sara Chaney reflected upon their methods for responding to student papers.

Responding to student papers is arguably a writing teacher’s greatest challenge. We put hours of work into crafting responses and correcting errors, worrying over whether or not the comments help, wondering if our students are even paying attention. The good news is that recent studies show us that our comments do in fact make a difference to young writers—if these comments work to create a conversation between instructor and student. At today’s workshop, co-sponsored by DCAL and the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric, IWR faculty Christiane Donahue and Sara Chaney reflected upon their methods for responding to student papers. Professor Donahue offered a model for responding to student papers across the course of the term—a model that is designed so that students will be able to transfer and develop their capabilities across assignments. Professor Chaney demonstrated a way of using an audio feature in Microsoft Word to comment on student papers. Both instructors understood response as a way of establishing an ongoing conversation with their students.

Christiane Donahue’s method for responding works in concert with scaffolded writing assignments. In the interest of time, Professor Donahue shared only three “beats” of her course-long method with us. The first occurs on the first draft of the first paper. Professor Donahue grades the paper but withholds the grade from the students, telling them that they should read the comments first. If they want the grade, she’ll release it to them—but once they’ve learned their grade, they can’t revise the draft. Students read over the comments together, discussing them with one another, as they try to make up their minds about whether or not to take their grades. The strategy is very clever—it ensures that students thoroughly weigh out Professor Donahue’s comments. To date, no one has ever asked for the grade, opting to revise instead.

The second method, which Professor Donahue uses to respond to the second draft of the second paper, involves writing (in addition to individual responses) a shared commentary for the class. The class then discusses that shared commentary, together. This method is effective, in that it generates a conversation about writing (moving students away from thinking only about their own papers). It also demonstrates to students that they are not alone in their struggles to write well.

The third method, which Professor Donahue employs on the last draft of the third essay, offers an end comment that identifies things that the student has done well, along with things that she still needs to work on. This set of comments serves as the standard for the student’s final paper, allowing students to have a clear sense of what they need to work on. It also helps students to see what they are doing well, and to transfer these capabilities to the next assignment. Overall, Professor Donahue’s methods of response come together to form a term-long conversation about writing.

Sara Chaney’s method for responding also seeks to understand any response to a particular paper in the context of a larger conversation about writing. Professor Chaney thinks that using audio technology is an easy and effective way to connect margin comments to this larger discussion. Indeed, it does seem easier for instructors to join their remarks to this larger conversation when speaking than when confined to writing in the margins.

To demonstrate this point, Professor Chaney offered us an example of audio commentary that she had produced for a student paper. She then invited instructors to try the method for themselves. While some participants reported initial discomfort and self-consciousness, others immediately saw that this method of response offered its own set of benefits—particularly in engaging students with early drafts, where their ideas are still forming.

Do students like receiving audio comments? Studies show that they do. In fact, students reported that they prefer audio commentary—they are able to internalize it more easily, and they simply “feel differently” about it. It seems to this observer that the method has real potential—not only as a means for instructors, but as a technology that could enhance peer review.

Overall, today’s workshop offered several ideas to think over and several methods to steal. Just another day at DCAL, I guess!

Using Works of Art in Writing Courses, 2/17/11

In this workshop offered by the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric and the Hood Museum of Art, Kathy Hart, (Interim Director of the Hood Museum), Lesley Wellman (Curator of Education at the Hood), Bill Nichols and Sara Chaney of IWR demonstrated how having a “closer look” at works of art can help achieve learning outcomes in writing courses.
In Writing 5, Bill Nichols assigns a major essay designed to help students get a sense of people and the places they inhabit by examining a part of the local built environment. Bill’s early experiences with this assignment were disappointing. Although the essay was assigned as a research essay, a few students wrote architectural criticism without paying much attention to what others had to say. More often, students focused exclusively on the scholarship and failed to describe their own experience with the place that was their subject. The students’ voices and experiences were absent.
To remedy this, Bill collaborated with the Hood Museum to design an exercise that would give students practice in all aspects of the assignment. The first phase of the exercise used object-based learning, a method found in many museum educational programs. Bill’s students went to the Hood, and with the aid of Lesley Wellman, learned to take a “closer look” at two paintings intentionally chosen because they depicted architectural spaces inhabited by people ­ modeling a process they could apply to real spaces. By deeply exploring these works using a variety of questions, students developed their own responses in collaboration with others. They then could take that experience and enriched with research, ultimately writing an essay.

In the excerpts Bill read from student work, it was obvious that the “closer look” assignment worked to help students incorporate their own voice/views/experiences into the larger architectural essay, weaving that knowledge together with knowledge gained from their research.

Sara Chaney shared another example of how works of art were used in her Writing 3 class. Hood folks made available photographs by several artists (e.g., Dorothea Lange and Lewis Hine) for students to study and learn how arguments are communicated using non-verbal media.

We had the opportunity to experience the “closer look” process first hand. Lesley took the group into the gallery to view and talk about McSorley’s 1912 painting, the Back Room. More information about resources for faculty and their teaching at the Hood Museum can be found here.