As we begin the time honoured tradition of scrambling for the first week of classes, it occurred to me that I often prepare for, and put effort into office hours first. What is the purpose of your office hours? My office hours are much more than helping a student with course material (although we do that, too)- office hours serve a purpose of building relationship, and therefore community.

I have a desk in my office that is a “student desk” – first come, first served –  no questions asked – they don’t have to talk to me. This desk can be used for quiet studying, but I also have snacks, postcards to write home, colouring books, stapler, hole punch, etc. I have not opened the student desk post-COVID, but will re-launch it this week.

I am also re-launching the together-scarf (this isn’t it’s real name. It needs a name). This project basically takes leftover yarn and students knit to the next destination. Some students are expert knitters and some are just learning. Groups of students show up to chat and pass the knitting around. This term it will be from my office to Bridgette’s office down the hall as step #1. From there, she will choose the next destination – possibly the Botany office upstairs. In years past, this tactile activity served to ease the pressure of making eye contact for some students. It’s also just a way for students to feel belonging to the group. The ultimate scarf from last time is not pretty, but it is meaningful. I have my knitting bag packed and ready for next week.

Finally, I’m bringing in an electric s’mores maker. I won this at the family white elephant last December and hauled it all the way back to Vancouver for this exact purpose. The act of preparing food binds us in amazing ways (I’ve mentioned this before – and thus the title of this blog.)

I wish you a happy return to office hours!

I’m currently reading The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker. In this book, she devotes a whole chapter (or more) to the importance of the physical space aligning appropriately to the purpose of your gathering.

Arguably, most of my thoughtful gatherings are in classrooms where I have little control over the physical space. (Digression: exceptions are the years I taught in a vacant residence ballroom, which was a remarkable space for a large lecture, and – the years I was fortunate enough to teach in the newly designed state of the art learning theatre (see image below) owned by physics before they realized how amazing the space was and took it back.) (I realize physics doesn’t really own the learning theatre, and yes, I’m still bitter – *sigh*.)

Hennings 200 Active Learning Theatre, UBC

Students working on phylogeny construction, Biology 121 in Totem Park Ballroom, UBC

Most of my courses are large-ish (100-250 students), which means they are scheduled in typical large lecture theatres (NOT like the Active Learning Theatre shown above, and more like the static-seat typical room shown below).

Biological Sciences 1000, UBC

My current “me” problem is that I don’t really *lecture* (in the traditional sense). My purpose for the learning space is not to stand up front and deliver knowledge.

My purpose is to get students learning – and the business of learning is best supported with movement.

(I swear this is true – at least for many or most students). (Digression: I, myself, am a partially-diagnosed person with ADHD. When I am stuck sitting still during things like faculty meetings, I have a hard time paying attention. My mind wanders, I get wiggly and bored. I know this is also true for many students because they tell me.)

This learning space does not mesh with my purpose, so I get creative. Here are some examples:

Example 1:

Our first unit is genetics and the first topic is typically cell division. I haul in an armload of pool noodles and students use the isle space to create improv interpretive dances of cell division. Pool noodles act as chromatids and groups are assigned a particular scenario (type of division, crossover location, division error, and/or genotype). This typically spills over into 2 lectures because engagement is high and they want to show off their dances.

Example 2:

Our second large unit is ecology. The segue between genetics and ecology is typically Hardy Weinberg equilibrium, which models the change (or not) of allele frequencies in a population through generations. I get students moving here with playing cards. I have several decks collected from the dollar store so that every student gets 2 cards which represent alleles (black and red). I secretly stack-the-deck at the start so that most students are heterozygous black or red. We record the numbers of hetero and homozygotes, and then students are instructed to wander around and mate randomly (an assumption of the equilibrium model) by exchanging 1 card with someone else. Invariably, they do not mate randomly at first and we talk about why. Once they understand the importance of random mating, they mate again and the 3rd generation is typically in equilibrium. The art of movement again enhances engagement with the material.

Example 3:

I demonstrate Mark-Recapture (a way of estimating population size) by marking students with candy. Students are instructed to wander around the room as volunteer ecologists throw candy once, and then twice, to mimic being marked and re-captured.

These movement learning exercises help to re-enforce the importance of assumptions in these models because students actually participate in model violations (not mating randomly or redistributing randomly after being marked).

Example 4:

Throughout the term, I set up various scenarios where students participate in expert groups. Specifically, we dive into the definition of a species as part of our evolution unit. Individual expert groups congregate in the front, back, or sides of the room to deep dive into their specific expertise. Physically, students are often sitting criss-cross on the floor in circles for this because there is sometimes an advantage to other expert groups not eavesdropping. Students also study phylogeny building during our evolution unit. Here, I pass out large poster paper and scented markers (for fun) and students use the walls of the lecture theatre to create and display their phylogenies. We then have a gallery walk to observe and discuss differences.

As we move into a new school year, imagine utilizing the space you are given creatively to help further your purpose in teaching. I am continuing to distance my teaching from a typical slide-deck static scene and am moving further towards  – well, movement! Happy New Year!

 

 

This post is authored with Koyah Morgan-Banke and Jocelyn Mushumanski, second year science students.

Celeste:

Traditional ways of thinking about teaching and learning can be visualized by imagining learning as some subset of what is taught. These overlapping circles of teaching and learning can be dynamic, changing size as learning expands or shrinks.

Traditional assessments then, can be thought of as pulling a thread (or 3 or 5,000) out of the tapestry of what is taught and framing this thread as a problem for students to solve in some sort of timed setting. If the student is careful or lucky, this collection of threads representing what was taught also represents what they learned in these overlapping dynamic circles.

We know that traditional assessments work best for a certain subset of learners, which means they do not work well for many others. (The Racist Beginnings of Standardized Testing is a good place to start if you’re curious about this.)

But here’s an interesting thought. As teachers, most of us have experienced a time when a student learned something in class. And then a while later, maybe the next class, the student comes and says, “That thing I learned was so interesting! I investigated and found out X, Y, Z…” and we think to ourselves, now THAT is real learning.

We can now imagine a shift with learning  inspired by, but not encompassed by our teaching.

And that real learning is not ours to own or control. It is fully the product of the student, but should be honoured and celebrated… and assessed as part of the learning arc. Our students bring loads of knowledge with them and learn loads more on the way. This knowledge is more than a passing tangent – it is essential contribution to our understanding of ourselves and our world. Inviting students into the academy in this way truly respects their belonging in this institution – But how do we assess this learning that we don’t own?

In my recent courses, I’ve used an approach that loosely encompasses 3 -steps:

1) Tell me What you Learned! This open ended project format works best when there are fewer constraints and more creativity options for the student. This must allow students to share what they bring and what they learned along the way.

2) Justify a Mark. As learners, I truly trust that students are best able to assess their own learning. (I use ungrading – see Ungrading, edited by Susan Blum).

3) Select the Weighting for this Work. Most recently, I have incorporated Jayme Dyer’s Multiple Grading Schemes, with a lot of personal modifications (see below)

This past term, I developed a Tree Project. In a nutshell, students  picked a tree and watched it throughout the term, tying in what they witnessed and investigated to our course material. This project could be done in teams or solo, and could count for 10% or 25%, if a student chose to do the project. (It was also an option to not do the project and to simply count exams instead.) For projects worth 25%, this project was framed as an alternate way to demonstrate understanding of course material and students were given this guidance:

“**The default will be 10% of your course grade. Some learners learn best with project based assessments. If you would rather put substantially more effort into this project, you can choose to count this project for 25% of your grade, with justification. Your exams will count for less in this scenario, but will still be weighted equivalently.

For a project worth 25% of your course grade, you should demonstrate that you understand every major concept, or nearly every major concept. For example, your genetics should cover: ploidy and chromosome number, a demonstration of cell division with crossover, a Mendelian genetics problem (a hypothetical trait is fine), a pedigree“

Koyah:

“Often when courses provide a marking rubric, the expectations are clearly outlined, and your execution of those standards depends solely on whether or not you included that content. Because the guidelines of this project weren’t heavily structured, there was a lot of room to experiment with new ideas- it motivated me to think outside the box and determine what “exceeding expectations” would mean to me. There was no direction from anyone telling me what I would need to do in order to succeed, and because I didn’t know that standard, I was more inclined to push the limit of this project.  

I don’t think that there is enough opportunity for first-year science students to be creative, and as someone who often tries to bridge the gap between science and art, I saw this project as a challenge and a chance to try something different. One of the parts of this project type I particularly appreciated was the optional weighting – it gives students the opportunity to take big risks without having to worry so much about it not working out to the extent they would have liked it to. This optional weighting style also caters well to different types of learners, as I find myself often suffering from severe exam anxiety. I prefer to have something I can continuously work towards and refine over time, but this isn’t the case for all students, and this project style respects that.”  

Jocelyn:

“In all of my other first year university classes at UBC, the rubrics and expectations for projects and assignments were quite specific and detailed. This led my peers and me to usually choose the easiest and fastest way to achieve the allotted points. The Tree Project in Biology 121, however, was designed in a way that was completely unique to me. While working on past projects in high school, I had completed self-evaluations and had the chance to declare a grade that I thought was fair, but the Tree Project gives students complete control over their learning. This project gave my partner and me total freedom to investigate and include any topic that we found interesting or important, allowing us to stray away from only discussing the topics we had been taught in class. We were able to explore the cultural and historical significance of our plant, rather than just relying on a scientific point of view. At first, having complete authority over the contents of our project was daunting. I felt unsure of the quality of my ideas as well as the length and depth of our work. I knew Koyah and I could easily complete a decent project, but achieving an extraordinary grade seemed difficult. Yet, throughout the term, as Koyah and I devoted so much time to this project and consulted many experts and peers, I gained confidence in the content of our project. I was immensely proud of our work as we reached completion and I knew this was the most outstanding project I had ever worked on. While the Tree Project taught me so much about Salal, I also profusely developed my self confidence, and it helped me learn how to rely on my own validation rather than others.”

Celeste:

So what does this have to do with decolonization? For several years, I have leaned into a poster (Letendre and Bennetch, 2022) with this small but very impactful table in the upper corner:

 

At it’s core, decolonzing assessments centres the learner and proceeds with a sense of respect and negotiation.

And then the first project came in and it was beautiful, creative, learner centred, and captured everything I hoped for:

Biology 121 Term Project, The Tree Project, Morgan-Banke and Mushumanski

Koyah:

“I knew instantaneously that I wanted to do my project on salal. My family and I have had many dinner table conversations about the historical importance of the plant and how little it is acknowledged today.  

When this project was first announced and I began trying to formulate a plan, I found myself stumped as to how I would get an “amazing” grade. Thinking in numbers proved to be quite harmful to my overall movement through this project. However, as reassured by my professor and the limited project guidelines, I forced myself to let go of the importance of a specific number grade and focus my energy towards creating a project that I myself thought would be both impressive and reflective of what I learned throughout the term. I basically brainwashed myself into thinking that if I do my best, and I mean my very best, then my effort will be represented in my work and provide me with a final mark that is fair. I knew I needed to take a risk in order to make sure this project would be memorable, which is why I decided to create a comic book. I have little to no experience writing comic books, so I was aware of how time consuming and challenging this whole process was bound to become. I was going to need some help, hence why I decided to recruit a trusted friend of mine who was also taking the course with me. I couldn’t find anyone else willing to work with me on such a challenging idea, as many other students I spoke to figured we were biting off more then we can chew – a totally fair assumption! Even if we were biting off more then we could chew, I was dedicated to the success of this project more than any assignment I have completed in my first year of university. This is probably because the alternate assessment encourages students to include elements that the student themselves are passionate about. For me, cultural history was a big interest of mine that I wanted to incorporate into the project. I found inspiration from the double-language-labeled signs around UBC, and from my family, who has worked in language archiving for decades.”

Jocelyn:

“This project gave me a chance to investigate a plant I had never heard of and immerse myself in a culture I had not previously explored. My partner Koyah introduced me to Salal plants and explained their deep significance to coastal indigenous communities, such as her own. While I initially felt more confident discussing the scientific aspects of this plant, I gained extensive knowledge and understanding of the cultural and historical perspectives of Salal. By the time we handed in our project, I knew a great deal about Salal from many different perspectives. The freedom we were given with this project allowed me to better know my friend, the land I live on, and the culture of the indigenous people of that land. ”

Biology 121 Term Project, The Tree Project, Morgan-Banke and Mushumanski

Celeste:

What immediately stood out to me, along with the artistry, was the substantial incorporation of Indigenous knowledge that ran throughout the project. I did explicitly invite students to do this, so I was excited to see this in action and I immediately went to the student’s self-assessment. The following quotes are exerts from the very thoughtful reflection (shared with permission):

“Working on this project has not only allowed me to relate what we are learning in lecture to real-world practices, but it has also encouraged me to reflect on my place in the science community as an indigenous student.”

and later…

“For this comic, I made it a goal of mine to research and include the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ language name and the English assigned name. I used these terms throughout the comic to encourage the memorization and casual use of this name. I then reached out to my grandmother, Chief — of the — Nation, as to gain her thoughts and knowledge on how I can incorporate cultural significance into my project.”

I felt overwhelmed and I phoned a friend, Elisa Baniassad (who leads our Centre for Teaching and Learning Technology). In her perfect Elisa way, she eloquently summarized what I could not articulate in my head:

“You did a thing to remove humiliation and subjugation from your syllabus. And voila — an Indigenous student is able to actually feel seen, and do their work with pride and confidence. You can see that in the product. It is not an apologetic product, where the student is hesitant or fearful. You can feel the sense of fundamental belonging in the entire artifact”

And that was it. By offering unrestricted significant options for students to demonstrate their learning with pride, we  can systematically remove some of the punishment protocols that are embedded in our processes. We further UBC’s stragic plan, which commits to “support(ing) Indigenous students to achieve success, however they choose to define
it.”  (Note that our strategic plan carefully passes the definition of success to the learner.)

Several students in this class submitted projects highlighting trees from their home countries or regions, reinforcing their feeling of belonging, emphasizing that their prior knowledge matters, and inviting a sharing of knowledge with a spirit of humility.  By doing so, we are able to centre ourselves as learners of the knowledge systems that our students bring to us.

“We have inherited and benefited from our current systems of harm”

–Will Valley, West Coast Teaching Excellence Award recipient, 2024

I am confident that we can do better by acknowledging the harm we continue to do, and working with our learners towards a practice of humility with our assessment work.

Biology 121 Term Project, The Tree Project, Morgan-Banke and Mushumanski

Koyah:

“Both my partner and I agree that the final project we submitted was the best assignment we have submitted in our entire academic careers. No aspect of creating this project came easy per say, but it is definitely easier to stay motivated when you are encouraged to include aspects of yourself that you are passionate about . This project gave me the opportunity to discover more about the rich history of salal plants as a staple food for many indigenous communities. This prompted me to work outside the classroom and connect with my family in Macoah, BC. However, it was also important to me to research and include the history of the indigenous communities whose land my partner and I were able to create the comic on, and whose land all UBC activities take place on. Hence, we used both the English and Musqueam interchangeably to encourage language learning during the read and provided a land acknowledgement within our comic.  

Taking part in the creation of this project has influenced the way I will approach future projects at UBC, as I have learned a great deal about my strengths and interests through the completion of this alternative assessment. This project has offered me a safe place to take risks and improve my overall confidence. I look forward to taking more risks like this in future assignments and will continue to try and work outside of the box.”

Reference:

Letendre, Angela and Bennetch, Rebekah J. (2022). “‘A new-old way of doing assessment: Indigenous ways of knowing and Ungrading in a pandemic” Poster at the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. https://www.stlhe.ca/conferences/2022-stlhe-annual-conference/

 

 

My daughter phoned on her way to work this morning. She’s training in Speech Language Pathology in California. Today she is evaluating an African American 4th grader who has been diagnosed on the autistic spectrum. She tells me that these evaluations require extra care because according to state law, black students cannot be ability-assessed (cognitive) in any quantitative way. This dates back to the old days of IQ tests – this document by T. Wyatt has a good history. These students cannot be tested with scores, and they cannot be compared to any sort of “norm”. Her assessments, then, require care to articulate the holistic ability and needs of this particular student.

Why has no-one stepped back to ask specifically who these sorts of tests are biased towards? And then deduced all the magnitude of people that they are biased against?

We are at an institution that welcomes students from all over the world, bringing with them their unique customs, foods, ways of knowing, and historical ways of assessments. There are very likely students in your classes right now who have never seen the type of question you are asking or the type of assessments you are administering. There are likely some who have never had time as a significant variable in their assessments. There are some coming from cultures where student input is included in assessments (ie/ Indigenous cultures where assessments are co-created and negotiated.)

I have attempted to mitigate some of these effects this year in my large section of first year biology. One thing that has mattered is allowing students to self-schedule their exams within a 3-4 day window. A second thing is tossing out points. Instead, we are binning answers into 4 buckets representing conceptual understanding. Third, and perhaps most critical, is implementation of a student-selected weighting scheme. In their term project, students demonstrate the things we learn in lecture applied to a self-selected organism (ie/ a Western Red Cedar tree). I have framed this project as an opportunity to demonstrate learning outside of an exam. Students can then decide to weight this project as 0%, 10%, or 25% of their course mark. Students who are comfortable with North American UBC style exams can choose to weight this project low or not even do it, and there is an opportunity for students to choose otherwise. Also importantly, students will self-assess these projects with detailed justification tied into their learning outcomes.

The term is ongoing, but many students have reported less exam stress with this combination of interventions. I hope that we can continue to think deeply about our assessment biases and broad scale implementation of big changes with our learners.

I

 

Welcome to a new semester and a new grading system! Each term, I become more disgruntled with the way we are assessing our students. (This post is particular to first year students, and less particular to biology.)

Our first year students enter this university admitted to a faculty (Science) but not a program/major (Biology). Most students are excited to start their UBC studies and come with earnest enthusiasm. They launch into classes where grades are largely exam dependent, with the hopes of entering into specific programs. The first problem is that entry into most programs is grade dependent and competitive. This is a problem because we (collectively) know that exams are biased. (I would strongly argue that this is true for ALL exams. More here: https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/racist-beginnings-standardized-testing) (Side argument: Bias comes in a lot of flavors. Think about an exam question you have created. The simple format of the question you are imagining will hold bias in favour of students who have experience with that type of question, particularly under any sort of timed circumstances).

Thus exams become *very high stakes*. And with that comes an entire culture of education as a police state. This was bad before the advent of Artificial Intelligence, with surveillance, assumptions of cheating, etc – but has since reached peak levels with broad scale mistrust of students.

By term 2, the enthusiasm tanks, and I understand why.

I am overhauling my first year biology section next term. To start, there is a significant term project. With this project, I am implementing a modified version of Jayme Dyer’s Multiple Grading Schemes. As a default, this project will determine 10% of the student’s course mark. The project is self-assessed, which means students will need to justify their assigned mark. (I have implemented this for years in third year – for a quick guide, see here.) However, with the understanding that not all students perform best on timed exams, and prefer to showcase their learning in alternative formats, students will be able to choose to count this term project as 25% of their course mark. (Doing so will require substantially more work, which the student can justify.)

The remainder of the course mark will be two midterms and one final exam. A portion of each will be collaborative, and the remainder will be administered at the Computer Based Testing Facility. This has several advantages, the biggest of which is that each student can sign up for a time to take the exam that works best for them.

Each exam question will be marked on a scale of conceptual understanding as follows (taken from the course syllabus):

Amazing = you fully understand the concept(s) being examined AND can clearly and logically articulate the concept(s) and solution(s). WELL DONE! (Note: minor errors of spelling, math, etc do not count)

Wow = you fully understand the major concept(s) but may have some minor errors in your knowledge, logic, or explanation(s). GREAT JOB!

Great = you have some concepts that need further explanation or have demonstrated some conceptual misunderstanding, but you are on the right track – GOOD WORK!

Good = you understand some of the concept(s) being examined, but have not articulated this well, or we can’t follow your logic, or you have some larger conceptual misunderstandings – KEEP GOING!

(N/A = the question was left blank, is off topic, or does not address what is being asked. This will not receive feedback.)

*Students will not see points or grades, and we will not keep points or grades.* (This is the most important part of the whole assessment system). As usual, they will receive a lot of feedback. (For those interested in how this will magically become a grade, at the end of the term, we will translate each question as “Amazing” as 100%, “Wow” as 87.5%, “Great” as 75%, and “Good” as 62.5% and weight each similarly to other sections of the course.) The point is not to do away with grades (although that would be nice), but to refocus on learning instead of points and marks.

I hope that the new year brings us peace and joy in our teaching and learning efforts.

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) argued that when a learner encounters a new thing that their current explanatory schemes cannot explain, the existing schemes will change – and often times it’s changed incorrectly. (Loosely paraphrased) In a nutshell, this is why I champion group learning AND cooperative exams.

I took an EdX course on Deep Learning and Transformative Pedagogy. The big thing I brought away from that course is “fear learning”. When we learn something when stressed or fearful, it’s very effective – but almost completely immalleable. When students are exposed to a new exam question, they will use what they know and do their best to interpret the question. When I see groups attempt the 2nd stage of a 2-stage exam, they come together with preconceived notions of what that question is asking and it’s difficult to overcome that. The stuck is hard to unstick during a high stakes event.

In 2017, I began giving cooperative assessments as part of our large introductory biology course. These were very successful but relied on a large learning theatre that I no longer have access to. I’m forging ahead regardless as I return to first year biology next term – I will need to re-think how to do these exams in a standard lecture theatre, but I’m full of hope!

 

(I’ve always been a syllabus minimalist, but find myself involved in multi-section courses with serious syllabus bloat. I’ve moved to hiding the big thing at the bottom of Canvas and offer a light version, below. Feel free to steal this and make it your own!)

My students launch their CURE (Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience) projects today!! I teach a 3rd year lab course and I think my CURE projects are special because I strategically on-purpose lead students through the most challenging part of doing science  (which is not project design).

In my experience as a scientist and as a teacher, the hardest and also best part of doing science is coming up with a decent question. We are all operating under various constraints of budget, time, expertise – but really, within those constraints – we an ask anything we like. The world is our oyster! My goal is to pass this joy (and challenge) on to my students.

We spend the first 5 weeks of the course learning some basic tools (field and bench). From there, my students are welcome to do whatever they want for term projects as long as it meets our course criteria (it’s safe and it’s feasible). That’s it. Although *technically* a BIOL course, we aren’t constrained. Most of my students are Combined Majors, so we happily support investigations into other sciences. Fun projects we have launching right now this minute as I type:

1. Is non-GMO rice really non-GMO? (This group is using primers specific for GMO rice to test a bunch of types)

2. How does hydrogen peroxide affect Tetrahymena growth? (This group wanted to look at H2O2 and then an antioxidant protective agent, but needed some baseline info on the oxidant first, so that’s what they’re giving the world.)

3. Which types of natural preservatives are most effective at preventing microbial growth in foods? (Testing lemon, garlic, and salt baked into a standard bread recipe)

4. Do fast-food burgers contain other types of meat? (Using primers for 7 meat species)

Live action shot from this group posted by request

5. What are these unknown mushrooms and how are they related? (using sequencing and phylogeny building)

6. If we synchronize cell division, can we time the stages of the cell cycle? (This group is using Tetrahymena)

It’s full on supervisory chaos these couple of weeks, but the excitement and learning of creating their own unconstrained research is worth it. Wish us luck!!

I have given several talks on ungrading and my approach this year. At every one, there is someone who asks about the course average.

I say 2 things.

1. My first semester of fully ungrading this course, the final course average was 1% lower than the previous traditionally graded term. (This is statistically insignificant, and also demonstrates that students are able to accurately assess themselves.)

2. The average in my course is close to 80%, and was so before ungrading.

Point #2 makes some people squirm, and I’m here for it. I ask – Why is that a problem? The common responses are: assuming that a course average needs to be a C, assuming that the course is too easy, assuming that grade inflation is a nebulous enemy we need to wage war against OR ELSE the whole academy is under dire threat of not being taken seriously.

To the first point, I set up my course so that every student has an opportunity to succeed well. If most of them are not succeeding well, that means I have done something wrong in the architecture of my course. To the second point, I have good data suggesting that students perceive that they work harder in this ungraded course than they do in other more prescribed labs. It does not escape my notice that this “hard work” stems a lot from making braver choices, which they are more likely to do since the advent of ungrading. Choosing to do a project with a novel approach or unknown liklihood of success automatically commits students to the extra mental labor of thinking through possible problems. To the final point, I suggest that this is exactly why we don’t need grades. (Many medical colleges do not grade, and neither do many smaller colleges. Nor does our K-9 public school system in BC). Grades are a recent advent that simply reflects the need to process a lot of students with minimal effort. (For a brief history of grades, I recommend Teaching More by Grading Less (or Differently) by Schniske and Tanner).

Ultimately I am OK with most of my students doing extremely well in my course. They have earned their high marks and I am increasingly convinced that they do a better job at articulating what theses marks mean than I do.

 

Hi! I’m back after a break and ready to talk about teaching! Today I gave the Biology Departmental Seminar at Simon Fraser University, which was super fun and I have all kinds of conversations swirling in my head.

One of the most fun conversations was around trying a new thing in September. In the before times, I taught a variety of courses each year, which kept me humble and on my toes. However… one of the consequences of the pandemic years was that our students missed out on lab courses. As a consequence, I have taught the same lab course each term since 2020. It’s easy to settle in as an expert, which leads to the inevitable – “Didn’t I already teach you this??” – when new students ask the same old questions.

Last year I decided to commit to trying Something New in September. Last year I enrolled in Roller Pole (which is exactly what it sounds like) and this year I have taken up aerial silks. I am twice the age of the other students, and it’s physically scary. This experience reminds me weekly of what it feels like to be new at something – unsure, out of my comfort zone, and hoping for a supportive environment.

 

As we were sitting around the table this evening after the seminar, a wonderful colleague from SFU chimed in that she’s taken up painting for the same reason. She said – “I suck at painting” – which is exactly the point! We all suck at a thing the first time we try it – students included. I highly recommend joining students in trying Something New in the fall – it’s fun and humbling. In the wise words of Rani Ban, I support “Fresh Starts and Do-over All Year Long”.