Category Archives: Teaching

Mid-course feedback & responses, Intro to Philosophy

I asked for feedback on how things are going in my Introduction to Philosophy course, right after Reading Week (which was at the halfway point). Here are some of the common answers, and my replies!

This post was originally posted on my Intro to Philosophy course site, where I put it for the students to read. I’m re-posting here on my blog.

Discussions in class, vs lecture

There were a number of people who made comments regarding the balance of lecture and discussion in the M,W classes.

The majority of students who gave feedback like having discussions in class as well as lecture (twice as many as those who said they want more lecture). One said they wanted more discussion and less lecture.

Some said they appreciated combining ideas on Google docs because that way those who don’t want to speak in front of the whole class can still contribute. That is exactly what I use these for! And don’t forget that you can see them all under “notes” on the main menu, above (notes from in-class discussions). These, plus the discussions in the discussion groups on W, F, plus the discussion summaries are things you can use when thinking about your essays–they provide interesting views on the readings!

A couple of people wanted less discussion during the M,W classes and more lecture. One thought that this was a distraction from the material. But as I said in class last week, learning does not best happen merely by listening to an “expert” and writing down notes. Doing something with the material yourself, whether answering questions, discussing with others, or some other activity, is important for learning. Here’s an article about a recent study about the value of “active learning”. Here’s a list of several studies supporting active learning.

There are some studies that suggest that people can only pay attention to a lecture for a short amount of time, and it needs to be broken up by activities (see, e.g., this article).

When I stop class to ask for comments or questions from the large group, that is also a way to break up the lecture. And some students wanted more people to participate during those times. I try hard to create a comfortable, safe atmosphere in class so that people feel okay doing so; but I realize that some still aren’t willing. So that’s why I do smaller group discussions during the M,W class too!

So the short story here is that it appears it is better for learning and attention if professors don’t just lecture for a full 50 minutes. Which means that the times I do that, I shouldn’t be! :)

And because twice as many people appreciated the discussions as didn’t, that also adds more support for me to continue doing this in class.

To benefit from the discussions, though, you have to actually participate. One person giving feedback said they didn’t find the discussions in the M,W class helpful, but that could be because they weren’t participating. If you are sitting doing something else during those periods, it’s definitely not going to be useful to you.

Learning Catalytics

A few students said they liked using Learning Catalytics, with one saying it should be used more frequently. One said that it encouraged them to keep up with the readings and the class generally (which is certainly part of why I do it!). I said on the syllabus it wouldn’t be used every M,W class, and probably about once a week. But it could be used twice in some weeks!

Lecture pacing and what’s on the slides

There was one student who thought the lectures sometimes went too slow, focusing for too long on one point, and one student who thought they lectures sometimes went too fast and I should slow down. Since there is no consensus on this, I will try to think about when I could speed up and when I might be speaking too quickly or rushing, and try to act accordingly rather than having a blanket change to what I’m doing.

One student wanted more detail on the slides because it’s hard to write down from when I’m speaking. There is a reason why I don’t put more detail on the slides: you can’t listen and write down at the same time, and there is research that shows that if you just write things down verbatim from slides you don’t learn as much as if you have to think and put it in your own words. Plus, if I put everything on the slides then that reduces some of the motivation for coming to class. In student evaluations one year I had a student suggest putting less on the slides for this reason!

Distractions by other students

A few students said they were distracted when others are going on social media or doing other things on their computers, unrelated to the class.

If you cannot stop yourself from doing things on your computer unrelated to the class, please SIT TOWARDS THE BACK so your screen is distracting to fewer people. 

I team-teach a course and attend the lectures by the other professors, and frequently get distracted by students’ screens when they are doing other things. This is a serious problem for those who want to pay attention!

Doing other things during class breaks the collaborative guidelines we came up with, and is not only correlated with doing worse in that class, but also with those around you doing worse. See this page for research on these issues (scroll down below the collaborative guidelines).

It is also distracting when people get up to leave in the middle of class or before class is finished. So if you’re going to get up to leave, also sit towards the back.

Help with writing essays

A few students wanted more guidance for writing essays. I have written a 2-page guide to writing essays, and provided a marking rubric with things we look for when marking, on this page. The page also has links to other philosophers’ writing suggestions that I agree with.

If you want more depth, here is a 5-page set of guidelines I wrote for a writing-intensive course I teach, Arts One. I have changed it slightly so that it fits this course. I’m also putting it on the “writing help” page linked above.

Guidelines for papers (longer)

In addition, the TA’s and I will write up a list of common suggestions for paper number 2, based on what they saw for paper number 1. We’ll send that to you as soon as it’s ready, and also post it here on the site!

The bigger picture

One student wanted to hear more about the bigger picture of what s/he should be getting from the course. What value can one get from what we’re learning and doing? How can it be applied to other courses and one’s life?

I have designed this course to try to address that question, but I need to do a better job emphasizing it! One thing I’ve done is to show how the readings are relating to the bigger picture of the course, which is about what the “examined life” is and why it matters: is the unexamined life not worth living, as Socrates says? Another way to think about this is: what is philosophy and why is it valuable? The parts of the course are designed to show the different reasons why philosophical activity might be useful, for oneself (cultivating a happy life, as per Epicurus) and for others (how do we decide what to do morally? (Mill), what should we do to help those in need? (Singer, Nussbaum).

I am also trying to cultivate skills you can use in other courses: learning how to outline arguments from readings in order to question and criticize them is something you can use in the rest of your life to clarify positions and see if they have good support for them. Learning how to write a clear argument is valuable not just in other courses, but you might need to do that in other aspects of your life such as in a job (granted, not in an academic essay exactly).

I will try to think more about how I can emphasize the bigger picture!

Collaborating with students on objectives & assessments

I just did a quick read of the following article:

Abdelmalak, M. (2016). Faculty-Student Partnerships in Assessment. IJTLHE : International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 28(2), 193–203.

See the TOC for this issue, with link to the open-access PDF of the article, here.

The article reports on a study of a course in Education in which 6 graduate students collaborated with the professor on developing the course objectives, the assessments to meet those, and the criteria for assessing the work. The students brainstormed ideas, and then they agreed on objectives, goals, criteria based on what they shared in those ideas, and based on negotiations afterwards. Clearly this process would work best in a small class.

The author found that for the grad students involved,

  • collaborating on these things gave them a sense of control over their learning (unsurprising), which increased their motivation to learn.

However,

  • even though they had agreed to provide peer feedback on a writing assignment, most felt uncomfortable providing deep feedback to their peers due to a sense of lack of knowledge and a reticence to take up a perceived position of power over other students
  • some found the whole process difficult because they were used to an instructor deciding all of these things for them.

 

I have been thinking a lot lately about getting students more involved in creating assignments, though mostly what I teach are first-year courses and I think their lack of knowledge about the subject at that point means it would be best to not have them try to decide all the assignments. Plus, I have over 100 students in some of my first-year courses, and that makes such things difficult.

But I think something like this could work in a 4th year course (my 4th year course is max 25 students). The students still might not be able to come up with objectives that have to do with specific content they have yet to learn, but they might be able to come up with good ones about other aspects of the course; and I like the idea of them deciding on assignments after and grounded in the objectives they hope to achieve. Why write a paper, for example? Just because that’s what we always do in Philosophy, or for some other reason? What are we trying to achieve by writing papers? Are there other ways to achieve those goals?

In my experience, most fourth-year students in Philosophy courses don’t have too much issue with providing peer feedback that is critical and useful, so I don’t think I’d run into that problem. But it might be a bit difficult for them to go through this whole exercise because they’re not used to doing it. I think it would be really useful for them to work through why courses are designed as they are, and re-design them as needed to fit goals that are shared by the class.

I haven’t taught a 4th year course since 2014, and I’m not scheduled to do so next year either, but maybe the next time I do I’ll try something like this. Perhaps not for all the assignments, but for one or two to start with.

Has anyone tried anything like this before? If so, how did it go?

Update later on Aug. 12:

Robin DeRosa responded on Twitter that she had done this sort of thing with a first-year composition class–see the thread of that conversation here.

The syllabus, with student-created objectives and policies for that course, is here.

I had thought this wouldn’t work with first-years, but I can see how it works for a composition course in which students come in with some general knowledge about writing–you can get a sense of that from the objectives they created.

For first-year philosophy students, I think they might have a harder time determining just what they want to get out of a course when many of them don’t even really know what philosophy is yet, or why it is worth taking a course on!

Robin had a good suggestion:

So one could have them collaborate on one or two things that they can bring to the table.

And I love this point:

 

Also, Juliet O’Brien gave some great ideas via Twitter, which I’ll just post here as they are pretty self-explanatory I think!

 

 

You can see more about Juliet’s courses from this page: https://metametamedieval.com/courses/

And here is a link to a PDF that explains some of what she’s talking about above.

 

More course planning with Dee Fink

 

I am back to planning a course using the Integrated Course Design model by Dee Fink, outlined in this document & set of worksheets. I worked with this model and the same course about a year ago, and blogged about it briefly here.

Now I am preparing for a presentation on using Fink’s ideas for developing course goals and assessments, as well as using David Wiley’s suggestion of practicing open pedagogy through using renewable assignments (which I discuss in this article). I’m presenting on this at the upcoming American Association of Philosophy Teachers’ conference, which is held every two years and is easily one of my favourite conferences–it’s filled with people who love teaching philosophy!

Here in this post, I’ll focus on drafting learning goals with Dee Fink’s Integrated Course Design. I’m also presenting on Wiley’s idea of “Renewable Assignments,” and I’ve already reflected on some ideas for those in a previous post.

I’ve been working on my Philosophy 102 course again, because even though I’ve taught it many times, I’m still not entirely happy with it. I feel like it could be more engaging for students, and since there really are few restrictions on what I can teach in that course (it’s an intro course focused on value theory…anything within that is fair game) then there’s a lot of freedom to consider how to make it more engaging.

Like last year, I’m using Workflowy to do the planning. Here’s a link to the part of my Workflowy list about this course that focuses on the learning objectives. While I find Workflowy excellent for planning in list format, it’s not so great for long-form reflecting, so I’m moving over here to my blog for that.

Draft Learning goals for PHIL 102

One of the things I love about Fink’s model for course design is the expanded kinds of learning goals he asks one to consider. He suggests setting goals in the following areas:

  • Foundational Knowledge: what key information or ideas, perspectives are important for students to learn?
  • Application: what kinds of thinking are needed, such as critical, creative, practical? What sorts of skills do they need to learn?
  • Integration: what connections should students make between parts of the course? Between what’s in the course and other courses? Or between the course and their own lives?
  • Human Dimension: what should students learn about themselves? About interacting with others in the future?
  • Caring: what changes would you like to see in what students care about? What changes like to see in their interests, values, feelings?
  • Learning How to Learn: What would you like students to learn about how to learn well in this course (and beyond)? About how to become self-directed learners, engage in inquiry and knowledge construction?

On my Workflowy list I went through each of these areas and answered the questions (see here for my answers), and then came up with a draft list of Learning Objectives for the course as a whole. Here they are in their current form, but if you go to the link in the last sentence, you can see any updates I make later.

  1. Explain the basic structure of a philosophical argument–premises and conclusion—and correctly outline an argument in a philosophical text
  2. Assess the strength of arguments in assigned texts, in oral or written work by other students, and their own arguments (oral or written)
  3. Read a complex philosophical text and produce notes that distinguish the main points of the arguments therein.
  4. Make a claim about a philosophical issue and defend it with sound reasoning, orally and in writing
  5. Participate in a respectful discussion with others on a philosophical question: clarify positions and arguments from themselves or others, criticize flawed arguments, present their own arguments, and do all this in manner that respects the other people in the discussion
  6. Based on what we’ve studied in the class, give one (of many!) possible answers to the questions: What is philosophical activity and where do we see it in the world outside this course? How do you engage in philosophical activity beyond this course?

What’s missing

Now, one of the great things about Workflowy is that I can go through and tag items in my list so as to just view them on a page and clear everything else out. I found a number of things in the 6 areas of learning goals (Foundational Knowledge, Caring, Learning how to Learn, etc.) that were not reflected in my draft set of learning objectives. I tagged them with #attn (for attention) and was able to just focus on them. Here is what I don’t have in my learning objectives or ideas for course activities yet:

  • Human dimension: what should students learn about themselves? about interacting with others in the future?
    • It would be good if they learned the degree to which they tend to rely on unexamined beliefs and values in their thoughts about the questions we’re discussing, and why it might be good to examine those #attn
    • Learn the value of respectful, philosophical (or other) dialogue with peers–how can we engage in dialogue that respects everyone and yet moves forward rather than sitting with everyone’s differing opinions and not going anywhere out of fear of offending anyone? #attn
    • At the same time, don’t want them to just rely on relativism–your view is okay and so is mine, there isn’t an answer. Need to find a way to both recognize that you might be wrong, and yet hold steady to what you have good reason to believe in b/c of evidence, good arguments behind it, etc. Still open to questioning and challenge from others. #attn
  • Caring: what changes would you like to see in what students care about? What changes like to see in their interests, values, feelings?
    This is a hard one–how can one work to change what people care about? #attn

    • I would like them to care about careful, philosophical inquiry, argument and dialogue, about how such activity can be helpful in addressing disagreements, if done well #attn
    • Care about whether their own views and values have been examined, whether they can provide adequate arguments for them, and what to do if they think they can’t #attn
    • Care about whether their own arguments about the content of the course are sound #attn
    • Care about treating with respect those whose views differ from theirs, but not thinking that this must mean we have to be relativists, that there are no objective truths about value #attn
    • Care about working together with others to solve problems/try to answer complex questions #attn
  • Learning how to learn: what would you like students to learn about how to learn well in this course (and beyond)? how to become self-directed learners, engage in inquiry and knowledge construction?
    • learn the value of working together with peers to learn; that sometimes learning on one’s own works well, and sometimes it’s also valuable to learn with peers #attn
      how to get them to see this?

      • learning with and from peers is not a waste of time compared to getting info from the prof as expert
      • recognize that even when they feel they know more than others, “teaching” others is a very useful way to better understand something; we learn by helping others to learn, not just by getting information from them
    • learn what to do if something isn’t making sense; what options do they have for getting help? How can they avoid just being confused and not doing much to solve the problem? #attn
    • understand that philosophical texts may require more than one read to understand them well, and have the patience to do work hard to understand something that is challenging. Of course, time pressure is also an issue, so want to make sure not overwhelming them. #attn
      how to help them see this?

Okay, so how?

Here is where I start reflecting on the things I’ve marked “attn,” above. It’s interesting to me that the ones I’m having the most difficulty with are the ones I hadn’t really thought of much before reading Fink’s work–goals about caring, the human dimension, and learning how to learn. My course goals were more content-focused before that.

Caring goals

I’m going to start with the hardest one, in my view. How do I get them to care about certain things, if they don’t already? I feel the need to tread carefully here, as there are ethical concerns with trying to change people’s values when you’re in a position of significant power in comparison to them. I don’t think I should require students to care about certain things so much as show evidence of doing certain things (whether doing so has entered into their emotional or value structure deeply is their own concern).

So while I’d like them to care if their arguments are sound or if they are relying on assumptions that they can’t defend, I can’t require them to show that they care about such things–only that they do unpack their assumptions and that the arguments they produce are sound. And while I would like them to care about working together with others to solve problems and treating them with respect in discussions, all I can require is that they do so.

One thing I could do is to model my own enthusiasm in striving to unpack my own assumptions and produce sound arguments, model respect in discussions, and show how I think of myself as working with them to address the problems we are discussion (which I do think, and I can model that). I can also explain why I believe those things are important, as a way of explaining why I require them, and then these reasons may resonate with others as well.

So while I don’t think the Caring goals will show up in my learning objectives, they will operate in how I teach, and how I explain why I’m teaching that way.

Human Dimension

  • Learning about how they might rely on unexamined beliefs: could help them see this by asking them to reflect on their views about certain issues and come up with arguments to support them, examining those premises as deeply as possible.
    • I’ve done this in the past when I’ve asked students to pick a current issue in the news and write blog posts about views one might have about that and arguments they can come up with to support them. I have always said it doesn’t have to actually be their own views, but the views someone could have (because some students are wary of blogging in front of their classmates about their own views).
    • I have run into issues where students have gotten upset by what others have written (one student was upset by a blog post about how abortion is wrong, because, this student said (in anonymous feedback), other students in the class may have had abortions. So this is not without dangers. One option is to just have all of them submit these posts privately to me, which has always been an option and students sometimes take it, but other students don’t mind blogging publicly and that’s how this student got upset.
    • Still, isn’t there a teaching moment there, or something valuable in determining how to deal with the fact that there are different views in our class just as in the world, and we need to learn how to engage with others who disagree? Probably, but I’m not sure I’ve yet figured out how best to handle this. So I’m still undecided on whether to require all such writing to be private to me or to let them post just to the class, or publicly, as they choose (which has been my practice so far).
  • Learning the value of respectful dialogue with others, but not falling back into relativism: mostly I think I just hope this happens when I require them to talk in small groups about the issues we’re discussing. I and the TA’s try to monitor the tone of such discussions, but we can’t be in all groups at the same time. Here are some things I could do:
    • Have us come up with ground rules for discussion, collaboratively. I have tried something like this with large classes before. It worked pretty well; the large class was split up into groups of 25 for one hour a week, and I had a google doc for each of those small groups. Then I compiled all the results into one doc.
      • I think in future I need to not just collate what students said, but use those as a basis for a concise set of simple guidelines that we can easily refer to throughout the class. So I’ve started this process by gathering what students have said, but just need to finish it by making the resulting set of guidelines easier to read and refer to.
    • How to avoid falling into relativism? How to get them to recognize that while each view could be debated and needs to be justified by reasons that others could question, this doesn’t mean all views are equal?
      • I do talk about the difficulties that ethical relativism puts us into, so that’s one thing.
      • I could also try to require each group to come up with one thing they or most of them think is justifiable, rather than just letting them discuss and not requiring them to come to some kind of conclusion (which is what I sometimes do).
      • I have in the past used Google docs for this, again–I have had a section on a google doc for each small group in the Friday discussion meetings (about 5 or 6 per discussion meeting) where they have to record something concrete, some kind of answer or argument. Possibly this could help with the relativism issue?

Learning How to Learn

  • Learning the value of learning with peers: This is a tough one. Many of us think, and there is research to back this up (geez…I need to have that at my fingertips, but I don’t!), that learning with and from peers is valuable, but there are still a number of students who resist it. So many times I’ve heard from others that students complain about the professors not doing their jobs when they focus part of class time on peer learning, or that they have paid tuition and fees and what are they getting out of it? I haven’t heard that myself (yet?), but it’s an important problem. How to address it?
    • I suppose one way is to point to the research on the value of learning with peers. I need to write something up on my course websites about such research so that students can understand it quickly but also dig more deeply into the articles if they wish.
    • I might also stress that I ask them to engage in peer learning because I firmly believe that each one of us has valuable things to contribute to philosophical discussion. I don’t believe that philosophy can only be done by experts (thus I would like to see more philosophy in schools, in earlier grades than university, even when kids are just starting school). We experts do have significant roles to play, but since my focus in this intro course is less on content and more on skills development regarding reading, writing and discussing, peer learning makes sense: I can model those skills, but so can other students. I am there to help refine the skills that many people already possess to some degree. And I can answer questions about the philosophers we’re studying with my disciplinary expertise. But other than that, you don’t need to be a philosophical expert to engage in philosophical discussion and help each other do it better.
    • I wonder if I could give an example or two where I learned just as much, if not more, from peers than from the expert? I wonder, not because I can’t think of any, but because I am not sure it would resonate with them. My “peers” are already “experts” to some degree. But we are not always experts in what we’re trying to learn, so maybe this sort of personal story would help?
  • Learning how to recognize when you need help and how to get it: I’ve found that too often, when students are struggling, they don’t reach out for help…perhaps because they don’t know how, or are intimidated. And that can be when things like plagiarism happen. Here are some thoughts on what I might do.
    • How many first-year students don’t really understand “office hours”? I say I have them, I talk about rescheduling them when I can’t make them one week, etc., but do I really explain what office hours are for? Do I make sure to continually invite students to come when they would like help? Do I say that I’m available even if students just want to better understand something but aren’t really having significant difficulty? Do I emphasize that they can talk to TA’s if they prefer (sometimes students find TA’s more approachable)? I think I could do better in these areas.
    • Of course, being approachable in class is important–having a demeanour that shows you really care and want to talk to students. I try to do this all the time, and student evaluations do show that many think I am open and kind and approachable. Not sure I need to do anything more in that regard.
    • I could do more to emphasize the various support services for students on campus. Sometimes they don’t want to talk to their professors about things that are going on with them, and there are wonderful supports for them that are available but they may not know them. I could put a line or two in the syllabus, but also have a section on the course website devoted to that. And talk it up in class, particularly during midterms and towards finals time.
  • Learning how to read philosophy… carefully and more than once: introductory students often struggle with primary texts. Sometimes people don’t assign them for that reason. I still do, and I think there can be value in learning how to read challenging things. But I also need to better support students in doing so.
    • Assign less reading: one common issue that comes up in student evaluations is that students often find it difficult to keep up with the amount of reading I assign. I keep cutting, but perhaps I still have to do more cutting next time. If what I care about is less the content than the skills, then students need time to practice the skills. And if there is less, then I could in all seriousness and practicality ask them to do the readings more than once.
    • I already have in the draft learning objectives above (#3) that they will be asked to write notes on texts that distinguish one or more of the main arguments in the text. That should help with this concern as well–they’ll have to read carefully to do this, and probably more than once!. I won’t ask them to do it on every single reading (I have over 100 students…I couldn’t possibly grade all those!), but on at least a few. And they’ll be practicing this in small groups first.
      • I suppose I wouldn’t have to grade them all…I could ask them to do peer comments on each others’ rather than grading all of them. I could grade one or two and then have one or two just have peer comments after that. A possibility….
    • I wonder if I could create a more “fun” way to ask students to summarize the main points in a reading? So far I’ve just been thinking of them doing an outline of one of the main arguments in a text in standard from (premises and conclusion). That’s important to learn, and I’ll keep doing that, but are there other, more engaging ways to summarize an argument in a text? Just some brainstorming below…might not use any of these…
      • write a summary in a “tweet” form (140 characters)
      • do a drawing that summarizes an argument somehow; or a comic strip
      • write a short dialogue between two or more people that summarizes the argument in your own words–maybe one person asking questions or bringing up objections
      • write a newspaper headline that summarizes the argument; or a short newspaper column
      • write about the reading in the style of a Wikipedia “lead” section–that part of a Wikipedia article before the table of contents, that is supposed to give a summary of the main points so you could get a good sense of it even w/o reading the whole article
        • of course, they could just go to the Wikipedia page of that reading, but not all of them are very good, actually, so perhaps the students could improve them!
      • Do a slide presentation with a few slides that explains the reading (with images so more visually interesting; will have to be sure they understand open licenses!)
      • Will keep thinking for more…

 

Conclusion

This was a very useful reflective exercise for me, even though it’s probably too long for others to read! And one thing I learned is that without realizing it, I’m already doing a few things that are helping to support the learning goals I thought at first I wasn’t addressing!

 

Reflections on Academic Integrity

I’m part of a group of people who are having some conversations on academic integrity, especially in first-year courses, and recently we were asked to reflect on some questions and send our thoughts to the organizers of the discussions. I thought this was a very useful thing to do for making clear to myself some of my own thoughts on this issue, and that I might as well share them with others in case they find them useful, and to possibly engage in conversations about these things here on the blog!

Note: what follows is what I think as of early June 2016, and we’ll be having more discussions in the future so my thoughts might change. Here is at least some of what I think now (it was getting so long I just stopped writing after awhile because it’s too much to read!).

What is your personal understanding of why it is important for students to conduct their coursework with academic integrity?

One of the things we are doing in the university is adding to the body of human knowledge—we faculty as well as students. And to do that well, we need to both recognize what’s out there already and what needs to be added to it or changed. This is where it gets tricky; we could just do this without acknowledging the contributions of anyone, including ourselves; we could just say that information and arguments are important, not who made them. So it wouldn’t matter what came from you and what came from others that you’re building on. What would matter is that new knowledge is created and we can all benefit from that.

I do lean to that picture of knowledge creation to some extent, but there is the other aspect of the university too, which is that we are here to teach students noun_373429_ccand evaluate their work. That’s where the value of fairness comes in: for better or worse, we have to grade some students as having achieved learning objectives of our courses better than others, and those grades matter for various opportunities in the future (scholarships, entrance to further programs of study, sometimes jobs, etc.). And it is simply unfair and unjust to give people an advantage in terms of grades (and the other opportunities those can bring) when they haven’t put in the work that others have, when they have claimed to have come up with an idea or argument themselves but this is untrue.

So while in one sense one could say that it doesn’t matter where ideas and arguments and results come from so much as that they make sense and add to our body of knowledge, there is also the reality that in our society it matters who came up with those things and there are rewards that come with being the one who did that shouldn’t be given to those who didn’t do the work. Thus in part, for me, it’s an ethical issue, and one I am very, very concerned about (being as fair as possible in students’ grading is a major worry for me, something I spend a lot of time trying to ensure).

noun_38995_ccThere’s another important reason too, though. Asking students to read/watch/hear what others have had to say and what they’ve done, and then come up with something of their own to add to that or criticize or question it is an important part of thinking well. Knowing that you yourself have something useful to say and do in response to what others have said and done, that you don’t just need to learn what they’ve said but also can add to it, is valuable for our efforts to help students develop as careful, confident thinkers and contributors to their social world. I often tell students in Arts One: I’m less interested in what others have had to say about [whatever work we’re discussing] than what you have to say. And that doesn’t mean you can’t go out and look at what others have said, but it does mean that you have to take it in, reflect, consider it critically, question, and then come up with what makes sense to you after you’ve done all that. What you produce then is your work, even though of course influenced by what others have said (including your professors and fellow students). If students don’t do this, then they are missing out on a valuable aspect of education; they are just taking what others have said and listing it as their own without doing the important work of reflecting, questioning, coming up with arguments, etc.

 

What are the positive consequences of doing so that you want to promote, and what are the negative consequences of committing academic dishonesty that you want to prevent? 

I think possibly I’ve already answered these in the above question to some extent. The positive consequences include getting students experience in thinking for themselves, even while being influenced by others (as we all are). I hope this is something that learners take with them beyond university.

The negative consequences of committing academic dishonesty that I want to avoid include:

  • Giving students an unfair advantage when they claim to have done work that they haven’t done, while others have done the work and got worse grades
    • I think if one doesn’t talk about academic dishonesty, or doesn’t try to find it and do something about it but just hopes it’s not happening, this can send a message to students that one isn’t that concerned about avoiding injustice. I’m not saying that’s how people actually feel when they don’t pursue it (usually it’s a matter of not having enough time), but it can send that message whether one thinks that or not. Students are well aware that this sort of thing happens in classes, and I imagine that it could be disheartening to be working hard and thinking that others are getting advantages they don’t deserve and you aren’t doing as well but are at least trying.
    • I’m not suggesting we publicize who has committed academic dishonesty in our classes so students know we’re doing something! But rather, at least talking about it, discussing why academic integrity is important, and signalling that you care and will be working to try to avoid it in your classes, I think is not only pedagogically beneficial, it could also send a message to those students who are not committing academic dishonesty that you care and are trying to foster fairness in your classes.
  • Then there are the negative consequences for those who engage in academic dishonesty, such as grade penalties, hearings, possible suspensions, etc.
    • These are bad in themselves, but what’s also bad is when they fall on some kinds of students disproportionately to others. For example, some students may be able to pay for others to write essays for them, and this gives them an unfair advantage due to wealth because it’s harder to “catch” those kinds of academic dishonesty than the student who is stressed out and has too many commitments and going through a tough time emotionally and panics in the face of a deadline but doesn’t have the money to avoid getting “caught” by doing it the way a richer student might. What I’m saying is that there is something wrong even in the consequences when they fall disproportionately on some kinds of students. That is something we need to take into consideration somehow, though I don’t have the answers right now how. At least, we can recognize the mitigating factors for why it happens (such as stress, having to work long hours in addition to school, emotional or family issues) and take those into account when considering consequences.

Please give your reactions to the following documents on academic integrity

[one of the documents I can’t find on the web and I’m not sure it’s licensed to allow re-posting so I won’t include that here]

Bill Taylor, “Academic Integrity: A Letter to my Students”

I really like how he points out that academic integrity means everyone in the class has responsibilities they need to live up to: he needs to come to class prepared, for example. I like pointing to how I, too, have commitments to them like I’m asking them to have commitments to the class and each other, but I wonder if that’s best described in terms of academic integrity? Maybe. I’d have to come up with a definition of integrity that I could use to explain why all of these things fall under it.

Overall, I like his approach here a lot. It holds the professor and the student accountable for responsibilities in the learning enterprise, and encourages students to “call [him] on it” if they think he is not fulfilling his responsibilities. And to go “above” him if his response to their calling him on it is not satisfactory. That is helpful for when he later asks them to call each other on not living up to their responsibilities (and for when he says he will call them on it if he finds instances of academic dishonesty).

Just one question. He focuses in the beginning on how integrity is important in life generally, and how if we don’t mind not having it in the small things, we might just not have it in the larger things too. I’m not sure that will be persuasive to all students—isn’t it possible to do a little lying, a little cheating here and there without thinking that one is thereby going to do it “when it really matters”? Then there are the students who would just as easily cheat when it comes to “areas where money might be at stake, or the possibility of advancement, or our esteem in the eyes of others”; indeed, they might be most likely to cheat then! So while I agree with him on what he says on this first page overall, I wonder how much the point about a kind of slippery slope of integrity will speak to students.

Gerald Nelms, “Why Plagiarism Doesn’t Bother me at All: A Research-Based Overview of Plagiarism as Educational Opportunity.”

“Not all student plagiarism rises to the level of academic dishonesty.” Definitely true, though I find myself wondering if I agree when the author says that “Does it really matter if one paragraph in a 20-page article includes enough overlap of language to be considered plagiarism? Does that amount of plagiarism really rise to the level of academic dishonesty?” I think it does. It’s still a matter of passing off someone else’s views as your own, even if it’s just one paragraph. But to me, the important question is whether it was done with the intent of trying to pretend it’s one’s own views when one knows that one is doing that, vs. doing it because one doesn’t realize how to cite or paraphrase correctly. That’s what “dishonesty” vs a “mistake” or “ignorance” means to me.

“We might also ask ourselves whether an accusation of academic dishonesty is truly warranted if there is evidence that the student writer has made an effort to adapt—that is, to integrate—the source material to fit into her writing and not mindlessly adopt that material.” This one really got me thinking. There is a difference between trying to work someone else’s view into your own and add to it but doing it not very well and changing words so that it’s harder to get caught because it looks more like your own work. The difference is, again, between dishonesty and a mistake. How do we tell the difference between these two scenarios? Same as above, I guess: talking with the student seems our best option here.

These points go along with what the author says about unintentional plagiarism and patch writing as a step along the way in developing one’s writing skills. I definitely agree there, and wouldn’t want to penalize students for honestly making mistakes rather than trying to be dishonest. I also agree that some who intentionally plagiarize are doing so because of outside pressures beyond their control, or inability to self motivate. And when those things are the case, they should be taken into account in handing out consequences for intentional academic misconduct. The trick is, of course, trying to be as fair as possible when considering mitigating circumstances for students in various situations.

“In some “real-world” contexts, plagiarism is not only acceptable but is expected,” such as when one uses a report template for creating new reports, using the same language as in previous reports. Another example is when instructors use wording on their syllabi that they’ve seen on other syllabi and liked, without citation. It’s true that sometimes this sort of “plagiarism” is accepted, but then it’s not really dishonesty at that point. The general expectation may not be that we have to have original wording in such contexts and it’s not useful to have it (it’s often more efficient, as the article points out, to re-use wording, especially when that wording says something really well). It’s different in educational contexts with things like assignments because there the work often just is to re-think, to evaluate, to come up with one’s own arguments. The expectations, and the value of the enterprise of doing this kind of work, are different than when one is writing up a quarterly report. For the latter, what matters is that you got the data right and presented it clearly, not that you came up with your own arguments or interpretations.

 

I welcome any comments on the above reflections, as I’m still formulating my ideas…

Presentation on SoTL research re: peer feedback

In mid-November I gave a presentation at the SoTL Symposium in Banff, Alberta, Canada, sponsored by Mount Royal University.

It’s a little difficult to describe this complex research, so I’ll let my (long) abstract for the presentation tell at least part of the story.

750-word abstract

Title: Tracking a dose-response curve for peer feedback on writing

There is a good deal of research showing that peer feedback can contribute to improvements in student writing (Cho & MacArthur, 2010; Crossman & Kite, 2012). Though intuitively one might think that students would benefit most from receiving peer comments on their written work, several studies have shown that student writing benefits both from comments given as well as comments received–indeed, sometimes the former more than the latter (Li, Liu & Steckelberg, 2010; Cho & MacArthur, 2011).

There are, however, some gaps in the literature on the impact of peer feedback on improving student writing. First, most studies published on this topic consider the effect of peer feedback on revisions to a single essay, rather than on whether students use peer comments on one essay when writing another essay. Cho and MacArthur (2011) is an exception: the authors found that students who wrote reviews of writing samples by students in a past course produced better writing on a different topic than those who either only read those samples or who read something else. In addition, there is little research on what one might call a “dose-response” curve for the impact of peer feedback on student writing—how are the “doses” of peer feedback related to the “response” of improvement in writing? It could be that peer feedback is more effective in improving writing after a certain number of feedback sessions, and/or that there are diminishing returns after quite a few sessions.

To address these gaps in the literature, we designed a research study focusing on peer feedback in a first-year, writing intensive course at a large university in North America. In this course students write an essay every two weeks, and they meet every week for a full year in groups of four plus their professor to give comments on each others’ essays (the same group stays together for half or the full year, depending on the instructor). With between 20 and 22 such meetings per year, students get a heavy dose of peer feedback sessions, and this is a good opportunity to measure the dose-response curve mentioned above. We can also test the difference in the dose-response curve for the peer feedback groups that change halfway through the year versus those who remain the same over the year. Further, we can evaluate the degree to which students use comments given by others, as well as comments they give to others, on later essays.

While at times researchers try to gauge improvement in student work on the basis of peer feedback by looking at coarse evaluations of quality before and after peer feedback (e.g., Sullivan & Pratt, 1996; Braine, 2001), because many things besides peer feedback could go into improving the quality of student work, more specific links between what is said in peer feedback and changes in student work are preferable. Thus, we will compare each student’s later essays with comments given to them (and those they gave to others) on previous ones, to see if the comments are reflected in the later essays, using a process similar to that described in Hewett (2000).

During the 2013-2014 academic year we ran a pilot study with just one of those sections (sixteen students, out of whom thirteen agreed to participate), to refine our data collection and analysis methods. For the pilot program we collected ten essays from each of the students who agreed to participate, comments they received from their peers on those essays, as well as comments they gave to their peers. For each essay, students received comments from three other students plus the instructor. We will use the instructor comments to, first, see whether student comments begin to approach instructor comments over time, and to isolate those things that only students commented on (not the instructor) to see if students use those in their essays (or if they mainly focus on those things that the instructor said also).

In this session, the Principal Investigator will report on the results of this pilot study and what we have learned about dealing with such a large data set, whether we can see any patterns from this pilot group of thirteen students, and how we will design a larger study on the basis of these results.

 

It turned out that we were still in the process of coding all the data when I gave the presentation, so we don’t yet have full results. We have coded all the comments on all the essays (10 essays from 13 participants), but are still coding the essays themselves (had finished 10 essays each from 6 participants, so a total of 60 essays).

I’m not sure the slides themselves tell the whole story very clearly, but I’m happy to answer questions if anyone has any. I’m saving up writing a narrative about the results until we have the full results in (hopefully in a couple of months!).

We’re also putting in a grant proposal to run the study with a larger sample (didn’t get a grant last year we were trying to get…will try again this year).

Here are the slides!

Collaborative doc on class guidelines

I participated in a #digped Twitter chat today (run by Hybrid Pedagogy), about class policies on use of electronic devices during class. As always, this chat was very helpful for pushing me to be honest with myself, my motivations, and my desires, as well as to consider new alternatives.

I don’t have a policy against the use of electronic devices in class. I feel it would be hypocritical of me to do so because I rely so heavily on them myself during meetings and conferences–I take all notes electronically, and I frequently engage in Tweeting during conferences to promote interesting ideas or facts I’m learning and let others know what’s happening at that session in case they couldn’t make it. But I do get annoyed, and mostly sad, when I spend SO MUCH TIME preparing for courses (those of you who are teachers know how much time that is) and then feel like all that work is going to very little if many students aren’t paying attention.

The #digped Tweet chat helped remind me that there are different ways of paying attention, and even when you think someone is not engaged, they may very well be engaged in a way that you don’t recognize as such. Plus, people need to be human beings, after all, and have breaks where they just zone out for a little bit and then come back. And I need to get over it when I think there is too much non-engagement (because what I think is non-engagement may not actually be such).
This is a lesson I have to keep reminding myself.

 

But on another note; there was a good deal of discussion about having the class guidelines be set collaboratively, with the students. I have 150 students in my Introduction to Philosophy course. I thought such a thing would be impossible. But in a separate discussion on Twitter yesterday, some colleagues suggested breaking students up into groups and having the groups write on a collaborative doc like in Google docs.

I already had a collaborative doc on suggestions for respectful discussions, so I turned that one into a document about other guidelines for the class too.

 

Here is what I have so far. It’s not currently open to editing, but just to commenting; next week it will be open to editing, but please just let the students in class edit, okay? :)

Click here for the doc; there is an embedded version below if you just want to look at it on this blog post.

 

I’d love to hear your comments on:

1. Are these good questions to ask? Are the questions phrased well?

2. What do I do with the answers? I was going to compile them all into a list of suggested guidelines, but not everyone will agree with all of them. Do I just have a vote on the whole list? Having 150 students makes this challenging…

 

Non-disposable assignments in Intro to Philosophy

NoDisposableAssignments

Remixed from two CC0 images on Pixabay: trash can and No symbol

Disposable assignments

In the past couple of years I’ve really been grabbed by the issue of “disposable assignments,” as discussed by David Wiley here:

These are assignments that students complain about doing and faculty complain about grading. They’re assignments that add no value to the world – after a student spends three hours creating it, a teacher spends 30 minutes grading it, and then the student throws it away. Not only do these assignments add no value to the world, they actually suck value out of the world.

A non-disposable assignment, then, is one that adds value to the world beyond simply being something the students have to do to get a grade. A similar idea is expressed by Derek Bruff in a post on the idea of “students as producers”–treating students as producers of knowledge, rather than only as consumers: Bruff talks about students creating work for “authentic audiences,” beyond just the teacher.

Wiley gives an example of a non-disposable assignment: students taking instructional materials in the course (which are openly licensed) and revising/remixing them to create tutorials for future students in the course. Other examples can be found in this growing list of examples of open pedagogy. One that I often hear about is asking students to edit or create Wikipedia articles. Or students could post their work more locally, but still have it be publicly visible, such as what Judy Chan does with her students’ research projects at UBC (click on “team projects” in the various years). Simon Bates has his physics students create learning objects to help their peers (see this story for more).

Students as producers in philosophy courses

I have already started to ask students to do some activities that could add value to the world, whether to their fellow students and/or beyond.

  • In a second-year moral theory course I asked them to sign up for 1-2 days on which to do “reading notes” on the class wiki page: they had to outline one of the main arguments in the text assigned for that day and write down questions for their small group to discuss. You can see those here (organized by group number).
  • In a first-year, introduction to philosophy course I have asked students to:
    • blog about what they think philosophy is, both at the beginning and end of the course–this, I thought, could provide some interesting information to others about what our students think “philosophy” is. I don’t have those blog posts visible anymore because I didn’t ask students if I could keep them posted after the course was finished (d’oh!!).
    • write a blog post describing how they see philosophical activity going on in the world around them, beyond the class–I thought this could be useful to show the range of what can count as philosophical activity. I do still have those posts up (but not for long, because again I forgot to ask for permission to keep the posts up after the course is finished…I will do that this term!): https://blogs.ubc.ca/phil102 (click on “philosophy in the world”)

 

But now that I’m working on my Intro to Philosophy course for Fall 2015 (see planning doc here), I’m trying to think through some other options for assignments with authentic audiences and that add value to the world. Here are some ideas (not that I’m going to implement all of these; I’m just brainstorming).

  • Editing Wikipedia articles on philosophy
    • This is a big task; it requires that students learn how to do so (not just technologically, but in terms of the rules and practices of Wikipedia), plus determining which articles need editing, etc.
    • I would prefer to start with students creating Wikipedia-style articles on philosophers or texts on the UBC Wiki first. Then other students (in future classes) could edit those, and then maybe eventually we could move to doing something on Wikipedia itself (the content would be good, and maybe students would be motivated to move some of it over to Wikipedia at that point).
  • Creating tutorials or other “learning objects” for their fellow students and for the public
    • As noted above, Simon Bates does this in his Physics 101 course, and I can pretty easily see how one might ask students to do so for basic physics concepts. But why not do so for some basic philosophy concepts too?
      • e.g., find something you find difficult in the course, and once you feel you have a handle on it, create something to help other students
    • could be done in groups (probably best, with a large class like Intro to Phil (150 students))
    • could be text based, but better if also incorporates some other kinds of visual or auditory elements (e.g., a video, or incorporating images, or slides or something)
  • Creating study questions or suggestions of “what to focus on” for the readings
    • students often get lost in reading primary philosophical texts, and I haven’t yet managed to write up study questions or suggestions for what to focus on for each reading. This would definitely be useful to other students.
    • But wouldn’t it be cruel to ask students to do this for later students when I haven’t done it for them myself? and do I have time to do this before the Fall term this year? Unfortunately not.
  • Creating lists of “common problems” or advice for writing, after doing peer review of each others’ work and self-reflecting on their own
    • I do provide quite a lot of writing advice to students, but I wonder if advice coming from students’ direct experience in my courses might be helpful to later students?
  • Creating possible exam questions
    • I ask students to do this informally, in groups, as part of the review for the final exam. But why not formalize this somehow so their suggestions are posted publicly? The course page on the UBC Wiki seems like a good place, at least to start. Then students could see them from year to year.
    • A number of instructors at UBC use PeerWise as a tool for students to ask and answer questions. It seems like an interesting thing, but:
      • It’s not public; but it could be used to generate questions and then the best ones could be made public somewhere
      • It’s limited to multiple choice questions, which I hardly ever use (and never on exams)

 

Those are my ideas for now. Have any others? Or comments on any of this? Please comment, below!

Planning a course using Fink’s integrated course design

I was introduced to L. Dee Fink’s integrated course design worksheets when I took a UBC professional development course on Teaching in a Blended Learning Environment. I have really enjoyed using his approach to course design, because it asks you to think about learning goals and learning activities in ways far beyond just thinking about what content students should leave the course knowing. He asks you to consider learning goals in areas such as:

  • Caring goals: developing new feelings, interests, values
  • Human dimension goals: what they should learn about themselves and others
  • Learning how to learn: how will their work in this course help them to learn better in the future?

… among many others.

He also has you start with the learning goals, and then think about content and activities in the course, which seems to me the right way to go about doing things. I used to (and still feel the pull to) start with content and the types of assignments I’d have, and then base the learning goals on those. But of course it makes sense to start off with what you’d like the students to learn, to be able to do, and then have that guide the rest.

I’m working on redesigning my Introduction to Philosophy course, which is a one-term course focused on value theory–anything having to do with ethics, or social and political philosophy, or aesthetics. I have tried several different themes in the past and haven’t really been happy with any of them. This time I’m trying a kind of “life and death” theme, focused on what some philosophers have said about how we should live, and what we should think about death.

I have gone through the process of using these worksheets on this blog before, but this time I am using Workflowy, on the recommendation of Paul Hibbitts. He pointed out to me how easy it is to share parts of your Workflowy lists with others (so they don’t have to see all of what you’re working on, but just the stuff that’s relevant to a particular audience). The free version gets you quite a lot; I’ve been using it for awhile and haven’t run up against the limits to the free version yet. It’s not big on style, and it seems like it wouldn’t be that useful, really, until you get into using it and see the power of zooming in and out of your documents/lists. It’s like being able to go to a particular part of a very long document really easily and ignoring the rest.

Now, I wish I could embed this Workflowy list into my blog post, because then you could see the changes as I update it. But for now, this will have to do.

Here is my working through of Fink’s worksheets for my Introduction to Philosophy course: https://workflowy.com/s/mnpuEmtnAu

And here is a copy of what I’ve done so far, just copied and pasted from that Workflowy list today. I’d welcome any feedback you have!

 

Starting to work through the course design worksheets on Workflowy

Dee Fink’s integrated course design In what follows I am using Dee Fink’s course design worksheets: http://www.deefinkandassociates.com/GuidetoCourseDesignAug05.pdf

  • Situational factors to take into account when designing the course
    • students--what do they tend to be like? prior experience with philosophy? attitudes towards the subject?
      • most tend to have little or no prior experience with philosophy; few know what philosophy is
      • most tend to find the readings very challenging
      • some think that works in the history of philosophy are not relevant to their everyday lives; they prefer the more recent works
      • mostly first and second-year students, so many of them are new to UBC (esp. since this is first-term course)
      • most taking lots of courses, and/or working alongside their studies; they generally have too much to do and not enough time, so often stressed
    • number of students, physical meeting space, structure of the weekly meetings, etc.
      • max 150 (currently 136 enrolled)
      • large lecture hall, with tables and immovable chairs: https://ssc.adm.ubc.ca/classroomservices/function/viewlocation?userEvent=ShowLocation&buildingID=LSK&roomID=200
        • will be somewhat difficult to do small groups b/c can’t move chairs around; tried small groups in a room like this in the past and it was difficult
      • 2 50-minute classes per week with all students; each student also part of one 50-minute discussion section with 25 students and a TA (I run one of these)
    • the course–particular departmental or institutional requirements?
      • not required for majors, so there is no particular curriculum that must be followed, no philosophers that have to be discussed, etc.
      • focused on value theory: ethics, social and political philosophy, aesthetics, the meaning of life, the good life… anything in one or more of those areas
      • should just introduce students to such topics and get them interested in philosophy if possible, maybe draw in to take more courses (or just get a decent sense of what philosophy is like and then they may never take another philosophy course again)
    • special pedagogical challenges of the course
      • making philosophy interesting and relevant to newcomers without sacrificing rigor
        • exemplifying what philosophers do in a way that makes it seem like something useful for all of us, while still showing how difficult and complex it can be
      • for me, showing the value of reading and discussing people like Plato, Epicurus, Mill to those who find them just old and no longer relevant
        • why are works in the history of philosophy still important to read and talk about? Why not just read stuff from the last 50-100 years?

 

  • Learning goals #LOs
    Fink suggests thinking about learning goals in several categories, noted below

    • Foundational knowledge: what key information or ideas, perspectives are important for students to learn?
      • This is a tough one because of the nature of the course: there is no specific curriculum or set of information that must be taught in the course. But there are still some things I think they should know by the time they finish the course.
      • What is an “argument”? They should be able to outline an argument in a philosophical text, identifying premises and conclusion, and be able to evaluate it effectively.
      • They should come out of the course with an understanding of:
        • What an “examined life” is, acc. to Socrates, the Socratic method
        • Some of the basic arguments of Epicureanism and stoicism, existentialism, utilitarianism, Nussbaum’s “capabilities” approach
      • [The following is for an earlier version of the course, for when I thought I might focus it on the philosophy of happiness] Name and explain three approaches to the philosophical study of happiness (e.g., hedonism, desire satisfaction, eudaimonism…what else?) and correctly connect one philosopher to each
      • [The following is for an earlier version of the course, for when I thought I might focus it on the philosophy of happiness] Explain how philosophers study happiness as distinguished from empirical, psychological research, and say why the philosophical approach is also valuable.
    • Application: what kinds of thinking are needed, such as critical, creative, practical? What sorts of skills do they need to learn?
      • critical thinking (analyzing and evaluating): analyzing and evaluating arguments in the texts, and arguments by themselves and peers
      • creative thinking (imagining and creating): come up with own criticisms of arguments and better ways to approach the issues; come up with creative solutions to ethical problems discussed
      • practical thinking (solving problems and making decisions): take what they understand about sound argumentation and apply it to their own arguments, whether oral or in writing; also do so with the arguments of their peers in class or in peer feedback on writing
      • skills
        • being able to outline and evaluate arguments by others in the readings, as noted above
        • write their own arguments, in various formats such as informal blog posts and formal essays
        • evaluate arguments and writing by their peers, as a means to help improve their own writing
    • Integration: what connections should students make between parts of the course? between what’s in the course and other areas, such as their own lives?
      • It would be great if they could see why philosophical thinking about many issues is valuable
        • What is philosophical thinking/activity and why is it useful more generally?
        • How do they already do philosophy in their university studies or other parts of their lives?
        • How might philosophical thinking be good for them to continue in the future?
      • I don’t think it’s required, but it would be nice if the things we’re studying affected their own views of what a “good life” is, and had an impact on how they live their own lives
      • They should be able to understand how the various approaches to “living well” and approaching death well differ, the strengths and weaknesses of each vis-à-vis the others
    • Human dimension: what should students learn about themselves? about interacting with others in the future?
      • It would be good if they learned the degree to which they tend to rely on unexamined beliefs and values in their thoughts about happiness (and other things, potentially), and why it might be good to examine those
      • Learn that philosophical activity is something that they can and already do in their lives outside of class
      • Learn the value of respectful, philosophical (or other) dialogue with peers–how can we engage in dialogue that respects everyone and yet moves forward rather than sitting with everyone’s differing opinions and not going anywhere out of fear of offending anyone?
    • Caring: what changes would you like to see in what students care about? In their interests, values, feelings?
      • I would like them to care about careful, philosophical inquiry, argument and dialogue, about how such activity can be helpful in addressing disagreements, if done well
      • Care about whether their own views and values have been examined, whether they can provide adequate arguments for them, and what to do if they think they can’t
      • Care about whether their own arguments for “big questions” like happiness or the good life are sound
      • Care about treating with respect those whose views differ from theirs, but not thinking that this must mean we have to be relativists, that there are no objective truths about value
    • Learning how to learn: what would you like students to learn about how to learn well in this course (and beyond)? how to become self-directed learners, engage in inquiry and knowledge construction?
      • learn the value of working together with peers to learn; that sometimes learning on one’s own works well, and sometimes it’s also valuable to learn with peers
        • learning with and from peers is not a waste of time compared to getting info from the prof as expert
        • recognize that even when they feel they know more than others, “teaching” others is a very useful way to better understand something; we learn by helping others to learn, not just by getting information from them
      • learn how to take notes on the main points of complex, philosophical texts
      • learn what to do if something isn’t making sense; what options do they have for getting help? How can they avoid just being confused and not doing much to solve the problem?
      • recognize the importance of writing and rewriting, that a first draft of a piece of writing is usually not the best, and revising to create new drafts is important
      • understand that philosophical texts may require more than one read to understand them well

 

  • Draft learning objectives developed from the above #LOs
    These don’t address all of the goals above; some of those goals are addressed in what we’ll be doing in the class, but don’t show up specifically as objectives

    • For reference, LO’s from PHIL 102, Summer 2015 syllabus (this version of the course was on a different topic)
      • 1. Give an answer to the question (one of many possible answers!): how would you describe what (Western) philosophy is, what philosophers do, and how such activities might help to make people’s lives better, based on your experiences in this course? (“philosophy in the world” assignment)
      • 2. Explain at least one way in which they engage in philosophical activity in their lives outside this class (“philosophy in the world” assignment).
      • 3. Explain the basic structure of an argument–premises and conclusion—and outline an argument in a philosophical text (argument outlines, final exam)
      • 4. Assess the strength of arguments in assigned texts, in oral or written work by other students, and in their own writing (argument outlines, essays, peer review of other students’ essays, group discussions)
      • 5. Participate in a respectful discussion with others on a philosophical question: clarify positions and arguments from themselves or others, criticize flawed arguments, present their own arguments, and do all this in manner that respects the other people in the discussion (small group discussions)
      • 6. Write an argumentative essay that outlines and evaluates the views of other philosophers (essay assignments).
      • 7. Explain how at least two Western philosophers might answer the question: what is philosophy/what do philosophers do, and how might it help make people’s lives better? (essay assignments)

 

  • Draft Learning Obj’s for this course: Students who successfully complete this course should be able to:
    • 1. Define and explain at least two philosophical approaches to how we should live (such as Epicureanism and Stoicism) and give the name of at least one philosopher who espouses each. Explain the similarities and differences between those approache sand evaluate each.
    • 2. Explain the utilitarian approach as well as the capabilities approach to how we should help others to live well, and give the name of at least one philosopher associated with each. Explain similarities and differences between these approaches and evaluate each.
    • 3. Explain the basic structure of a philosophical argument–premises and conclusion—and outline an argument in a philosophical text
    • 4. Assess the strength of arguments in assigned texts, in oral or written work by other students, and their own arguments (oral or written)
    • 5. Participate in a respectful discussion with others on a philosophical question: clarify positions and arguments from themselves or others, criticize flawed arguments, present their own arguments, and do all this in manner that respects the other people in the discussion
    • 6. Produce a polished piece of philosophical writing, with a sound argument, strong evidence, and clear organization
    • 7. Read a complex philosophical text and take notes that distinguish the main points of the arguments therein.
    • 8. Based on what we’ve studied in the class, give one (of many!) possible answers to the question: What is philosophical activity and why might it be useful? How do you engage in philosophical activity outside this course?
  • Assessments to fit these objectives (TBA)
  • teaching and learning activities to fit these objectives (TBA)
  • consider whether the parts of the course are integrated (TBA)

 

 

Rubrics and peer feedback

I’ve been participating in an open, online course called Human MOOC: Humanizing Online Instruction. It’s officially over now, but I’m just completing a couple of final things from it.

One of the sections was on peer review/peer feedback by students of each others’ work. There was a link to a very helpful resource on peer feedback from the teaching and learning centre at Washington University in St. Louis. This page, linked to the previous one, is also very useful: “How to Plan and Guide In-class Peer Review Sessions.” A couple of things struck me about these resources that I wanted to comment on briefly.

What rubric/criteria should students use to do peer review?

On the first resource linked above, the following is stated:

Some instructors ask their students to evaluate their peers’ writing using the same criteria the instructor uses when grading papers (e.g., quality of thesis, adequacy of support, coherence, etc.). Undergraduate students often have an inadequate understanding of these criteria, and as a result, they either ignore or inappropriately apply such criteria during peer-review sessions (Nilson 2003).

The second resource states similarly:

The role of the peer-reviewer should be that of a reader, not an evaluator or grader. Do not replicate the grading criteria when designing these worksheets. Your students will not necessarily be qualified to apply these criteria effectively, and they may feel uncomfortable if they are given the responsibility to pronounce an overall judgment on their peers’ work.

This makes sense, though at the same time it’s troubling because if the students can’t understand the rubrics we use to mark their work, then how can they understand why they got the mark they did, or what they need to do to improve? It seems to me the answer here is not to ask students to use a different rubric when doing peer review than what we use to mark, but changing the rubric we use to mark so that it makes more sense to students (if there are comprehension problems). Now, I haven’t read the work by Nilson cited above, but it would be interesting to look more carefully into what undergraduate students tend to understand or not understand, or why, and then change one’s rubric accordingly.

One way one might do this, perhaps, is to ask them to use one’s marking rubric to evaluate sample essays and then invite feedback on the rubric as/after they are doing this. Then one can maybe catch some of the things students don’t understand before one uses the rubric for marking the essays?

Mock peer review session

The second resource suggests that one holds a mock session to begin with, which seems an excellent idea. It connects with the importance of training students in peer review before asking them to engage in it on work for the course (as discussed in Sluijsmans et al., 2002).

The idea would be to give them a “fake” essay of a kind similar to what they need to write, give them the peer review worksheet, and ask them to come up with comments on the paper. This can be done individually or in groups. Then, in class, have students give their comments to the whole group and the instructor writes them down on something that can be shown on the screen (or, alternatively, one could have them write the comments on a shared document online so they could be projected easily and the instructor doesn’t have to re-write them!). Then the class can have a discussion on the essay, the comments, and the marking worksheet/rubric, to clear up any confusion or help students improve their comments–e.g., moving from “good introduction” to saying what about the introduction is good, in particular.

This is an excellent idea, and I’m going to incorporate it in my upcoming philosophy class this summer. In Arts One we meet every week to do peer review of essays, in groups of four students plus the prof, so we can help students learn how to do peer review well on an almost one-to-one basis. And, since they do it every week for a year, they get quite good at it after awhile, even a very short time, actually!

 

Self-assessment

I could have sworn that the resources linked above from Washington University also talked about the value of students doing self-assessment of their own work, but now I can’t find that on those pages. But I was thinking that after they do peer feedback on each others’ work, it would be useful for them to go back to their own work and give feedback on it. It seems to me that after reading and commenting on others’ work, seeing what works/what doesn’t work, one could come to one’s own with fresh eyes, having learned from others’ work and also having distanced oneself from one’s own a bit.

I think I’ll try asking students to submit the peer review worksheet on their own essays after doing the peer feedback on others’, when they turn in their drafts post-peer-feedback.

 

Works cited

Nilson, Linda. (2003). “Improving Student Peer Feedback.” College Teaching, 51 (1), p. 34-38.
Sluijsmans, D. M. A., Brand-Gruwel, S., van Merriënboer, J. J. G., & Bastiaens, T. J. (2002). The training of peer assessment skills to promote the development of reflection skills in teacher education. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 29(1), 23–42. http://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-491X(03)90003-4