Learnist boards on SoTL and Open Access

During the past week or so I’ve been working on finishing a couple of things before their deadlines, and during breaks in working on those I’ve been having fun with Learnist: http://learni.st/. Learnist is sort of like Pinterest but focused more on learning about new things. The idea is that someone who has some knowledge about something designs a “learnboard” about it, and collects things from the web (including PDFs, Google docs and books, Prezi presentations, Kickstarter campaigns, and more), plus their own materials if they like, and puts them together in an order that helps others learn the topic. That person also adds commentary to help explain the artifact posted. There are places to comment on each artifact or on the whole board, and others can suggest new things to be put on the board.

Right now Learnist is in beta, and I am a bit frustrated by the fact that there is nothing on the front page to explain it (though there are learnboards on Learnist itself that give you an overview–you just have to type in “learnist” on the search bar at the top to find them).

You have to send a request to them if you want an account to create your own boards or make comments, but you don’t have to have an account to see all the existing boards. You can see mine by following the links below. They are still in progress, so more will likely be added later (esp. to the first and third ones).

 

1. What is the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and How Can I Get Involved?

2. Open Access Journals in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

3. Open Access Scholarly Publishing (and Why It’s Important)

 

And you could also check out my personal page on Learnist, which lists any new learnboards I may have added since writing this post, as well as the boards I myself “like” and “follow.”

Update Dec. 6, 2012

I received an email from someone over at Grockit, the company that runs Learnist, asking for some suggestions to try to address the problems I noted above with being confused about how it all works when you arrive at the page for the first time. Nice to hear they are concerned and open to suggestions!

They also let me know I could invite others to use Learnist and they could bypass the usual waiting period through that means. So if you want an invite, send me an email (I may have to ask you a couple of questions to make sure you’re a real person and really interested in Learnist, since I’ll personally be inviting you!). Find my email address on my personal website at: https://blogs.ubc.ca/christinahendricks

 

How does giving comments in peer assessment impact students? (Part 1)

Some colleagues and I are brainstorming various research we might undertake regarding peer assessment, and in our discussions the question in the title of this post came up. I am personally interested in the comments students can give to each other in peer assessment, more than in students giving marks/grades to each other. Students engaging in giving comments on each others’ work are not only impacted by receiving peer comments, of course, but through the process of giving them as well. How does practice in giving comments and evaluating others’ work affect students’ own work or the processes they use to produce it?

I’ve already looked at a couple of articles that address this question from a somewhat theoretical (rather than empirical) angle (see earlier posts here and here). As discussed in those posts, it makes sense to think that practice in evaluating the work of peers could help students get a better sense of what counts as “high quality,” and thus have that understanding available to use in self-monitoring so as to become more self-regulated.

In this post I summarize the findings of two empirical articles looking at the question of whether and how providing feedback to others affects the quality of students’ own work. I will continue this summary in another post, where I look at another few articles.

(1) Li, L., Liu, X. and Steckelberg, A.L. (2010) Assessor or assessee: How student learning improves by giving and receiving peer feedback, British Journal of Educational Technology 41:3, 525-536. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8535.2009.00968.x

In this study, 43 undergraduate teacher-education students engaged in online peer assessment of each others’ WebQuest projects. Each student evaluated the projects of two other students. They used a rubric, and I believe they gave both comments and marks to each other. Students then revised their projects, having been asked to take the peer assessment into account and decide what to use from it. The post-peer assessment projects were marked by the course instructor.

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Contract grading, Part 2

In the previous post I discussed two versions of contract grading that, to me, didn’t really seem like contracts. In this one I’ll talk about a couple more that are more like contracts.

Critical Pedagogy and Grading Contracts

Isabel Moreno-Lopez, in “Sharing Power with Students: The Critical Language Classroom,” Radical Pedagogy 2005 (available online at http://radicalpedagogy.icaap.org/content/issue7_2/moreno.html), uses grading contracts as part of a larger strategy of critical pedagogy based on the work of Paulo Freire and others. An important part of engaging in critical pedagogy is giving more power to students:

… critical pedagogues encourage teachers to reinvent the role of power, placing authority on the students, and arranging curricula and classroom practices to ensure students can develop the relative autonomy necessary to be empowered to analyze, criticize, and question not only the material they are studying, but also the texts in which the content material is presented.

Moreno-Lopez uses grading contracts plus a number of other strategies in order to giver her students more autonomy. I’ll focus here just on the grading contracts she reports on in this article, from a fourth-semester, undergraduate Spanish course.

In her version, students signed a contract for a particular grade, saying that they would fulfill a set of criteria that included both completion-only items (such as number of classes attended, only being late a certain number of times, number of journal entries completed) and items marked for quality (such as written work and class participation). Students could rewrite assignments as many times as they wished in order to achieve the quality desired, with the restriction that rewrites had to be turned in within one week of receiving the marked paper back.

Moreno-Lopez’s version of contract grading is highly negotiable with students. She presented the syllabus and contracts on the first day, and students had time in class, without her present, to discuss them and suggest changes. They negotiated until they came to a mutually-acceptable decision.

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Contract grading, Part 1

I first came across the phrase “contract grading” in some Twitter feed or another (I really should write down which feeds I get things from, so I can give proper credit!). I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what contract grading could be–surely it didn’t mean that one would sign a contract with a student, promising to give them a certain grade, right?

Wrong. That’s exactly what it means. Though, of course, the student has to hold up their end of the bargain too.

I’ve looked into the idea a bit more, and I’m still ambivalent about it, though intrigued.

The Bok Blog (Harvard) starts off a post on contract grading this way:

The central feature of contract grading is the contract: a clear and detailed set of guidelines that stipulate exactly what a student needs to do in order to earn each possible grade.

Surely that’s not all there is to it, of course, since that’s what a syllabus gives (this point is also made in a post by Billie Hara on contract grading over at The ProfHacker blog, from The Chronicle of Higher Education). The first versions of contract grading I have come across, though, do resemble sections of syllabi more than contracts.

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Literature on written and oral peer feedback

For context on why I’m interested in this, see the previous post.

I’ve done some searches into the question of oral and written peer feedback, and been surprised at the paucity of results. Or rather, the paucity of results outside the field of language teaching, or teaching courses in a language that is an “additional language” for students. I have yet to look into literature on online vs. face-to-face peer review as well. Outside of those areas, I’ve found only a few articles.

1. Van den Berg, I., Admiraal, W.,  & Pilot, A. (2006) Designing student peer assessment in higher education: analysis of written and oral peer feedback, Teaching in Higher Education, 11:2, 135-147.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562510500527685

In this article Van den Berg et al report on a study in which they looked at peer feedback in seven different courses in the discipline of history (131 students). These courses had peer feedback designs that differed according to things such as: what kind of assignment was the subject of peer feedback, whether the peer feedback took place alongside teacher feedback or whether there was peer feedback only, whether students who commented on others got comments from those same others on their own work or not, how many students participated in feedback groups, and more. Most of the courses had both written and oral peer feedback, though one of the seven had just written peer feedback.

The authors coded both the written and oral feedback along two sets of criteria: feedback functions and feedback aspects. I quote from their paper to explain these two things, as they are fairly complicated:

Based on Flower et al . (1986) and Roossink (1990), we coded the feedback in relation to its product-oriented functions (referring directly to the product to be assessed): analysis, evaluation, explanation and revision. ‘Analysis’ includes comments aimed at understanding the text. ‘Evaluation’ refers to all explicit and implicit quality statements. Arguments supporting the evaluation refer to ‘Explanation’, and suggested measures for improvement to ‘Revision’. Next, we distinguished two process-oriented functions, ‘Orientation’ and ‘Method’. ‘Orientation’ includes communication which aims at structuring the discussion of the oral feedback. ‘Method’ means that students discuss the writing process. (141-142)

By the term ‘aspect’ we refer to the subject of feedback, distinguishing between content, structure, and style of the students’ writing (see Steehouder et al., 1992). ‘Content’ includes the relevance of information, the clarity of the problem, the argumentation, and the explanation of concepts. With ‘Structure’ we mean the inner consistency of a text, for example the relation between the main problem and the specified research questions, or between the argumentation and the conclusion. ‘Style’ refers to the ‘outer’ form of the text, which includes use of language, grammar, spelling and layout. (142)

They found that students tended to focus on different things in their oral and written feedback. Written feedback over all the courses tended to be more product-oriented than process-oriented, with a focus on evaluation of quality rather than explaining that evaluation or offering suggestions for revision.  In terms of feedback aspect, written feedback focused more on content and style than structure (143).

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Oral and written peer feedback

This post is part of my ongoing efforts to develop a research project focusing on the Arts One program–a team-taught, interdisciplinary program for first-year students in the Faculty of Arts at the University of British Columbia. As noted in some earlier posts, one of the things that stands out about Arts One is what we call “tutorials,” which are weekly meetings of four students plus the professor in which all read and comment on each others’ essays (students write approximately one essay every two weeks). Thus, peer feedback on essays is an integral part of this course, occurring as a regular part of the course meeting time, every week.

In a recent survey of Arts One Alumni (see my post summarizing the results), students cited tutorials as one of the things that helped them improve their writing the most, and as one of the most important aspects of the program. In that earlier post I speculated on what might be so valuable about these tutorials, such as the frequency of providing and getting peer feedback (giving feedback every week, getting feedback on your own paper every two weeks), the fact that professors are there in the meetings with students to give their comments too and comment on the students’ comments, the fact that students revisit their work in an intensive way after it’s written, that they may feel pressure to make the work better before submitting it because they know they’ll have to present and defend it with their peers, etc. That last point is perhaps made even more important when you consider that the students get to know each other quite well, meeting every week for at least one term (the course is two terms, or one year long, but some of us switch students into different tutorial groups halfway through so they get the experience of reading other students’ papers too).

One thing I didn’t consider before, but am thinking about more now, is whether the fact that the feedback is done mostly, if not exclusively, orally and synchronously (and face-to-face) rather than through writing and asynchronously, makes a difference.

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The flipped classroom in philosophy–need to change lectures too

Somehow I missed all the hype about the “flipped” or “inverted” or “reversed” or “backwards” classroom over the past year or two. Just saw an excellent post on some Twitter feed or other (can’t remember which) that brought the whole idea to my attention–discussed below. At first I thought it meant inverting the classroom in the sense of the teacher no longer being the main expert, or the content-deliverer, but the students taking a more active role. Ummm…no. It’s more than that.

There is a truly excellent discussion of this model over at the User Generated Education blog, called “The Flipped Classroom Model: A Full Picture” (http://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/the-flipped-classroom-model-a-full-picture/). I’m glad this was the first exposure I had to the whole idea, because it really helped me see the “full picture,” or at least the bigger picture, surrounding this new way of handling class time.

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New name, new look

I have been trying to come up with a new name for my blog for quite awhile now. Finally I arrived at something I am happy with: You’re the Teacher. The backstory is personal, but the name fits beyond that as well.

The story [revised Feb., 2013]

When I was in graduate school, working on my PhD in Philosophy, I was given the opportunity to teach a few courses on my own, as opposed to only being a TA for someone else’s courses. I vividly remember my very first day teaching my own course. It was an aesthetics course, which was a fairly new area for me. That, plus the fact that I was walking into a classroom for the first time as “the” teacher, meant I was more than a little nervous.

I walked into the room for the first time, put my things down on the desk at the front, and looked out over the room. Just a few students were there already, but as soon as I had put my things down a student in the front row said, incredulously, “You’re the teacher?”

Now, I had worked hard to dress differently than my usual grad-school garb, and thought I looked pretty professional. But I was clearly young, nevertheless. And could my apprehension be read that clearly on my face, in my body language? All I did was walk in and put my books down.

In that one question, the student encapsulated all my first-time-teaching fears: I’m the teacher? Really? Whose crazy idea was this? Can I really do this?

I don’t remember what I said in reply, but hopefully I was witty. Probably not. Flustered, more like.

The familiar “imposter syndrome” continued with me for the next couple of years, as I taught more courses on my own while still a grad student. Perhaps not yet having the degree makes a difference–you know you are still somehow in training, and the students view you as such. Whenever students would question interpretations I was giving of the texts, or criticize my arguments, I took it as a personal challenge to the fragile authority I was hoping to build in the classroom. I felt that to be a good teacher I had to be an expert, and if I couldn’t fulfill the picture of an expert as the one who knows more than the students, then I wasn’t doing my job as a teacher.

I don’t know exactly how all this changed. I can’t pinpoint a moment at which I realized that a better answer to that first student’s question would have been: “No, you’re the teacher.” Or better: “Yes, and so are you.”

The more I attended workshops on teaching and learning, and began to read the literature on the scholarship of teaching and learning, the more I realized that I wasn’t doing students any favours by always acting as of I were the expert and attempting to provide all the answers (with the emphasis here on “attempting”). I needed, rather, to provide opportunities and the skills required for students to learn how to teach themselves and others. I could give them things to read and structure courses such that they must, alone and/or with their peers, work to create meanings, provide interpretations, figure out what is going on and whether criticisms are required. I wouldn’t necessarily disappear as the expert entirely, but I would stand aside more and be a resource for questions and advice.

Where I am now

Some of what I am aiming for now is inspired by Problem Based Learning, Inquiry-based learning, and Team Based Learning. I have also been thinking quite a lot about Jacques Ranciere’s The Ignorant Schoolmaster (discussing the theory of “universal education” of Joseph Jacotot). Indeed, I thought about calling this blog The Ignorant Philosopher, but: (1) most people wouldn’t get it and think I’m being cheekily self-denigrating, and (2) I don’t actually live up to the idea of being an “ignorant” teacher–I still engage in explication, still act as an expert. I have to think further about whether I should continue to do so.

In addition, in the first part of 2013 I have been involved in a “connectivist” MOOC (massive, open, online course) called etmooc––a mooc on educational technology and media. (My blog posts on this experience can be found under the category “etmooc.”) Through this experience I discovered just how powerful learning can be through connecting with others–through writing and commenting on blog posts, participating in conversations on twitter and social networks like Google+, and more. I have learned more from the other people in the course, and the conversations we have in these media, than I have through the “instructors” or those who give the archived “lectures.” And that’s a big part of the point of etmooc–to get people connected so that they can continue to share, discuss and learn together long after the course is finished. We are each teaching, and learning from, each other. That is the sort of atmosphere I’d love to develop in my courses.

While doing a web search to make sure that I was not choosing a name that was already being used for a blog or something else, I came across this post by Karl Fisch, from Sept. 2010: “Who’s the teacher? You’re the teacher.” In it Fisch talks about a TED talk by TED founder Chris Anderson, called “How web video powers global innovation.” This talk is about what Anderson calls “crowd accelerated innovation,” wherein change, innovation occurs through exposure of information to large groups of people, through web video. The basic idea is openness of information, which allows multitudes of people to contribute to development of knowledge, culture, technology, etc. Anderson gives the example of dance and sports (unicycling), where watching others perform allows people to see new possibilities and add innovations themselves. He also discusses JoVE (the Journal of Visual Experiments), a peer-reviewed, online video journal showcasing techniques for scientific experiments. This allows others to learn and replicate (and alter) them more easily, rather than waiting for published papers and then trying to figure out how to do the experiments through reading about them.

Towards the end of this talk, Anderson talks about education:

Now, is it possible to imagine a similar process to this, happening to global education overall? I mean, does it have to be this painful, top-down process? Why not a self-fueling cycle in which we all can participate? It’s the participation age, right? Schools can’t be silos. We can’t stop learning at age 21. What if, in the coming crowd of nine billion … what if that crowd could learn enough to be net contributors, instead of net plunderers? That changes everything, right? I mean, that would take more teachers than we’ve ever had. But the good news is they are out there. They’re in the crowd, and the crowd is switching on lights, and we can see them for the first time, not as an undifferentiated mass of strangers, but as individuals we can learn from. Who’s the teacher? You’re the teacher. You’re part of the crowd that may be about to launch the biggest learning cycle in human history, a cycle capable of carrying all of us to a smarter, wiser, more beautiful place. [emphasis added to the original transcript]

This, of course, is where Fisch gets the title for his blog post. And it fits with my own burgeoning views of teaching and learning.

I’m the teacher, and so are you.

The value of peer review for effective feedback

No matter how expertly and conscientiously constructed, it is difficult to comprehend how feedback, regardless of its properties, could be expected to carry the burden of being the primary instrument for improvement. (Sadler 2010, p. 541)

… [A] deep knowledge of criteria and how to use them properly does not come about through feedback as the primary instructional strategy. Telling can inform and edify only when all the referents – including the meanings and implications of the terms and the structure of the communication – are understood by the students as message recipients. (Sadler 2010, p. 545)

In “Beyond feedback: developing student capability in complex appraisal” (Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35:5, 535-550), D. Royce Sadler points out how difficult it can be for instructor feedback to work the way we might want–to allow students to improve their future work. Like Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick 2006 (discussed in the previous post), Sadler here argues that effective feedback should help students become self-regulated learners:

Feedback should help the student understand more about the learning goal, more about their own achievement status in relation to that goal, and more about ways to bridge the gap between their current status and the desired status (Sadler 1989). Formative assessment and feedback should therefore empower students to become self-regulated learners (Carless 2006). (p. 536)

 The issue that Sadler focuses on here is that students simply cannot use feedback for improvement and development of self-regulation unless they share some of the same knowledge as the person giving the feedback. Much of this is complex or tacit knowledge, not easily provided in things such as lists of criteria or marking rubrics. Instructors may try to make their criteria for marking and their feedback as clear as they can,

Yet despite the teachers’ best efforts to make the disclosure full, objective and precise, many students do not understand it appropriately because, as argued below, they are not equipped to decode the statements properly. (p. 539)

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Seven Principles of Effective Feedback Practice

I recently read an article by David J. Nicol and Debra Macfarlane-Dick that I found quite thought-provoking:

David J. Nicol & Debra Macfarlane-Dick (2006). Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: a model and seven principles of good feedback practice, Studies in Higher Education, 31:2, 199-218.   http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075070600572090

The basic belief guiding their argument is that formative assessment (which they define, referring to Sadler 1998, as “assessment that is specifically intended to generate feedback on performance to improve and accelerate learning” (199)) should be aimed at helping students become more self-regulated. What does it mean for students to be self-regulated? The authors state that it manifests in behaviours such as monitoring and regulating processes such as “the setting of, and orientation towards, learning goals; the strategies used to achieve goals; the management of resources; the effort exerted; reactions to external feedback; the products produced” (199). They also cite later in the article (p. 202) a definition from Pintrich and Zusho, 2002:

Self-regulated learning is an active constructive process whereby learners set goals for their learning and monitor, regulate, and control their cognition, motivation, and behaviour, guided and constrained by their goals and the contextual features of the environment. (Pintrich and Zusho (2002), 64)

Students who are self-regulated learners, Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick explain on p. 200, set goals for themselves (usually affected by external goals in the educational setting) against which they can measure their performance. They generate internal feedback about the degree to which they are reaching these goals, what they need to do to improve progress towards them, etc. They incorporate external feedback (e.g., from instructors and peers) into their own sense of how well they are doing in relation towards their goals. The better they are at self-regulation, the better they are able to use their own and external feedback to progress towards their goals (here they cite Butler and Winne, 1995). The authors point to research providing evidence that “learners who are more self-regulated are more effective learners: they are more persistent, resourceful, confident and higher achievers (Pintrich, 1995; Zimmerman & Schunk, 2001)” (205).

Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick note, however, that current literature shows little work on arguing for how formative feedback can improve student self-regulation. That’s what they do here.

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