CFP: Diversity in Philosophy conference

The American Philosophical Association’s Committee on the Status of Women is hosting a conference on diversity in Philosophy, May 29-31, 2013, at the University of Dayton in Ohio. The following description is from the conference’s website (http://www.apaonlinecsw.org/diversity-in-philosophy-conference), where you can also find information on submitting proposals. I very much wish I could go, just to glean information; but I’m in Australia until July 2013, and Dayton is just too far away and too expensive to get to from here!

 

This conference examines and addresses the underrepresentation of women and other marginalized groups in Philosophy. Participants will focus on hurdles and best practices associated with the inclusion of underrepresented groups. It will focus on such questions as:

 

  • Why do white males continue to be over-represented among Philosophy majors, graduate students, and faculty members, especially given that most other fields in the sciences and humanities are increasingly diverse?
  • What are some effective ways to improve the recruitment, retention and advancement of women and other underrepresented groups?
  • What roles do implicit bias and stereotyping play in who advances in Philosophy?
  • How can the climate for women and other marginalized groups be improved?
  • What role can philosophers who study marginalized groups play in advancing underrepresented groups in Philosophy?
  • What can Philosophy learn from National Science Foundation ADVANCE initiatives that address how to recruit and advance women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields?
  • How can we improve the climate for all underrepresented groups in Philosophy, including those who are LGBTQ, disabled, first generation in college, or economically disadvantaged?

 

Results of a survey of Arts One alumni, and thoughts on research questions

 

In March and April of 2012, a research assistant (an Arts One alum) and I did a survey of alumni of the Arts One program (a team-taught, interdisciplinary, year-long program for first year students at UBC). Arts One has been in existence since 1967, yet very little research has been done on how it impacts students. I hope to do some research on that broad question in the coming years.

The purpose of the survey of alumni from earlier this year was to see how students themselves thought Arts One impacted them, in two ways: how it impacted their work in other courses, and how it impacted them beyond their work in other courses. Just for fun, and to see if we could isolate that which really sets the Arts One program apart from other first year programs, we also asked them what they thought the most important aspect of Arts One was (a question I had taken from an earlier study on Arts One, by Cheryl Dumaresq (see https://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/3693 for a copy of Dumaresq’s survey of Arts One alumni in the 1990s). We surveyed students who had just finished Arts One that Spring, plus those who had taken Arts One their first year and were still at UBC, in their second, third, fourth years and beyond. 116 students answered our email request to fill in an online survey. The questions were all open-ended and subjected to descriptive qualitative analysis only.

The reason for doing this survey, beyond being interested generally, was to gain material for developing research questions to study further later. In other words, this was a pilot study to determine which areas of Arts One to subject to further research, and how/why. In what follows I begin thinking about some possible research questions arising from the data.

In some ways, the results of the survey were unsurprising, in the sense that I guessed before doing the survey much of what came out of it. But there were a couple of things I hadn’t thought of before, which was the point of doing the survey in an open-ended way (so students weren’t stuck with giving only multiple-choice answers to topics we thought of ourselves).

 

[What follows provides only a discussion of only a few of the prominent answers, or the ones I found most interesting. There were many, many different things said by students, with the result that most of those ended up being said only a few times, and thus are not recorded below unless I found them particularly interesting or surprising.]

Percentage of student alumni saying Arts One positively impacted their other coursework

Over 90% said Arts One impacted them in ways that positively affected their work in other courses. A few said there was no impact on their work in other courses, and a few said it impacted their work negatively (though some of those also said it had some positive impacts too).

How Arts One helps with other courses

  • Most of the respondents said it helped with writing (73% of respondents; 80% of those who said A1 had positive impact on other courses). This wasn’t surprising, as improving writing is one of the main emphases of Arts One. Students write 12 essays over the course of one year (approximately one every two weeks), and each of those essays is peer reviewed in a tutorial meeting of four students plus their professor. Every week students meet in these tutorials and discuss two essays, each for 25-30 minutes.
    • Of those, most said it was the tutorials that helped with their writing (48%), and next highest cited was the amount of writing (39%). Some of these may be the same people (they may have said both things).
    • What could be some reasons students think tutorials are so helpful for improving their writing? In tutorials we discuss particular issues with the papers being commented on, but also general advice about writing academic papers, about the writing process, etc. Some of this advice comes from the professors and some from the students. One thing that several students mentioned as being helpful is the chance to read and comment on others’ essays; some noted that this helped them think more critically about their own. One stated that giving comments to peers in front of the professor, and having the professor comment on those comments, was especially helpful. Students likely also feel some pressure to make their writing better because they have to present and defend it in front of peers and the professor. Revisiting work in an intensive way after it’s written may also contribute to improvement in writing.
    • Possible research areas:
      • It would be interesting to see if students’ self-perceptions match up with reality: does their writing really improve after completing the program? One could compare their improvement with gains in writing skill from other first-year writing courses (though that might be difficult, as several such courses at UBC have different foci than the writing in Arts One, emphasizing research whereas we do not). I could have a look at the literature on self-perceptions of skills (esp. writing skills) and objective measures of those, to see if generally self-perceptions tend to be accurate or not. I recall reading something about this somewhere, but I don’t have the details ready to hand.
      • I could focus on and expand upon the above questions about tutorials: what it is about tutorials leads students to cite them as particularly helpful for improving their writing skills? Is there something special about A1 tutorials, as opposed to peer review in other courses? E.g., I do peer review in other courses, and get no such comments about its value, even though the peer review is done in small groups during class time, as with the Arts One tutorials. Peer review does not constitute a separate class period in those other courses, though, like it does in Arts One, and I as the professor am not sitting there with the group the whole time they are doing the peer review. Is there something special about having the prof present the whole time? Is there something special about the amount of time spent on each essay? Is it that it is done every single week? Does the fact that it’s a scheduled part of the course, so especially emphasized, make a difference? Is it perhaps that students recognize that tutorials are supposed to help them with writing, so they think and say that they do? After all, one wouldn’t want to spend so much time doing tutorial work for nothing. I’m not sure how to even begin to answer any of those questions yet!

 

  • A significant number of students said Arts One contributed to their critical thinking skills (24% of respondents, 27% of those who said A1 had a positive impact on their other coursework). I expected this to show up in the survey, as one of the things we emphasize in Arts One is providing students with a lot of opportunity to develop their own responses and arguments to the texts and issues we discuss. The seminars are focused on discussion, and many of us try to get the students to lead that discussion as much as possible (with some variation for professor style, of course) and though we provide essay topics for the papers, they are purposefully open-ended so that students have a lot of room to argue for their own readings and emphasize what they find important.
    • However, the survey responses did not provide much clarity as to what aspects of the program especially helped with critical thinking, in the students’ views. Many of those who said A1 helped with critical thinking did not explain clearly how, and among those that did, numerous aspects were cited such that I couldn’t find a clear pattern for which things were most helpful.
    • possible research areas
      • Studying what critical thinking is, and how to promote it, is an entire field in its own right. There are numerous definitions of critical thinking, and quite a few different tests of it, and I would need to delve into that literature before even beginning to think further about this topic. It’s unclear what each student meant by terms like “critical thinking,” or “analysis skills” when they said them, as well.
      • One thing I am particularly interested in myself is perhaps captured by the term “critical thinking,” but perhaps not–it’s the ability and confidence to engage in independent thinking. I think what I mean by that term is that students feel they can sit down with a text and make sense of it on their own, or with a small group of peers, without needing to rely on finding out what others (experts) have said about it in order to find out what is the “right” way to read the text. We specifically and consciously downplay seeking outside research on the texts we read, so as to focus students’ attention on their own reading and analysis skills. I, personally, also emphasize that the idea in writing essays for Arts One is less a matter of getting something right about the text than it is about coming up with a thought-provoking, justified reading, an interpretation grounded in the text but that also goes beyond a surface level and can make the reader really think. I am hoping students take risks rather than provide just the safest or most clear-cut arguments possible. I would need to better clarify just what I am looking for here, and what terms that corresponds to in the literature.

 

  • The same number of students as said Arts One helped critical thinking said it helped their confidence in some way, such as confidence speaking in class, speaking to profs, confidence in their writing skills, or in their own ideas as valuable (24% of respondents, 27% of those who said positive impact).
    • I find this one especially interesting, perhaps because I hadn’t really thought about it before, and yet it is so important to students’ future coursework and life. My rough analysis of the survey data has not yet revealed clear patterns on how, exactly, students think Arts One helps with their confidence, which aspects do so and why. I plan to go back over the data and see if I can come up with something clearer on this, or if the answers are simply too thinly scattered.
    • possible research areas
      • Maybe something in the area of confidence would be a better place for me to focus my attention to try to capture what I was talking about at the end of the discussion on critical thinking. If students feel confident in their own ideas and their ability to express and defend them, they might be more likely to approach texts and discussions in the way I suggested.
      • Studying confidence has the added bonus of being easier to study than whether writing really improves or whether critical thinking really improves, because one would, presumably, rely on students’ own self-reports of confidence. Though I suppose that some behavioural data might contribute to showing increases or decreases in confidence as well.
      • There must be literature on levels of confidence and how this affects students’ coursework…I would need to look into that.


Percentage of student alumni saying Arts One positively impacted them beyond coursework

83% of students said that Arts One impacted them positively in ways beyond their work in other courses.  Most of those who did not assent to this simply said it did not impact them beyond coursework. Only two gave negative comments in response to this question, and only one of those was about the program itself.

How Arts One impacts students beyond their work in other courses

  • The most often-cited answer to this question from students was that Arts One provided a close-knit community that allowed them to develop friendships, get to know their colleagues and the professor, and feel comfortable in the classroom (38% of respondents, 46% of those who said Arts One impacted them in some positive way beyond their work in other courses). I guessed beforehand that this would be important, as it’s something else that we emphasize in Arts One. There are five professors who team-teach the course (two groups of five profs total, with separate themes, readings, and students); there are up to 100 students in the course and each professor is assigned to up to 20 of those. Each week there is a lecture given by one of the five professors to all 100 students, and two seminar discussions of 20 students with their professor. Then there are tutorials of four students from the group of 20 with their professor, and each student has one of these per week (each prof has five). The students in the seminar group of 20 get to know each other and their professor very well, with two discussions per week plus a tutorial every week. They often get together outside of class for study or social purposes, develop group Facebook pages, etc.
    • The seminars were cited as more important for developing a sense of community and friendships (25% of respondents, 30% of those who said A1 had positive impact beyond coursework) than tutorials (14% of respondents, 17% of those who said positive impact). I suppose this could be a little surprising, since the tutorials are only 4 students plus the professor, while the seminars are 20 students plus the professor. But the tutorials are somewhat stressful for numerous students, as it is where they have to present and defend their essays, listening to and responding to criticism from their peers and professor. They also have to learn to constructively comment on the essays of their peers, which can be difficult for many at first. Though by the end of the year the tutorials are often much more relaxed, I am not surprised that students don’t view tutorials as being as much of a space for developing a close sense of community and friendships as seminars, overall.
    • possible research areas
      • It might seem, and many students thought of it this way, that developing a sense of community and having friendships come out of Arts One is mainly a social effect that doesn’t have much to do with academic coursework. But I think that’s a mistake. I know I have read some things that point to the importance of having a close community and friendships in courses, and it would be good to revisit those to show that this could be an important ingredient to student success in Arts One. If students see the value of developing an academic and social community in their classes through their Arts One experience, it might encourage them to seek to develop those in other courses as well (as a few students mentioned in their answers to the survey). So looking at the literature on community and student success (broadly defined) would be a good place to start. Then I might be able to find best practices on developing a sense of community and see if they are implemented in Arts One. Or see if some aspects of Arts One are especially important to developing a sense of community that might be exported to other courses.


  •  A significant number of students pointed out that Arts One had improved their confidence in ways that extended beyond their work in university courses, such as confidence in public speaking, in their own views, and in writing (13% of respondents, 16% of those who said A1 had positive impact beyond coursework). This is less than the number who pointed to confidence in response to how Arts One had impacted their work in other courses, but presumably if it gave them confidence in the above ways for courses, most of that would transfer to their life beyond the university.
    • possible research areas: Same as above re: confidence, but it’s important to think about the value of confidence beyond how it can help students succeed in their university coursework.

 

The most important aspect of Arts One, according to student alumni

  • Most often cited as an answer to this question was having small classes (35% of respondents).
  • A close second were seminars and tutorials, which had about the same number of people citing them in answer to this question (31% of respondents said something about seminars in response to this question, and 32% said something about tutorials).
  • The next highest category was people who said something relating to the quality of the professors, a particular professor, or the lectures given by professors (26% of respondents).
  • Finally, a significant number of people said the most important thing was the ability to have close connections between students and professors (19%). This, of course, is closely connected to having small classes (though small classes are not required for it, they can help facilitate it). The 4-person tutorials are especially conducive to students being able to work closely with professors, and to gain confidence in speaking to them.
    • possible research areas
      • Many of the above are related–small classes (seminars and tutorials) and the ability to have a close connection between students and professors. Why is it that connecting with one’s professor is so important? What does it facilitate that being an anonymous face in a classroom where one never speaks to the professor does not? Does the fact that Arts One does not have any Teaching Assistants have a bearing on these issues, or would a close connection to Teaching Assistants yield similar results?

 

There is much to think about here. Obviously I’ve raised enough research areas to last a lifetime. I just need to pick the one I’d like to work on for the next few years…a daunting task!

 

Here is a more detailed report, without the possible research areas, and including the questions asked: Arts One Alumni Survey 2012, Report on Results

 

Students reading/not reading the texts

(The last term, Jan-April 2012, was incredibly busy for me…no time to blog! But now I’m on a year’s sabbatical (July 2012-July 2013), and plan to do a good deal of reading and writing about teaching!)

Some common concerns: How can we engage in good classroom discussion of one or more texts and the issues and arguments they raise if a good number of students haven’t read the texts? How can we encourage students to read the texts before coming to class?

Clearly we need to motivate students so they want to read the texts before class. If the readings were intrinsically interesting to them and they had lots of time, it wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately, those two things are not always true (and with philosophical texts, the first is too often not true for many students). In addition, I have in the past found myself making up for the lack of preparedness by lecturing on the main ideas in the texts myself in class. Which, of course, just makes students even less likely to read the texts: if the texts are difficult, and the professor is just going to lecture on the main points anyway, why not spend one’s precious time in one’s very busy life doing something else? For many college students are very, very busy–probably too much so; but that’s an argument for another day.

One of the courses I teach is “Arts One,” a year-long, interdisciplinary, team-taught course for first year students only. In that course we read a book a week, approximately (sometimes one book over two weeks), and most of the class time is spent in discussion of the books. It is imperative that students have read the texts before coming to discussion class, and in that particular class, I have too often relied on the thought that the students who choose Arts One are already diligent and highly motivated, and would do the work on their own. But that isn’t always the case, and often it’s because they are overworked or the texts are difficult for them to understand on their own.

Things really become problematic when I ask students to do presentations either to the whole class or to small groups, in which they raise questions for discussion and facilitate that discussion. They are understandably disappointed when their hard work results in lackluster discussion because others haven’t finished reading the books.

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CFP: teaching philosophy in high schools

I got this call for papers via email earlier this week. I am very happy to see the issue of pre-college philosophy getting attention in this way!

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The journal Teaching Philosophy (http://secure.pdcnet.org/teachphil) solicits contributions for a special issue devoted to philosophical inquiry at the high school level (including its non-U.S. equivalent, such as Gymnasium, Bachillerato, Sixth Form, etc.), with guest editors Jana Mohr Lone (University of Washington) and Mitchell Green (University of Virginia).

Articles on topics such as (but not limited to) the following are welcome:
· general methodological issues related to teaching philosophy at the high school level
· the challenges and rewards of introducing particular philosophical topics to this age group
· the value of preparing students for humanistic inquiry in college by reaching them during their time before college
· the contribution of philosophy to the cultivation of students’ critical reasoning skills
· the issues involved in creating entirely new, philosophically-based high schools
· the potential value of service learning college courses or internships that involve outreach to high schools through the medium of philosophy
· case studies (including either quantitative or qualitative assessment) of initiatives that have incorporated philosophy into the high school curriculum
· discussion of strategies that may be efficacious in overcoming institutional barriers to supporting philosophy classes in high schools.

Submissions from high school, college, and university faculty as well as independent scholars are welcome and should be prepared for blind refereeing. Submitted manuscripts should be no more than 8,000 words.

Deadline for submissions is September 1, 2012. Accepted papers will be published in mid-2013. Submissions should be made via the journal’s online submission system, at http://www.teaching-philosophy.com/. Please indicate that your submission is for the Special Issue on High School Philosophy.

On time and teaching

My hiatus from posting this Spring

I had every intention of keeping up with this blog this year. Things started off pretty well, but during this Spring term (Jan-April) I found I had zero extra time to devote to blogging. There were numerous things going on in my professional and personal life, most of them due to my own choosing–such as a year-long workshop on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning that has been fantastic but a significant amount of work. I copy here a post that I did for my blog for that workshop. I decided that the points I was making are important enough to share more widely.

Taking a toll on teaching

All of the things I needed to do this term led to my having to work seven days a week, plus nights after putting my son to bed (I took Friday and Saturday evenings off, to keep my sanity, but that was it). Perhaps this is normal for many academics, but I found it utterly and completely exhausting and unsustainable. And more than the physical and emotional toll it took, I realized it took another toll that I found intolerable: my teaching suffered.

I was not only that I did not have enough time to prepare as I wanted to, as I felt I needed to, in order to be as effective as possible. It was also that I was so exhausted and spent that I could not think as well on my feet as I usually do. And that was the worst part–I have found that sometimes having less of a “planned” class meeting can actually be beneficial for the sort of teaching I do, but then this must be balanced by the professor being able to work spontaneously and think in the moment during the class. Many of the classes I teach involve quite a lot of student discussion, and I try to find ways to encourage the students themselves to take the lead in what to discuss and what to say about those topics they themselves choose. This doesn’t, can’t, and shouldn’t happen all the time, of course, but one of the things I hope to promote in my classes in Arts One and Philosophy is practice in independent and original thinking, and thus standing back sometimes and letting students think about and discuss what they want to makes sense. It can be chaotic at times, and some students find it too confusing therefore; I am sure I need to refine my techniques. But I still firmly believe in the value of the potential results of that sort of student-driven learning.

So my usual way of planning class meetings is to take notes on the main arguments in a text (or themes, images, etc. in a literary work), and present some of those things in class to make sure we are all on more or less the same page with the text before either providing questions to discuss or asking students to raise questions to discuss. Then the class moves from there into a discussion mode that I try, with more or less success, to steer such that we at least remain on track with a question for enough time to exhaust students’ comments on that question before moving on to a different one. We may not resolve any of the issues, but that’s not the point–the point is to raise questions, consider possible answers, and leave things open enough for students to explore these (or other) issues further in their own written work.

Well, that’s the ideal, anyway. I found that when I’m too worn out from various responsibilities I cannot run classes this way well. I cannot think well enough in the moment to keep the discussion on track, to come up with potential objections during the discussions, to evaluate well the arguments people are giving. As a result, the discussions are not as effective as they should be. In a formative assessment I asked my students to do of one of my courses this term, a student asked for more “leadership” from me during the discussions. I tried, but was unable to do so because I was simply too exhausted this term. I find this entirely unacceptable.

A bigger issue for universities

This personal problem has links to a wider one. Though I myself chose to take on too many things this term, what I found through this experience is an important issue to consider for academia in general. The more work we expect of teachers, whether it be through greater class sizes, greater numbers of classes, or new course preparations, the less effective they are going to be at doing much more than lecturing from prepared notes. That can be done pretty well even when one is tired and overworked (though I got to the point where I had trouble even doing that well), but the more spontaneous, in-the-moment, on-your-feet work that active learning strategies require cannot be done very effectively when people are overworked.

I think this is a useful issue to consider for universities like UBC that are developing a “teaching” career track as well as a “research” career track. Universities have already been thinking of ways to try to ensure that researchers have enough time for their research (though arguably that isn’t happening for a lot of people), such as buyouts for courses through the use of grant money, reducing teaching loads in departments from (3-3 to 3-2 to 2-2, to even 2-1 in some departments), allowing some people to double up their teaching in one term so as to have another one off entirely from teaching, allowing people to sometimes teach two or more sections of one class to reduce course preps, etc. But I’m not sure we’ve thought in similar ways about people on the teaching track. I’m not sure that those who don’t focus extensively on teaching, who don’t read scholarly research on teaching or reflect significantly on their own teaching practice, have really thought seriously about just how much time it takes to do it well. At least, I have not heard these issues discussed in very many conversations (outside of those between those on the teaching track themselves).

Some examples

I have in the past heard an argument that it might be best for a department to allocate TA hours on the basis of giving priority to research faculty members (Assistant, Associate, Full Professors) over teaching faculty members (Instructor I, Sr. Instructor) and sessional faculty members (not sure where faculty on non-permanent appointments or teaching postdoctoral fellows were to be placed in the priority list). The rationale seems to be that research faculty needed more time to do research and thus need the TA assistance more than teaching faculty. This doesn’t make good sense to me, for a number of reasons (including that making sessionals work even harder for their meagre pay seems to make an unjust situation even worse). Consider that one could make the same argument for teaching faculty as for research faculty: just as research faculty need time for research, teaching faculty need time for teaching. Good teaching is not something one can do in a rush, as I have amply demonstrated to myself this term. The point is that while the argument of research faculty needing time to do their research is common and easily recognized, the structurally similar argument for teaching is not as common and has to be made specifically.

Another issue I have come across at UBC is Instructors being hired a few years after others, being asked to teach more courses than those hired earlier–there may be a push in some Faculties to get Instructors to teach more courses. Alternatively, I have heard of Instructors being asked as the years go by to teach larger and larger classes, without enough TA support to make this teaching work well. I can understand the impetus to try to get Instructors to teach more courses or more students, in part to free up more time for research faculty, and in part to get faculty who love and are good at teaching into more classrooms. Nevertheless, the argument must be made (and was made by the person I am thinking about) that if the university would like to have people in the Instructor track who not only can but do teach well, then there is good reason to limit the number of courses per term one must teach in order to do this teaching as effectively as possible. And we all know that putting more and more students into a course does not always lead to the best results. One can only be so creative in trying to teach effectively to a very large group, especially when one does not have enough TA hours to help with marking.

Instead of extra teaching or extra students, I have heard of a couple of cases of departments or Faculties trying to get Instructors to do a significant amount of service work on top of the teaching they are asked to do. The problem here is the same–such things take time away from teaching as much as they take time away from research. And if we’re serious about having good teaching at the university, we need to consider seriously the conditions under which good teaching is and is not possible.

Conclusions

I have gone on a bit of a rant here, but it actually does not apply specifically to my own situation. My own position is very good in terms of teaching and service. No one has asked me to do an inordinate amount of either, and I am very happy with my place in the University, the Faculty, and my Department. The concerns I raise are not ones that led to my own problems this term; those occurred because I took on too many things, voluntarily. I have learned my lesson in that regard.

But in the process I have had another lesson brought home to me in more than a theoretical respect: the crucial importance for universities of ensuring that teachers have adequate time to teach. Especially for a place (like UBC) that is developing a teaching track with three levels that mirror (somewhat) the levels of research faculty–Instructor I, Sr. Instructor, Professor of Teaching. To reach the highest level one must not only be an excellent teacher, but show leadership in areas such as curriculum development, professional development re: teaching for others (e.g., leading workshops for other faculty and TAs), or research in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. If Instructors are to head towards Professor of Teaching, they simply must be treated like research professors in terms of valuing their time. Otherwise, the rhetoric that research and teaching are equally important rings hollow.

Peer Review of Teaching

The University of British Columbia is moving towards emphasizing and improving the practice of peer review of teaching. This website explains the project and its history:  http://ctlt.ubc.ca/about-isotl/programs-events/ubc-peer-review-of-teaching-initiative/

I have recently received a draft of a set of guidelines for the Faculty of Arts, a draft that is still in development so what I say below may change. But still, I find the whole project very interesting and potentially quite valuable.

Explanation and evaluation of some specific aspects of the program:

1. Data sources for peer evaluation of teaching are wider than just one class visit. The guidelines give several options for other sources, stating that not all of these need to be used. Some options:  course materials, such as syllabi, assignment instructions, even possibly samples of student work; one or more meetings with the instructor; meeting with students; statement of teaching philosophy; past student evaluation results; contributions to curriculum or new course development; innovations in teaching practices and/or use of technology; evidence of professional development re: teaching beyond the classroom; evidence of reflection upon teaching; teaching load (number and types of courses); grad students supervised; grad student publications and awards; information solicited from grad students. This seems an excellent way to get a better picture of someone’s teaching capacities than just visiting one course meeting. Of course, it has to be handled carefully within departments so that what is requested of each person in terms of documentation is relatively uniform so as to avoid perceptions of unfairness. Considerations of workload come in here too–gathering and looking over this information can take a significant amount of time and effort, on the part of both the reviewer and the instructor him/herself.

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Potential problems with comments on students’ essays

[The following is from my monthly reflections journal for the UBC Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Leadership program I’m attending this year (a year-long workshop focused in part on general improvements in pedagogy, but also in large part on learning about SoTL and developing a SoTL project). Warning–a long post!]

I recently read an article by Ursula Wingate of the Department of Education and Professional Studies at King’s College London, entitled The impact of formative feedback on the development of academic writing,” Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education Vol. 35, No. 5 (August 2010): 519-533. I am very interested in this article b/c it deals with a question I myself have wondered, in relation to my teaching in Arts One: why do some students improve so much in their writing over the course of the year, and why do some fail to do so? I was thinking this might be a future SoTL project for me, and I’m glad to see that there is literature on this…so I’ve got some work in the future, looking through that literature!

In this article Wingate reports on a study focused on two research questions:

(1) Can improvements in student writing be linked to the use of the formative feedback?
(2) What are the reasons for engaging or not engaging with the assessment feedback? (p. 523)

The sample was a set of essays by 62 students in a first year course focused in part on writing (the course was part of a program in applied linguistics). Comments on essays were coded according to which category they belong to in terms of assessment criteria, and the researchers compared the comments in each category from an early essay to those on a later essay from each student. They separated students into three main categories: those whose essays showed equally high achievement over the two assignments, those whose marks improved by at least 10% between the two essays, and those whose marks didn’t show much of a difference between the two essay (+ or – 5%).  After this separation they ended up with 39 essays. They list a few reasons why they didn’t include other students in the study, but those aren’t crucial to what I want to comment on here (I think). Mostly they were looking to find why some students improve a lot and some don’t, so the second two groups make sense, but the first group (those who were consistently high achievers) were included to see if they could find out in interviews some useful information about how/why they are academically engaged.

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The ethics of blogging about teaching and learning

I have recently been thinking about something that has only come up since more people have started reading my blog. At first I wrote it mainly for my own reflections, but obviously when I put it online and open to the public I was inviting others to read it too. And some of those who read it are former and future students (not sure about current ones…no one has told me!).

Now, this can bring up a potential ethical issue: when one is blogging about teaching and learning, one will often blog about experiences in one’s own classes. That’s natural and probably expected. But it can also mean that one risks saying things about that experience that could potentially bother some current, former or future students. I don’t just mean that they may not like the sorts of views one has on teaching and learning–that can easily happen anyway, and at least this way potential students may get a sense of those views before registering for a course! Rather, it could be that one may say things that could be viewed as giving a negative opinion of current or former students, even if one doesn’t mean to do so. Obviously a blogger shouldn’t reveal any particular information about students, but what if someone says something negative about a particular class, or some students in a class, how there isn’t a lot of participation going on, or some students aren’t getting things as one would hope they would, etc., and what if some students took offense at that? Maybe a course is a very small one and other students or faculty could determine approximately who one is talking about in a blog post, even if one doesn’t mention any identifying information.

I have tried not to do anything like this, but when things one says are out in public, it may be that they could be taken in ways other than we mean, or we may end up going beyond the line without realizing it.

I wonder if some of us bloggers on teaching and learning should discuss something like a “code of ethics when blogging about classroom experience.” I know I would welcome such a discussion, not so I can police others, but so I can police myself. If one already exists, can someone please let me know?

Leaving the room

I have long had a bit of a pet peeve that I think I’m finally coming to terms with: students getting up and leaving in the middle of the class meeting, whether to just leave for good for the day, or to leave for a little while and then come back (presumably to go to the washroom or make a call or something).

This happens quite often, every year, every class, and it’s happening more and more. For a long time I wondered if it was happening more in my classes than in those of my colleagues, which might explain why no one else complained about it. My partner teaches statistics in the Psychology department, and it rarely happens to him; but that’s easily explained by the fact that his students are often terrified of the class and don’t want to miss anything he says in case it could help them on the assignments and exams.

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Developing a SoTL project

I have just begun attending a year-long faculty certificate program on the scholarship of teaching and learning here at UBC. One of the main things this program is designed to do is to support faculty who wish to start engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL).

Just for quick reference, “scholarly teaching” refers generally to a practice where educators base their pedagogical practices on as much evidence as they can from relevant research, studies devoted to showing what is most effective for what sorts of desired outcomes, etc. SoTL, then, is doing this plus engaging in research oneself, and disseminating that somehow to colleagues (e.g., through conferences, publications, etc.).

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