A Simple Path Forward: Trading digital clutter for physical simplicity.

I talked to my 'rabbi' the other day, a senior faculty member in the department, and we talked over his observation of my class. He said a lot that stuck with me, but the thing that rings out now is my class has a lot of 'bells and whistles' in the number and type of assignments I have. Maybe its time to reduce all of them for something more simple, for both my students and myself.  

My colleague and I also kvetched about the problem of students just disappearing. A good 10%-30% of my class has just stopped showing up after a few weeks, and in talking to others this isn't unusual. I wonder what I could do to persuade more students to not withdraw. Is there some phrase, some way of describing learning that I can share that makes them more receptive to sticking with the struggle of learning? Some change to assignments, framing of practice, a culturally relevant example or application that will inspire them to stay? If I were to quit teaching I wouldn't be able to answer these questions, and would be left wondering 'What if?'

In listening to the audiobook of Elements of Choice by Eric J. Johnson I wonder if I can shape a student's plausible path towards them choosing to lean into learning the course material. Can I reduce the choices students have to one where they complete assignments? I keep circling back to the following course structure for next Fall;

• No online assignments. The LMS is a place just for grades, announcements, and files.
• After each class is a list of two to three things students should do before the next class session, such as;
• Complete any remaining questions from the in-class activity from Monday's class. 
• Complete the following Exercise questions from Section 1.6
• Read and take notes on Sections 2.1 and 2.2
• Review your returned Assessment 5 and complete the Assessment Reflection Form for up to two questions you want to reattempt.
• Check that students completed this list of tasks for 10% of their course grade. (Maybe during the Weekly Assessment?)
• Weekly Assessments with 5-6 questions from the prior week, that comprise 60% of the course grade, allowing reattempts for up to two questions which amounts to around 40% of each assessment. They can't ignore the material, they have to know something by the Weekly Assessment. 
• The Final Assessment will comprise 30% of the course grade, no reattempts.

I can hear my more senior colleagues cackle in delight as I essentially 'reinvent' college courses from 30 years ago. Yet really stripping down a course, getting away from all the distractions of the online environment, would address some of what I am worrying about. The LMS has this headspace of "I should be doing something here." yet to many students it isn't clear what they should be doing. The ten to thirty percent I lose each term may be leaving because they don't know what to do, and by providing clear directions of what to do will hopefully give them the specific guidance they need. Also, taking the uncertainty of online assignments away and putting the work in front of them on pencil and paper will get them to the work quicker, and in a more focused way.

Hard Thoughts: Answers you have to hear again and again.

My last post got some attention, and after talking to others and thinking through the questions I posed at the end (still more to do to really answer them in full) I thought I'd share where I'm at. This is also a letter to my future self for when I have similar thoughts, as I am noticing a cycle of disillusionment and resolve that seems to happen every 2-3 years. 

Yes, teaching with active learning is difficult. You have chosen to teach on hard mode, as you are not only trying to help students learn math but also how humans learn; through experiences, reflection, and engaging with others. Yet humans also want things to be easy, so posing learning as something you have to actively struggle with is going to get apathy, resistance, and even anger. There may be students who can't do what you ask, which leads to another hard question; are you ready to change your teaching practice to be more inclusive of students who may not be prepared mathematically, or who may not be ready to be put in charge of their learning? The answer has to be yes if you want to help students move from where they are to learn the course outcomes, and this change should refine what you want students to struggle with. 

So what can I do? I can address students who are not mathematically prepared by confirming prerequisites are fulfilled, running a prerequisite assessment at the start of the term. Taking time to carefully grade these assessments will allow me to identify unprepared students I need to counsel to take another course. (I don't believe it is equitable to let a student continue in a course if a faculty member has evidence that the student will be unlikely to be successful. Every student deserves a reasonable chance of success at the start of the term.) This assessment would also let me identify where to offer targeted practice of these skills when they are needed for underprepared but qualified students. Throughout the term I can also point to prerequisite skills students should have before starting topics that require them. I can address students who may not be ready to be put in charge of their learning by being explicit with how learning happens in the course at the start of the term, and following through on that model throughout. A good practice has been to share with students how many of them have completed the homework before giving out the assessment over the material from that assignment.

Still, you're not going to reach everyone. One of the hardest parts of the job right now is the DFW rate in my current courses. For my last three courses it ranged between 50% to 60%. Meaning more than half or the students who are enrolled in my courses after the first week end up with a non-passing grade. I know there are many forces acting on students, and they come from inequitable systems, yet I am tasked with helping students learning the course material. In talking to others these rates are not unusual, but I am driven to be good at my job.

Do what you can with who you have. A poignant moment happened the prior Friday during an active learning community of practice I run. I don't have the number of people I once had, but the quality of our conversations has certainly deepened. Two educators with more years than I shared that we can only reach the students who are in the classroom. If students choose to withdraw from a class it isn't clear if that is something I can control. I can certainly ask them which requires having a copy of the initial course roster with their email addresses, and messaging them once I notice that they have dropped. 

You feel stuck because the system is not setup to support students, and you want to. Decreasing state support of higher education, the demand to be more 'efficient' in education, increased income inequality, decreases in both numeracy and literacy, and other forces beyond your control are making it difficult for students to spend the necessary time and energy on earning a college degree. You can either fight these tides, or use your energy and attention to support the students you can, while advocating for change. 

Hopefully the above will help my future self not get so frustrated, and move on to solutions I can't see right now. What are cycles you repeat? What would you say to your future self?

Hard Thoughts: Is it time to move on or did I have a rough year?

I listened to the podcast What the Canvas Hack Revealed by College Matters from The Chronicle (transcript and article) and it gave me a lot to think about, reflecting back on this academic year. Like many in higher education, this year has been really hard for me, my teaching, and working with my college. The crisis in higher education given student use of AI in place of their own learning has made teaching any course difficult, with online courses amounting to constant Turing tests. No educator goes into this profession to be a cop, and yet how can we assess what students know if it isn't clear if students are the ones responding. Moreover, everyone is asking the long overdue question "What does it mean to learn?" which pulls at the rug beneath everything in higher education. 

Between the long term trends described in the podcast (increasing costs, efficiency focus, cognitive offloading) and what I am encountering in my classes and institution, I am beginning to wonder about the risk to reward ratio of staying in higher education as an educator. There doesn't seem to be counteracting forces that would slow these trends, other than faculty and staff pushing back as they can and have the energy for. Employers, arguably the ultimate 'customer' of higher education, could push back, but it isn't clear they'll have a huge need for college graduates in the near or far future. Academic integrity for its own sake doesn't seem to be enough to moderate student use of AI, given the constant (sometimes perceived) push for high GPAs that will differentiate students in the workplace. 

The COVID pandemic accelerated a number of other trends, notably in K-12 education, and we are seeing the then 7th and 8th graders enter college. Based on what I have seen this year on weekly quizzes where they can't use a calculator, my students' biggest struggle is with basic computations; multiplying two numbers, adding two digit numbers, any operation with fractions, etc. If I can't rely on student's basic numeracy to answer questions and to generate sufficient information to generalize, and therefore understand bigger concepts, how do I get them to understand this new information?

The pipeline of students from K-12 is making me question some of the bedrock principles my teaching is based on. Group-based active learning requires some amount of common knowledge and prerequisites. Having a student who does not have a sufficient understanding of prerequisites puts them at a disadvantage, and makes group construction of concepts and ideas very limited. These students end up being passive receivers of the discussions other students are having, and I worry that this just perpetuates the passivity in their learning that K-12 has engendered in them. It also requires some affective domain skills such as oral communication, working with others, and general sociability. Student development of these skills during their K-12 education was negatively impacted by the pandemic, leading to a situation where I have observed about a quarter of my classes not engaging with students their age. 

Each term I share that I teach the way I do for three reasons; 1. Research shows it is effective in learning math. 2. It helps students develop necessary affective domain skills. 3. I want them to make a friend. Another way to put the above is that I am unsure if these reasons are sufficient anymore. 

The push for Guided Self-Placement (students place themselves in math courses based on their comfort with various math equations and expressions, no 'work' required) would have students place into a math course not based on what they know, but what they perceive they know. My department has luckily pushed back, but we are a minority in our state, and I believe it is only a matter of time. If Guided Self-Placement happens at my institution, it isn't clear to me that I could teach in my institution even if I wanted to. 

Dual credit in general is a fine goal, yet with its focus on efficiency for student's time (why take a class that just counts for just high school) it is another effort in alignment with these trends. I am happy to have any student who is sufficiently prepared take any of my classes, and yet it isn't clear to me that the sheer number of students being pushed to take dual credit classes is appropriate, given the above. I do think the 'demographic cliff' high education will face, the decrease in birth rates from 2008 leading to lower college enrollments, is a bit overblown. Shifts in who attends college has happened historically (GI Bill, technical education, etc.) but that requires research into new possibilities, investment, and building new relationships. I get the sense no one knows what direction to move towards.

Being around 45 I still have 15-20 years of working life left I am getting concerned that these trends will lead to substantial changes in students, how to teach them, and whether my teaching philosophy supports these new students. I am trying a few things in the next couple months to answer some heavy questions:

1. When I strip away the institutional friction, does the core act of teaching math still bring me professional utility? Joy? A sense of purpose?
2. Am I adhering to active learning principles with fidelity, or am I doing something wrong? 
3. Are other faculty experiencing the same 50% disengagement rate that I am seeing across in-class and online sections?

What questions would you ask to diagnose if these feelings are the result of burnout from a hard year, or are more of a signal that it is time for a profession change? Are you going through something similar? I'm interested to hear how any teacher or educator is navigating through these trends.

Spring 2026: Improving Learning Objective Alignment in Coreq College Algebra - What to do to make things more transparent for students.

This term I am making two changes to my college algebra course, and the second is to have better alignment of course activities and student-facing directions of the weekly learning objectives. This is informed by my attempts at standards based learning, that I've ultimately backed off of. In short the grading methods got complicated quickly, which left students unsure of their grade and where they were in the course. I am still holding out for another chance at using standards for grades, and am looking for ways to do that this conference season. If you find some interesting ones, let me know. 

Best practices in teaching tell us that learning objectives should be clear to students, and all parts of the learning process should align to that learning objective. 

• There should be some framing of the learning objective, why it is important, how it connects to other areas of the course or course of study. I have this in a Weekly Objective page that introduces the week and the learning objectives for that week.  
• There should be some introductory activity exposing students to the content of the learning objective. I use Note-Taking Assignments to have students take notes on the textbook before class, using it as an opportunity for them to take notes in a few different methods throughout the term to figure out what works for them. 
• There should be some kind of instruction of the learning objective. My in-class active learning activities focus on this. 
• There should be some place students can practice the learning objective in a formative way. Our online homework system Knewton and the exercises in the textbook form this practice for my students. 
• There should be a way to assess if students have learned the associated knowledge, skills, and abilities found in the learning objectives.

These learning objectives really provide clarity to students and educators of what the real goals and stakes are in a course. 

I have all of these course activities aligned to these learning objectives, yet I don't have consistent student-facing messaging around how these activities support their learning. To address this I have started doing the following;

• Including the learning objectives in the daily agenda. This is a sheet with student group and role assignments, a list of what we'll be doing today, student process goals, my faculty goals, feedback from students from last class, and how many students completed the pre-class assignments. 
• Review activities to ensure they match the learning objective, and find places to ask students if the questions in the activity address the learning objectives in the daily agenda.
• Connecting where pre-class assignments support the learning objective in the activity. This requires some level of review of both the pre-class assignment, and the activity, which I have to do anyway. 
• For assessments I allow students to retake two questions from the assessment, if they complete an Assessment Reflection Form. I've adjusted the form to ask students which learning objective the questions they want to retake are from. 

These are just a few ways I am trying to make learning objectives meaningful to students, showing how they touch various parts of the course. 

What do you do to ensure students understand the learning objectives in your course? Is it not that important, or something you repeat regularly? I'd love to learn more about what others do, selfishly sure to learn from their experience, but also how this might change in different disciplines to support my colleagues in other departments. 

Spring 2026: Improving Process Skill Development in Coreq College Algebra - What to do instead of things students hate.

This term I am teaching a corequisite support version of College Algebra at my home institution, and as an educator I am constantly tweaking and changing my courses. There are two changes I'd like to make this term; the first on process skill development which I'll describe here, and the second on better alignment of course activities and student-facing directions of the weekly learning objectives, which I'll talk more about in another post this week.

Process skills, success skills, or foundational skills, are the skills students need to develop and use in order to learn. There are a wide variety of them out there (I also like the CAST UDL Guidelines, and there is overlap with the NACE Career Readiness Competencies) and I use the Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) Process Skills; Teamwork, Oral and Written Communication, Management, Information Processing, Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Assessment. Here are the three areas Process Skills will come about in my class this term. 

1. Class Session Agenda - Each class session I make a student-facing agenda that includes group assignments, role assignments, process skill for the day, faculty goal for the day, learning outcomes, exit ticket feedback, and how many pre-class assignments were submitted. The inclusion of the process skill is meant to help students identify the specific skills they are developing, and to nudge them towards behaviors that will help them learn in groups. I then also use it when asking students to reflect about their progress as a group in answering questions together. 
   
   
2. Craft Your Learning - Corequisite support courses have three goals; help students develop prerequisite knowledge to support their understanding of course-level material, have more time for course-level content, and to develop the necessary skills to be successful in a college-level math course. I used to have specific assignments about organizing a binder, reflecting on procrastination, and other skills, but students rarely completed them, and when they did complained about them.
   
   To help with this I started having conversations with the class about what they struggled with. Over time these conversations came around to the same skills I was trying to help them develop, but it wasn't until they recognized the need for the skills themselves did they actually start engaging in these assignments. I have now a developed protocol on how to structure these conversations, focused on having students discuss what they are struggling with in small groups referencing the POGIL Process Skills, and collecting this information anonymously to share out with the class. We then talk about what kind of assignment or activity would have students address this struggle, and then talk about what they did the following week. If you are interested in hearing more and seeing examples, I will share out more during the upcoming POGIL Practitioner Collaborative in June. 
   
   
3. Weekly Process Skill - One thing I would like to try is to have a specific process skill for the week, that I integrate into the goals for the week, exit tickets, and course announcements. I thought I might have this list before the start of the term, but I'm realizing it may be better to think through it as I do my weekly preparations.
   

How have you used process skills in your courses? Yours may not be the ones I use, and students seem to benefit from having the 'hidden curriculum' be made visible and direct.