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?

"Making Teamwork Work" ideas to adapt

 In Inside Higher Ed, Steve Reifenberg discusses teamwork in Making Teamwork Work, and what faculty can do to improve how students work in teams. As a POGIL practitioner the People, Process, and Feedback elements are well worn paths to me, but there was a new route was offered. This quote really stuck out to me, emphasis mine;

In fact, a lot of evidence suggests that diverse teams can be more creative and perform better than homogeneous ones. But that diversity works only if the team members get to know one another and learn something about their teammates’ different vantage points and experiences and the benefits that they can bring to the project.

 I realize I haven't done a lot of that in recent memory, although my initial activities do have some personal questions. Maybe I should look at those first few activities to be intentional about students getting to know each other during that first week. 

Summer 2020 Thoughts - College Trigonometry

For various reasons I am teaching three classes this summer, and because of the coronavirus pandemic I'm teaching them all online through Canvas. Having taught online courses off and on since 2012 I'm comfortable teaching in this modality, but as is my nature, I'm looking to improve the student experience and their ability to learn the course material. I'm writing down the following thoughts so I can look back on my rationale for making certain decisions, to share them with others, and to backtrack on any coding ideas I'd like to follow up on.

Homework

I've taught College Trigonometry a number of times before and have a well developed set of homework questions through WAMAP, which I'll use again. I would like to align homework assignments and questions to course outcomes, and WAMAP has a way to track this so I may give it a shot this term. My goal here would be to give students specific feedback on the areas they need to work on, and to give me a dashboard of where students are doing well, and need help with.

Discussion Forums

I also created a number of group-based active learning discussion forums last term in the switch to remote learning. Below is an example.

I really like having having a first post where students explore an idea or concept through simple exploratory questions. This is in keeping with the POGIL activity writing framework, and works well to get students started thinking about these ideas. I also like that students must share their first post without seeing the work other's did to get a sense of what others are thinking, and to show that incorrect answers are completely normal. What didn't work so well last term was getting students to discuss their answers to these questions. I believe this was partially because their second post was to answer a number of questions in a longer activity, with many students seeing this activity as a 'worksheet' to complete like an additional homework assignment.

Over time my directions to both of these two initial posts changed, making sure to indicate that saying "I don't know." is a perfectly fine answer, but then students would just write that and not go back to the discussion forums. There were situations where students did have engaging discussions starting from these activities, but the students who had these discussions usually had very high affective motivation. The groups that I struggled most with were students who either had low affective motivation, or those who had a very solutions oriented view of mathematics. I will likely need to make explicit the purpose of these discussion forums, and to model what a good discussion forum looks like.

Subsequent replies were supposed to be completed with the following directions;

The above roles were a slight modification of my face-to-face roles, and after the last term it seems clear that I need to make a few changes;

• Roles need to be tied into a deliverable, some 'thing' students do or say at the end of the discussion that shows that they fulfilled the role. For Presenters this could be a group answer or solution to a question where students have to use what they learned in the activity (a POGIL application question), for Reflectors this could be a deeper reflection on the group's work together, for Quality Controller this could be a series of questions about the quality of the group's work, and for Managers this could be a set of questions about who worked well in the group and what students could do to improve. 
• At the end of each week last term I had students complete a group reflection by Thursday so I could post answers to any questions on Friday. For the summer term I think I could have students answer role-based reflection quizzes.
• I assigned roles at the start of each week in a 'Meet your group' discussion forum, but wonder if there are more automatic ways of doing this? I would also really like some kind of notification or color to be the background of discussion forums where they need to post in their roles. CSS maybe?

With multiple deadlines of posts students found it difficult to know when to post. To address this I added reminders in the course calendar of when to post. The reminders are just text, but I figured out you can add links to the assignments themselves. Here is what it looked like in the Canvas calendar;

In playing with the Canvas API I did find a way to create calendar events, and may play with that over the term.

Closer to the end of the course, once groups were well established I included Group Help Discussion Forums, like the following;

This format was borrowed from one of my colleagues Kayoko Barnhill, and is a really nice low effort way to get students talking. For the summer term I may alternate the discussion forums between one to two group-based activity discussion forums, and one of these group help discussion forums. There may be more cognitive load in following different sets of directions at first, but I think students may appreciate the reduced time commitment.

Quizzes

Each week I had a quiz over the course material with five questions and spent the plurality of my time each week grading them and providing feedback. This term I'll be doing similar quizzes, but only providing detailed feedback on two of them. Here are the directions I ended the term with and plan on using this term;

Directions

Submit your work for the quiz. Note the following;

• Your work submission should be the work you did in getting your answers to quiz.
• You will earn partial credit by showing your work, step by step.
• You will not earn any additional credit for submitting the incorrect answers in the quiz and submitting the correct answer in your work.
• You will not earn credit for questions that you answered correctly with no work.
• You will not earn credit for solutions that utilize technology (graphing calculators, WolframAlpha, Desmos, etc.) unless specified to in the question.

I will review all of their questions this term for showing work, but will only grade two of their questions in detail.

Final Assessment

I had a final assessment consisting of twenty questions, ten True or False, and ten similar to the homework. A few of my colleagues had questions about the efficacy of True or False questions in a final assessment, pointing out that they should be fairly easy to determine by students. I agreed, but argued that we believe they are easy to determine if the statement is correct or not, and that is not that purpose of these questions. The purpose is to determine if students know how to determine if the statement is correct or not. Below are three questions and their results;

While all students were able to answer the last question above correctly, a number had difficulty with the first two. This suggests to me that students don't have a developed understanding of either inverse functions, or what cos(-x) means. If that is the case then I would be very concerned about their ability to do well in calculus, and subsequently by not answering this question (and others) incorrectly their chances of passing this class decrease. And really, what is the point of a final assessment in a math class other than to determine if a student is ready for the next class?

I did have students write down their work and submit it to me, and overall the quality and work was consistent with their quiz work submissions. Reviewing all of their work took quite a bit of time, but it was made easier by WAMAP's ability to review individual questions, even though I randomized the order the questions students were given. I did not provide as detailed feedback, but did award partial credit where warranted. 

I did not use proctoring software, and actually gave students a few days to take the final with a time limit of 2 hours 30 minutes. They were required to complete an academic affidavit (below) before accessing the final, which was to automatically release after signing the affidavit.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the final assessment from last term, and will likely keep the format, change some of the questions, and ask for online proctoring if available. 

Weekly Overviews

Each week I also wrote a weekly overview page that included student-friendly learning objectives, their course tasks, additional resources, and how to get help. I may keep these, making sure to include them in student's To-Do list (a feature in Canvas that adds content pages to their course calendars), but may also include some of this information in a Monday email or at least summarize it. I've read over the fall term plans of faculty at other institutions and they seem to like multiple communication methods, or at least find that students respond to them differently. 

In writing down the above I've come to a few tasks for myself;

• Rework the discussion forums to include one to two group activities, and one group help discussion forum each week.
• Reformat reflections to be role-based, possibly sharing the results anonymously with students to further our conversations about group work, what high quality work looks like, and to reflect on our experiences. 
• Try to complete the course outcomes in WAMAP.
• Find a way to automate discussion forum reminders. I'm still learning the ins-and-outs of the Canvas API and of Python, so this may be a goal through the term.
• Update Weekly Overviews and include them in a Monday Week-in-Preview email. On second thought I'm not sure I like having separate ways of communicating with students, I'd rather have everything done through Canvas. Sure, students can opt to get information sent to their email or text, Canvas has pretty robust notification settings. At the same time I've had to deal with multiple communication methods in work place settings, and it can be bewildering to figure out where something came from. It generally seems to run counter to Quality Matters, and the best practices I have seen for online education. I could try it... I'll have to mull it over more. 

Writing this out has given me a good idea of what I need to do today, and I'll try to write something similar for my other two classes this summer Finite Mathematics and Business Math, and Business Calculus. I've already decided I'll be doing something less involved for these two classes, and have quite a few materials already developed.

As always I appreciate any feedback, suggestions, questions, ideas, recommendations for books or articles, accusations, or anything else you'd like to share.

Notes on 'POGIL Best Practices in an Asynchronous Environement'

Here are my notes from my later viewing of the POGIL Best Practices in an Asynchronous Environment webinar by Claire Major and Kevin Forgard.

• Focus is on asynchronous environments, using POGIL principles, not necessarily 'How to do POGIL online.'
• Planning online courses;
• (Claire) Backwards design is a good start (learning objectives, assessments, processes, etc.) Our own experiences (and lack of) in online learning makes teaching online more difficult. 
• (Kevin) Purposeful course design is one thing we have to do for all courses, but online there is much more planning, how to organize learners, how are we going to communicate, more front loading of assignments and materials, etc. 
• (K) If given a course and asked to 'plug-and-play' that can be difficult for some instructors. 
• (K) In thinking about group work and POGIL principles, how are we going to plan to be in the discussion forums, roles, management, etc. What about online skill sets of individuals? (First time online learner, etc.)
• What about blended, hybrid, hy-flex models?
• How can we make an engaged online experience?
• (K) Community of Inquiry Framework - Cognitive presence, teaching presence, social presence. Online courses is not taking face-to-face courses and putting them online, need to adapt. Need to think about formative assessments and how that informs your next steps/JiTT.
• (K) The use of videos doesn't have to be high production. As an example, a finance instructor took a short video in front of a bank and discussed what are banks, why we need them, whats the purpose of them. What about students creating videos?
• (K) Communicating systems beyond emails and discussion boards, Slack and Teams given a more flexible way, less formal to communicate that isn't open to the internet. You as the faculty member are modeling what it means to communicate, and really leading the course. 
• (C) Engagement - the cognitive part (deep thinking, intellectual effort) and the affective part (feeling, sensing). How can we motivate students to learn, wanting to learn, valuing the task, etc. If we don't have that part the course really isn't going to happen. There are things we can do to provide motivation; creating authentic tasks, students create professional products, etc. Make the material deep, meaningful, connected to their personal lives, relevant, etc. 
• (C) We also need to plan for their cognitive engagement. Is it that some students don't try very hard, or don't know how to try very hard? Do students know how to perform deep learning vs. shallow learning. In thinking about our tasks we have to think about how do we move them from lower levels of intellectual engagement to higher levels. We can do that regardless of the task. Passive learning isn't a thing, even in lectures where you have to listen actively. 
• (C) If tasks are 'low level' then they could be moved up Bloom's Taxonomy by developing meta-cognition and/or analysis of these skills. (Ex Solving equations, moving from solving to determining when/how to improve on solving them.) We can create tasks that move students from low-level to high-level cognition. 
• How do we create this engaging environment online? We can do this ad-hoc in our class rooms, but online this is more difficult. 
• (C) Scaffolding! Ex. videos that convey information, we could use scaffolded guided notes. At the start of the term the notes may be fuller, contain more questions, etc. and later on in the term contain less. 
• How to scaffold the group work assignments?
• (K) By the end of the course we want there to be a metacognitive learning development, almost like a secondary learning objective. To get them there we have to scaffold the process. 
• (K) At the start of the term we could have very well defined roles, points for following those roles, etc. As the term goes on we could remove those scaffolds so by the end of the term, students are able to work on their own w/o our micromanaging. This could work for many levels of students.
• (K) Build your discussions with these external motivators (sticks and carrots, grades) in mind, and removing them over the course of the term. We know we've succeeded because there is a natural dialog that happens. It really is about planning. 
• "What's the end goal in mind?" POGIL Process Skills are part of the course and building them in. Let's talk about one of these and how we would build it into an online course. 
• (K) We want students to develop these higher order thinking skills. What about critical thinking? Are the learning outcomes aligned to those critical thinking skills? Can we have students take these ideas to the next level? (Project-based learning. Padlet) Critical thinking is really about getting students to develop mental models and externalize them, what are the schemas, how do they express that? Critical thinking is about creating that evidence, their rational, etc.
• How do we do that online?
• (K) Collaborative tools online. Ex. Google doc creating a common assignment. Using communication tools. Many of us think about the LMS as a delivery tool, but we can also use it to have students create tools. What about a lesson where we ask students to write a lesson, which turns into an electronic artefact? It could be added to a student's portfolio, 
• What about metacognition?
• (C) Structure and build over the term. Start out with short tasks and build up to bigger reflections. If I'm lecturing or in videos, pencutate it with a question "What are you doing right now? Write it down on a piece of paper." Students are surprised by how they lose focus. In videos there may be a question of "Is this now on 1.5x speed?" Create awareness of what their brains are doing?
• (C) Reflect on what students have done and learned. "What is the most important thing you learned?" 
• (C) In online courses have used 'ungrading assignments', where a certain portion of the grade is determined by students and how they want to be graded. Through the term ask a series of T/F questions on how they did. Ex. "I read all the assignments.", "I tried as much as I could have." etc.
• (C) Later on in the course ask students to do self-reflection, how they did as learners, how their preferences for learning helped them, extraneous things prevented them from course work.
• (C) "So what?" or "What now?" reflection assignments where you ask students "So you learned this material, what are you going to do with it?" or "Now that you've learned this material, what are you going to do with it?"
• (C) Create a personal learning environment through a concept map of how to learn the material after the term. 
• (C) Start with small things and build to bigger things to help them think about their learning, and how to think about themselves as learners. 
• What about student-to-student learning? What do I need to do online to create a format that can help that happen? What can I do as an instructor to promote group work?
• (K) Humanizing the experience. Creating a culture in the online course. What is the tone? Humor? Pathos or ethos? How do you model it? Students look to us. 
• (K) POGIL Roles, Reflector Roles, the opportunity to say "What happens in the group?" This is more about reflecting back on the group not instructors.
• (K) Make sure to have a good icebreaker discussion. "What is your gif?" Each week have a 'fun' discussion. At first it should be modeled, but over time it could be 
• (K) Want discussion boards to not be very formal, really want the comment sections on social media, YouTube, etc. Ex. a video of painting a ceiling with comments. How do we get students to do what they do out in the open internet in our classrooms with our learning objectives. 
• (C) Students are going to be communicating with each other. There will be 'back channel' discussion. How to put discussions into productive use?
• (C) Short informal videos. First is introducing themselves and really basic. Need to establish rapport. 
• (C) Build in group-work to ensure communication. Student work is done independently and is then contributed to the group so everyone has something to add. Don't want communication to become a problem.
• (C) In discussion boards have been difficult; wanting to replicate the in-class experience and it becomes really stilted. Discussions are very important, but they have to be structured differently. Weekly create for students that are shared out with students. Must be intentional with how discussion forums are structured to support communication centered on the learning outcomes. Communication for communication's sake isn't very helpful. 
• What about the asynchronous component? Social media is asynchronous communication. Are there timing hints we should build into the course. 
• (C) For me its about inclusiveness. Some students may not be on a laptop with a high-speed internet connection. They may be on a phone. No synchronous sessions. Assume students are not going to have not great internet access.
• (C) To get around this students have used Twitter, use videos for online discussions, but try to use low bandwidth tools and low communication tools.
• Last term we did things because we had to. What advice would you give faculty who are planning for fall. Could by hybrid, online, etc. What should instructors think about now for their fall classes?
• (K) Plan for the fact that students are taking online courses who may not have the resources or tools. Ask students at the beginning what their situation is. Have a survey over your needs and how you can adjust your needs. We want to meet the needs of students, and try to get them the resources they need. 
• (K) Plan on things messing up, so have some contingency plans in place. Mistakes happen.
• (C) Have taught hyflex with online course materials, with f2f sessions that included students Zooming in. Having contingency plans is critical. Be ready to pivot asynchronously. 
• (C) Even if nothing happens, there will be some students who can't come. How will we help those students?
• The biggest frustration of faculty is "How can I be ready for everyone, AND create an active learning environment that achieves my learning objectives, AND has all the high goals I want for students?" Nothing is as it is expected. 
• The traditional POGIL approach would suggest a concurrent synchronous environment (Zoom breakout rooms) but include students/groups who can't meet during that time working through the activities. How can an instructor constructively help them move forward? POGIL facilitators can do that f2f, but how do we do that online in a discussion board? We want students to learn and own the material, but not answer the question for them?
• (C) It is really hard. Refer students to each other, ask students to respond to each other. Give them a way to respond. For example, there is a format for them to follow. Possibly a compliment, ask a question, make a connection, make a comment, etc. There are many formats for guiding responses. (ED: Scaffold the experience!)
• (K) The purpose of these activities and our presence is that we're providing feedback. The feedback should be aligned to our goals for the activity. If the groups are behaving in the same way in a copy/paste, provide individualized content-specific feedback. If students may not have energy for a group activity, provide the feedback 'Step it up.' What is your relationship with students?
• Deadlines. How strict should we be with deadlines?
• (C) For weekly modules there is a routine; watch a video, read, application exercise, study guide, quiz, discuss, and then build towards a final product. The same kinds of activities are due on the same day of the week. Structure and repitition is really helpful. 
• (C) Send an email each week that lays out what they need to be doing. Don't use announcements very much, unsure if students view them. 
• (C) Send a text via GroupMe and students really liked it. Use student tools. Use reminders. 
• (C) Not super strict by an hour or a day. 
• Recommended to read over the following POGIL page; https://pogil.org/teaching-online-during-the-covid-19-crisis
• On the hyflex course, is it like teaching two courses?
• (C) While there is a lot of work that goes into building a good online course, I do think of it as one course. There is an efficiency in having everything online. From now on face-to-face courses will likely have a strong online course site. 
• (K) When you create course material for hyflex, you create a learning artefact. We want to create course materials that can be reused over and over.
• (C) We're creating an interactive online text. 
• Last thoughts. 
• (K) We're in a strange place, and running into a big experiment of how online learning works and can work. We should think about taking ideas in POGIL and expand it online. We will make mistakes. 
• (C) Situation the pedagogy first, and use the technology to support the pedagogy. How will the tech let me do this? Let the pedagogy lead!

Pre-Fall Term Psychic Exorcism: Statistics class ideas on a page

Past two weeks between summer term and the faculty work week has been spent packing (we bought a house!), cooking a lot of good food, watching Star Trek: TNG, and reading a variety of books and articles meant to 'help' my teaching. Not sure if they are helping right now, I just have a lot of ideas floating around in my head that I need to put somewhere, namely here.

• I've been browsing Technology-Supported Mathematics Learning Environments 67th Yearbook (2005) and while focused on a K-12 audience, I have taken up a few ideas from it:
• Teaching Strategies for Developing Judicious Technology Use by Ball and Stacey helped address my concerns of letting students run amok with calculators (mathematical totems I call them in class). They suggest, as is a common theme with many education best practices, that we have to model how to use technology tools. And not just their actual use, but whether to use them or not. I am hoping to incorporate some of the strategies below into my in-class activities, through question prompts, discussions, or demonstrations.
  
  
  
• Comparing Distributions and Growing Samples by Hand and with a Computer Tool by Bakker and Frederickson focused on middle school students and their conceptual development of data, samples, population, and measures of center. This passage in particular struck me:

• We can compare this situation (focus on calculation of measures of center) to the proverbial tip of the iceberg. It is the substance beneath the surface that makes the iceberg float. In this metaphor, mean, median, and mode are the visible tip of the iceberg. What is beneath the visible surface is the knowledge and skills that students really need to understand and sensibly use these measures of center. 

While it is necessary to be able to do the computations, it is much more critical for students to develop an understanding of when these measures are appropriate, and then apply and use these numbers in context. This reinforces the need for students to write these numbers in context, and base decisions on them. My in-class activities should always contain summary questions that ask students to write in words what their calculations are, and what they mean.


• Student Engagement Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty by Barkley offers a wide variety of ways to get students engaged with course material. One I found especially useful was the two-page section on "Try to rebuild the confidence of discouraged and disengaged students." Teaching statistics usually means teaching a student population that has some mathematical knowledge, but are not confident with that knowledge. Below is a list of strategies based on Motivating students to learn by Brophy (2004).
  
  
  
  
  
  I tried having students set goals in my summer Calculus course, asking them to describe what their study plan was for the weekend. I think this helped with planning, understanding consequences, and overall helped students understand responsibility. I will definitely incorporate these questions into post-quizzes for my statistics course.
  
  The entirety of Chapter 8: Tips and Strategies for Promoting Active Learning should be tattooed on my body somewhere. I know and apply a number of the strategies (Activate prior learning, clarify your role, limit and chunk information, etc.) but found the section on "Teach in ways that promote effective transfer." useful. I regularly refer to Bloom's Taxonomy in my classes, but the below table really hit home that your strategies and methods for developing those cognitive tasks should be different for each level of understanding.
  
  

So in summary, for my Fall Statistics course I will:

• Include judicious technology use questions throughout in-class activities. 
• Have questions that ask students to interpret their calculations, and make decisions based on them. 
• In announcements and post-quizzes write comments or questions that have students think about what they have accomplished, set realistic goals, go to different support services, and to reflect on their own cognitive processes. 
• During the start of the course, and during exam review sessions, share the Learning Strategies table and have students determine what a question is asking, at what level, and possibly how they should study for such a question. 

Glad I got those ideas out, and can now refer back to them after the term to keep me accountable. What ideas are floating around in your head for the upcoming term? Any exciting projects, new ways of doing things, assignments, assessments? Feel free to share below.