Lunch and Learn: Creating and Implementing Authentic Assignments

Logo for Lunch and Learn program showing the words Lunch and Learn in orange with a fork above and a pen below the lettering. Faculty Conversations on Teaching at the bottom.On Tuesday, October 15, the Center for Educational Resources (CER) hosted the first Lunch and Learn—Faculty Conversations on Teaching—for the 201-2018 academic year.  Sanchita Balachandran, Associate Director, the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum and Senior Lecturer, Department of Near Eastern Studies; and Sauleh Siddiqui, Assistant Professor, Civil Engineering presented on their experiences using authentic assignments.

As a preface, students often ask why they need to learn something, and wonder when, if ever, they will use course information. Authentic assignments give students “real-world” experience and context, and involve hands-on, active learning.

Students building a kiln for Sanchita Balachandran's Greek Vases course.Sanchita Balachandran is Associate Director and conservator of the JHU Archaeological Museum as well as a lecturer in the Department of Near Eastern Studies. The collection was started in 1882, just six years after the founding of the University, and now occupies a jewel-box of a space in the renovated Gilman Hall, where its collection is at long last appropriately displayed. Balachandran uses the museum collection and “teaches courses related to the identification and analysis of ancient manufacturing techniques of objects, as well as the history, ethics and practice of museum conservation and curation.” She’s long been interested in authentic learning, and has recently taught two courses that exemplify this method: Recreating Ancient Greek Ceramics and Roman Egyptian Mummy Portraits.  [See presentation slides.]

When designing authentic learning assignments Balachandran asks herself a series of questions.

  1. Is this a question I am genuinely curious about and don’t know the answer to? With the course on recreating Greek ceramics she had long wondered how these objects were made (a subject of speculation and debate but no definitive answers). For both Balachandran and her students, it was both “exhilarating and terrifying” to not know what the end results would be. They would be discovering the answers together and this was motivating for the students.
  2. Is the question big enough, and are the stakes high? For her course on Roman Egyptian mummy portraits (Freshman Seminar: Technical Research on Archaeological Objects in the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum) the primary goal was to generate and collect technical data on these ancient portraits for contribution to an international data base. Other collaborators included the J. Paul Getty Museum, the British Museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Walters Art Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago. The students were working with “big players” in the museum world.
  3. Do I have a physical thing that can be the focus of sustained and weekly examination and research? In both courses museum artifacts provided a focus point for the students.
  4. What methodology am I trying to teach? Balachandran’s methodology involved working hands-on with museum objects, consulting with experts and specialists in the field, documenting through writing, photography, and film the processes, and sharing observations and reflections with a broad audience. She noted that it was important that students experience moments of confusion during the process as it teaches them to think critically about, for example, past research, and what applies and doesn’t.
  5. What kind of expertise is need and who has it and will help? Balachandran spends a great deal of time in advance of her courses identifying relevant resources. She noted the value of Skype for bringing subject matter experts and specialists into the classroom from around the world.
  6. Is my class of students disciplinarily diverse? Balachandran advertises her courses broadly. Museum work often involves material scientists, for example. Her Greek vase course had students from materials science, applied mathematics, and biomedical engineering as well as the humanities and social sciences.
  7. Is the class work challenging and is there a hands on component? In each of the courses, Balachandran had students working with the materials that were used in the creation of the original art objects. The students made vases from clay using the techniques known to have been used in Ancient Greece; in the portrait course, they painted with encaustic, the material used by Roman Egyptians. She stressed that this was more than an arts and crafts session. Students studied the material science behind the techniques that were used and gained an appreciation for how the works were created.
  8. Is there an enduring “deliverable” or a regular public component to the class? Students contributed to the international data base in the mummy portraits class and blogged regularly as a part of the Greek vases class. Balachandran used social media (Facebook) to publicize student work. There was also a documentary film—Mysteries of the Kylix—made during the class that has been viewed over 4000 times. She arranged for radio spots on WYPR (Baltimore’s NPR station) and gained exposure through Johns Hopkins publications and the Baltimore Sun newspaper.
  9. Do I see my students as collaborators? Balachandran makes sure that students are given credit in the public components of the course and regularly acknowledges their participation. She sees herself as in the trenches with the students, finding answers to problems together.
  10. Am I ready not to be in control of what we find out? This is perhaps the most difficult step for an instructor to take with authentic assignments, but the one that will allow for the real learning gains. We learn from our failures as well as successes, and that is important for students to experience firsthand.

In conclusion, Balachandran summarized what students learned during her courses:

  • Everything is more complicated than we think and merits repeated examination/re-examination
  • Our work in the classroom produces unique specialized knowledge
  • We can participate in and contribute to scholarly conversations
  • We should broaden our own knowledge base and collaborate beyond our usual networks
  • We must provide access to the knowledge we produce
  • The process of trying to answer a question is more important than answering the question—and will lead to more interesting questions
  • We can/must ask more daring questions.

Siddiqui discussed the main components of authentic learning assignments as he uses them in his courses with the most important being that students should be doing rather than listening. [See presentation slides.] These are:

  • The judgment to distinguish reliable from unreliable information.
  • The patience to follow longer arguments.
  • The synthetic ability to recognize relevant patterns in unfamiliar contexts.
  • The flexibility to work across disciplinary and cultural boundaries to generate innovative solutions.

Example of problem involving transportation networks by Sauleh Siddiqui.In his course, Equilibrium Models in Systems Engineering, students work on real-life examples such as designing transportation networks. To demonstrate an exercise that Siddiqui uses in his course, he passed out clickers to the audience, as his students would use. He then set up a problem involving getting from Washington, DC to Baltimore, MD using a combination of driving and taking a train, with two possible routes. Driving time on each route will vary depending on the number of cars on the road. The model is set for the number of participants/students in the group—if there are 28 participants driving on the same route, the driving part of the trip will take 28 minutes. If there are 5 participants driving on the route, it will take 5 minutes. The train trip is static and takes 30 minutes on each route. Using their clickers, participants vote on a route, A or B. Siddiqui then show the histogram of the vote, and participants can change their vote based on the road time component. As participants change votes, the driving time will increase or decrease on each choice. Voting continues until eventually a state of equilibrium is reached and the driving time on the two routes is equal.

Siddiqui then throws in another component. What happens if you add another variable, a new road? Participants can now vote for three options. Ultimately his students will see (as did the participants at the Lunch and Learn) that sometimes a third option can worsen the situation rather than improve it.

In his classes, students work with actual examples taken from New York City, Germany, South Korea, and other places, to examine the factors that went into the design process, and analyze what went wrong. Siddiqui feels that engineers are not necessarily taught to work with real-life situations and this can lead to poor design. Engineers need to understand the factors that impact actual human decision making in order to build successful solutions.

In the discussion period that followed the presentation, Balachandran and Siddiqui agreed that students are motivated by working with real-life problems. Siddiqui noted that his students still had to “slog through” doing the mathematics behind the exercises, but valued understanding both sides.

In discussing how to gauge whether an assignment or project was too big or too small, it was agreed that it is important to scaffold larger projects, build support structures, and allow for flexibility. It was acknowledged that students will struggle with ambiguity. It is important with authentic assignments to be clear that the goal is not so much to find an answer as to go through a process.

Both presenters agreed that setting up these authentic learning experiences—assignments, projects, and courses, can be time consuming and challenging. But, for both, the benefits for students have been substantial and they will continue to explore the possibilities for future classes.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Sources: Lunch and Learn Logo, slides from Balachandran and Siddiqui presentations

Midterm Course Evaluations

Many of us are reaching the mid-semester mark and students are anticipating or completing midterm exams. Perhaps you are in the throes of grading.  Now is a good time to think about letting your students grade you, in the sense of evaluating your teaching. Think of this as a type of formative assessment, an opportunity for you to make corrections to your teaching strategies and clarify student misconceptions.

There are several ways to obtain feedback and these evaluations do not needTwo buttons, green with a thumbs up and red with a thumbs down. to be lengthy. Examples and resources are explored below. Popular among instructors I’ve talked to are short, anonymous surveys, offered either online or on paper. Blackboard and other course management systems allow you to create surveys where student responses are anonymous but you can see who has responded and who has not, making it easy to track. You want to keep these evaluations focused with three or four questions, which might include: What is working in the class/what is not working? What change(s) would you suggest to improve [class discussions/lectures/lab sessions]? What is something you are confused about? Have you found [specific course assignment] to be a useful learning activity?

As the Yale Center for Teaching and Learning states on their website page Midterm Student Course Evaluations: “Midterm course evaluations (MCE) are a powerful tool for improving instructors’ teaching and students’ learning.  … MCE provide two critical benefits for teaching and learning: the temporal advantage of improving the course immediately, and the qualitative benefit of making teaching adjustments specific to the particular needs and desires of current students. In addition, MCE generally produce better quality feedback than end-of-term evaluations since students have a shared stake in the results and instructors can seek clarification on any contradicting or confusing responses.” The Yale site offers useful examples, strategies, and resources.

Michigan State University Academic Advancement Network offers a comprehensive guide with Mid-term Student Feedback, which includes research citations as well as examples. Here, too, you will find a list of resources from other universities on the topic, as well as more in-depth methods to gain student feedback. There is also a section with tips on effective use of information gained from student feedback.

A sampling survey-type midterm evaluations can be found in PDF format at the UC Berkeley Center for Teaching and Learning: Teaching Resources: Sample Midterm Evaluations. This document will get you off and running with little effort.

Ideally you will be using the results on the midterm exam or other learning assessment as a gauge along with the teaching evaluations. If the learning assessment is indicating gaps in content understanding, you can see how it aligns with feedback gained from the student evaluations. The value is that you can make timely course corrections. Another plus—students will see that you are genuinely interested in your teaching and their learning.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: Pixabay.com

We Have a Solution for That: Student Presentations, Posters, and Websites

Some of our faculty are moving away from traditional end-of-semester assessments, such as term papers and high-stakes final exams, in favor of projects that can be scaffolded over a period of time. These may include having students share their research in an oral presentation, poster, or website. The question is, how do you support their research output? Fortunately, we have some solutions!

If your students are doing either oral presentations or electronic posters, check out Prezi Next, the new version of the online presentation application. [See our post on the original version, The Power of Prezi, from October 2014.] The new version, which runs on HTML5 rather than Adobe Flash, offers many more templates, a more intuitive interface, supports more file types, and is easier to navigate while presenting. While Prezi is great for a linear presentation, one advantage is that presentations can be designed to be non-linear, useful for facilitating a less formal discussion for example.

Looking for a presentation software that allows for easy collaboration among student team members? Check out Google Slides. Like Google Docs and Google Sheets, access to the slides can be shared and multiple users can work on the sides remotely and simultaneously—there’s even a chat feature to make group editing easy. There are some nicely designed templates, themes in Google-speak, and you can easily integrate content from Google spread sheets and documents. There is also a downloadable version of Google Slides for desktop use.

If you don’t like the templates in PowerPoint or Google Slides, check out Slides Carnival, which has many creative templates available for download, including fonts, icon sets, maps, and charts, graphs, and tables styled for each template. These work with both PowerPoint and Google Slides.

If you are looking to have your students create a website, Google Sites has recently come out with a new version of its website creation application. When you sign into Google Sites you can choose to use the classic version or the new one. The new version gives you fewer options (just six themes available currently), but is a snap to use, being essentially drag and drop. There no messing with HTML code, and it is easy to tie into the content from your other Google apps. There is an “add editors” feature that will facilitate group work. It’s a great option when you want your students to be focused on creating content, not on struggling with technology.

We also have some resources for students doing presentations and posters—online videos on creating and designing effective PowerPoint presentations and posters, as well as some handouts on these topics. See Presentation Strategies on the CER website. If your students (or you) are looking for freely-available and rights-free visual resources (images and multimedia) check out CER’s Visual Resources page.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: cc Wikimedia Commons