Lunch and Learn: Community-based Learning

Posted on December 19, 2018 by Macie Hall

On Wednesday, December 12, the Center for Educational Resources (CER) hosted the second Lunch and Learn for the 2018-2019 academic year. Shawntay Stocks, Assistant Director of Engaged Scholarship, Center for Social Concern; and Dora Malech, Assistant Professor, Writing Seminars; presented on Community-based Learning.

Shawntay Stocks opened with a presentation on community-based learning (CBL) at Johns Hopkins speaking about how her organization—the Center for Social Concern (CSC)—can assist faculty who wish to use the CBL pedagogical model in their courses (see slides here). The Center for Social Concern is the part of the Homewood Student Affairs division of Johns Hopkins University that focuses on volunteerism and community engagement; Community-based Learning is just one of their programs.

Stocks described CBL as “…a pedagogical model that connects classroom-based work with meaningful community involvement and exchange. Within the context of equitable partnership, community organizations and students mutually benefit from the CBL experience both by meeting course objectives and addressing community-identified goals. Students may engage with groups including, but not limited to: nonprofits, government agencies, grassroots collectives, and other educational institutions.” She noted that collaboration is the key for faculty, students, and community groups in pursuing mutual goals and course objectives, and that faculty must provide adequate preparation for their students to engage in CBL. The Center for Social Concern offers training for faculty, stipends to support faculty and community partners, and provides a TA for courses using CBL. At the core CBL is an equal partnership. The community partner may not have an advanced academic degree, but does have expertise, relationships, and contextual knowledge to bring to the table.

Students benefit because CBL allows them to connect theory to real-life experience and to think critically, in our case, about urban life in Baltimore. They have the opportunity to work collaboratively and collectively and gain an understanding of diverse perspectives. The skills they develop will be transferable to other aspects of their lives. Students often transform their thinking about the city in positive ways as they gain knowledge through reflection.

How can faculty ensure a successful CBL experience? Stocks emphasized the importance of “doing your homework” in terms of the community partner. You should think about these questions: What are the areas of commonality? How do your academic goals and their programmatic goals overlap? What are the expectations on both sides? What types of training will students need for a successful partnership? What are the logistics for partnership meetings? What commitment is being made (e.g., one semester, multiple semesters or academic years) and what is the potential for an ongoing partnership? What type of action are you planning for your CBL course—research, service, community building, advocacy, dialog?

Critical for the student experience are reflection and assessment. Reflection deepens learning. Instructors must allow for students to express their discomfort, frustration, anxiety, anger as well as their positive, affirmative feelings. It’s important to have conversations around the emotional impact of their experiences and acknowledge difficulties. Assessment of learning can be done through journaling, discussion, essays, or presentations.

At the end of the course there should be a project evaluation that includes the community partner. How did the partnership work? Were the learning goals accomplished? What would make the partnership work better? What were the pitfalls? How can these be navigated next time? CBL courses may be iterative processes and such evaluation will allow for continuous improvement of the experience for all involved.

Dora Malech won the Crenson-Hertz Award for Community Based Learning and Participatory Research from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Social Concern in 2016. For the past several years she has worked with CSC, partnering with the Writers in Baltimore Schools (WBS) program to give her Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars students a CBL experience. The WBS website has more information on this partnership. Malech shared her experiences with developing and teaching her course, Poetry and Social Justice.

Malech teaches undergraduate and graduate students now, but previously, at the University of Iowa, she directed a K-12 outreach program, which gave her an appreciation for community partnerships. In thinking about CBL, an important component for her is the concept of cultural humility, which comes from social work, a profession that emphasizes diversity and cultural competency. This idea of respecting the different experience of others and being open to learning from them works well for those interested in implementing CBL.

When she was first considering CBL, she made a lot of phone calls to prospective partners. Malech recommends meeting face to face, having coffee, getting to know the person. She ended up partnering with Patrice Hutton from the Writers in Baltimore Schools program. The program starts with Middle School students who participate in “in-school, after-school, and summer programming that builds skills in literacy and communication while creating a community of support for young writers.” Malech’s Writing Seminars students worked with Baltimore City high school students who had been program participants.

For the students on both sides, it is important to frame the relationship as a two-way transaction. The high school students have the experience of growing up in Baltimore City. They have cultural wealth and knowledge, and can articulate the community concerns. These students are college bound, but university culture is very much an abstraction for them. The JHU students may know nothing about inner-city life; the high school students give them the benefit of their urban experience, while the JHU students can help break down the mystery of what college life will be like for their high school partners.

Malech is explicit with her students about the course requirements. Participation in events outside of class time is mandatory—these include field trips, interview assignments, literary readings. Students are expected to get to these events on their own. Purchase of a Maryland Transit Administration CharmCard is recommended, and students should become familiar with public transportation such as local buses, light rail and the MARC train to DC. Due to logistics (the high school students are coming from all across Baltimore City), and to the high school students’ expressed preference, the class meetings are held on the JHU campus.

Malech said her role is to be explicit that the text is the community itself and that the students will build it together in the classroom. An on-going class blog—Poetry and Power—captures student writings. From the web site: “POETRY & POWER is the website and blog of “Poetry & Social Justice,” a Community Based Learning class that brings 15-20 Baltimore City high school students and 15- 20 Johns Hopkins University undergraduate students together to explore the intersection of poetry and social justice. They’ll write and read poetry together, engage with visiting writers, interview local poets and activists, and hold public performances of their own.”

As Stocks emphasized, Malech also views critical reflection as a key component for CBL. She uses the DEAL Model for Critical Reflection from Patti Clayton’s web site PHC Ventures (Mission: To build capacity for and generate best practices around community-engaged teaching, learning, and scholarship.), which Malech recommends as a great resource for those engaging in CBL.

A discussion followed the presentations. Stocks gave examples of different models of CBL. In one case a STEM faculty member and his class developed course modules to augment STEM programming at Margaret Brent Middle School. She fielded questions about whether it would be possible for Engineering capstone courses to use CBL with identified partners, specifically whether Civil Engineering students might partner with city agencies to identify and resolve infrastructure issues. This is an intriguing possibility that may be pursued with faculty and deans in the Whiting School of Engineering.

A question was posed about how to get departmental buy-in and funding for CBL courses. Malech noted that she had to prove that the concept was pedagogically sound and not overwhelming for the students. Strong positive feedback from the students showed that this was a high-impact teaching model. She said that she worked very hard to make the course a success. Getting positive publicity can be a strong incentive for department backing. Media attention acts as a “witness” to the process and as pressure for the administration to continue a project. She also presented at conferences and made the connection between strong writing and community engagement. Malech stated that culture change is an uphill battle where positive community feedback can really help. Being flexible and willing to scale up or down is important as well. The JHU President’s Office is advocating for community engagement, which may also be useful in getting departmental approval.

Stocks reminded us that CSC has resources for faculty and can assist even if someone wants to start on a small scale and build up to greater community engagement. Mike Reese, who uses CBL in his Sociology courses (focused on Baltimore City) noted that CSC had helped him get a JHU van to transport students for field work assignments. Stocks referenced the CSC website page for faculty wanting to use CBL—there are resources listed. She invited interested faculty to come have a conversation and learn more.

A question was asked about how a course could be restructured to include a CBL component. Faculty who have implemented CBL agreed that the activities must be the core course fabric. Traditional assignments can be swapped out for CBL assignments; class time can be used, or time outside of class can be substituted depending on the activity. Both the Center for Social Concern and the Center for Educational Resources can assist faculty with course planning.

Several participants who have used CBL in their courses stressed the importance of structuring and scaffolding the experience for students to assure that they buy into the concept. Malech emphasized that students should be prepared for the fact that there will be a certain amount of chaos inherent in the program, and that interpersonal relationships can be challenging. That is part of any real-world experience, but if students are prepared, they will be able to adapt. Another faculty CBL user noted that it is never a majority of students who feel “unsettled” by the realities of city life and partnership, but for those who are it is important to keep communication lines open and be flexible. And someone else noted that the “chaos factor” is also part of the equation for faculty and doesn’t go away even after multiple experiences offering CBL courses. In her experience, the chaos is well worth the meaningful, long-term impact for students. Malech commented, “That’s what college should be all about.”

Ahmed Ibrahim, Senior Education Research Consultant in the Center for Educational Resources, has been analyzing data on CBL courses taught at JHU from 2015 to 2017. He shared that students indicated that the best aspect of CBL courses is the personal interaction. Students asked for negative aspects made comments when the course was not well-structured.

Mike Reese, Director of the Center for Educational Resources asked Stocks and Malech what the best thing about CBL has been for them. Stocks answered that she enjoys creating CBL partnerships and wants to further engage faculty in a CBL learning community. For Malech, it has been the publishing and presenting as an educational expert outside her field of poetry. In terms of the learning process, she has come to think differently about course content. While originally she was focused on social justice and lived experience for the high school students, they challenged her to allow them to be creative writers. She’s appreciated the chance to be more open about her own assumptions of what the community partner wants and needs.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Sources: Center for Social Concern, Community-based Learning web site: https://studentaffairs.jhu.edu/socialconcern/programs/community-based-learning/

Quick Tips: Tweeting to Learn

Posted on November 9, 2018 by Macie Hall

Today it seems that everyone is tweeting, from politicians to celebrities to regular folks. And yes, even academics are tweeting. For high profile users, Twitter allows users to quickly get out a message to followers, whether political or public relations. For academics, it can be a great way to share conference takeaways, timely articles, or, in the case of Johns Hopkins University Professor of History, Martha S. Jones, to stimulate class discussion. A recent article in the JHU Hub, History Class Meets the Digital Age, details Jones’ practice.

Jones thinks that giving students skills in using social media is as important as teaching content and having students learn to do research. “Which is why this semester, six sessions of Jones’ History of Law and Social Justice course are taking the form of Twitter chats. Over the period of an hour, Jones posts 10 questions related to that unit’s reading, and students—along with anyone else who happens to drop in on the chat—respond and discuss. Far from an afterthought, the chats—conducted using the #lawsocialjustice hash tag—are a central element in the course and determine 30 percent of a student’s grade.”

Just as they might do in class, these students are participating in a discussion, albeit one they can contribute to while in their pajamas lounging at home as easily as in the quiet space of the library or while sitting on the quad enjoying the fall weather.

“The questions are rapid-fire, with a new one popping up every six minutes. Students are required to answer each question, which means that responses often overlap, but also that all 20 can fully participate in a way not always possible in a traditional class setting. Responses are limited to Twitter’s 280 characters, which encourages students to distill their thoughts, though many are also learning to “thread” their responses to allow for greater depth.”

And the audience is not limited to the instructor and classmates; Jones invites her 8,000 plus Twitter followers to join in as well. These additional voices enrich the students’ learning experience as they become teachers themselves byclarifying or providing nuance to their responses when questioned by others on the chat. In some cases, the followers contribute additional expertise to the conversation. Jones appreciates the give and take with a larger community as well the view that students get into her roles as a professional/scholar/researcher—something that undergraduates may not always see or have access to in their relationships with faculty.

If you are interested in using Twitter in your class, read the full article to get more detail. In addition, two previous Innovative Instructor posts have looked at using Twitter in the classroom and will provide additional resources: Using Twitter in Your Course (December 10, 2014) and Tweeting the Iliad (November 22, 2016). Faculty have asked about whether students might have reservations about setting up a Twitter account. If tweeting will be a requirement for your course, it would be wise to make that clear in the course description and again on the first day of class. Student response to tweeting in Jones’ course and to the courses described in the previous blog posts on Twitter have been overwhelmingly positive. The Innovative Instructor welcomes comments on your pedagogical experiences with Twitter specifically or social media more generally.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: Twitter blue logo https://about.twitter.com/press/brand-assets

Lunch and Learn: Creating and Implementing Authentic Assignments

Posted on October 31, 2017 by Macie Hall

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.

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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

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

Lunch and Learn: Using Videos in Your Course

Posted on May 1, 2017 by Macie Hall

On Friday, April 21, the Center for Educational Resources (CER) hosted the fourth and final Lunch and Learn—Faculty Conversations on Teaching—for the 2016-1017 academic year. Jane Greco, Associate Teaching Professor Chemistry and Alison Papadakis, Associate Teaching Professor Psychological and Brain Sciences, presented on “Using Videos in Your Course.”

Papadakis presented first (see slides). She teaches the introduction to abnormal psychology course, where students learn about symptoms, causes, and treatment of common psychological disorders, and an upper level course that expands on this content. Although she has wrestled with using videos in that they might be seen as entertainment, she likes the fact that they have the advantage of grabbing and focusing student attention. Studies have shown that student attentiveness drops off after about 15 minutes of lecture time, so well-timed videos can provide a way to bring them back to task. Papadakis noted that carefully selected video content can help bring dry or complicated content to life, foster discussion, challenge students to apply concepts to practice, build empathy, and set the mood. In her upper level course, she uses videos showing psychotherapists in practice, pausing the videos at strategic points to ask students what they would do next in the particular situation.

Papadakis offered several examples of her use. The first, a clip from The Office, is used to help students understand the concept of classical conditioning. She explains the concept first, shows the video, then tests the students understanding of the concept using clickers. The class then discusses the complexities of applying the concept.

In a second example, Papadakis showed videos of an OCD patient and her treatment. As these videos are from a textbook publisher’s DVD, they can’t be shared here. Such videos bring complex phenomena to life, provide insight and build empathy, help the instructor test understanding of concepts, and foster discussion. Papadakis had another example, showing the hallucinations common to schizophrenia, that she uses in a similar way—to help deepen student understanding and learning of a complex disorder.

A final example showed how she used a video of students rapping about the value of learning statistic analysis relevant to analyzing data in her discipline to set the mood, make learning fun, and decrease students anxiety.

Papadakis discussed issues to consider when deciding to use videos in the classroom. Start with your pedagogical goals. Make sure the video connects to these in a meaningful way. Provide context before viewing. If the video is long, interrupt and debrief at strategic points. Use short videos or clips, extracting the minimum that you need to get the point across. Pair video viewing with other teaching techniques to increase student reflection on the content (clickers, think-pair-share exercises, minute papers, discussion). Fair use may also be a consideration and a useful resource is the Columbia University Copyright Advisory Office’s Fair Use Checklist. She also suggested sources for videos such as YouTube, textbook publishers, the library’s video database subscriptions, news websites, PBS documentaries, professional organizations websites and Facebook feeds, and even Google video searches.

If you use presentation slides in your teaching, embedding the video clips is advised. If you share your slides with students, the file size will be very large with the videos embedded, so consider removing them and providing access to the clips by linking or other means. Be aware of accessibility issues and make sure the videos are closed captioned.

While Jane Greco (see slides) also uses videos in her teaching she has a different approach. She uses videos created by others to demonstrate chemical reactions caused by materials considered too dangerous for use in undergraduate labs, and to bring experts in the field, who wouldn’t normally be available to speak to her students, into the classroom via readily available taped interviews or talks. But she also has her students produce videos, both through grant-funded projects to provide course-related content, and as student assignments.

In speaking of producing video to convey content, Greco said that instructors should balance the advantages of making your own—they are specific to your equipment and your method of teaching a topic, versus using available videos, which often have better production quality and offer a less time-intensive way to approach the topic. Questions to ask are 1) How much time to you want to put into production quality? 2) Where/How will you share your video content? (YouTube channel, Course Management System, video streaming service) 3) Who can help you with the videos and is there funding available? Greco made use of the Technology Fellowship Grants offered by the Center for Educational Resources, and CER expertise and equipment.

The first CER-funded project produced animations to help students understand complex chemical concepts, such as this one explaining Column Chromatography. YESYOUCHEM was another project funded by a Technology Fellow Grant. The videos produced by student fellows can be found on both the YESYOUCHEM website and a Johns Hopkins YouTube channel. They include main concept videos, supplemental problems, and extended interviews with Hopkins faculty in relevant fields. One lesson she learned from having students produce videos for course work was to be sure that they have the requisite experience, and that a platform for sharing and guidelines for production (branding, credits) be specified by the instructor. For YESYOUCHEM she chose students whose work she had seen in a student project.

Greco assigns a creative group project to students in her lab. Although the project has a relatively small point value, it allows students to delve into a single topic and show their understanding outside of a testing environment, and it gives students an opportunity to use their other amazing creative talents. Videos are just one of many options the students can choose for the project, in the past there have been craft projects, dance performances, and other imaginative and inspired demonstrations of chemistry topics. She provides a list of suggested topics, but students can go off list with approval. Greco makes it clear that she expects chemistry content not just chemistry words. She also explains the limitations of group work. Different group members will contribute differently to the project, but there is just one grade assigned even if the group work was uneven. It is difficult to create an all-encompassing rubric for grading when the projects range widely in the platform chosen. She lets students know that grading might not be as quite as objective as for a test or exam. However, the assignment has been successful, students enjoy it and produce amazing projects. Here are links to two of the video projects produced by student groups in the course:

Lab Safety video ( I Just Had Lab) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enFFIK2Mhzw
The Blood Buffer System Demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6UAEbhRXNI

Students may choose to have their videos made public or kept private. Greco posts public videos for future classes to view.

In the discussion that followed, it was clear that faculty are eager to try the approaches that Papadakis and Greco presented—use of existing course-related content given context within a lecture or discussion, development of course-specific video content, and assigning students a project to produce videos.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: Pixabay.com, video still from I Just Had Lab https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enFFIK2Mhzw

Does Active Learning Disadvantage the Learning Disabled?

Posted on March 17, 2017 by Macie Hall

Active Learning is a good thing, right? As an instructional designer, I’ve read a great deal of research compiling evidence for teaching practices that promote active learning as a way to engage students and secure better learning outcomes. In my role consulting with faculty on curriculum design, I often suggest ways to increase student participation in their learning that match the learning goals and objectives articulated by the instructor. So it was a surprise to read a dissenting view in a Tomorrow’s Professor post by Fernando Gonzalez, an assistant professor of software engineering at Florida Gulf Coast University, titled For Some, Active Learning Can Be a Nightmare. [Full citation for original publication: Gonzalez, Fernando. “For Some, Active Learning Can Be a Nightmare.” ASEE Prism 26, no. 4 (December 2016): 52.]

To be clear at the outset, this is an opinion piece, based on anecdotal evidence and personal experience. There is no research backing Gonzalez’s claims, at least not yet. The article is short, and I encourage you to read it for yourself. In summary, Gonzalez provides a short overview of active learning, then states that “…[active learning] can be a nightmare for students with learning disabilities (LD). While learning disabled students – including those with dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, visual and auditory processing deficits, ADHD, nonverbal learning disabilities, and many others – vary in how they learn and on the type of accommodation they require, a common characteristic found in most LD students is needing more time to assimilate information from a lecture.” This he contends, makes it difficult for the learning disabled student “…who may not be able to learn the material in time to participate in the active learning activity immediately following the lecture or may have problems with the activity itself.” He notes that he has severe dyslexia and states he would not have “survived” an undergraduate education heavily based on active learning, and certainly would not have then been able to go on to get a PhD.

There are weaknesses in Gonzalez’s argument, starting with his construct of active learning as mostly being “…strategies [that] consist of a lecture where the student listens passively, followed by an activity that serves to clarify and reinforce what the student has learned.” There are many active learning strategies, and it is misleading to characterize them in total as being difficult for those with learning disabilities, which also are many and varied.

He cites only one concrete example of a strategy, the minute paper, which, although it can be considered an example of active learning, is typically used to obtain formative assessment from students. These exercises are not typically graded and therefore pose little pressure for students.

That said, I do not want to dismiss Gonzalez’s concerns. I was unable to find any published research on the benefits or disadvantages of active learning strategies for learning disabled students. Indeed, it would be valuable for these students and their instructors to have evidence of teaching and learning strategies that are inclusive. If you are aware of research in this area, please share the information in the comments.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: Pixabay.com

Using Classroom Simulations as an Active Learning Technique

Posted on January 20, 2017 by Macie Hall

College educators have many goals for students; we want them to acquire more knowledge and be better critical thinkers, but also to feel empowered and energized about their future contribution to society. Students that are motivated and ambitious are more likely to pursue personal opportunities and inventive ideas. This type of energy and focus also contributes to the problem-solving capacity of society as a whole. Although a positive attitude often comes from within the student or outside the classroom, the structure of learning also has an impact.

For the global environmental politics classroom, the problem of student attitudes is especially acute: students of global environmental governance are particularly prone to negative emotional reactions, including feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, which can engender apathy and cynicism. Students come to believe that the complexity and depth of problems like climate change make effective action impossible. Students who do not believe a problem can be solved are unlikely to seek solutions to that problem in their post-college careers. Using active learning techniques like Simulations can combat these attitudes, by giving students the opportunity to collectively investigate and tackle barriers to international action.

I designed a Simulation for the last week of my fall 2017 “Politics of the Ocean” class, because I noticed that the students often left class in despair. Solutions to over-fishing, plastic pollution, dead zones, ocean acidification, coral bleaching, and other ocean issues seemed out of reach because of political and economic barriers. The number and complexity of ocean issues seemed overwhelming. And yet, we knew that the United Nations was gearing up to negotiate a new treaty to govern the high seas. This provided me with the opportunity to design a politics Simulation that hewed as close to the real world as possible, where students could practice negotiating a treaty that addressed many of the problems they had learned about in class.

The basic features of the course dictated the options for Simulation design – I had 15 students, and we met twice a week for a total of 2.5 hours. I started by assigning students to polity teams in the week before the Simulation began. I choose countries that have had the most influence on ocean governance historically, and groups that would likely have influence in the upcoming negotiations: The United States, China, Russia, the G77 coalition, Singapore, and NGOs. I asked students to do the assigned readings for the next week – each of which contained a specific proposal for ocean governance – with their team in mind.

The Simulation was divided into two days. On day one, students worked within their teams to answer a series of questions like “Who are the primary ocean interest groups in your country?” “What are your priorities for ocean governance?” and “What treaty design best serves your interests?” Students were instructed to work with their teammates, and to do supplementary in-class research to help flesh out their positions. Some teams had specific questions: the NGOs had to decide which NGOs to represent, and the China team had to decide whether to negotiate with the G77, or on its own. The Singapore team had additional questions about how the negotiations ought to be run, because of Singapore’s historic role as a leader in organizing past Law of the Sea negotiations.

On day two, students entered the classroom to discover groups of tables designated with small flags. Singapore ran the negotiations while I took notes, with some minor interventions. Each team started with an opening statement about their key interests and main concerns, with short rebuttals following. Then Singapore asked each team to submit a list of priority topics, and chose the top four. While the original plan was to address each in turn through speeches and open discussion, the students ended up deciding to address all the issues simultaneously. In the last ten minutes, Singapore collected specific treaty language proposals. Each of six new rules was voted on individually, and those that with a majority of teams affirming became the agreed upon treaty.

I designed this Simulation to achieve attitudinal goals in three ways. First, role playing required students to formulate prescriptions from the descriptions of ocean problems and governance models they had learned about in class. The idea is that practicing advocacy will help students recognize that they have informed opinions about ocean issues, and see themselves as agents of change. Second, the format shows students that complexity is not the same as intractability. The two-day design allows group work to break down the structure of a collective action problem, construct a policy agenda and negotiation strategy, and consider various policy models described in the literature. Third, the negotiations allow students to directly encounter barriers to consensus formation, instead of speculating about everything that could hold up an agreement. Confronting obstacles to agreement this way may illustrate the utility of issue-linkages, and demonstrate that there are coalitions willing to move forward.

I assessed the achievement of attitudinal learning outcomes using a short pre- and post-Simulation survey, which asked students to rate their level of agreement with statements like “All relevant parties can get what they want from the oceans” and “The situation in the high seas is too complicated for effective management.” The survey also asked students to rank the importance of different barriers to an international treaty, like “political will” and “public education.” The final questions were open-ended, and asked students to use one word to describe the situation in the ocean, and also how they feel about it. While the survey results showed a slight improvement in optimism, I was surprised by the fact that students started out more optimistic than I expected.

The biggest mistake I made in the design of this Simulation was asking the Singapore team to take a leadership role by designing the basic structure of the negotiations, and leading the class on day two. Although I chose two students with obvious leadership qualities, they found it difficult to command authority among the teams, and to push for efficiency in negotiations. They also seemed displeased that they had a “special” role, and more interested in participating as a regular team. Most of the students reported wanting to start the Simulation earlier in the semester, so they could have more time getting into the details of constructing a workable solution to collective problems in the ocean.

This type of Simulation is relatively easy to design and implement, and there exists a broad literature relating game design to specific cognitive and attitudinal goals. Even though this Simulation was imperfect, students reported on their course evaluations that they appreciated doing something different, and having the chance to work through obstacles to consensus as a group. And because this type of Simulation can be used with a larger class size (just add more teams), I know that the lessons from this class can be used to improve the Simulation for the future.

Elizabeth Mendenall, PhD candidate, Johns Hopkins University

Elizabeth Mendenhall is a PhD candidate in International Relations. Her dissertation concerns obstacles to effective governance in the global commons, specifically the ocean, atmosphere, and outer space. She will be starting as an assistant professor at the University of Rhode Island in the Fall of 2017.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Lunch and Learn: Team-Based Learning

Posted on December 29, 2016 by Macie Hall

On Friday, December 16, the Center for Educational Resources (CER) hosted the second Lunch and Learn—Faculty Conversations on Teaching, for the 2016-1017 academic year. Eileen Haase, Senior Lecturer in Biomedical Engineering, and Mike Reese, Director, Center for Educational Resources, and Instructor in Sociology, discussed their approaches to team-based learning (TBL).

Eileen Haase teaches a number of core courses in Biomedical Engineering at the Whiting School of Engineering, including Freshmen Modeling and Design, BME Teaching Practicum, Molecules and Cells, and System Bioengineering Lab I and II, as well as being course director for Cell and Tissue Engineering and assisting with System Bioengineering II. She has long been a proponent of team work in the classroom.

In her presentation, Haase focused on the Molecules and Cells course, required for BME majors in the sophomore year, which she co-teaches with Harry Goldberg, Assistant Dean at the School of Medicine, Director of Academic Computing and faculty member, Department of Biomedical Engineering. The slides from Haase’s presentation are available here.

In the first class, Haase has the students do a short exercise that demonstrates the value of teamwork. Then the students take the VARK Questionnaire. VARK stands for Visual Aural Read/Write Kinesthetic and is a guide to learning styles. The questionnaire helps students and instructors by suggesting strategies for teaching and learning that align with these different styles. Haase and Goldberg found that 62% of their students were “multimodal” learners who will benefit from having the same material presented in several modes in order to learn it. In Haase’s class, in addition to group work, students work at the blackboard, use clickers, have access to online materials, participate in think-pair-share exercises, and get some content explained in lecture form.

Team work takes place in sections most Fridays. At the start of class, students take an individual, 10 question quiz called the iRAT, Individual Readiness Assurance Test, which consists of multiple-choice questions based on pre-class assigned materials. The students then take the test as a group (gRAT). Haase uses IF-AT scratch cards for these quizzes. Both tests count towards the students’ grades.

To provide evidence for the efficacy of team-based learning, Haase and Goldberg retested students from their course five months after the original final exam (99 of the 137 students enrolled in the course were retested). The data showed that students scored significantly better on the final exam on material that had been taught using team-based learning strategies and on the retest, retained significantly more of the TBL taught material.

Mike Reese, Director of the Center for Educational Resources and instructor in the Department of Sociology, presented on his experiences with team-based learning in courses that included community-based learning in Baltimore City neighborhoods [presentation slides]. His courses are typically small and discussion oriented. Students read papers on urban issues and, in class, discuss these and develop research methodologies for gathering data in the field. Students are divided into teams, and Reese accompanies each team as they go out into neighborhoods to gather data by talking to people on the street and making observations on their surroundings. The students then do group presentations on their field work and write individual papers. Reese says that team work is hard, but students realize that they could not collect and analyze data in such a short time-frame without a group effort.

Reese noted that learning is a social process. We are social beings, and while many students dislike group projects, they will learn and retain more (as Haase and Goldberg demonstrated). This is not automatic. Instructors need to be thoughtful about structuring team work in their courses. The emotional climate created by the teacher is important. Reese shared a list of things to consider when designing a course that will incorporate team-based learning.

Purpose: Why are you doing it? For Reese, teamwork is a skill that students should acquire, but primarily it serves his learning objectives. If students are going to conduct a mini-research project in a short amount of time, they need multiple people working collectively to help with data collection and analysis.
Group Size: This depends on the context and the course, but experts agree that having three to five students in a group is best to prevent slacking by team members.
Roles: Reese finds that assigning roles works well as students don’t necessarily come into the course with strong project management skills, and projects typically require a division of labor. It was suggested that assigning roles is essential to the concept of true team-based learning as opposed to group work.
Formation: One key to teamwork success is having the instructor assign students to groups rather than allowing them to self-select. [Research supports this. See Fiechtner, S. B., & Davis, E. A. (1985). Why some groups fail: A survey of students’ experiences with learning groups. The Organizational Behavior Teaching Review, 9(4), 75-88.] In Reese’s experience assigning students to groups helps them to build social capital and relationships at the institution beyond their current group of friends.
Diversity: It is important not to isolate at-risk minorities. See: Heller, P. and Hollabaugh, M. (1992). Teaching problem solving through cooperative grouping. American Journal of Physics, 60 (7), 637-644.
Ice Breakers: The use of ice breakers can help establish healthy team relationships. Have students create a team name, for example, to promote an identity within the group.
Contracts: Having a contract for teamwork is a good idea. In the contract, students agree to support each other and commit to doing their share of the work. Students can create contracts themselves, but it is best if the instructor provides structured questions to guide them.
Persistence: Consider the purpose of having groups and how long they will last. Depending on learning goals, teams may work together over an entire semester, or reform after each course module is completed.
Check-ins: It is important to check in with teams on a regular basis, especially if the team is working together over an entire semester, to make sure that the group hasn’t developed problems and become dysfunctional.
Peer Evaluation: Using peer evaluation keeps a check on the students to ensure that everyone is doing a fair share of the work. The instructor can develop a rubric, or have students work together to create one. Evaluation should be on specific tasks. Ratings should be anonymous (to the students, not the instructor) to ensure honest evaluation, and students should also self-evaluate.

In the discussion that followed the presentation, mentoring of teams and peer assessment were key topics. Several faculty with experience working with team-based learning recommended providing support systems in the form of mentors and or coaches who are assigned to the groups. These could be teaching assistants or undergraduate assistants who have previously taken the course. Resources for team-based learning were mentioned. CATME, “which stands for ‘Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness,’ is a free set of tools designed to help instructors manage group work and team assignments more effectively.”

Doodle was suggested as another tool for scheduling collaborative work. Many are familiar with the Doodle poll concept, but there are also free tools such as Connect Calendars and Meet Me that can be used by students.

An Innovative Instructor print article, Making Group Projects Work by Pam Sheff and Leslie Kendrick, Center for Leadership Education, August 2012, covers many aspects of successful teamwork.

Another resource of interest is a scholarly article by Barbara Oakley and Richard Felder, Turning Student Groups into Effective Teams [Oakley, B., Felder, R.M., Brent, R., Elhajj, I. Journal of student centered learning, 2004]. “This paper is a guide to the effective design and management of team assignments in a college classroom where little class time is available for instruction on teaming skills. Topics discussed include forming teams, helping them become effective, and using peer ratings to adjust team grades for individual performance. A Frequently Asked Questions section offers suggestions for dealing with several problems that commonly arise with student teams, and forms and handouts are provided to assist in team formation and management.”

If you are an instructor on the Homewood campus, staff in the Centerfor Educational Resources will be happy to talk with you about team-based learning and your courses.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Sources: Lunch and Learn logo by Reid Sczerba, presentation slides by Eileen Haase and Mike Reese

Fair Play—Gaming to Identify and Understand Racial Bias

Posted on June 30, 2016 by Macie Hall

A colleague recently attended an academic conference during which he had an opportunity to attend a workshop demonstrating Fair Play. Fair Play, a video game developed at the University of Wisconsin with awards from the National Institutes of Health, the Gates Millennium Foundation and supported by the University of Wisconsin System Administration’s Growth Agenda for Wisconsin grant program, allows players the opportunity to simulate the complex experience of a graduate student. Specifically, according to the website, “Fair Play provides players with the opportunity to take the perspective of Jamal Davis, a Black graduate student on his way to becoming a renowned professor. In this game, players experience racial bias during interactions with other characters, as well as in the virtual environment.”

Players move through five chapters experiencing typical graduate school challenges (identifying an advisor, managing funding, making friends, publishing, and attending conferences); these are magnified through the lens of being an African American confronting biases. The goal is to identify and name biases.

While workshops, such as the one my colleague attended, are available, it is easy to download and play the game on your own. You can view a trailer to get an idea of the content. Even novice gamers will pick up the navigation quickly as the interface is straightforward and explanations are provided along the way. The exercise is enlightening. Although the game centers around graduate student activities, the lessons to be learned are universal, and would benefit faculty and graduate student future faculty alike.

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Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Images source: Fair Play Screenshot: http://fairplaygame.org/

In Her Words: Alison Papadakis on Teaching

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Macie Hall

Five times a year the Center for Educational Resources publishes an e-newsletter that is distributed to Johns Hopkins University faculty in the schools of Arts & Sciences and Engineering. Most of the content is of local interest: “… [highlighting] resources that can enhance teaching or research or facilitate faculty administrative tasks.” A recurring feature is the Faculty Spotlight, in which a CER staff member interviews an instructor about their teaching interests. For the April 2016 edition, the interview was presented as a video rather than text. Because it is of general interest, I wanted to share it.

Alison Papadakis received an AB in Psychology from Princeton University, and an MA and PhD in Clinical Psychology from Duke University. She taught in the Department of Psychology at Loyola University Maryland from 2005 to 2014, before accepting a position as Associate Teaching Professor and Director of Clinical Psychological Studies in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins. She is also a licensed psychologist in the state of Maryland. Among her many awards are several that speak to her success as a teacher, advisor, and mentor: 2015-2016 JHU Faculty Mentor for Provost’s Undergraduate Research Award, 2014-2016 JHU Faculty Mentor for Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Grant, and 2015 JHU Undergraduate Advising Award, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

At JHU Papadakis is teaching three undergraduate courses: Abnormal Psychology (enrollment 200), Child and Adolescent Psychopathology (enrollment 40), Child and Adolescent Psychopathology (enrollment 19), and Research Seminar in Clinical Psychology (enrollment 19). The large enrollment for Abnormal Psychology was a particular challenge for her after the small classes she taught at Loyola Maryland. As she notes in the video she sought ways of teaching much larger classes and keeping a conversational style and an environment that engages students. Papadakis also talks about ways in which she sets expectations for students and specific activities she uses in class.

You can watch the video here.

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Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Clickers: Beyond the Basics

Posted on February 9, 2016 by Macie Hall

On Friday, February 5, the Center for Educational Resources hosted the third Lunch and Learn—Faculty Conversations on Teaching. For this session, three presenters discussed their experiences using clickers (classroom polling systems).

Leah Jager and Margaret Taub, are both Assistant Scientists and Lecturers who co-teach Public Health Biostatistics in the Department of Biostatistics at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. This is a required course for Public Health majors, and regularly sees enrollments of 170 plus students. The course focuses on quantitative methods used in public health research. Jager reported that many students feel intimidated by the math. There is no text book for the course, instead students watch short videos before class meetings.

Jager started the presentation, Clickers in Public Health Biostatiscs, with a hands-on demo where the audience used clickers to answer example questions. A basic use of clickers might include checking class attendance or taking a quick quiz on an assignment. Taub and Jager seek a dynamic classroom environment, using clickers to “provide fodder for interaction between students” and gaining formative assessment of student learning of new concepts being taught. In their teaching, clickers are used daily to promote problem solving and peer discussion. They start with “warm up questions” to review materials from previous classes, then move on to checking newly introduced concepts. Jager showed examples of poll results (these may be called results charts, plots, or histograms) and discussed how she and Taub would respond to situations where it was clear that many students understood concepts or not. When students are not clear on the answer to a question, the instructors have them pair up and discuss the question and their answers. The students re-vote, then Taub and Jager review the concept and correct answer. Even when it is apparent that most students understand the material, the instructors briefly review the question to be sure that no one is left behind.

Jager and Taub use clickers for data entry as well (see above), a practice that qualifies as beyond the basics. The JHU clicker system (i>clicker) is integrated with the JHU course management system, Blackboard. Using the survey tool in Blackboard as a data recording form allows the instructors to record student responses question by question. It then takes minimal effort to output a spreadsheet with data that can be shared with the class and used for exercises and assignments.

Emily Fisher, Director, Undergraduate Studies and Lecturer, Department of Biology, uses clickers in her classes (Biochemistry, Cell Biology, Genetics). Her presentation, Clickers Beyond the Basics. Fisher began with a discussion of what she considered to be basic use. This would include a question at the beginning of class to gauge understanding of a pre-class assignment, a formative assessment question midway through class, and a question at the end of class to “place today’s topic in the bigger picture.” This use encourages students to attend class (if answers count toward grade) and acts as a means to “reset the attention span clock.”

Going beyond the basics Fisher uses clickers throughout the class period to help students evaluate data, understand how biological systems work, and engage in higher level critical thinking by engaging in complex problem solving. She also uses the questions to identify student misconceptions. Using student responses and gauging the results charts allows her to make sure that students don’t get lost as she works through building a model for problem solving. Fisher led the audience through a series of slides (see presentation) demonstrating her process.

Fisher noted that using clickers for teaching higher level problem solving takes time to implement but is worthwhile. She explains to students at the beginning of each course how and why she is using clickers in order to ensure buy-in. By developing a model, students get a preview for the type of thinking that will be required to answer exam questions. Students get to practice in class by articulating answers to peers. Fisher has found that the process motivates student engagement, breaks up the lecture structure with active learning, and allows students to see real-world situations.

In the discussion that followed, faculty attendees expressed concern about the amount of time that clicker questions take away from content delivery. Advice from clicker users was to move some content to videos and outside of class assignments. Quizzing can be used to motivate students to complete this coursework.

Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts & Sciences and Whiting School of Engineer faculty will receive email invitations for the upcoming Lunch and Learn presentations. We will be reporting on all of the sessions here at The Innovative Instructor.

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Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image source: Lunch and Learn logo by Reid Sczerba, Center for Educational Resources. Other images were taken from the presentations by Leah Jager, Margaret Taub, and Emily Fisher.

The Innovative Instructor

Pedagogy – Best Practices – Technology

Category Archives: Active Learning

Lunch and Learn: Creating and Implementing Authentic Assignments

Lunch and Learn: Using Videos in Your Course

Does Active Learning Disadvantage the Learning Disabled?

Using Classroom Simulations as an Active Learning Technique

Lunch and Learn: Team-Based Learning

Fair Play—Gaming to Identify and Understand Racial Bias

In Her Words: Alison Papadakis on Teaching

Clickers: Beyond the Basics