Reaction to Readings (Blog #5)

This weeks readings mainly concerned testing and assessment of both students and ourselves as instructors. I found many suggestions in the reading that were both interesting and useful in implementing in my own teaching in the future. In this blog, for my personal future reference, I've divided the useful suggestions between assessment of students and assessment of the instructor.

Assessment of the Students:

I felt the most important suggestion was found in both McKeachie's Teaching Tips and the reading excerpt and it was the idea tests and assessments should facilitate learning. I feel this is important because the primary goal of being an instructor is to teach students and therefore assessment should also be a technique in furthering the knowledge of our students. I would implement this through essay questions on exams. I feel that essays, rather than multiple choice or fill in the blank questions, really tap into a higher level of thinking. If the questions concern critical thinking, they will further assist the student in assimilating information together into one cohesive answer. I also plan to implement this suggestion through "hands-on" exams or labs, as some of my psychology classes have done. During my Psychobiology class, one exam involved dissecting brains and correctly labeling areas and parts of the brain. Not only did this exam test our recall of these parts, but it also facilitated learning through the actual dissection and the experience of seeing and touching a brain. This idea also ties into another suggestion made by McKeachie. He suggested that teachers should construct learning situations in which they can observe student performance. This is done in the field of psychology regularly, as well as other "hands-on" experiences, such as my practicum placements and video-taping role playing in class. Both these experiences are assessed and graded, but both provide vital information and practical practice that a paper and pencil exam couldn't. I also like his suggestion of implementing a portfolio as a class assignment in order to assess student learning over the long term, the entire semester. I would like to use a portfolio possibly by having the students create a case study throughout the semester. The portfolio would have to include aspects from each unit of the semester, that way I could assess the students development and improvement over time.

Another important suggestion arouse from the McKeachie chapter. He suggested that we use a variety of assessments when measuring the goals and learning development of the class. "...not every student can show understanding on high-stakes tests; some students might do better on written assignments or on projects or shorter assessments." I feel this is important because students learn in a variety of ways and methods. Some people are visual learners and really prefer powerpoint presentations and hand outs. Other students are more audio-directed learners. These students benefit more from purely listening and hearing the instruction as well as verbally participating in discussion. Yet there are still other types of learners: those who learn through class participation, those who prefer to learn through reading, some prefer to work alone, others prefer group work, or yet others who do much better writing. I plan to implement this suggestion in the obvious fashion: administering a variety of ways both students can earn points towards a final grade and I can assess their level of learning and progress towards class goals. These could include examinations that include a variety of question types (short answer, multiple choice, fill in the blank, essay), written assignments, hands-on assignments, group projects, ecetera. I feel this could be implemented to a greater extent in the psychology field. Currently, the majority of my experiences as an undergraduate psychology student as well as a TA for undergraduate psychology classes consist of multiple choice item examinations and written assignments. Not many of my classes utilized other types of methods. Hands-on assignments and group projects really didn't start to much extent until graduate school. I feel the field would benefit by implementing more of these various methods.

When creating examinations, I plan to implement a couple of McKeachie's suggestions. I feel it is important for me to first lay out the number of items I want from each chapter. This is important because, since I'm new at writing test questions (no easy feat), this will assist in speeding up the test writing process. I also feel it is important to use materials with somewhat greater apparent relevance to the course goals. This is important because not only will it be easier to assess progress towards goals, it will be more fun for the students if they feel the tasks are relevant. It seemed to me while reading McKeachie's chapter this week, that he "frowns" upon multiple choice exam items. Unlike McKeachie, I like to utilize multiple choice items when I write exams (for the classes I TA for). I feel they determine if the student has done the required reading and assesses if the student has acquired the very basic understanding and comprehension required for more critical thinking. I also plan to implement the following quick tips for estimating the time to allow for the exam: 1 minute per multiple choice item or fill-in-the-blank item, 2 minutes per short answer item, and 10-15 minutes per essay questions.

The last suggestion concerns involving students in the assessment process. I think it is important to ask students for test questions. This is important because it involves students in the learning process rather than simply telling the students what they should think is important, they actively learn and decide what is important for themselves. I plan to implement this through having the students create questions from the readings and including a select few of these in the exam. This serves two purposes: ensuring the students do the reading and involve them in creating some of the test items.

Assessment of Instructors:

The one suggestion from the excerpt article that I felt is useful is the idea of peer assessment among instructors. Although the text outlines a problem with this method, instructors simply comparing each other to one another's teaching style, I feel this can be overcome by creating a set of what should be assessed. Departments for example could create a rubric for assessing each other and rather than "grading" it could be more of a suggestions and feedback exercise for instructors. I think this is important because if utilized effectively, it could increase the overall quality of teaching. I plan to implement this by asking fellow instructors to look over my syllabus, student assessments, the nature of my class assignments and reports. As a new instructor, I also plan to compare my ideas with past instructors. Obviously I plan to implement fresh and new ideas, but it helps to have other instructor's experiences to compare to. And lastly, an important part of this implementation is my peer reviewing of other instructors. This will, hopefully, not only help those instructors, but will also give me an idea of other's methods and give me new ideas for methods and assessments.

A suggestion that was offered by the reading excerpt I feel is both useful and I would like to implement, but my experience in teaching and being a student in psychology classes tell me it would be extremely difficult. The reading suggested that successful professions learn as much as possible about their students, their lives outside of class, hobbies, interests, involvement, and some go so far to have lunch with their students. I would LOVE to be that teacher! However, most psychology classes that I've TA'ed for and taken as a student consist of at most 500 students and at least 40. If I am assigned to instruct smaller courses I would like to implement getting to know my students on a more personal level, without compromising the teacher/student relationship. I would like more instruction on how to do this without overstepping boundaries or allowing myself to look less professional and perhaps be taken less seriously. Although I'd like to see the field of psychology implement this, I feel it wouldn't work the majority of the time due to the sheer volume of students in the class.

Additional Resources:

• Internet Resources for Higher Education Outcomes Assessment
• From the Society for the Teaching of Psychology, Peer Review of Teaching: An Overview

"Helicopter Parent" Article

A few weeks back in class, we discussed the phenomena we often encounter as professors and TAs known as helicopter parenting. When reading Psychology in the News today, I found this interesting article, Beyond the Jokes on 'Helicopter Parents', which tackles this concept and provides personal and professional experience, as well as makes a few suggestions in regards to approaching these situations.

Reaction to Readings (Blog #4)

This weeks reading primarily focused on grades, with a little information regarding cheating also included. As a TA, I have experience in both of these areas, and am still not comfortable with either process! I am aware I spend too much time reading and re-reading student's essay answers, second guessing myself on grading, and after TA-ing for a huge (450-500) class, I have quite a bit of interesting experiencing with cheating on exams. Therefore, the information provided in this weeks readings was particularly useful to me. However, I listed and identified the most useful information in this blog:

McKeachie described recommendations to prevent cheating in Chapter 10. I felt this some of the most useful information in the whole chapter because, according to McKeachie, it seems that cheating is common and inevitable in every class. Therefore, tips to help reduce the instances and probability of cheating are going to be useful. Since I'm more interested in what the student's learned rather than if the students are getting good grades, I feel these tips are helpful to get that point across to my students. The author makes an interesting point that students often engage in cheating due to the pressure of grades and that they believe there is a large reward for success at any cost. This means that they are looking at the potential of a good grade, good GPA, graduating, and getting a job rather than the immediate cost of cheating. Thus the first recommendation is reduce the pressure. This could mean providing a number of opportunities, rather than just one or two exams, to earn a grade.

This idea should be implemented in the field of psychology. Because the field studies people, it is common knowledge to psychologists that students learn in many ways (visual versus auditory, etc), that some students are better able to show achievement through discussion and writing rather than sitting an examination (test anxiety plays a large role in student's test results). I personally would implement this suggestion by providing an opportunity to drop one exam, providing several assignments, a few papers, a few discussion sessions, and regular exams. I feel this would cover a variety of learning and assessment methods. I also think it would be beneficial to alternate forms of exams to prevent the "wandering eyes". Its more work for the professor (creating multiple versions and keys) but I feel it makes a huge difference in eliminating cheating.

From the First Day to Final Grade, I felt some of the most useful information regarded fair grading strategies. Grading fairly is an important issue in all fields and from both student and teacher perspectives. I feel the advice this chapter gives helps because I constantly worry while grading the papers and exams as a TA that I'm grading too harsh or worry that I gave one student too little or too many points and spend too much time going back and re-reading student responses.

I particularly would like to implement one of the useful strategies in which the professor waits to assign grades until after he or she has read all of the papers. Then the papers are put in order of quality and the grades are assigned within that range. I like this idea because often as a graduate student, and I'm sure it will only get worse, I lose touch and forget what an average range of abilities for an undergraduate is. An alternative to this method, which I feel would be equally affective and perhaps the two could be combined, is to grade the paper immediately, but place the grade on a separate sheet of paper so that it can be reassessed. All too often when I'm grading I give a student a so/so grade only to find their answer was the best out of the bunch when I'm finished. Now I have to go through and regrade them according to the class's ability. The only time this would be difficult to implement in the field is that, psychology being as popular undergrad major as it is, many of the classes are very large. For example, this would be nearly impossible to implement in the current class I TA for of 200 and even harder in the intro class of 500 I TA'ed last year. There is no way I could remember each student's responses in order to put them in order of quality. Here I think the best solution would be to grade using criterion grading.

I also felt the information on grading group work, found in First Day to Final Grade, was extremely useful because all of us have experience in being in a group, but I don't have experience in having to assess or grade a group project. I want to give the students the important opportunity of working together, but I also want to ensure that I am grading fairly. The authors state that professors tend to lean towards one of two groups: those who love group work or those who believe group work allows lazy students to ride the coattails of harder working students. I happen to belong to the group that believes group work allows lazy students an easy way out. I probably believe this due to my own personal experiences as an undergraduate student. Obviously group work is still important because it mirrors real life and provides students with an opportunity to learn valuable interpersonal skills. Therefore, I felt the book was useful in that it outlined pro's and con's of different grading styles of group work. Personally, I felt the pro they described of giving each student the same group grade that the book listed was soft. They said the pro was that it was easy for the professor to give everyone the same grade, and I don't feel this is a valid reason and that this grading method does not let the grade represent the achievement and ideals that McKeachie stated grades should represent. I feel a better solution was the alternative the chapter offered.

I would implement that each students grade is based on individual contribution to the group. I thought the step by step approach provided by the chapter (assign over all grade, ask each student to rate other student's contributions, average percentages, take percentage of overall grade). I also felt that the con (tension between group members) could be overcome. If each student knows they need to contribute before hand, why should they feel tension towards other members. Also, I've played with the idea of not letting the students know that they will be rating each other until after the group project is completed. Then I would ask the students to spur of the moment rate their group members. This way it would be confidential and group members could not influence other group members. After the first time, if i utilize group work again, students should understand that contribution to the group is important. I also feel that a solution could be to assign "roles" in the groups. Then each time a group project is assigned, the "roles" can be switched. This would eliminate the excuse that one student dominated the project and did not allow others to contribute. I feel that grading group work on individual contributions should be implemented in the psychology field. As a social science, much of the work we do concerns people, individuals and groups. Before we can understand group dynamics, we must first experience them. Psychology classes should implement more group work (but like I said, I'm against it purely because I have been abused by lazy students in the past) and grade it based on individual contribution.

A few final and quick suggestions from this weeks readings that I found useful and that I plan to implement in my own teaching is the suggestions of passing out grades at the end of class in order to avoid students looking over their grades or creating a negative atmosphere to teach in and the helpful hints on how to implement a successful discussion of difficult sections. Lastly, I personally have my own personal idea about missing exams. I had one teacher who I deeply respected who had a no missed exams at all policy. She stated that since we have the syllabus ahead of time, she felt we should be able to respect her enough to respect those dates and be there on those dates. I probably wouldn't go this far because I understand emergencies happen, having had family members funerals and things that are unplanned for occur last minute. I feel that I would allow students to drop one exam, as stated earlier it alleviates some pressure and hopefully prevents some cheating, and further than that, I might (might) implement all essay exam for those who need to make it up.

Additional Helpful Links:

• I had some trouble embedding the video so here's the url for the TOP TEN WAYS STUDENTS CHEAT
• A very funny guide to grading exams
• Facebook use Linked to Lower Grades in College
• How to Grade Fairly and Accurately
• Tips: Grading Group Work from the Center of Teaching Learning and Technology

An interesting side note: One of my favorite ways a student has cheated in classes I've TA'ed for (other than the obvious of looking at others papers) involve the student taping a cheat sheet to the floor and placing his feet over top of it. Pretty smart right? In a class of 500 how would we ever see his feet? He sat in the last chair of the row, practically in the aisle up which three proctors paced constantly. Another, fairly common, way I've experienced here at MSU was students using their mp3 players to download vocab words and listen to them during the exam and also using electronic translators in order to look up definitions of word english (basically using only the dictionary function rather than the translator function).

Reaction to Readings (Blog #3)

This weeks readings were from McKeachie's Teaching Tips. The chapters focused on reading as active learning, facilitating discussions, and effective lecturing. One think I thought was most useful in this weeks reading was the research information the author provided. Each chapter had empirical research either supporting or criticizing the concepts being discussed. This is useful (and interesting) because as a teacher, without this behind the scenes information, you may continue to use methods that have been shown to be ineffective or may miss out on new and improved ways of engaging students. Some examples of research results that McKeachie shared are as follows:

1. "Research shows that most material covered [in lecture] does not get into the students' notes or memory."

2. "Experimental evidence is accumulating to indicate that a certain degree of surprise or uncertainty arouses curiosity, a basic motive for learning."

3. "...found that teachers who used interpretation questions produced gains in student comprehension."

4. "...have shown that developmental discussion techniques improve the quality of decisions compared with freer, more nondirective discussion methods."

Although each of these, among the many others included in the reading, provide information to be learned, new teaching techniques, and suggested alterations in some classroom methods, I did not agree with all of them. Even though the text cites research stating how discussion is superior to lecture, I feel it is important to first ensure basic comprehension and knowledge of the material before an effective discussion can even take place. Therefore I feel lecture is an essential part of the learning process, not to be replaced solely by discussion. I think it would be most beneficial to implement one lecture day and one discussion day a week, or to include partial lecture for half the class period and the remainder be discussion of the material. Overall however, I felt the research results included in the reading were the most useful because future teachers can look at these findings and utilize them (structured discussion preferred over freer methods, interpretation questions rather than content ones, etc.)

As I stated in my Blog #2, I really feel my field, psychology, would really benefit from implementing more discussion and active learning methods of teaching. In addition, the ideas behind encouraging students to read could also be highly useful when implemented in my field. My experiences with the majority of my undergraduate (emphasis on this rather than graduate!) psychology classes is that the reading isn't overly important. What students are tested on, of course still in my experience, was what was lectured (most of this was from the book anyways), so reading the book was unnecessary in the eyes of the students. Since the field is made of a wide variety of opinions, theories, and ideas, it would be more beneficial for professors teaching psychology to implement readings from a wide variety of sources and discussion to integrate and evaluate the ideas.

There were many ideas in this weeks readings that I hope to implement in my own teaching:

1. First I was intrigued by the suggestion of providing study questions to guide student readings and to ensure that the questions that are provided are higher level (not focusing just on content but also ideas). However, I do stand behind the idea that it is the students responsibility to take initiative and read the material, so I would not make these questions mandatory or worth any percent of the final grade. I feel by making them mandatory, I'm making my students read, and like I said, the students don't have to read, its their responsibility to their education and their grade in the class. I would implement these questions in a way that either they would be worth extra credit, facilitate discussion on discussion class days, and I also am playing with the idea of writing three or four study guide questions for the reading and picking one from each to include on the test. I say playing because part of me would want to not inform the students of this and have them learn for themselves, reinforcing those who read and did the questions, but part of me feels this is also bordering on making the students read and not encouraging them to read. I remain unsure of exactly how I would implement the study questions, but I know somehow it will be done. I'm leaning towards combining some of the methods, mixing how I would utilize these questions depending on the class day. Sometimes they would be worth extra credit, sometimes if it is a discussion day they would serve to facilitate discussion, etc.


2. Second, I feel the suggestion of breaking the discussion down into part would be very helpful in facilitating student response. I would implement this by first asking the students what we know about the question, problem, or topic. I would write these on the board for visual reference during the actual discussion. Next, I would pose the question what do we not know. The responses to this question would guide the discussion and students would be able to use points from what we do know that we discussed earlier when answering some of the what do we not know discussions.


3. Third, I would use socratic questioning! For a clinical psychology graduate student who pracitces therapy techniques on a daily basis in class and at an internship, socratic questioning is known to be important and effective (and in the thearpy setting it is almost second nature) I hope to use this practice in the classroom setting as well.


4. Fourth, I like the suggestion of having students write out their answers to discussion questions I pose first in order to encourage talking and coherent ideas. Although, part of the reason I liked this idea was the way it fit so well with the suggestion of study questions to guide the reading. I would like to implement both of these in combination. The study guide questions could serve as discussion facilitators on discussion class days.


5. Lastly, the text stated that professors should encourage students to take fewer notes, writing only what is important. I would implement this suggestion into my own teaching, only in a slightly different way. I think it would be beneficial to post a general outline of the lecture prior to class. I would encourage students to print it out before class and let the outline help guide note taking while both reading and sitting in lecture. Students could use the outline to fill in the gaps when writing notes. I think this would speed up note taking on the students side of things and would also be beneficial for organizing the lecture on the professor side of things.

There were a few suggestions I feel I would NOT implement into my teaching in the future. Firstly, I despise the idea of audio taping and playing back the discussion to the class as well as having class observers note and comment on the discussion. I feel the students would be discouraged from talking when they know they are on tape and will have to listen to it again (fear of embarrassment hightened!) and I think they might feel judged if there are observers. These suggestions do not spell out increased classroom participation to me, but thats just my opinion. I also never liked the idea of stating during a lecture "this will be on the test" in order to capture students attention. I feel the students would gather from this statement that oh yes this is important and would maybe get the idea that not everything in the lecture is important or will listen only for that statement. I feel that if the information is not important enough to even possibly be on the test or just isn't important to the class objectives, why is the professor lecturing on it? Any information I am lecturing on, I want the students to be learning. I also feel that telling them what will be on the test is going to far in "helping" them. Students should be responsible for some of their learning (not all, I do think professors are there to help facilitate their learning, just this is a little much for me).

Here are some helpful links:

Book: The art of lecturing: a practical guide to successful university lectures. In particular the section on Common Mistakes that Turn Good Lectures into Disasters.

The Center for Instructional Development and Research's Teaching and Learning Bulletins:

1. More and Better Class Participation
2. What Helps Students Learn
3. Helping Students Read Well

Psychology in the News

I found this article today when browsing the psychology in the news section. I found it both entertaining and informative and highly recommend it to any one interested. According to the article, "Rude behavior in college classrooms is often a matter of course: College students more disrespectful, professors find."

Reaction to Readings (Blog #2)

This week's readings covered important information in regards to preparing weekly for class, running a discussion, and various trusted class plans. In this blog I will discuss what I felt was most useful, how I could implement some of the ideas in the readings in my field, and what I would like to incorporate into my own teaching.

I felt the most useful information I learned from this weeks readings was found in the "Why students may not talk" section of the Running a Discussion chapter. As both a student and a TA, and I'm sure everyone else with classroom experience has, I have been there. I have been sitting in the classroom, hearing the buzz of the fluorescent lights, watching the teacher struggle to breathe some sort of life into an attempt at a discussion. I have everything from the student who dominates the conversation to the student who stares at the floor praying the teacher doesn't call her out. This section of the reading was useful because it not only outlined various reasons why students may not be talking but also gave helpful hints for what the teacher can do to put an end to the silence. I've outlined those problems and solutions here:

• Peer Pressure - The teacher should ask opinions rather than answers with a distinct right or wrong answer in order to avoid potential embarrassment
• Time to Think - Sometimes, students may need to ponder the question just posed to them and in this instance, the teacher should count to 20 slowly. Eventually, one of the students (this is so me) will be unable to withstand the silence and will break it.
• Very Difficult Material - Here the teacher should empathize with the students, letting them know you are aware of how difficult the material is and that at some points you also needed clarification and that the class as a whole can work through it together.
• Lack of Preparation - The teacher should be straight forward and ask the class if they read the material
• Class Dynamics - Often the silence in the class is due to the dynamics of gender, race, and age in the class and the teacher should be aware of these issues
• Quiet Students - If making direct eye contact does not drive the quiet ones into breaking the silence, this is a good example of a situation in which the pair and share method works wonders. Teachers can pair students and ask that they discuss what they believe the answer to the discussion question is first before sharing ideas with the class.
• Outside Forces - During particularly busy times in the semester, students may be more apt to sit silently. Teachers should be cognisant of these times and empathise with the students, perhaps planning discussions during weeks that seem to be less busy, weeks without midterms, finals, or homecoming.

This video, although about younger students, explains why some students are silent from the teacher, researcher, and children's perspectives.

Something from this week's readings that I thought could be implemented into my field more was the idea of discussions in the classroom in general. Often in the field of psychology, topics are very open for discussion and opinions, since many of the ideas are relatively new and being researched. There are many many theories available in the field explaning things related to each of us, such as personality, anxiety, depression, substance use, etc. I believe it would be valuable for more teachers in this field to implement student discussions about these theories. First, these students are future researchers and it may be beneficial to hear bright new ideas from young minds. Second, since most topics are up for debate, it would be interesting for students to hear eachothers opinions and compare them to popular theories and research. Most of my undergraduate psychology courses lacked the discussion element. I feel it would be very beneficial for this element to be implemented on a regular basis.

Lastly, something I learned from this weeks readings that I would like to implement into my own teaching in the future is the idea that class formats should vary among the different types, never using the same one format all the time. The three teaching formats are as follows:

1. more loosely planned discussion sections
2. lectures
3. more highly structured classes with preplanned student activities.

How I visualize myself implementing this is that on the first day of a unit, I would focus entirely on lecture. The main purpose would be to get the information out there and clarify it so the students have a general knowledge of the chapter. Once that is met, whether it be the next class period or the next week, I would then like to have the third option of preplanned student activities. I feel these would help to ensure the step beyond knowledge, comprehension. Once I feel the students generally know and understand the ideas, then I would like to implement the loosely planned discussion section. I would wait to utilize this format until last because I feel the discussion would be most useful and beneficial for the students when they have that general knowledge and comprehension basis and feel enough with the material to make contributions to the discussion.

I recommend checking out the following links for further helpful information:

UCSC'S Teaching Toolbox: Getting More out of Classroom Discussion

Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology's Active Learning Strategies: Suggestions for Classroom Discussion (particularly the five types of discussion questions that cause inherent problems)