UP Teaching & Learning Community Blog

Jeffrey White

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Supportive Resources for Teaching and Learning

students and tutors sitting together at a small round tableWelcome back faculty! We are all now four weeks into our annual sojourn into a new academic year. During our journey as disciplinary experts, we have opportunities to develop and refine the craft of teaching at the college level. The University of Portland and several colleagues on campus offer resources to support our reflective teaching. These include the REFLECT team, the Untethered Lecture Capture initiative, the Ignite Grant program, CISGO, this TLC blog, our Teaching and Learning HUB, new Humanities Collaborative, and much more.

In addition to our own on-campus initiatives, online resources based at other institutions can also augment our efforts to hone our approaches to teaching. One excellent example is Carnegie Mellon University’s Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation. This thoughtfully designed site includes resources for course design and teaching, assessing both teaching and learning, education and technology, and solving teaching problems. This latter topic’s page breaks down the problem-solving process into three virtual steps: identification of problems by category, followed by identification of possible reasons, and ending with a set of potential strategies for addressing each possible reason for the problem. Teaching in higher education is often a puzzle for us disciplinary experts; some call it one of those wicked problems. The Eberly Center website provides us with a well-organized set of practical virtual tools for approaching our questions about teaching and learning.

We have now included The Eberly Center on our Teaching and Learning HUB’s Toolkits page. While you visit the page, take a moment to explore UP’s other resources for becoming a more reflective teacher at the college level.

Jeffrey White is an instructor of German and the Learning Commons administrator in Buckley Center 163. To discuss with Jeffrey topics on teaching and learning or how your students can practice and enhance their learning in the Learning Commons, contact him at x7141 or via email at white@up.edu.

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Learning Commons hosts Northwest CRLA at UP, May 11-12

The Northwest College Reading and Learning Association conference is just around the corner from May 11-12 at the University of Portland. Register today at www.nwcrla.com.  Our theme is “Blazing a Trail for Student Success.” On the Friday afternoon, Leonard Geddes of the LearnWell Projects will lead a three-hour workshop Preconditions for Learning: Establishing the Proper Infrastructure for Academic Success.

Saturday’s line-up includes Leonard Geddes’  keynote address Preconditions for Learning: Essential Infrastructure for Student Success followed by several breakout sessions for learning assistance directors and staff, tutors, academic coaches, and faculty. A sampling of our sessions includes:

Strand: Learning Assistance Centers and Peer Assistance Programs

  • Blending Methods: Combining Evidence-based Learning Strategies with Academic Coaching Methods for Student Success
  • If You Build It, They Will Come (That’s a Lie. You Need to Meet Folks Where They’re at.)
  • Peers Researching the Impact of Peers in Student Learning: Insights from a Student Research Team Examining the Peer Mentoring Experience at Portland State University
  • Approaches to Tutor Training and Math Center Programming

Strand: Academic Coaching and Tutoring Techniques

  • Navigating Resources and Coaching Study Skills to Meet College Expectations for Under-Prepared Students for Students Who Think Their Skills are Adequate
  • Emotional Intelligence Blazes a Successful Path Toward Learning
  • Incorporating Active Learning Strategies into Tutor Training

Strand: Equity and Inclusion

  • Creating Inclusive Spaces for Learning through Naming and Navigating Microaggressions
  • Disability Identity: Student Development, Policy, and Practice
  • Digital Learning Center Accessibility: Practical Solutions for Student Success
  • Modeling and Cultivating Intercultural Leadership through Training and Professional Development
  • Blazing a Cultural Bridge for International Student Success

Strand: Teaching and Learning Instructional Strategies

  • Enhancing College Student Success with Writing Studios
  • Trust-building in the Asynchronous OWL

The Northwest CRLA has a discount rate for students and part-time staff, so that everyone has the chance to improve their programs and practices.

Please note that space is limited for Leonard Geddes’ Friday workshops, so register now at www.nwcrla.com. For more information, please contact Jeffrey White, Learning Commons Administrator and Northwest CRLA Treasurer, at white@up.edu.

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“…and I was happy not to finish what I had intended.”

Last week, Lars Larson challenged us to integrate interleaving into our courses, basing his proposal on principles found in Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel’s Make it Stick (2014). One simple approach to interleaving is to bridge the introduction of material over two classes while also working on a different topic or concept. Although I know to do this, I sometimes fall for trying to package an important concept into one class session. This occurred last week in my Maximizing Study Abroad course. I had planned to have students explain and apply material from a book chapter on Milton Bennett’s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) through discussion and in-class group work. Since we had just returned from spring break, I also used the beginning of the hour for students to recall what they had been learning prior to the break. This took a bit longer than I expected, as did our group work, and by the end of the hour, we were not done with my lesson plan. As I gathered my things at the end of class, I realized how happy I was not to have finished my intended plan. I could now interleave the material by having students read over the week for the next topic on making cultural inferences and then guiding students the next week to recall Bennett’s DMIS and continue committing it more deeply to memory through elaboration and application.

But why interleave learning? The authors of Make it Stick cite studies that indicate the benefits of interleaving for retrieval of past learned material and developing the ability to discriminate between different kinds of concepts and problems. Interleaving our subject matter also supports effortful learning and what they refer to as “distributed practice” or learning that is spaced out over time. The opposite of distributed practice is massed practice, which includes trying to learn material in one block, as in my original lesson plan, or through cramming, which unfortunately is likely to happen on campus for some students in about a month. James Lang (2016) also discusses interleaving in his recent Small Teaching and cites supporting research findings from math and language learning. He suggests models for shifting from blocked class sessions to interleaved class sessions. Again, the key to interleaving is not finishing a topic or concept before introducing another. For example (Lang, 2016, p. 79):

From Blocked Class Sessions

Monday: Topic A, Problem-Solving Session

Wednesday: Topic B, Problem-Solving Session

Friday: Topic C, Problem-Solving Session, Quiz

To Interleaved Class Sessions

Monday: Topic A, Problem-Solving Session, Topic B

Wednesday: Topic B, Problem-Solving Session, Topic C

Friday: Topic C, Problem-Solving Session, Review or Quiz

Lang notes that students may perceive interleaved learning as moving more slowly, but he cites both laboratory and classroom research that indicates better retention and recall among learners who practice interleaving. Applying interleaving also promotes relating concepts to each other in the classroom and through assessments.

Like the authors of Make it Stick, Lang also promotes frequent low-stakes quizzing and other retrieval practices, such as the following quick classroom assessment techniques:

  • Opening questions that prompt students to remind us what we were working on in the last class session;
  • Closing activities such as a minute paper in which student list key take-aways or their own questions from the day;
  • Closing a session through a short quiz or solving a final problem;
  • Eliciting responses that connect the new topic to some other aspect of the course material.

By engaging students in retrieval practice within an interleaved classroom, we will increase the likelihood of their ability to recall and discriminate concepts, connections, and applications of the material we teach into the future.

As we embrace Lars’ challenge from last week, we can use some of the above approaches to integrate interleaving into your course and lesson plans. For example, when I meet with my Maximizing Study Abroad class next, we will (1) finish some work on Bennett’s intercultural sensitivity scale, (2) interleave it with questioning how it might connect to stages of cultural adjustment, and then (3) move on to the first stage of learning about making cultural inferences.

If you would like to discuss interleaving teaching and learning, please feel free to contact me at white@up.edu.

Jeffrey White is an instructor of German and the Learning Commons administrator in Buckley Center 163. To discuss with Jeffrey how your students can practice and enhance their learning the Learning Commons, contact him at x7141.

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Your image of the student: Where teaching begins

Student pair share activityAs faculty, we can find ourselves in common patterns of thinking about course planning. We sometimes worry about covering the material. Often we may choose texts and materials first before considering what the intended learning outcomes are. Starting with the outcomes in mind is an important approach, but we may find that the end goal is situated at an overly long distance from where the students actually are. We may find ourselves at times flabbergasted by the gap between what we are teaching and what the students are bringing to the learning experience. What are we to do? In Building a Pathway to Student Learning, Steven Jones, Robert Noyd, and Kenneth Sagendorf (2014) argue that course planning is a design process that starts with focusing on student learning factors. From this first step, the authors provide a helpful systematic framework for course design.

Jones, Noyd, and Sagedorf claim, “An effective pathway for student learning must start with a focus on your students rather than with a focus on your disciplinary content.” Student learning factors may include prior experiences and knowledge, maturity, class standing, cultural background, socioeconomic status, interests, motivation, intellectual development, and more. Such factors can have significant impact on students’ success in the classroom. While we might not have exact knowledge about student learning factors, we can reflect on our students in general and specific ways. For example, any higher education institution is likely to attract certain kinds of students with shared characteristics. In our case, UP students have certain values and that include community, service, and peer relationships. As course designers, we can consider how these values and characteristics affect learning and student interaction in our courses. Other general factors may include trends that we see, such as digital distraction, changes in how students deal with texts, or issues revolving around time management and study skills.

As faculty and course designers, we know of specific student learning factors, too. These include the typical breakdown of students taking our courses by class standing or by major. We know if students take specific courses as a core requirement, a major requirement, or an elective. More specifically, we may know our students personally and thus their habits or mind when taking classes in our departments. As we consider student-learning factors, we can complete this reflection by determining which factors are most significant and likely to have the greatest impact on student-learning success in our courses.

Once we reflect on the projected learning factors of our students, we can move on to the next stages of Jones, Noyd, and Sagendorf’s course design model:

  1. Setting learning goals
  2. Determining summative assessments;
  3. Gauging what intermediate proficiencies will need to be developed to reach the learning goals;
  4. Main learning experiences for the course;
  5. Formative assessments used during those learning experiences.

While the authors provide a systematic approach to course design, the process need not be mechanical since we may think of other student learning factors during the design process. When I use this model, I do find myself hopping between stages of the design process though I find it essential that I start with student learning factors. The key assumptions for course design, however, still hold true: All learning is situated, our students bring values, characteristics, and habits of mind to our courses, and it is up to us to take such situated learning and student learning factors into account. So next time you are planning a course, take out a legal pad or journal and start reflecting on your incoming students. To adapt a phrase by the Italian educator Loris Malaguzzi to our higher education context, your image of the student is where teaching begins.

If you would like to meet over coffee or tea and discuss student-learning factors, course design, or Jones, Noyd, and Sagendorf’s model, please feel free to contact me at white@up.edu.

Jeffrey White administers the Learning Commons in BC 163, develops training programs, and trains tutors for the Learning Commons and other programs on campus. He also teaches courses in third-year German, language learner strategies, language tutor training, and “Maximizing Study Abroad” for the Department of International Languages and Cultures. He can be reached at white@up.edu or x7141.

The Learning Commons is a program of the Shepard Academic Resource Center

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Providing the opportunity to forget…and remember

a close up of an elephants faceOver this past summer, a couple books that focus on the role of recall in learning came to my attention. Make it stick (Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel (2014)) and Small Teaching by James Lang (2016) both claim that retrieval practice is essential for durable learning. The authors argue that practicing recall builds strong connections in the brain that lead to long-term retention, and they cite numerous studies to support their claims. Our students can often struggle with recalling material from their readings, our lectures, and classroom discussions, but we can take steps to promote recall by making small changes to our teaching. For example, we can open class sessions by asking students to remind everyone what we did in the last session or last week. Having students do this in pairs or small groups and then report out may help to them to overcome some inhibitions or recalling in a whole-group discussion. When introducing something new, Lang suggests having students retrieve previous related material or concepts that lead up to it. By providing students the opportunity to recall at the beginning of class, we help to prime the pump for learning and better participation. These are just a couple of the many suggestions and examples of how we can support our students’ learning and improve our approaches to teaching in higher education.