UP Teaching & Learning Community Blog

Professional Development

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Imagining the World Factfully

UP aims to cultivate world-citizenship in its students. We see this in Vision 2020’s push to foreground opportunities and curricula that support internationalism, our robust study- abroad programs, the 69 Fulbrights students have won, as well as CISGO’s set of outcomes for Global and Intercultural Learning.

Part of such student learning depends on faculty possessing a quantitatively accurate understanding of the modern world.

Have you tested yourself lately?

An enjoyable opportunity can be found in Hans Rosling’s 2018 book Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things are Better Than you Think – a book I devoured over spring break.

Rosling was a quirky Swedish TED-talk and global affairs speaker (one known to punctuate talks with displays of sword swallowing). He died from pancreatic cancer in 2017, just as he was finishing this career-capping overview of the true state of the world, as supported by numbers.

Readers start the book confronted by a 13-question multiple-choice quiz on such things as how people are distributed across the planet’s continents, the amount poverty has decreased, rates of girls’ education, access to electricity, and global life expectancy. Sad to say, you and I will achieve a predictably bad score (as Rosling’s three decades of audience testing has determined) – a score likely worse than if we had merely guessed the answers.

Most Westerners’ concept of the world, as Rosling explains, comes from a patchwork of outdated assumptions, unfamiliarity, media sentimentality, fear of the foreign, and a natural instinct for negativity. This leads us to operate with an “overdramatic worldview.” His solution is to cultivate a factful worldview – one based on numbers, proportions, and comparisons, gathered from across our planet’s 200+ countries.

And so we learn that the majority of the world lives in middle-income countries (just 9% live in extreme poverty), 80% of humans have access to electricity, girls worldwide spend an average of 9 years in school (boys spend 10), and 80% of people around the world have had at least one vaccination (on this planet, anti-vaxxers are decidedly outnumbered). This is not a bunch of global trivia but rather the shaping of a worldview – one lit with possibility. Amid the good news, he prioritizes things we should worry about: global pandemics, financial collapse, world war, climate change, and extreme poverty.

Along the way, Rosling reminds us of basic strategies for avoiding being fooled by data (e.g. getting proportionality with your information, avoiding urgency to maintain clear thinking, questioning categories). He presents helpful charts for visualizing the world and its (often confusing) data, and offers a concrete, four-level way to categorize countries by income (to replace the long-outdated “first/third-world” mode).

While lies inevitably travel faster than facts, Rosling’s data helps fight the War on Error.

In the right course, Factfulness would be an eye-opening inclusion. Knowing that in 2100, 80% of the population will most likely live in Asia and Africa would help our students keep their eye on the future’s true continental leaders (a recognition not given by most Western popular culture). Knowing that world population is not spiraling out of control would help calm fears. Recognizing how the past century has radically reduced global poverty and increased world health and safety would offer hope as we work on more intractable problems of our planet. And re-committing to truth would help keep us from bending it amid the panic of the day’s urgencies (as Rosling insists, “Data must be used to tell the truth, not to call to action, no matter how noble the intention”).

Faculty can prepare the next several generations of global citizens by first ensuring our characteristically inaccurate and overdramatic worldviews are better tethered to Factfulness.

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Need a Moodle Question Answered?

Do you have Moodle questions? Maybe you are new to UP and are coming from using a different LMS like Blackboard or Canvas. Perhaps you’ve been using Moodle for a while but want to leverage it more to create efficiencies or open up new opportunities. Or maybe you are brand new to the world of Moodle – in any case, Academic Technology Services & Innovation is here to help!

Contact Us!

You can always reach us at atsi@up.edu – you can get questions answered, or get connected to more resources if you need hands-on tech-training or instructional design consulting to enhance your use of digital resources in your teaching.

Are you more of a “show me the tutorials and let me have a go at it” type person? Check out our Moodle Guides site for quick tutorial articles and videos on common Moodle tasks. Here are some of my favorites to spark your interest:

*/ Photo by Camylla Battani on Unsplash

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Lesson Planning: At the Intersection of Bloom’s Taxonomy and Knowledge Dimensions

Revisiting Bloom’s Taxonomy

In the 1950’s Benjamin Bloom and other researchers collaborated to create what is known as Bloom’s Taxonomy of cognitive processes. This has been revised over the years and includes today six cognitive dimensions:

  • Remember: recall facts and basic concepts (e.g., define, list, state)
  • Understand: explain ideas or concepts (e.g., describe, explain, summarize)
  • Apply: use information in new situations (e.g., solve, complete, change)
  • Analyze: draw connections among ideas (e.g., contrast, categorize, connect)
  • Evaluate: justify a stand or decision (e.g., criticize, defend, prioritize)
  • Create: produce new or original work (e.g., design, modify, write)

The accompanying verbs can be used to develop and organize learning goals and objectives for our curricula, courses, and daily lesson plans. Many UP faculty already use Bloom’s Taxonomy as a guide for planning, but we can enhance the use of Bloom’s Taxonomy by considering our objectives through the lens of knowledge dimensions that Anderson and Krathwohl added to the taxonomy in 2001. The four dimensions are:

  • Factual knowledge (basic elements to learn in the discipline)
  • Conceptual knowledge (interrelationships between basic elements within a larger context)
  • Procedural knowledge (methods in the discipline)
  • Metacognitive knowledge (awareness of how learning work in relation to one’s self)

Anderson and Krathwohl developed a matrix for combining cognitive processes and knowledge dimensions that can be adapted when planning courses and lessons. As faculty, we can adapt this matrix in our own lesson planning. Here’s an example from a 300-level applied linguistics course that I teach in the Department of International Languages and Cultures.

Basic concept: Individual differences in language learning

Knowledge Dimension: Factual knowledge

Bloom’s Taxonomy Cognitive Process: Remember (Related actions verbs: define, list, state, recall, identify)

Learning Goal: Students can accurately define individual differences and list examples.Writing assistance working with student

Assessment: Students take a low-stakes quiz in which they define individual differences and provide examples they recall from the reading and group work activity.

Learning Experiences: 

  1. Students read section on individual differences in How Languages are Learned respond to reading prompts before class.
  2. In class, students work in groups to identify individual differences in written profiles of learners and present their findings.

Intersecting with multiple knowledge dimensions

As faculty, we can also run concepts and theories we teach through both multiple knowledge and cognitive process dimensions as we plan instruction. Let’s take, for example, the social cultural theoretical perspective of second language acquisition from the same applied linguistics course

Factual dimension / Remember

Instructor provides learning experiences so that students practice recalling definitions of terms and characteristics and elements of the theory.

Conceptual dimension / Understand

Students participate in learning experiences that guide them to start explaining principles and models of the social cultural perspective. It’s important to note that at this level, the students are not just restating an author’s or instructor’s explanation; that would be remembering. Rather, they are using concepts, terms, and paraphrasing to explain the concept or theory.

Procedural dimension / Analyze

Eventually, students point out passages in a research text that indicate the linguistics researcher is writing from the social cultural perspective of second language learning. They are using their knowledge of the theory as an analytical tool.

Metacognitive dimension / Apply

Finally, the instructor can work with students to develop and apply motivational and language learning strategies that are based on a social cultural perspective of second language learning.

The above processes can also be reorganized into a class lesson planning tool.

Application in your teaching

The combination of Bloom’s Taxonomy and knowledge dimensions create a powerful approach for your faculty toolbox in support of our efforts to provide the excellent undergraduate education opportunities to our students. For more about deploying Bloom’s Taxonomy and the four dimensions of knowledge, check out Laurie Richlin’s Blueprint for Learning: Construction College Courses to Facilitate, Assess, and Document Learning (2006), one of the sources of today’s TLC blog entry. If you would like to explore in more detail using dimensions and Bloom’s Taxonomy verbs in a lesson planning form, download this MS Word version.

Jeffrey White directs the Learning Commons in the Shepard Academic Resource Center in Buckley Center 163, where he trains tutors to reach Level 1 of the International Tutor Training Program Certification. He also teaches German, an applied linguistics course, and a preparation course for study abroad in the Department of International Languages and Cultures. Jeffrey is currently the president-elect of the Northwest College Reading and Learning Association. He is happy to meet over coffee or lunch to discuss course and lesson design, training, and teaching in higher education and can be reached at white@up.edu.

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Exit Cards: A Simple Formative Assessment Strategy

We all want to be effective teachers, but how do we gauge whether our teaching has been effective? One simple way to gather informal, low-stakes feedback from students is through exit cards. In the last several minutes of class, the instructor can pose a question to the class, have students write their answer on a card, and collect the cards. Exit cards can be anonymous or graded; low-tech or electronic; and about pedagogy or about content. After reviewing the cards, the instructor can address student concerns either individually or with the whole class. Rather than relying on end-of-semester evaluations to evaluate how a class is going, exit cards can give on-going feedback to help instructors make decisions about instructional techniques, pacing, or classroom management. Exit cards provide an equitable way for all students to share their voice, and they can open up opportunities for further dialogue with students who may be hesitant to share concerns face-to-face.

Exit cards can be used to gauge specific, disciplinary content. For example, a Calculus II instructor might ask students: “What is the difference between the comparison test and the limit comparison test for series convergence.” Used as a formative assessment tool, exit cards can indicate whether more time is needed for particular content or if common misconceptions exist in the class. Exit cards can also be used to gauge pedagogical components of the course, such as course content and structure; participation, collaboration, and inclusion; use of technology; or groupwork. Consider this list of possible exit cards:

 

Course Content and Structure

  • How is the pace of this class? (Too slow, About right, Too fast)
  • Is there a topic from class this week that was particularly challenging? What is your strategy for learning this topic?
  • What is one misconception you or another student had about the lesson today? How would you address that misconception?
  • Do you feel this class challenges you in a productive way on most days? Please give examples of how.
  • How challenging have you found the material in this class to be compared to other classes you have taken? Circle one: Low, Medium, High
  • What were the main learning objectives from today’s lesson? Rank how well you currently understand them (0 = not so much, 5 = totally get it)
  • Do you feel this class is organized around specific learning objectives that focus on building your knowledge? Please give one example of how.
  • Do you believe that exam and test materials in this class are clearly defined based on specific learning objectives? Please give one example:
  • Do you feel the material in this class is meaningful or has interesting applications?

Participation, Collaboration, and Inclusion

  • How comfortable are you participating in this class? Give examples of types of participation that are comfortable for you and those that are less comfortable for you.
  • In class today, did you get to hear different ideas from your classmates? What was one idea/question/solution from a classmate that helped you understand something?
  • Did you have the chance to share your ideas during class today? Give an example of one idea you had and how you shared it.
  • What is one thing you can do to help a classmate feel more comfortable sharing incomplete or incorrect ideas? What could the instructor do to make you feel more comfortable sharing ideas?
  • Do you feel comfortable sharing incomplete or incorrect ideas with your small group? What could be done differently to help you feel more comfortable sharing ideas in your small group?
  • How safe do you feel in this classroom? Please explain. How comfortable do you feel in this classroom? Please explain.
  • Estimate how many different people you have worked with in this class this term.
  • Estimate how many different people you feel you have gotten to know better in this class this term.
    • Do you feel comfortable sharing your identity with them?
  • How would you characterize the inclusivity of this classroom? (Low, Medium, High) What can you do to help make the class more inclusive?

Use of Technology

  • Do you feel technology is used effectively in this class? Please give examples of how.
  • Estimate how many different types of technology used in this class you found helpful this week? (examples include course website, discussion board, videos developed, etc)
  • How would you characterize the use of technology in this class compared to other classes you have taken? Circle one: Needs Improvement, Good, Excellent. Explain your choice.

Group Work

  • Did you value the group activity today? Do you think the activity or task would have been better done alone?
  • Did you find your group members to participate equally?
  • Do you value the product of the group activity or task today?
  • Do you feel your group members listened to your contributions in the group activity today?
  • How did you make your group members feel welcome sharing ideas today?

 

For more information on the benefits and use of exit cards, consider

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13562517.2016.1167033?src=recsys&

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1469787405054237

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/formative-assessment-exit-slip-rebecca-alber

http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/exit_slips

**Featured Image Photo by Michael Jasmund on Unsplash

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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.