by Jerod Quinn, Instructional Designer, CTTL

I warned my students this past semester that there would be a certain level of ambiguity inherent in my “introduction to technology” class. I was not going to walk them through using every application we discuss, but I would instead expect them to “figure it out” on their own. I promised them it would be frustrating at times, but learning is frustrating at times. As it turns out, I too had to eat my own words.

I am a techie by nature, so a course designed to introduce students to gadgets and apps and to prompt their understanding about how those apps can be useful, especially for future educators, is right up my alley. As I began choosing which apps we would wrestle with, I decided early on that I wanted my students to be familiar with blogs and understand how to navigate the backend of a content management system. I wanted them reading and commenting on each other’s work, but I also wanted them writing and publishing their own work. With that in mind, I decided to use a public WordPress blog; www.edi399.com.

While the focus of this post will be about the experience of using a public WordPress blog in my class, I think the topic warrants a quick explanation of why I was using a blog in the first place. A blog can incorporate two of Chickering and Gamson’s “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education” fairly naturally: good practice encourages student faculty contact, and good practice encourages cooperation among students. In keeping with the traditions of a Jesuit university, I also wanted to incorporate a space for the students to reflect on their experiences in the class. Reflection is a very important part of Ignatian Pedagogy and is connected to the Jesuit commitment to the transformational power of education.

“But why WordPress? There’s a perfectly fine blogging tool in Blackboard or Campus Pack!” That’s true. Going with WordPress means more hassle on my part administering an additional website and more hassle for my students in having to access another online tool. But it also means they get experience using a real-world tool that their future employers or graduate schools may be using to manage their professional websites. When their future bosses ask them in an interview, “Do you have any experience navigating a content management system?” I wanted them to be able to give an enthusiastic, “Yes!” I have also gathered anecdotal evidence from other faculty that when students know their writing will be seen by their peers and possibly by future employers, they tend to put a little more effort into it.

Along the way, I encountered expected and unexpected challenges. Of all the things I have learned with this project, here are a few lessons that stand out in my mind.

• Having a self-hosted blog means you are now an instructor and a website administrator. You manage student login info, create how-to-use-this-blog videos, deal with comment spam, and troubleshoot technical issues with students.
• Students will always forget their login name or password, no matter how many times they have previously posted to the blog.
• Blog comments give you another space where you can push the critical thinking of students and challenge their assumptions.
• You need to be clear when assignments are to be turned in as blog posts. And even then, you will get a few emailed to you instead.
• While I required students to comment on each other’s work, I wonder if it would have occurred more naturally if they were writing to the blog more frequently?
• Depending on the questions you ask, you can get a picture of the student’s process of thinking as they wrestle with course material.
• Even though your host company’s servers have never gone down a single time in the five years you have had service with them, they will go down on the exact day and hour your biggest writing assignment of the semester is due, which of course, is submitted as a blog post. True story.
• The more you have students using the blog the better and more useful the blog gets. Commit to it being a major part of your class or don’t use a public blog.
• You spend the semester scaffolding their learning. You cover material and assign projects that build to a cumulative final project that is designed to be an evaluation asking if they have reached the course goals. They complete the project, then reflect on some questions about the project on the blog. You grade the project and then read the student reflections about the final project. As you read the reflections you realize, they get it. Your students understand the things you knew you needed them to understand when you began this course sixteen weeks ago. The blog gives you a place to celebrate that victory.

There’s always a risk when you try something new. There will be unforeseen problems like continual password resets and horribly timed server crashes. But risk is what makes teaching and learning exciting, and it makes payoffs all the more sweet. Trying something new will be frustrating at times, but learning is frustrating at times. With that in mind, I would absolutely use a public blog again for my class. The only thing I know I would do differently is to have it more incorporated into the class. I would want them to write and reflect more, even if that means resetting passwords every week.

Food for thought for those interested in blogging in the classroom:

• Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing
• Using Blogs in a College Classroom: What’s Authenticity Got to Do with It?

For the last several weeks, I’ve felt – and many SLU faculty have affirmed this sense – that the end of the semester was both speeding at me like a locomotive and slowing like an unwinding watch.  Some days, it was hard to believe May was actually here; others, it seemed the semester would never end.  And yet, here we are: last days of class and final exams and graduation ceremonies are upon us.  It’s been a long and productive year.  I don’t know about you, but I am ready for a somewhat slower pace.

Whether you’re about to depart St. Louis for the summer or gearing up for summer session courses, I hope you’ll find a spot of quiet this summer, a space and an occasion for renewal.

The verb renew has many layers and meanings, as the OED suggests.  While we most commonly think of renewal as “making something new” or “taking on fresh life,” it also can mean “to restore to the same condition as when new, young, or fresh,” and “to reawaken, to revive.”

As you reflect on your teaching from this year – what your students have said in evaluations, what they’ve shown in their classroom contributions – I hope you’ll remember a bit of what it was like to be a “new, young, fresh” teacher.  None of us wants to stumble as much as we did in those early days of teaching, but we do want to reconnect to the energy we felt then, when all things were possible.

At our spring Certificate Ceremony last week, Dr. Paul Lynch reminded us that, even when we are exhausted and frustrated by the semester that is, there is always next semester, when we’ll be fresh, get it all right, inspire our students to greatness.  For those of us who teach as a labor of love, as a calling, it is essential that we take time out between semesters to search for a little renewal, to rekindle and reawaken our early passion for teaching.

As you close out the 2012-2013 academic year, we wish you renewal, and maybe even a little rest.  If you find yourself in need of new insights or perspectives on your teaching, stop by and see us.  We’re here all summer – and all united in a single location now, in Pius Library, 2^nd floor – and we’d love to help you reignite your passion for teaching.  And keep an eye on this blog: we’ll be posting short reviews and summaries of research on the art and science of learning throughout the summer.

PS: for those in need of a more concrete jolt, there’s still time to apply for one of our Try It! Summer Mini-Grants.

The Reinert Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning honored 29 Certificate in University Teaching Skills recipients at our Spring Ceremony on Friday, May 3, 2013.  After warm welcomes from Dr. Debie Lohe, Director of the CTTL, keynote speaker, Dr. Paul Lynch, professor in the Department of English, imparted words of wisdom on teaching and learning to the recipients, friends, and family in attendance.

During Lynch’s address, he reflected on the idea of teaching being an art, but an art of a very particular kind.  Taking Fr. Gregory Boyle, S.J. of Homeboy Industries as an example, Lynch asked those in attendance to reflect on the habits that distance us from our students, and to find practices to narrow that gap in meaningful ways, considering the “no matter whatness” of transformative teaching.

As Lohe reminded the attendees at the ceremony, the requirements for the Certificate in University Teaching Skills help participants to make deliberate and intentional choices about teaching, much like the ideas shared by Lynch.  Friday’s ceremony acknowledged the time and commitment these participants gave to earning one of the Certificates. We also celebrated the dedication shown by those faculty who served as teaching mentors.

For more information about our certificates visit our website.

Dr. Beccy Aldrich explains how and why she partnered with a colleague at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden this spring 2013 semester to teach students about how culture influences the understanding of occupational therapy, geopolitics, and disability.

by Michaella Thornton, Assistant Director for Instructional Design

It is an inspiring and instructive privilege to be able to peek inside others’ classrooms to experience how others teach, hear how and why teachers make the choices they do for students, learning goals and objectives, and respective disciplines, and to consider how such possibilities may be transformed by those who teach elsewhere and/or do research on the scholarship of teaching and learning.

On Friday, April 19th past and current Innovative Teaching Fellows shared their perspectives about teaching in the Learning Studio, a state-of-the-art teaching space designed by a team of Saint Louis University faculty and students as part of the Herman Miller Learning Spaces Research Program.  Almost 40 full-time SLU faculty and administrators attended this at-capacity event.

Presenting CTTL Innovative Teaching Fellows included:

• Jenny Agnew, Ph.D., School for Professional Studies (Fall 2012), who discussed how her “ENGL 150:  The Process of Composition” students used theme-based writing projects via a public WordPress blog to explore the collaborative and on-going nature of writing, food, and culture, in addition to sharing how flexible classroom design may enhance the teaching of composition, especially in hosting teacher-student conferences, brainstorming sessions, and peer review.
• Beccy Aldrich, Ph.D., Department of Occupational Sciences and Occupational Therapy (Spring 2013), who shared how her “OCS 372: Occupations in Diverse Contexts” class uses immersive, collaborative learning technologies such as Fuze Meeting to connect with the Karolinska Institutet, a premier medical university located in Stockholm, Sweden, to foster a more globalized and diverse student perspective about occupational therapy.
• Paul Lynch, Ph.D., Department of English (Spring 2013), who shared how his graduate-level “ENGL 501: Teaching Writing” class uses a course blog and Google Docs to empower first-year composition instructors to co-construct assignments, the course syllabus, and model effective writing feedback for first-year composition students.
• Nathaniel Rivers, Ph.D., Department of English (Fall 2012), gave the audience a first-hand look at what he and his students have learned through the course, “ENGL 401: New Media Science Writing,” by sharing a snippet from his forthcoming jointly-created webtext, “Articulation.”  To see and/or hear a  different Vimeo video that sets the tone for the course Dr. Rivers held in the Learning Studio last fall, please click here.
• Thomas Stewart, J.D., School of Law (Fall 2012), who discussed how his first-year Evidence students used Google Docs and team-based and case-based learning to identify, apply, and contextualize the Federal Rules of Evidence (and the Missouri counterparts) to prepare students to practice law as professional attorneys.

We are so grateful to the Symposium panelists, who make this annual event possible by generously sharing their teaching and learning reflections with the larger Saint Louis University community.  [update on Tuesday, May 15th]: For those in the SLU community who were unable to attend the Symposium and would like to view a password-protected video, please email me at mthornt7[at]slu[dot]edu and I will enroll you in the CTTL Events course via Blackboard Learn.

Special thanks is also due to Flannery Burke, Ph.D., Department of History (Spring 2012), who prepared and introduced the Symposium panelists and deftly facilitated the Q&A session that immediately followed the panelists’ presentations.

We especially look forward to continuing the reflective conversation next April (2014) when we host our 3rd Annual Learning Studio Symposium.  Since the Innovative Teaching Fellowship program began in Fall 2011, the faculty who teach in the Learning Studio have much to share with the broader community about what teaching practices and educational technologies resonate with them, transfer to classrooms outside of the Learning Studio, the role of instructional design, and how providing space, time, and support to be in a new or refreshed mindset can make all the difference in reinvigorating or creating innovative learning environments for 21st Century students.

Late April to mid-May is often a frenetic time of year for faculty, students, and staff (admittedly, my mind often wanders to a beach much like the one pictured here in Venice Beach).  The semester is winding down, culminating projects are well underway, and time is fleeting and in short supply.  Yet before the barrage of grading final projects and papers begins or graduation commences, I’d like to take a moment to share two important events happening at Saint Louis University that may affect those of you teaching this summer and beyond.

Saturday, May 18, 2013: SLU Global, which will be officially known as Blackboard Learn on May 18th, the Learning Management System (LMS) used by many faculty members and graduate teaching assistants and supported by SLU ITS, will be upgraded from Service Pack 7 to Blackboard Learn 9.1 Service Pack 11.  This upgrade was announced by ITS on March 6 via Newslink and live webinar “tours” of the Blackboard upgrade are available this week and next, also announced via Newslink on April 19^th.  To register for these “tours,” click here.

To get a sense of the upcoming changes, Kim Scharringhausen, Instructional Liaison, also recommends viewing the following videos so those teaching at SLU may see what’s in store with the enhanced design and improved functionality and accessibility of Service Pack 11:

• The New 2012-2013 Theme
• Global Navigation and My Blackboard

So, what does the Blackboard upgrade mean for you, the faculty member or graduate instructor?

• Blackboard Learn will not be available for most of the day on May 18^th and after May 18th Blackboard Learn may look and/or function differently to SLU users, depending on users’ familiarity, comfort, and prior review or experience with the new look and feel of the updated LMS.
• This also means that anyone teaching during or immediately after this Blackboard upgrade may want to take extra time planning and preparing for online or face-to-face courses that use Blackboard, in addition to reviewing syllabi and course schedules to ensure major assignments or online collaboration and discussions are not due on May 18^th.
• Notifying students about the Blackboard upgrade and how it may affect their ability to complete coursework on Saturday, May 18^th is also a smart plan of action.  Plan Bs (and Cs and Ds) are often a professor’s best friend, especially when learning technologies are being upgraded.

Monday, July 29 – Friday, August 2, 2013: The next session of the CTTL’s Online Teaching & Learning Institute, or OTLI, has been designed to fit into full-time faculty members’ schedules for one week this summer.  OTLI will take place from 9 AM to 4 PM the week of July 29.  Seating is limited to 12 full-time SLU faculty members. Priority seating is given to those who have not already gone through the Institute, are planning to teach an online or blended course in the near future, and for full-time professors who hail from a variety of departments, schools, and programs at Saint Louis University so as to foster an interdisciplinary cohort interested in exploring effective practices and pedagogy for teaching online.

OTLI includes daily meetings and facilitated conversations about online teaching and learning, collaborative and independent work time, individualized instructional-design consultations, and much more.  To register for this summer’s OTLI, please click here.

Best of luck as your semester wraps up!  We hope you’ll consider the forthcoming update to Blackboard Learn as you plan for summer and fall classes and think about registering for the CTTL’s next Online Teaching & Learning Institute.

Tuesday, May 7, 8:30 am 12:00 pm

College Church Ballroom

In this interactive workshop, Dr. Patti Clayton will share a research-grounded model for critical reflection and engage participants in a hands-on workshop to enhance understanding of the features of critical reflection. Participants will leave with practical strategies for deepening students’ critical reflection, both in and out of class.For more information, and to register, please click here.

Continental breakfast will be served. Registration & breakfast begin at 8 a.m.

Patti H. Clayton, Ph.D. is an Independent Consultant and Practitioner-Scholar (PHC Ventures). She currently serves as a Senior Scholar with the Center for Service and Learning at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), a Visiting Fellow with the New England Resource Center for Higher Education (NERCHE), and a Visiting Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She is co-developer of the DEAL Model, a research-grounded critical reflection and assessment model, and she has designed faculty development and curriculum development processes related to community-campus engagement, among other things. She has consulted with over 100 colleges and universities in the US, Canada, and Ireland.

by Michaella Thornton, Assistant Director for Instructional Design, Reinert CTTL

First, a brief, lively video explanation of what digital media curation is:

What is Curation? from Percolate on Vimeo.

There’s an exciting movement underway regarding the tried-and-true textbook.  The Internet, digital scholarship, open-access journals, academic crowd-sourcing, and on-going debates about providing equitable, affordable, and timely course information to students have all contributed to educators questioning the role (and possibly even the relevancy) of the almighty textbook.  There’s even an Institute for the Future of the Book. The first sentence of their mission statement reads: “The printed page is giving way to the networked screen.”  True enough.  But how true is this statement for professors and college students?

While a great textbook can help organize numerous concepts and content into more manageable and organized chapters, textbooks can sometimes become instructional crutches, overly relied on for coverage-based courses instead of thinking about why a particular text or series of texts serves as a primary authority on a subject or how such a text supports the learning objectives of the course, among a bevy of important skills many of us hope students hone and use beyond our classes: critical reflection, deep and close reading, analytical thinking, and encouraging students to connect the dots between the texts they read to their lives, other texts, and the world at large.

Some commonly used digital curation tools that many teachers are finding success with, especially in co-constructing course reading lists and co-creating collaborative learning experiences with students, include:

• Twitter: Instructional designer Jerod Quinn wrote a great primer about using social media in the classroom in an earlier blog post, in addition to getting the most out of this micro-blogging and bookmarking tool.
• Pinterest: This visual bulletin board is not just for the super crafty or photo-obsessed. Professors are using Pinterest for “visual sharing in architecture, photography, design, and art classes,” among many other things.
• Diigo: Diigo first started out as an online bookmarking tool. Nowadays the website and app allows users to “collect and highlight, then remember.” Many educators use this tool to create reading lists with students and to organize web-based research.
• Bit.ly Bundles: Helps professors unify, organize, and then share web-based information more easily with students. For an example, check out the blog, Technology for Academics.
• iBooks Author, Red Staple, and Folium Book Studio: There are many ways to e-publish a course text. These are a couple options to help you consider the possibilities if you’re interested in creating your own course text.

So, what digital curation methods do you employ in your classes?   Do you view your role as a curator of educational experiences?  If so, how do you help students explore compelling questions through the digital learning objects you’ve assembled?

by Sandy Gambill, Instructional Designer, Reinert Center for Transformative Teaching & Learning

Classroom flipping, or using technology like Tegrity to move lecture out of physical class time, is all the rage these days, but what actually makes it an effective learning strategy for students?  Faculty are invited to attend an informal brainstorming conversation on effective flipping practices on April 17 from Noon to 1:00 pm in Allied Health Room 2002.

Questions to be considered

How do you prepare students for the flipped model?

What are effective strategies for getting students to do the out of class work?

What does physical class time look like if you are not lecturing?

Resources

What is the Flipped Classroom Infograph

http://www.knewton.com/flipped-classroom/

7 Things You Should Know about the Flipped Classroom

http://www.educause.edu/library/resources/7-things-you-should-know-about-flipped-classrooms

St Louis Post Dispatch Article featuring SLU’s Professor Michael Lewis:

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/flipped-classrooms-homework-in-class-online-lectures-at-home/article_529a4e07-0f60-5382-aaa1-3bb8688373dc.html

by Gina Merys, Assistant Director for Faculty and Graduate Student Development, Reinert Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning

In honor of the 15th anniversary of the Reinert Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning (CTTL), I would like to share “15 Tips for Creating Exams.”   When creating exams it is important to remember the purpose of exams is to assess or evaluate student learning.  Creating exams that carefully measure real learning rather than those that measure a student’s ability to take an exam is an important skill for instructors to practice.

All Exams

1. Align the type of exam (take-home, timed, multiple-choice, short answer, essay, etc.) with the learning objectives of the course.

Not all exam types can measure all types of learning.  For instance, if the objective is that students can perform a specific activity, they made need a demonstration exam rather than a multiple choice exam.

2. Create a variety of questions so that students engage both lower order and higher order thinking skills.

Use this chart for some beginning ideas for using Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning in exam questions.

3. Design questions that should be difficult for people who don’t know the material to answer, but that are straightforward for those who do know the material.

If a question is difficult because of complicated wording (e.g., double negatives) or vocabulary, you will be testing verbal ability rather than a command of the subject.

4. Give clear directions on how to take the various parts of the test, and identify the point value of the various items.

The directions to each part of an exam should tell students details about how to answer questions (there is only one correct answer for each of the following questions, write answers in complete sentences, etc.).  Additionally, the point value should not only be identified, but should also be aligned with the kind of answer expected.  For instance, a complicated essay question that requires a paragraph or more of writing will likely be worth more points than a brief short answer question that requires a few words or one sentence.

5. Guard against cultural, racial, ethnic, age and sexual bias. Items should not require presupposed knowledge which favors one group over another.

References to specific musicians, television shows, movies, or sports may introduce confusion or prejudice into an otherwise clear or unbiased question.

Multiple-Choice Exams

1. Present a clear and complete problem in the stem of the question, and state questions as questions rather than as incomplete thoughts.

For instance, the question stem,  “Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?” is much   clearer than “The Declaration of Independence was written by …”

2. Avoid using negative words.

It is generally suggested that negative words be avoided in the question stem to prevent confusion. If included, it is best if any negative word is capitalized and/or underlined, and bolded (e.g., Which of the following is NOT an item of mountain climbing gear?)

3. Balance the placement of the correct answer.

Rather than placing correct answers as the second or third option only, remember to use all the options equally.

4. Keep each alternative answer homogeneous in content.

Alternatives that are parallel in content help the question present a clear-cut problem more useful in measuring the attainment of a specific objective.

5. Keep the alternative answers similar in length.

An answer noticeably longer or shorter than the other is frequently assumed to be the answer, with good reason.

Short-Answer and Essay Exams

1.  Use specific course content.

Focus essay questions on specific course content. Make it clear what content and subject matter students should use in answering the question. (Generally, it is better to require students to use more specific content then broad or general content.)

2. Limit and narrow the possible correct responses.

Structure the question so that the range of acceptable responses is limited to a single correct answer or a narrow set of definite, clear-cut, and explicit answers.

3. Clearly state the thinking processes students are to use in writing their answers and require the students to use these thinking processes in a novel or previously un-encountered problem situation (e.g., compare, analyze, evaluate, etc.).

Instead of providing the exact problem found in the textbook, or discussed in class which would only measure a student’s ability to memorize a response, create a new problem, situation, or case in which you ask students to demonstrate specific thinking or methodology.

4. Avoid writing essay questions that require only factual knowledge.

There are other types of exam questions, such as multiple choice questions, that measure factual knowledge better and more efficiently.

5. Require students to answer all of the essay questions provided.

When students have an option of choosing to answer only some of the essay questions such as three of five, they are not all being assessed or evaluated over the same material.

Full-time faculty members are cordially invited to the Paul C. Reinert, S.J. Center for Transformative Teaching & Learning’s 2nd Annual Learning Studio Symposium from 2-3:30 p.m. Friday, April 19, in room 213 in Des Peres Hall.  Refreshments will follow the symposium in the first-floor International Lounge in Des Peres Hall. Interested attendees are invited to register online (Seating is limited, so priority will be given to full time faculty.)

Past and current Innovative Teaching Fellows will share their perspectives and experiences about teaching in the Learning Studio, a state-of-the-art teaching space designed by a team of faculty and students as part of the Herman Miller Learning Spaces Research Program.  For more information about the Learning Studio, visit the CTTL website.

Presenting CTTL Innovative Teaching Fellows will include:

• Jenny Agnew, Ph.D., School for Professional Studies
• Beccy Aldrich, Ph.D., Department of Occupational Sciences and Occupational Therapy
• Paul Lynch, Ph.D., Department of English
• Nathaniel Rivers, Ph.D., Department of English
• Thomas Stewart, J.D., School of Law
  

Flannery Burke, Ph.D., Department of History, will introduce the symposium panel and facilitate the conversation. Symposium presenters and attendees will also have an opportunity to discuss how to create engaging and interactive learning experiences designed especially for today’s learners and how these lessons may be extended into others’ classrooms and teaching philosophies.

Please note: The front entrance of Des Peres Hall is currently under construction. Enter Des Peres Hall on the second-floor entrance via the back (south) stairwell, which faces Laclede Ave. For those who need accommodations, access to the basement of Des Peres Hall requires a SLU ID swipe and needs to be requested in advance by contacting Jane Jones, Program Director of Disability Services, at (314) 977-8885 or jjone166@slu.edu.