by Gina Merys, Assistant Director for Faculty & Graduate Student Development, Reinert CTTL

This is the Weekly Reflection podcast from Saint Louis University’s Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning. Each week, we focus on a topic that fits with our theme for the 2012-2013 academic year, Engaging All Learners. Each reflection loosely follows the five-part Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (context, experience, reflection, action, and evaluation). The goal of this podcast is to provide an avenue into a space for thoughtful reflection on complex issues, rather than to provide answers to these issues.

The next reflection will be posted on Friday, November 29th. All reflections are archived for future use. For more information on this week’s topic, CTTL services, programs, or events please consult the website at http://slu.edu/cttl.

The full transcript is available by clicking here: Weekly Reflection Podcast 12: The Power of Narrative

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by Katie Beres, Instructional Liaison

In the first two posts in this three-part series, I examined the habit of thought related to preparing and conceptualizing the lecture experience. I shared that a major shift in my habit of thought for preparing my lecture time was to prepare for my lecture apart from any technology or tools I would use. Freeing me from the confines of bullets and text in PowerPoint gave me more creative freedom to imagine the best learning strategies for my classes. In this final post, I will address how I apply my learning outcomes and strategies to choices about tools for delivery.

Tools are the last factor in my process for planning a lecture. I save them for last because I do not want to teach to technology. Only when I have well defined learning outcomes and strategies for my lecture do I consider the tools I will use in class. “Technology” in my mind is any tool that can be used to facilitate learning. This means that tools can be simple as paper, pencil, and a minute of time, a book, or web-based like blogs, wikis, and Google docs.

The criteria I consider when evaluating a tool are:

• The learning outcomes,
• Strengths and weaknesses,
• Enhancement or unnecessary complication, and
• My confidence with the tool.

The capabilities of the tool need to align with my desired learning. The strengths and weaknesses need to be taken into consideration with the ability of the tool to enhance or complicate the learning experience. Does the ability of the tool to facilitate a quality learning experience outweigh the challenge of learning to use the tool itself? The answer to this question is influenced by my confidence; confidence in me and confidence in my students. I attempt to minimize risks that do not have a high probability of success, yet they are still risks.

What type of learning experience do you like to have in your course? As I shared in the previous post, my mental model for my lectures is that of a highly participatory workshop with me as a facilitator. I favor strategies and technologies that facilitate collaboration, reflection, and discussion. Your teaching philosophy and nature of your course may mean interaction within your lecture may look very different.

Below is a brief list of various strategies and corresponding tools. As you read through the list, consider what tools you use and how you use them. What strategies and corresponding technologies would you add? We live in an exciting time where educational technology is becoming more user-friendly, but it still takes a community to wade through it all to determine what is best for learning.

We wanted to take a moment to recognize several CTTL staff for some major accomplishments in the past few weeks.  If you see them around, ask them to tell you about what they’ve been working on!

Chris Grabau passed his doctoral comprehensive examination on Saturday, October 13.  He is well on his way to a PhD!

This year, Kim Scharringhausen celebrates her 26^th year at SLU.  Congratulations to Kim, and to all of us who have had the pleasure of working with her over the years.

Kim was also one of three CTTL staff members to present at the Focus on Teaching and Technology Conference at UMSL on November 1-2.  Kim presented on “Flipping Learning Technology Support: Preparing Faculty in the 24/7 World.”   Also at the UMSL conference, Sandy Gambill led a workshop on “Designing, Implementing, and Assessing Technology-Based Assignments,” and Michaella Thornton joined forces with Dr. Jenny Agnew (one of our Innovative Teaching Fellows), to present “Food for Thought: Collaborative Course Design and Social Media in the Writing Classroom.”

Four of us had an opportunity to attend and present at the annual conference of the Professional and Organizational Network in Higher Education (POD Network) in Seattle at the end of October.  (POD is the premier faculty/instructional development professional organization in the United States.)  Dr. Gina Merys and Sandy Gambill presented a poster on our pilot of asynchronous Small Group Instructional Feedback sessions.  Both Gina and Sandy also were a part of other sessions at POD: Sandy joined Dr. Debra Lohe and Michaella Thornton in a workshop entitled, “Learning Space: Classroom or Change Agent?,” and Gina, MIchaella, and Debie held a roundtable discussion on strategic planning, “Illuminating ‘Lived Experiences’: Strategic Planning in Teaching and Learning Centers.”

by Gina Merys, Assistant Director for Faculty & Graduate Student Development, Reinert CTTL

This is the Weekly Reflection podcast from Saint Louis University’s Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning. Each week, we focus on a topic that fits with our theme for the 2012-2013 academic year, Engaging All Learners. Each reflection loosely follows the five-part Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (context, experience, reflection, action, and evaluation). The goal of this podcast is to provide an avenue into a space for thoughtful reflection on complex issues, rather than to provide answers to these issues.

The next reflection will be posted on Friday, November 16th. All reflections are archived for future use. For more information on this week’s topic, CTTL services, programs, or events please consult the website at http://slu.edu/cttl.

The full transcript is available by clicking here: Weekly Reflection Podcast 11: Fostering Students’ Self-Evaluation Skills

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

by Elena Bray Speth, Biology Department

One of the newest trends in instructional design is the “flipped classroom”.  Started in K-12 as a must-do-to-be-current practice, brought to public fame by initiatives like Khan Academy, talked about in pretty much every online forum on education, the flipped classroom approach involves delivering lectures outside of class, mainly through technologies like screencasting, and using class time for collaborative problem solving and other minds-on activities.  As Debie Lohe explained in a recent televised interview (http://fox2now.com/2012/07/25/the-flipped-classroom-at-slu/), interest in this pedagogy is growing at SLU as well.

I am in the midst of piloting my first attempt at “flipping” my own (large) classroom, and of course this experience is spurring a whole lot of reflection and questions. Why am I doing this? What am I actually “flipping”? And, most importantly, does it matter to student learning?

The “why” is easy: I want to free up class time for active learning exercises, but I still want to offer students the synthesis, emphasis and content selection that distinguishes my course from the printed textbook.

“What” am I flipping? Now, that’s a harder question. Let’s say an instructor places all or most lecture materials outside of class, in the form of podcasts, screencasts, worksheets, powerpoint slides, etc. and devotes classroom time entirely to homework-like activities. Students and teacher are still doing the same things as they would in a traditional lecture-based environment, just in a different place and at a different time. A screencast is still a lecture, and an in-class clicker question is still a quiz.

Beyond switching around time and place, something deeper needs to happen in the flipped classroom that makes it a significant learning experience and that might not happen otherwise. Katie Beres’ posts on the Notebook, regarding habits of thought and practice, have given me a great perspective to consider. As I think of myself and my students – each of us bringing to the classroom our own habits of thoughts and habits of practice – I realize that no single flipping action on the instructor’s side can productively happen without a proper counter-action on the learner side. The goal of teaching is to elicit in students responses, behaviors and practices that are likely to result in learning.  And learning happens inside the class and outside, when we study alone in a quiet room and when we collaborate on a group assignment, when we listen to explanations and when we try to explain to others, when we make sense of facts, find meaning, build connections, use what we know to interpret and solve new problems.

The great opportunity within the concept of flipping the classroom is, to me, that of gaining a whole new view of time and space for instruction and learning. Technologies like Tegrity and online course management systems allow us teach, communicate, and assess learning outside of class, in that cyberspace that is such an integral part of students’ daily lives. We have the opportunity and means to select what content and activities are best placed outside of class and what should be explained, processed, applied in class. Clearly, the choice of content and activities is dependent on each discipline. However, instruction, student engagement, learning, and assessment no longer need to be confined to designated times and places. Active, engaged learning both at home and in class seems to be the promise of the “flipped” classroom.

Does it matter to student learning? That is what we need to find out.

Dr. Bray Speth is Assistant Professor of Biology at Saint Louis University. Elena has been active in the CTTL since coming to SLU in 2009. She has participated in reading and working groups related to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and, in spring 2012, received an Innovative Teaching Fellowship in the Center, which allowed her the opportunity to teach in the in the CTTL’s Learning Studio. She has been named the first-ever Mary L. Stephen Faculty Fellow for Scholarly Teaching.

by Katie Beres, Instructional Liaison

In my previous post, I described the process of separating learning from the tools and activities used to facilitate the learning experience in a class. This second post will build on the learning strategies chosen to facilitate the learning for the lecture.

The content of a lecture is driven by what you want students to learn, which is communicated via learning objectives. How your lecture is then delivered is determined by your perception of the lecture itself. Instructors utilize a variety of strategies when delivering a lecture, which emphasize different teaching styles and philosophies of teaching and learning. The table below is a helpful summary of interactive lecture strategies presented in the literature. As you scan through the table, ask yourself:

• What strategies connect with me?
• Which strategies seem like they “ wouldn’t work”?

Interactive Lecturing Strategies

This Interactive Lecture Chart provides just a few strategies for making lectures more interactive.  There are numerous others, but these should get you started.

My mental model for a lecture is that of an active, highly participatory workshop with my role being that of a facilitator. My choices for lecture strategies emphasize activities like, think, pair, share; brief 5-10 minute lectures to introduce new topics, clarify misunderstandings, and to make connections; individual reflective writing, and group discussion. While I prepare for a lecture, I outline my learning objectives, sequence my topics, and consider the strategies that best fit the learning and my teaching philosophy. The process is not linear and contains constant revision as I go between my objectives and strategies. As I work, I ask myself, “how does this strategy help my students achieve the learning objectives?”. Three outcomes are possible when I ask myself this question:

1. The strategy is justified,
2. The strategy does not fit and is cut, or
3. My learning objectives need to be changed.

My motto for balancing what remains and what is cut was shared with me by a colleague: “do not force the fun”. This motto helps me keep perspective, especially as my tendency is to do more and add layers of complexity. Cutting an idea does not mean it is useless; instead the idea is not a fit for the desired learning of that class session. The better I am able to guide myself through an intentional process of designing my course sessions with my students’ learning in mind, the better the experience for me and them. I know why I do what I do in my course and can express that to my students and others.

The steps in my shift of habit for thinking about lecture began with separating the learning from the tools by outlining my lecture, then considering the strategies for the course. In my third post, we will address the decision process for using tools and technologies.

by Gina Merys, Assistant Director for Faculty & Graduate Student Development, Reinert CTTL

This is the Weekly Reflection podcast from Saint Louis University’s Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning. Each week, we focus on a topic that fits with our theme for the 2012-2013 academic year, Engaging All Learners. Each reflection loosely follows the five-part Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (context, experience, reflection, action, and evaluation). The goal of this podcast is to provide an avenue into a space for thoughtful reflection on complex issues, rather than to provide answers to these issues.

The next reflection will be posted on Friday, November 9th. All reflections are archived for future use. For more information on this week’s topic, CTTL services, programs, or events please consult the website at http://slu.edu/cttl.

The full transcript is available by clicking here: Weekly Reflection Podcast 10: Engaging Questions for Critical Thought

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

by Katie Beres, Instructional Liaison

Growing as instructors requires reflecting on our habits: habits of thought and practice. I define a habit as an internalized behavior or thought process. For many of us, we were taught with lecture as a primary learning strategy. Lecture is a habit that many of us are revisiting as we experience a tension of how we were taught compared to what our students expect of us now. In this three part series, I will share with you my process of transforming my habits of thought regarding preparation for lecture and the habit of practice for using technologies to facilitate learning.

My habits for preparing for my lecture were challenged by my perception that my students weren’t engaged as much as they could be during class. They weren’t performing in the way that I wanted. Intuitively, I knew that I could make their learning environment better and I began to examine my habits. In my reflection, I noticed that my preparation process emphasized PowerPoint. A lot. I worked completely within PowerPoint as a means of preparing my lecture. I wrote out my points in bullets or paragraphs onto slides and whittled them down until I had my talking points covered. Working in PowerPoint inadvertently emphasized what I wanted to say and not what I wanted my students to learn.

Working in PowerPoint not only encouraged me to think more about me rather than my students’ learning, but by working within the tool, I restricted my own creativity for imagining my students’ learning experience. In order to separate my learning from the tools that supported the facilitation of the learning, I created my own version of a course design template. I used a simple outline to frame the learning goals, specific objectives for the lecture, the content and activities within class, and related assessments.

This shift in my habit of thought was small, but significant for me. I moved from allowing a tool to influence how I designed my learning experiences, to freeing myself to imagine a class session in any way possible with learning objectives as my guide. In my next post, I will discuss how I continue the preparation process by using learning objectives to make decisions about the learning strategies or activities I use in class.

Until then, what strategies do you use to keep your students’ learning present in your mind first before thinking about tools you may use in your lecture? Post your ideas below.

by Gina Merys, Assistant Director for Faculty & Graduate Student Development, Reinert CTTL

This is the Weekly Reflection podcast from Saint Louis University’s Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning. Each week, we focus on a topic that fits with our theme for the 2012-2013 academic year, Engaging All Learners. Each reflection loosely follows the five-part Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (context, experience, reflection, action, and evaluation). The goal of this podcast is to provide an avenue into a space for thoughtful reflection on complex issues, rather than to provide answers to these issues.

The next reflection will be posted on Friday, November 2nd. All reflections are archived for future use. For more information on this week’s topic, CTTL services, programs, or events please consult the website at http://slu.edu/cttl.

The full transcript is available by clicking here: Weekly Reflection Podcast 9: Learning through Risk Taking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

by Debra Lohe, Director

With the growing number of international students in American universities, we hear a lot about the “culture shock” they experience in the classroom.  Expectations for everything from classroom participation to faculty-student interactions to collaborative learning to writing and academic integrity may differ greatly from their home countries, and students often are left to detect – and adapt to – these differences on their own.  To better meet international students’ needs, centers like ours encourage faculty to make explicit the implicit assumptions and expectations they bring into the classroom.

But what if international students aren’t the only ones with culture shock?

In fact, almost all students entering colleges and universities experience a version of culture shock, whether they’re coming from domestic high schools, entering an online degree program, or returning to college after years in the workforce.  For most students (even those from very strong college-prep high schools), the expectations for performance are not wholly visible, and the task of the first couple of semesters is to try to survive this new terrain and to identify strategies that can help with success in future courses.

In Clueless in Academe, Gerald Graff describes the “mystification of academic culture” and the ways in which college students struggle to de-mystify it.  He describes in lively detail the ways in which undergraduates encounter this mystifying “culture” and lays out some of his own strategies for helping students enter into this special “club” and “breaking up its exclusivity,” which he does by “flushing out and engaging [students’] resistance to entering [the club], addressing questions about why as well as how” (24-25).  Specifically, Graff lays out what he calls the “Six Degrees of Obfuscation,” which are “the specific educational practices, structures, and beliefs that help prevent students and others from penetrating the secrets of academic culture” – chief among them, something we’ve all done: take academic discourse for granted (25).

The reality is, most of our students (and not just our international students) would be hard-pressed to articulate the mostly-concealed rules of academic discourse or explain them with any subtlety, and who could blame them?  We often don’t see it as our job to make those things explicit; many of us might struggle ourselves to explain those things.  But until we do see it as our job, our students will continue to be mystified by the exercises we put them through.  And to experience culture shock in our classrooms.

For learning to be transformative, it must create experiences that offer “a process by which previously uncritically assimilated assumptions, beliefs, values, and perspectives are questions and thereby become more open, permeable, and better justified” (Patricia Cranton, Understanding and Promoting Transformative Learning).

Here are two ways you can begin to uncover your own implicit assumptions and expectations and to make them visible to students:

First, reflect deeply on your own assumptions, beliefs, and expectations about what teaching and learning really look like; this weekly reflection podcast on this topic can help.

And second, check out Graff’s work, co-authored with Cathy Birkenstein, on “templates” that can help students better identify and use the implicit argumentative structures in scholarly writing, They Say / I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing.