Results tagged “assessment” from PEDABLOGUE

The blog run by Voicethread (which I've tested now with students in a current online class, and we adore it!) recently steered me to the American Association of School Librarians, which houses an excellent resource in their Best Websites for Teaching and Learning master list. Also recommended is their 2007 publication, "Standards for the 21st-Century Learner" which nicely outlines the standards for assessing information literacy today.

Today I noticed that PlanBook 2.06 has been released for the Macintosh. It's also available in a Windows version (which I haven't tested yet, but hope to). If you like to use the computer to organize your ideas, I recommend it!

The key focus of PlanBook is on weekly calendaring. I tend to think this way, as a college teacher, and my course plan always is conceptualized right from the get-go on a weekly system. This excellent "lesson plan" generator allows teachers to organize courses in a 'weekly calendar' mode, while remaining flexible enough to keep individual class units in the foreground, through color coding and filtering systems. You can schedule classes, enter lesson information, link up entries to files, and print professional looking reports. While there are many software-based teaching tools, this one really fills a gap because few are about the actual organization of learning units, and most are instead focused on grading or student communication.

I don't usually keep lesson plans the way that most people do; I organize my files by thematic clusters, and chart my plans on the syllabus, rather than in some private binder or lockstep chart. But I still found this software useful post-facto, because it allowed me to keep track of what I did every period. After a class, I would go into PlanBook, type out what I was able to cover in class that day, and save it for future reference. Later, I found myself going back to this 'journal' to both track what I wanted to quiz students on, and also plot out revisions to my future course calendars.

The interface is relatively easy to use, once you figure out the routine ways of keying in information for each course. Although I haven't tested the Windows version, I know that it 'fits' the Mac paradigm well, and is intuitive enough to use in a customized way, depending on how you work. It is easily adaptable to different school calendar systems (like a 6 period school day or a two week rotation). This, I think, is one of its numerous appeals.

Software like this needs to be approached as a tool for organizing and planning. Most faculty might want this to plot out a course, week by week. It lends itself toward processing ideas in this way, and can help keep you organized. But many will likely say they can do this the old fashioned way, with pen and paper.

But I see the side benefits of doing this on a computer with dedicated software: you can run searches for, say, every time you've taught a particular text; you can build a good archive of lessons for assessment purposes; you can print out or e-mail your lesson plans to a substitute teacher from home; or you can simply publish your homework calendar for students to view online. Yes, PlanBook can publish your lesson plans to the web, and I think this is a very strong component of the software, especially if you don't already have access to a campus Content Management System.

There's not much more to say about it: it works, it helps, and it rocks. Verdict: A+!

PlanBook is a great way to "process" your calendar and I recommend you give it a try -- especially if you HAVE no routine system of your own for course planning yet. Visit Hellmansoft to download a demo.

"The classroom is like my garden. There is nothing that is ever ugly in it. If it is capable of blooming, it stays." -- Louis Schmier, "My Most Important Teaching Tool", Peer Review

The quote above comes from Schmier's reflective essay in the Spring 2009 issue of the AACU's journal, Peer Review. (I blush to brag that I just learned my analysis of Rate My Professor from this blog was also cited by the editor elsewhere in this issue). In his opening anecdote, Schmier describes how he was once asked the question by her mentor, "What is your most important pedagogical tool?" and it later struck him that it was ultimately herself and "the power of [his] intentions."

This may seem quite obvious. But the key word here is "intention." It takes reflexive practice to really know what your own intentions are as a teacher. Our job title is a verb that sometimes becomes a tautology ("As a teacher I intend to teach") that focuses on the content of the teaching, rather than the actual process of how we teach and what it means to teach.

This is why, perhaps, crafting and annually revising a "philosophy of teaching" statement could be a valuable "tool" for your teaching toolbox.

Schmier's essay essentially concludes with such a philosophy. I really liked his iteration of seven elements that compose his "vision statement." These are overtly optimistic and necessarily general, leading with the metaphor above: that "the classroom is like my garden." It's a good metaphor, though it ostensibly includes nurturing rather than weeding. The teacher feeds and cultivates, but lets learning take its own natural course.

In doing so, there must be room for aberrant growth and unpredictable weather. In another element of his vision statement, he writes: "The classroom is a shop of 'serious novelties'...we must never get into a predictable, old-hat, stagnating, repetitive, and mind-numbing routine. New ways of looking at, thinking about, and using both the material and ourselves must be the rule of each day." I share this vision. Constructing moments of 'serious novelty' is the only way to prime the pump of intellectual curiosity -- which is a pro forma requirement for autonomous learning.

-- postscript: thanks for the corrections Charles B.!

Education Week is reporting on a study that the makers of the ACT have recently put out that points to the gap between what high schools and college teachers want their students to be ready for when they come to college.

The new survey found that college professors generally want incoming students to have a deeper understanding of a selected number of topics and skills, while high school teachers in all content areas tend to rate a far broader array of content and skills as “important” or “very important.”

In other words, the "array" of content coverage is a sign that HS emphasizes breadth, while college tends to emphasize depth of work in a single content area. I'm not sure if this happens because of the assumptions of high school teachers about what college actually expects, or if it is merely a symptom of a larger neurosis regarding testing (prompted, perhaps, by NCLBA). "Breadth" is easy to test and grade, and errs toward assessing memorized knowledge over analytical and critical thinking, which usually takes essay reading and concentrated analysis in itself to generate a response.

Thus, the report itself shows the outcome:

the survey found a general lack of reading courses in high school and a decline in the teaching of targeted reading strategies after the 9th grade. In contrast, college instructors of remedial courses rated such strategies as very important and reported devoting a large percentage of time to teaching them.

I am not damning all High School in some generic, demonizing way. One of the things colleges have to offer is a shift in this paradigm of thinking. I think breadth is perhaps JUST AS important as depth for that level of learner, and I would simply suggest that some sort of balance should be sought. Whether or not an institution can support that kind of balance, in a frenzy to establish assessable outcomes, is debatable. But until teachers begin supporting reading in every way they can -- which means being active readers of their own student's writing, in addition to simply assigning texts -- the culture will not change.

The last time I gave a quiz to my Intro to Lit course, I tried a new variation on my collaborative quiz methods (see this blog's articles tagged with keyword "testing" for others)... and it seemed to work really well.

Have you ever posted a question on your quiz that you thought was important enough to test, but which you knew was likely to be one few students answered correctly? I had that sneaking suspicion myself, when I asked students to define "metonymy" in a multiple choice question. The term was not really covered very well in the book, but I did give a mini-lecture about the word and I thought it was important for them to understand...but when I was composing the quiz my back brain reminded me that I didn't see very many students taking notes at the time I lectured, and I knew it was brand new and difficult term to spell, let alone comprehend, so I suspected few would get it right on the quiz.

But I wasn't really sure. So I gave them a chance. After everyone had turned their quizzes over, I asked them to take a moment to circle the one single answer on they quiz they were least sure of. Then they passed the quiz to a neighbor (who, as in Quiz Taker/Note Maker, had to put their name under the quiz-taker's and would be held accountable for any cheating on their behalf). The neighbor then had to read the circled question and write their own answer to it down. If they felt the student got the question right already, they were told to write something supportive instead, like "way to go!" Then I collected the quizzes.

Once I had them all, I did a quick scan of the pile...and found my suspicions were correct. Most people had circled the "metonymy" question. There was another question often circled that came in "2nd place". I turned these two answers into brief discussions with the class, and since I became fully convinced by that point that "metonymy" hadn't really sunk in the first time we covered it, I announced that everyone would get the points for that answer, whether right or wrong. We discussed the second most-commonly circled answer and I felt that enough people already knew that one that it would not receive instant credit, unless the "corrector" of the quiz got it right. The same held true for the other answers that were circled which we hadn't covered in discussion: if the corrector got it correct, they "saved" the quiz-taker some points.

In the end, this didn't really skew the scale for the class or have any negative impacts. The only students it "hurt" were the ones who got the question they chose to be "saved" right to begin with but missed other questions on the quiz. But that isn't really my fault -- they had their chance.

So why do this, beyond hedging my own risk on quizzing the class on an "iffy" course topic (like "metonymy") that I wasn't confident I had taught well or that they would really know?

For the teacher, it saves time. I usually like to go over a quiz after we take it (often using them to structure a lecture/period), but in this instance drilling down to the top two answers which the majority of the students presume they got wrong helped me to know what answers were most pressing, and dispensed with the others, leaving me enough time to shift to another class matter.

The benefit for students, beyond possibly getting a few bonus points, is essentially two-fold: it fosters bonds between neighbors in the room, and, more importantly, it rewards collaboration. Not only did we get to have an open, collaborative dialogue about the most pressing material right after the quiz, but the "corrector" gets to be the quiz-taker's hero if they happen to save them some points. In this way, the student gets to see the value and significance in knowing answers beyond the scope of their own grades, and comes to understand that what they know might benefit others. They don't get punished for not knowing; they get to reward others for knowing! And many were proud of doing so in my class that day. These benevolent correctors were given a sense of power, in the form of academic philanthropy. I hope to cultivate that sort of "givingness" among those who have knowledge and skills.

One might contend that all I did was sanction an act akin to "cheating off" a fellow student, by turning it into a system for extra credit. I don't see quizzes as instruments of torture and panoptical surveillance. I see them as opportunities to make students accountable, yes, but if they are not integrated into the class period of the day, they feel like tools intended to police rather than instruments of learning.

Dennis Jerz's Literacy Weblog today points to the new Humanities Resource Center and "a major study that aims to establish benchmarks for assessing the humanities" from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This looks like a terrific resource for guaging the Humanities and a good assessment tool to delve into at a later date. I have agreed to chair our Humanities Division at our university starting in the Fall, so I definitely appreciate this lead.

I stopped at a Half-Priced Books store in Monroeville this past October and found myself burrowing around in their really great section in the back of the store, for "Teaching." In it, I picked up some really great titles cheap, including a book I want to call attention to in this review, called Reflective Practice in Action: 80 Reflection Breaks for Busy Teachers by Thomas S.C. Farrell. But before I get to it, I wanted to first say that spontaneously browsing around in the "Teaching" or "Education" section of a bookstore is a really good idea once in awhile -- especially if you're not a pedagogy specialist or teacher trainer by profession -- and I encourage you to take a moment to do this if you're shopping in a bookstore for the holidays. You might be surprised by what gifts you might find for yourself.

It's also the case that those bookstore sections for Teaching and Education are rarely well-organized and become a catch-all for any title that smacks of school. Thus, you often find exercises for kindergarteners and home-schooler workbooks placed side by side with philosophical books and guitar instructional manuals. It's a mess. That's both good and bad (and perhaps says something about the coherency of our industry): you'll have to dig to find what you need, but you might find a hidden treasure.

Of course, that's true of all bookstore shelves to some degree. And the ENTIRE bookstore is really about learning, is it not?

In any case, one of those hidden treasures I recently found was Reflective Practice in Action by Thomas S.C. Farrell (Corwin Press, 2004). It seems like just the sort of book any teacher who blogs or keeps a journal would find of interest, because it is filled with questions, worksheets and discussions intended to prompt thinking and writing about one's mission and career as an instructor. Through reflective teaching, Farrell claims, "teachers can begin to locate themselves within their profession and start to take more responsibility for shaping their practice" (6).

I know a lot of teachers who struggle over writing their annual self-reports, development plans, and teaching portfolios. Sometimes this struggle is located in one's relationship to writing itself. At other times, these documents that we have to write in the name of development sometimes are seen as empty exercises in paper shuffling, bureaucratical nonsense, and just one more thing to do on top of a million others. One sometimes wonders what the point of it all is, when only one person or committee often reads it closely before it's filed away in some infinitely-receding drawer of bureaucratic paperwork, never to be seen again.

But I have always refused to see any project that involves writing as a waste of time. It makes me a better writer and often my writing leads me to new ways of seeing a topic, inspiring me to change my relationship to it. So rather than treating those "official" forms of reflection as dehumanizing forms of busy work, I have tried to use those documents as moments to write reflectively about my career (sometimes to the consternation of those who have to read them, because I write a lot). This book reminds me that reflection -- taking stock about where one has gone and where one is going -- is entirely the point of those documents to begin with.

Moreover, this slim, 100 page book makes reflecting on one's work easier, more pleasurable and, ultimately, more significant. Grounded in the principles of reflective practice, it aims at helping teachers see their work in a less technical and more organic fashion. While not every "guided reflection break" offered in the book is equally of value, the book does an excellent job identifying the diverse areas where one might direct their attention in thinking reflectively, and it utilizes research in a refreshingly clear and practical manner, by emphasizing activity and application of the principles it outlines in a systematic (but not overly formal) way.

The book opens by exploring the theories behind "reflective practice" by immediately engaging the reader in thinking that reexamines one's assumptions about teaching and how they have played out in our practical work. It is a transformative process founded on heightened self-awareness. "...Reflective practice is a systematic and structured process in which we look at concrete aspects of teaching and learning with the overall goal of personal change and more effective practice...we change as a result of the awareness brought about by engaging in reflection." (27).

Farrell seems to draw the bulk of his research from the work of Kenneth Zeichner and Daniel Liston, authors of Reflective Teaching: An Introduction, which delves into the pedagogical theory behind reflective practice in depth. The book brings more critics into the picture -- like Daniel Schon and Max Van Manen -- and the bibliography covers all the primary sources in this field of pedagogy. I think Farrell's book can be seen as a sort of practical workbook to go along with Zeichner and Liston's title, so the two could work hand in hand if assigned in a teacher development course. Some of Farrell's "prompts" would occur naturally to a reader of Reflective Teaching: An Introduction, but what makes Farrell's book useful is the systematic and proactive way in which he guides the application of its concepts.

The first four chapters of the book provide an array of models for reflective practice and explore methods for any teacher or group to put theory into action. It's a great concise overview, while being inspirational (covering the first 24 prompts of the 80 in the book). In the book's fifth chapter, the author outlines the "Farrell Model of Reflective Practice," which identifies a wide range of different ways in which the prompts in the book can be utilized, whether in isolation or in groups, while covering the principle modalities of reflection (37). This section opens up the numerous arenas in which reflection can occur -- from journals to teacher development workshops -- and readers might be surprised by the number of reflective practices happening all around us on campus all the time, and the myriad ways one can approach reflective thinking.

The latter chapters of Farrell's book are focused on specific means toward enhancing one's reflective practice. These processes are: group discussions, classroom observations, journal writing, and the teaching portfolio. The book ends by encouraging one to be a "reflective practitioner" and is the most involved and personal chapter for helping teachers come up with their own prompts for reflection. Here he draws upon and expands Zeichner and Liston's five principle elements of the reflective practitioner in a way worthy of citing fully:

A reflective teacher:

• Examines, frames, and attempts to solve dilemmas in classroom practice.
• Is aware of and questions the assumptions and values he or she brings to teaching
• Is attentive to the institutional and cultural contexts in which he or she teaches
• Takes part in curriculum development and is involved in school change efforts
• Takes responsibility for his or her own professional development

Farrell's book is a great assistant in making one a more reflective teacher, in general. But there are other things he brings to the table that got my interest. For example, he talks about using a method called the SCORE (Seating Chart Observation Record) to analyze how teachers interact with groups that seems very useful for, say, analyzing a videotape of one's class or observing a colleague's class. This would involve drawing a seating chart,and drawing lines between teacher and students when questions are asked or addressed, which I imagine could be revelatory of unconscious habits like favoring one side of the room or calling on the same set of students over and over again.

Overall, I'm glad I stumbled upon this book and I recommend it to anyone who is looking for something to prompt their writing about teaching (like bloggers) or help in writing their own self-assessments. I think administrators and faculty development coordinators who are looking for practical ways to help faculty energize their growth in an autonomous-yet-connected fashion would benefit greatly from this title.

See ItsLife's coverage of more issues in reflective practice.

In "Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Using Blogs with Students" (Campus Technology, Oct 2008), Dr. Ruth Reynard talks about the mistakes she's made using weblogs with her grad students. It's a fantastic, enlightening essay, revealing how to not only avoid errors but how to utilize weblog technology well. In a nutshell, here are the problems Reynard outlines:

• Ineffective Contextualization


• Unclear Learning Outcomes


• Misuse of the environment


• Illusive grading practices


• Inadequate time allocation

I don't use blogs as a teaching tool nearly as much as my English colleague at SHU, Dennis Jerz, does (see our campus blog portal for a peek at all that he administers). But I do routinely ask my student authors in the Writing Popular Fiction graduate program to keep a blog as a reading journal. Reading Reynard's article, I feel that "illusive grading practices" may be something I still need to work on: often, I just append evaluative comments on a student's blog entries without giving much thought into the >kind< of entries I'm evaluating. Reynard recommends making a rubric that outlines various "statement types" that students can bring to their blogging, such as: "Reflection statements (self positioning within the course concepts); Commentary statements (effective use of the course content in discussion and analysis); New idea statements (synthesis of ideas to a higher level); and Application statements (direct use of the new ideas in a real life setting)." I may borrow from this idea and design a handout for students that asks them to approach their journal entries -- which essentially are reading responses -- as different "types" of statements -- possibly asking them to do one of each. Another good idea, naturally, is to request students to tag entries along these lines, as warranted.

I also like Dennis Jerz' structured RRRR sequence -- a method for routinizing student blogging assignments in his Writing for the Internet course. It encourages students to interact with each other and class alike, and functions to support his challenging "Just in Time" teaching method.

Paul Miller has posted an excellent entry on his blog, PaulsPen, called "Thou Shall Have Balance: The Ten Commandments of Teaching Creative Writing." Here they are. Each is explained in great depth on his blog, so be sure to visit his site:

I. Thou shall teach both theory and practice

II. Thou shall teach students to neither mistake, nor suppress, themselves for their audience

III. Thou shall articulate the difference between vision and revision

IV. Thou shall create a plan and be prepared to improvise

V. Thou shall encourage and practice freedom with restraint

VI. Thou shall boldly state absolutes in the realm of the relative

VII. Thou shall teach reading and writing, and the importance of both

VIII. Thou shall coach students to strive for art but be prepared for life

IX. Thou shall lead as an equal

X. Thou shall temper the dream with pragmatism

I admire Paul's mission to teach a balanced approach to the art and trade of writing. This is a useful addition to research on creative writing pedagogy -- thanks, Paul!

"...however effectively one 'prepares' for a class, the realities of learning alter the original orientation in a number of creative and unpredictable ways. If the structure is too tight, or the scenario is too predictable, then we move towards a tightly organized outcomes-based approach to learning. We end up confusing the relationship between clear goals (set by the teacher), and an anticipation that the student will meet the expectations of the course, because they have replicated the core meaning of the content. This is, to some degree, summarized by the assumption that teachers need to envision what students should know at the end of a course. Yet, knowledge cannot be packaged in such a simplistic way. We gain an understanding of an idea, for example, through dialogue. The dialogue can lead in an untold number of different directions. The fundamental unpredictability of dialogue is that both interacting parties may have no sense of where they are headed and may, indeed, learn in ways that they had not anticipated. This should be a source of excitement, but it is often a source of anxiety. I believe the anxiety is partially situated in how we define teachers and students." Ron Burnett, in "The Radical Impossibility of Teaching"

I have not really processed this article as fully as I should yet, but Ron Burnett's "The Radical Impossibility of Teaching" was a fascinating read for me, because -- among many interesting ideas that question the assumptions we have about institutionalized learning -- the argument cited above encapsulates my occasional resistance to "outcomes based" assessment. I believe that having assessable goals and objectives gives a class a focus, a common ground, and a sense of direction. But by the same token, there's a degree to which these outcomes need to emerge organically from the class itself more collaboratively than they typically do. Burnett argues against the notion that objectives be prescribed by the teacher's hasty, generalized prediction about what students "need" that is handed down from above before the fact -- especially if "above" means not only the teacher, but some larger institutional group which the teacher is simply delivering like some enforcer or mediator between the institution and the student. Burnett invites us to think about some radical reconfigurations which cultivate creativity in the classroom. Like, what if the students were allowed to collaborate with the teacher, modifying and revising the learning objectives in the class? (The answer asks for more responsibility from the student than you might think).

In a system controlled universally through "outcome-based" assessment, where curricular administration risks becoming reduced to an act of enforcing policies rather than enhancing the development of teaching, such revision is virtually impossible. And yet at the same time, students do in their very particularity and individuality revise and adapt the learning objectives in their own ways. Assignments like "reflective essays" and "self-assessments" encourage students to gauge their own investment in course outcomes and to pursue them as they feel they need. And as long as teachers are working closely with students in interpersonal ways -- such as in individual office conferences -- the learning that happens can be guided and modulated to some degree in concert with the teacher.

While a teacher can use the course itself to "play" off the objectives, the syllabus remains the invariable law and point of accountability. The outcomes themselves are never really open to student revision in any way that can be filed, made permanent, or recognized publicly in the name of "accountability" or "assessment." Thus, I would suggest that the "radical impossibility" at work here is not one of teaching or of learning, per se, but of the very idea of a universal "outcome." Although grading and assessment have numerous modalities, a self-conscious teacher must recognize the virtual impossibility of measuring outcomes in any concrete way, beyond some abstract/numerical method (evaluations by ranking rather than providing qualitative comments) that reduces the significance of the experience and threatens to rob the quality of the course objective -- if not the course itself -- of meaningful substance.

Ah well...I'm still mulling these ideas over. Burnett's essay was originally delivered to the Federation Internationale des Sciences Sociales, in Milan Italy in 1999, and subsequently published in Critical Approaches to Culture, Communications + Hypermedia, his excellent weblog.

This afternoon I attended a great Teaching & Learning Forum on our campus on the topic of teaching with technology. Mary Spataro -- our campus technology-enhanced learning guru and Instructional Design pro -- ran a healthy discussion on implementing technology in a way that supports the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education outlined by Chickering and Gamson for the American Assn for Higher Ed. This work was done in 1987, and though I have heard these principles in various guises throughout the years, the citation was new to me, so I thought I'd briefly blog about it.

In a nutshell, Chickering and Gamson argue that it is good practice for a teacher to employ these seven principles in their courses...

1. encourages contact between students and faculty,


2. develops reciprocity and cooperation among students,


3. encourages active learning,


4. gives prompt feedback,


5. emphasizes time on task,


6. communicates high expectations, and


7. respects diverse talents and ways of learning.

In our development session, Spataro broke the faculty into small groups, assigning one principle to each group to unearth ways that they are using technology in their courses to support such practices. My group discussed "gives prompt feedback" -- such as using e-mail to respond to student theses or topic proposals before they actually write their papers, or having some stock "comments" to copy and paste into a response to student writing. Spataro also added that recording oral notes is another way that is gaining popularity (though, as I have argued with my SHU colleague in New Media, Dennis Jerz, there are instances where too much play with this may not be fair to the student writer because it does not, for example, teach direct editing skills by example... on the other hand, such text-to-speech technology can be liberating as Norman Coombs has explained).

In their 1996 article, "Technology as a Lever," Chickering and Ehrmann similarly illustrated how these principles can be achieved with technology (and the website that this article appears on -- hosted by the Teaching Learning and Technology Group -- gives a host of good sources on the topic). They mention Coombs (again) and his use of e-mail as an example of how online discussions can get quiet students to raise issues in a more equalizing and honest setting (in this case, Coombs reports that he had taught for many years, but it wasn't until he began to use e-mail to teach his course that a student finally had the gumption to ask, “What’s a white guy doing teaching black history?” -- see Ehrmann's "Grand Challenges" for more on using e-mail as an educational tool). The article is a great I like how they conclude with the argument that "technology is not enough" and that students need to take action to learn on their own (or to make the instructor aware when they are not "respecting" the diverse ways that students learn).

If it isn't self-evident from this weblog, I am in favor of technology-enhanced learning and I do try to follow the above principles, though I am always skeptical of pedagogical AND technological dogma. I use technology in many of my courses and in advising, but I would add that there are times when technology can actually get in the way of achieving these principles. Sometimes there are simply "technical difficulties" but at other times there are "faculty difficulties" with the technology, or it is utilized in unconsciously (or even fetishistically) poor ways. If a teacher is not modulating their employment of technology in the classroom with other methods, and aren't engaging with the course technology to the same degree their students are, then, for example, these tools can only get in the way, lead to passive learning, or discourage other forms of student-faculty contact. Being receptive to student feedback on the medium for communication is crucial.

Simply put, sometimes we use the wrong tools for the job without knowing it; this does not necessarily mean one has to throw out the tool if it isn't working, but instead try another guage (swap an inch-based wrench for a metric-sized one). As Spataro urged us today, it's best to start small...you'll find the right amount of technology to use along the way.

Chickering and Gamson actually mention something similar to this final point in their original article, when they discuss the classroom as an environment that a teacher develops. Here's how they see the ideal environment for teaching the principles:

• A strong sense of shared purposes.


• Concrete support from administrators and faculty leaders for those purposes.


• Adequate funding appropriate for the purposes.


• Policies and procedures consistent with the purposes.


• Continuing examination of how well the purposes are being achieved.

All of this, I would say, obviously pertains to teaching with technology, as well. Technology is not just a tool; it is an element of a learning environment that needs just as much planning, planting, grooming, and trimming as a tree in a backyard.

Edutopia magazine -- published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation -- publishes a neat regular department called, "Sage Advice": a collection of tips from teachers in answer to a posed question. The latest issue's question is:

How do you challenge and motivate gifted students?

You can read my answer in the magazine, something I sent in when I was reflecting on how I try to approach a classroom of Honor's students a little differently than others.

Feel free to share your own 'sage advice' by leaving a comment.

Edutopia this month published "NCLB Confidential" -- an interesting article by Roberta Furger that explores a few elements of the No Child Left Behind Act that are often ignored because so much of the debates surrounding this act focus solely on the issue of testing and student accountability. I've written here before about one of these neglected areas (the NCLB Act's relationship with military recruitment). Furger's essay takes a look at two components of the Act that are starting to raise problems: how the Act mandates both "parental involvement" in the school and the employment of "highly qualified teachers."

The latter phrase -- "highly qualified" -- is semantically deconstructed by the article. The NCLB makes clear what the standards are for qualification and they are apparently flexible in this criterion, accepting alternative forms of certification. But to be "highly qualified" does not equate with being "high quality" though that's what people initially assume. Some are arguing that this could lead to hiring low quality teachers or generally lower the standards regarding what it means to teach well. Furger cites Barnett Berry, from the Center from Teacher Quality, who challenges the specious way that NCLB defines "qualified" teacher, as simply having a basic teaching preparation and baseline education:

"...someone with a degree in biology, with no knowledge of how to teach second-language learners, no knowledge of how to find the right resources to engage kids, no knowledge of technology applications in school, no knowledge of how to work with parents or children whose culture is different from their own, is 'highly qualified.'"

In other words, being "minimally" qualified is elided by supervisors and administrators as meaning "highly" qualified. Interesting point.

Does certification alone qualify a teacher? Barry also participated in research that asked, "Does Teaching Certification Matter?" -- which challenges research that claims that having a teaching certificate did not make a student more or less prepared to teach than others who had a college degree. His group found that they were indeed still good teachers, but could be better ones, and generally, that preparation is really the issue, not certification.

[Note: Barnett Berry has started an interesting new weblog, Building the Teaching Profession.]

Take a look at one of the course objectives from my syllabus for Literary Criticism (a 300-level course in theory and analysis):

"To become comfortable reading academic criticism and applying critical methods in your writing"

Seems like a good objective, no? At a recent faculty workshop on Bloom's taxonomy, I discovered that this seemingly innocent -- and to me, important -- objective may be more problematic than I realized. And by revising this objective I've come up with some strategies for strengthening my course.

I think most teachers would agree that reducing student anxiety about a course's content is a prime objective, because anxiety and fear can impede learning. Everyone knows that motivation plays a role in student learning. And what teacher of English doesn't harbor some desire to inculcate students with some awareness and appreciation of the "pleasure of the text"? But the problem my objective raises is quite simple. How does one objectively evaluate whether or not a student has become more "comfortable"? Is comfort-level really a measurable skill? Without utilizing biofeedback technology, it's probably difficult to assess (let alone grade) in an objective manner.

When I teach lit crit, I always encounter a latent fear and anxiety among students about the level of discourse encountered in literary theory. The reactions to the writing of critics like Jacques Derrida range from jaw-dropping bafflement to outrageous hostility. Literary criticism can read like a foreign language to a college student. The attitudes one develops early in relation to criticism can become a sort of baggage one carries throughout their academic life -- and many advanced learners carry chips on their shoulders (or, alternatively, a defensive arrogance) in regards to theory. So one of my missions in teaching the class is to encourage students to bracket off their emotional responses to (and alienation from) the Otherness of writing and to "run with it" even if they don't completely understand what a critical text is saying. It takes several reads and much learning to comprehend a difficult piece of theory, and I dare say only a fool would pretend to entirely understand what the critic means in some cases. Indeed, since theory is often philosophically abstract, the complicated syntax and the poetics of the writing are often required to encapsulate a thought, and it often approaches creative writing -- and therefore it requires a great deal of interpretive flexibility on the part of the reader.

Beyond the matter of "difficulty," I also try to encourage students to become comfortable forwarding their ideas and making risky interpretive moves that will advance their theoretical arguments beyond basic (and often "vulgar" -- meaning common and oversimplified, not grotesque) socio-historical interpretations. Undergraduate students who are finally "coming of age" as English majors aren't entirely comfortable having the legs they have recently mastered pulled out from under them. But too often they rely on habitual forms of interpretation that have worked in their other classes. When pressed to try something new, students will too often "consult the oracle" in their research and parrot the arguments of others, sometimes avoiding the advancement of authentic or original claims in the process. Trying to raise a student's comfort level with literary discourse invites them to participate more effectively in that discourse as an active critic, and to learn more about the value of alternative approaches to literature.

There are even more reasons why I would list "becoming comfortable" as a course objective, but the problem is assessment. It is nearly impossible to judge whether a student has met such an outcome using Bloom's cognitive taxonomy (although the objective on my syllabus does indeed use the term "applying," the phrase "to become comfortable" is the operative phrase).

The leader of our syllabus workshop suggested that I look into the "affective domain" of Bloom's Taxonomy, rather than the cognitive domain. He later turned me on to a very useful document that gives an overview of them, and I've begun looking into this material more deeply. The "Affective" taxonomy examines a student's growth in feelings or emotional areas -- it is an attitudinal form of assessment. Looking over the affective domain, I believe my objective ("to become comfortable") is most in line with this category:

Responding to Phenomena: Active participation on the part of the learners. Attends and reacts to a particular phenomenon. Learning outcomes may emphasize compliance in responding, willingness to respond, or satisfaction in responding (motivation).

Examples: Participates in class discussions. Gives a presentation. Questions new ideals, concepts, models, etc. in order to fully understand them. Know the safety rules and practices them.

Key Words: answers, assists, aids, complies, conforms, discusses, greets, helps, labels, performs, practices, presents, reads, recites, reports, selects, tells, writes.

And indeed, all of those examples and keywords are methods I employ in Literary Criticism to raise the students' comfort with the texts. Students not only write and participate in discussions, but even read a difficult essay outside of class and give a presentation to class about it. I am trying to raise the students' "willingness to respond" to criticism by asking them to respond with their own advanced critical thinking.

Here's how I might revise my objective:
FROM: "To become comfortable reading academic criticism and applying critical methods in your writing"
TO: "To apply critical methodology in response to criticism, through writing, presentation, and discussion."

Although that revision robs the objective of my drive to reduce student anxiety and increase comfort, it is easier for me to assess their application of criticism, than it is to determine their feelings about it. But as a creative writing instructor, I suspect that I am particularly attentive to student affects and attitudes and have some skill in helping students express themselves. I might consider mobilizing some of the techniques I apply in the creative writing classroom in the literary criticism classroom. This might enable students to move toward a higher level on the "affective" skill taxonomy, such as "integrating and organizing values" in relation to schools of critical thought. One technique I might adopt in the class is to ask students to keep a journal that invites them to share their feelings, gut reactions, and personal investment in the theories we are discussing, so that they might better integrate them into their own value system and career plans. Or I might ask them to express the attitudes inherent to (or, alternatively their own attitudes about) a particular school of thought through their own poetry, for example. In the past, I've assigned a paper that allows the student to write about their own "experience of feminism" and perhaps I can get them to do more personal writing in addition to the critical writing they perform.

I've only scratched the surface of this topic, but I've found a few useful essays on assessing the affective domain. Yeap Lay Leng's piece on "Learner Analysis in Instructional Design: The Affective Domain" offers an overview of ways in which affect is "taught and caught". Mary Miller's article, "Learning and Teaching in the Affective Domain" addresses how pervasive attitudinal assessment is in education, and offers good strategies for teaching in the affective domain.

In my entry "Remembering the Objective of Learning Objectives" two years ago, I wrote about Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives and how it gives teachers a great way to think about course design -- from syllabus construction to assignments. This term, our campus is hosting "Teaching and Learning Forums" which will specifically focus on Bloom's taxonomy. A group of instructors at SHU will be workshopping their syllabi with it in mind, led by Dr. Terrance DePasquale. We've only just begun these forums, but I'm confident that doing this with colleagues will be a great way to reflect on and retool my/our courses.

In fact, I've become something of a taxonomic terror this past week: my Freshman Composition course is writing their first major essays on issues in Education, and -- thanks to the suggestion of my colleague Laura Patterson (who is expertly steering our campus toward a Writing Across the Curriculum model) -- I actually used the taxonomy itself as a focal point for class discussion. I put the cognitive processes (knowledge, comprehension, analysis, etc.) on the board and asked students to tell me what they thought these words meant -- and whether they thought they were equally good at all of them. The students got very interested in this, once they started sharing stories about their high school experiences and the majority agreed that most classes never go much deeper than teaching "knowledge."

Then I asked them if the taxonomy was a hierarchy -- with "knowledge" at the bottom and "evaluation" at the top -- or if they were all equally important. One student interestingly posited that "knowledge" is like the hub of a wheel, with spokes leading to all the other cognitive skills. Another suggested that people who don't know very much are still often good at "evaluation" from their gut instincts.

The discussion of "evaluation" was most productive. Out of the blue, I suggested we evaluate something we all know a thing or two about, like "chicken strips." The class laughed at this idea, but then I pointed to one student and said: "Seriously, what do you like about a chicken strip?" She shrugged and replied, "I dunno...I like them crunchy, I guess." Immediately everyone started spitting out things they liked or hated about them: greasiness, dipping sauces, batter, meatiness, etc. I transcribed all these on the board. Then we set to wittling the list down to isolate the most important "criteria" for evaluation. I think I was successful at getting across the idea that there's a difference between a snap value judgment and true evaluation, which requires a set of socially agreed-upon criteria.

Then I opened up the proverbial can of worms: "So how do your teachers evaluate you? How should I grade your writing?"

That, as the cliche goes, is the question.

It circled right back to Bloom's taxonomy...and some grading criteria I listed on the syllabus distributed on the first day of class. I think my attempt at making students conscious of the assumptions of the teaching situation was a productive and positive move. And I hope they'll continue to think about these issues as they become more reflexive thinkers.

The problem with taxonomies, obviously, is that they become monolithic abstractions that can lose their meanings entirely, reduced to meaningless buzzwords. Bloom's taxonomy is wonderful, but I still think I prefer Lorin Anderson's revision of Bloom's taxonomy, which changes some of Bloom's terms from nouns to verbs (e.g. "knowledge" is "remembering"; "comprehension" is "understanding"). Perhaps I'll bring this up with the class later on. The point I want them to recognize is that not only does evaluation require social justification, but also that the criteria shift and change as social groups evolve.

We held commencement exercises at Seton Hill yesterday. That means "summer break" is here, though there's still a little grading to be done, graduate modules to teach, five or six freshman orientation sessions to attend as advisor this summer (!), and other things I've been tasked to do as interim division chair of the Humanities this past semester.

One thing our campus does every summer is give a free book to all incoming freshmen during those aforementioned orientations, and early in the first semester we host a large book discussion en masse with all the students, faculty, and staff who want to participate. Generally speaking, it's a good bonding experience, and a great introduction to the sort of literate college life we hope to foster at Seton Hill.

LOTS of colleges have similar programs, too. I notice that schools in our region, like Slippery Rock University, are running them too. Even our "nemesis" out east, Seton Hall University, is hosting a Freshman Reading Project. I say "nemesis" only because people PERPETUALLY confuse their school's name with ours. And ironically, I notice the book selection at the Other SHU this year is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon...the exact same choice as ours!

Since I teach freshman composition I've participated in this program every year, and I generally enjoy it even though it seems like many of the incoming students don't bother to read the assigned title. I think it's good for them anyway to be exposed to the college as a "discourse community" where people get together and talk about texts (and facilitating such a process is essentially all that I do for a living!) But it's also important to try to encourage the students to read the book and actively learn from the experience. I try to accomplish this on my own by integrating the book into my course as much as I can, and at minimum I usually have a "post-discussion" discussion in the classroom, where the students can, at least, share their thoughts about the reading program.

I like to use the web to enhance my preparation for this project, and given what I see online at other schools, I think our campus could better use the web to promote the project. Discussion questions for most mainstream books are almost always available from their publishers anymore, and I easily found the discussion group page for Vintage Contemporaries (which includes questions specific to Curious Incident) since it's listed right on the back cover of the book itself. I notice that a number of colleges that host Freshman Reading Projects have websites dedicated to the project that explain the motives, the processes, and the books themselves online so students can prepare. I really like the design of Temple University's page, which is so well-done it makes me want to rush out and read the book they're using this summer, West of Kabul, East of New York by Tamim Ansary.

I notice that Temple enhances their selection by inviting the author to be a guest speaker on campus. This is one of many tactics that can really enhance the experience for the students and encourage reading. We were lucky enough to do a similar thing last year, with author James McBride, who talked with students about his book, The Color of Water, to much success...and I'm sure it got people reading if they hadn't read it beforehand. Duke University hosts a reflective panel discussion that includes the author and faculty. The University of Texas at Austin hosts a "reader roundup" which gives the Freshman a LIST of books that they can choose from, each one proposed by a different faculty member, and then the faculty who put the book on the list hosts an intimate discussion with all the freshman who chose that title.

Our college usually has "break out" small groups that discuss a list of questions that are handed out, and then we gather together in one large hall to "report" from the groups and have a large shared dialogue. We've talked about switching this order, and moving from large group to small, in order to give the students who hadn't read some issues they can discuss even if they're not directly emergent from the book. We've also discussed possibly hosting the small groups a week or so AFTER the mass discussion, to give students more time to read, in hopes that the mass discussion sparks interest. And I hope I'm not giving away anything here by saying we've also bandied about Dennis Jerz's concept of using weblogs as a way for students to discuss the title before classes begin, though such a method would pose challenges.

I have a feeling that ultimately the selection itself makes a big difference. Curious Incident is a literate bestseller, but it's also a sort of children's book with lots of pictures. I bet we'll get a good response. Reading is worthy no matter what, but as I learned in my graduate teaching experiences, you cannot rely on the assumption that a book will teach itself. It's important to have a good series of questions that raise issues in the book since freshman -- many of whom may never have a read an entire novel on their own -- might not notice the issues or read very closely the first time through. Likewise, those freshman that are avid readers already will feel a sense of community when they come to campus. Critical reading is a skill that takes time to master, so I think it's important to re-read books, too, and I'm glad to see that some of my colleagues in the English program have integrated the summer reading titles into their lit classes, as well.

I just signed on board the campus Professional Development Committee for the next academic year. I was attracted to this committee as an offshoot of the sort of "scholarship of teaching" I've been doing on this weblog, and I'm interested in learning how other teachers seek development in addition to discovering more about the system behind providing funding and support to faculty research.

It sounds innocent enough. Quite helpful, even, to others. But what are the ideological assumptions operating behind the very idea of "professional development"? And how does it participate in the commercialization of academic life?

In her fascinating article, "Against Professional Development" (note: .pdf format), Erica McWilliam draws parallels between the discourses that surround "professional development" and the language governments and corporations use when talking about developing the Third World. It's a subversively brilliant discussion of the new power/knowledge relationships that are artificially constructed by standardized forms of professional development. She critiques the "charming absurdities" that emerge from such practices, and discusses how the drive to be "enterprising" is rewarded, if not institutionally mandated, by colleges that are more and more using a commercialized model for managing faculty. She essentially argues that professional development often reifies new technologies (for their own sake -- like, for example, rewarding those who learn to use PowerPoint for lectures, even if it reduces their teaching effectiveness). The problem she raises is that such rewards tend to commodify pedagogy into predictable pre-packaged systems, while at the same time subordinating individualized forms of self-education and other forms of growth that might otherwise emerge from one's own discipline. Borrowing from Foucault, she challenges how structured forms of professional development are complicit "in the production of the 'malleable-but-disciplined' individual that is so necessary to enterprising culture."

A remarkable read!

A recent entry about the problems with student evaluations over at the anonymous weblog for "Bitch Ph.D." is garnering a lot of heated comments (as noted by my colleague, Dennis Jerz). Essentially, she's concerned that "our primary feedback on our work comes from children...18 year olds who don't understand what your job really is" and that "a major part of the reason we all feel so alienated and anxious is because we don't get feedback or praise from people who count on any kind of regular basis."

Having just reviewed a number of part-time faculty evaluations in my job as interim division chair this term, I can see what she means. While I don't think 18 year olds are "children," it's true that the evaluations are often emotionally-driven rants or raves, whether pro or con, and often don't focus on the teaching itself -- or, when they do, they're filled out like customer service surveys rather than critical feedback on pedagogy. While I typically garner very strong recommendations, the ones with thoughtful written comments that mention specific examples are the only ones that really help me. I'm way beyond doing this for my own ego -- so while it feels good for a moment when I read the evals that say "You're the best teacher in the world!" they are sometimes only as helpful as a blank form.

But student evaluations are only part of a larger process of self-reflection and administrative evaluation. What "Bitch, Ph.D." neglects to say is that we already are (or should be) the "authorities" on our own course teaching and that the best people to teach the teacher is the students because they are the living embodiments of our course objectives. Our peers also function as our continued mentors, but they can't sit in on the day-to-day experience of our classes. Though nothing's stopping a professor from inviting colleagues to sit in on her classes, and most colleges have a system of peer review. We also get our feedback in teacher development sessions and tenure review letters -- help that comes in an academic and collegial manner, not from some outsider boss up on high. Teachers need to take advantage of all the forums for the scholarship of teaching if they really want to improve.

Besides, she kind of misses the point of the evaluation process, too: the students really are the ONLY ONES "who count on any kind of regular basis." Not because they're the customers, but because they're the learners.

Of course, I do understand her point. If a class were a book, the sort of feedback we get from editors is what we'd like to get on our teaching. Students (esp Freshman) aren't really skilled in evaluating teachers -- and yet, perhaps they are to some degree because they've been studying teaching as much as course content their whole lives. The problem is that they haven't thought of what they're doing as students in a critical manner. But evaluation skills, too, could be taught in some classes and the teacher can "prep" the evaluation at the end of term. I often directly solicit comments on specific events, telling them outright how much I depend on their feedback to improve the class -- "last year's students who took this class influenced what I taught you this year," I'll say, and so I urge them to be specific about course activities. And before the class fills out their evaluations, I'll have them brainstorm orally while I transcribe on the board all the different sorts of class activities performed across the term. This works to get concrete feedback far better than just tossing the evaluation instrument at them blindly with a fistful of pencils. I also always seem to get better evaluations (meaning thorough and critical, with cited examples and thoughtful reasoning, not just "way to go" responses) in my courses that have writing workshops, because they train students to evaluate in thoughtful ways. Any class that has students engaging in "evaluation" as part of the course content can tie those same skills into the end of term course evaluation as well.

Anyway, I think the system is indeed a "weird gig" but I'd much rather have students evaluate me at the end of the term than some sort of outside inspector watching over my shoulder the whole time. A string of bad evaluations may not be a sign of badly taught classes at all, per se -- they may instead be a sign that the teacher isn't engaging in their own development as an educator (whether by attending pedagogical conferences, soliciting peer class sit-ins, or simply talking about teaching and genuinely revising their syllabi) in the scholarly and self-reflective ways that they probably ought to be. Students tend to write positive evaluations about those who genuinely care about teaching more than they do about their own needs and are flexible in adopting the course to the students learning...even students who aren't getting good grades respond positively to teachers who care about their jobs.

I'm not saying Bitch, PhD. doesn't care about her job...if she didn't she wouldn't host such a GREAT blog about education and she wouldn't have let those evaluations get to her. When bad evals sting us, they hurt because we do care. But we can't blame the students for it. The instititution might be partly to blame, but that's only because, perhaps, the system (at some research colleges anyway) is designed in a way that is more interested in what is taught than how it is delivered. That's one reason why "teaching certification" isn't required of professors. But when the scholarship of teaching is valued by a school, then the purpose of student evaluation becomes more meaningful.

I adored Terry Caesar's article, "Against Syllabi" recently posted to Inside Higher Ed. In it, Caesar argues that the course syllabus has become so overridden by legalese that it's been rendered meaningless: "It seems to me that we have become unsure about what not to put on syllabi because we have become unsure what a course is. It is no longer self-contained."

Caesar's right, of course. There are so many institutionally-driven guidelines that have very little to do with the course that the document is longer than a real estate contract. Although many of us teach close reading, I wonder if the long-winded, legalistic syllabus is a genre that -- like the forms put out by the IRS -- are reader unfriendly by design.

But aside from all the course policies and mandatory statements, a syllabus is a great course organizing tool, one that makes me a better teacher. I think of it as being akin to a book outline -- it maps out the territory to be covered in the course. I'm one of those teachers who outlines the entire term in a calendar that is integrated into my syllabus, and I follow my plan rather strictly. Homework due dates, reading assignments -- it's all in there, in a really big table. It also helps me revise the course as I go: I jot notes on the printed sylllabus after each class meeting, so I'll remember what to change for the next time. By thinking of the syllabus as not only a road map or a contract, but also as a document in revision, I find a well-organized syllabus invaluable.

I'm not against syllabi, obviously, but I think they do need to be focused on course learning objectives. It's worth critically reexamining your approach if you haven't changed your course syllabi for awhile. he Orientation to College Teaching website at San Francisco State U offers a really good discussion of Course Design and Creating a Syllabus, among other things.

Here's a good resource: an adapted version of “Looking for Good Teaching: A Guide to Peer Observation,” by B. B. Helling (1976). It is a surprisingly lengthy checklist for teaching observations that focuses on the "good" elements of the teacher's performance, in the name of specific and positive criticism, rather than "generalities that do not deal with behavior we can do anything about...[which] rather than providing the guidance we had hoped for, they leave us feeling threatened, helpless, and discouraged." I like the optimistic tone of this -- the emphasis on reward rather than punishment. Whether you're looking for help when evaluating or observing another teacher, or simply interested in what sort of things "good" teachers do, you might want to take a look at Helling's checklist.

Discovered at the wonderfully generous Center for Teaching and Learning at Western Michigan University.