Teaching Academy Retreat: Engaging the Diverse Classroom

January 16th I attended the UW Teaching Academy Annual Retreat. The topic was, “What can I do in my classroom to create a welcoming teaching/learning environment for all students?” This is a very important topic on campus right now, as we’ve learned that students from underrepresented groups are not performing well in many of our large, gateway courses. This is more true at UW than at most of our peer institutions and it is true even for students with high ACT scores.

In preparation for the retreat, we read Can We Talk about Race? And other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation by Beverly Daniel Tatum, Ph.D. I’ll add this to our office bookshelf. If you’d like to take a look it’s a quick read and we focused on Chapter 2.

At the workshop, we heard some interesting presentations and worked on some challenging case studies in small groups. We also heard from a student panel, which was so enlightening. I learned about some excellent materials developed by CIRTL, in particular their book, Reaching All Students: A Resource for Teaching in Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics, which I’ll place on our bookshelf, but is also freely available online (!!) I plan to go back to this for classes in all disciplines. This is a topic we should be thinking about for future LILI Forums and Retreats.

First-Year Conference: Large Lecture Courses

I’m very interested in large lecture courses because they’re inherent to large, public research university environments and becaue there’s often an assuption that it’s logistically impossible to give assignments/assessments other than multiple-choice tests.  It was really inspiring to work with some brave faculty at UC Berkeley who were willing to explore transforming large lecture courses with research assignments.  I learned so much during that project about assignment design, but also about a variety of strategies for engaging students in these environments.

Cathy Middlecamp, Chem 108 for 100+ non-chemistry majors.  It’s important not to alienate students in first-year math/science courses.  Goal is to organize disparate topics into a foundation so that students can get to the good stuff later on, but many students may never take upper-level chemistry courses.  Instead, “teach through” big ideas (air quality, global warming) to the underlying chemistry and draw chemists into the world of people.

Jonathon Martin “Introduction to Weather and Climate” 385-405 students.  Martin does an early-semester survey and meetings with individual students — generating that intimacy transforms the class, this year met with forty students early and knows many by name.  Socratic method transforms lectures, willing to pause for fifteen seconds or more until peer pressure works in favor of a verbal response (doesn’t like clickers because it promotes anonymity).  Humor, human interest, fairness, approachability and enthusiasm are key to approach.

Kathy DeMaster is a TA in Nelson Institute and teaches IES 112 and 113.  These courses are structured so that she attends large lecture and meets with of sections of 20-25.  Brings in digital camera and learns names by second day and asks people to write down some of their interests, thoughout the semester, writes each student 2-3 emails to show she is in touch with what students are concerned about and connects people to job announcments by maintaining a database of students/interests.  To create a collaborative and participatory classroom, writes a list of things to master on the board and has students in groups plan course (what and how to go about it) and set the rules for the classroom environment, then brings typed syllabus the following week.      Asks students to explore multiple perspectives by arguing perspectives they don’t agree with.

Michelle Sizemore, TA in English, teaches in large introductory literature courses, 200 students where she facilitates discussion sections of approximately twenty.   Challenges may be tied to the content of the course (e.g. connecting to content that may seem remote, dealing with controversial issues).    Tries to build a comparative framework that provides students who are unfamiliar with academic discourse with another point of entry.  These could be related to popular culture, with goal of getting every student involved despite range of prior experience and learning styles.

Claire Wendland teaches Anthropology 104, which has 800 students in two lectures and 36 sections, and is the largest course at the university.  As a novice to teaching very large courses and first year students, she is surprised by the intensity of students’ grade focus, some of the lecture material that makes them uncomfortable, that students show up to the office hours without invitation but need help to know what do do there.  Many students are going through a difficult transition from being the star in their high school to being more average in this environment, so it’s important to engage with them in ways other than grading.  Can be useful to talk about the work in third person rather than “you.”  Important to talk about strategies for being efficient at meeting expectations.  In college, there are fewer opportunities for feedback than in high school, so gives self-graded quizzes that are discussed in class and may show up on exams.

Lessons for librarians?  Hope these notes give you a window into a few classrooms, since we usually see what’s happening through conversations with students, the syllabus, or the written assignment.  The more we know about the environment of a particular course, the more we can become an integral part of the learning experience there.  Maybe we should have a role in these large courses other than or in addition to library instruction or teaching students how to complete a research assignment…?  The idea that we can be a familiar face and someone who knows students’ names is a familiar one to librarians, but the one that many students are learning how to have appropriate interactions with authority figures is an important one.

K-20 Information Literacy in Wisconsin

This afternoon, Jo Ann Carr and I facilitated a discussion, “Not a Bridge to Nowhere: K-20 Collaboration in Information Literacy” for the WiscNet 3rd Thursday series.   Maddy Covelli, formerly Head of STS and now at WiscNet, is working on reviving the series and this was the first session.   So I want to thank everyone who participated, including many of our colleagues at Madison. WiscNet “serves Wisconsin’s education, library, government, and affiliated organizations by: Providing high quality, cost effective network services and adding value to the network through the services we provide; Helping people use information technology services effectively; Fostering information and resource sharing; and Embracing partnerships with government, consortium, education and information provider organizations.”   We should invite Maddy to tell us more about it sometime.  She travels for work and they’re touring the supper clubs of Northern Wisconsin.

Our session was about bridging K-12 and higher ed information literacy efforts in the state: “The students and the environments of K-12 and Higher Education  are changing. The diversity and amount of information these students encounters continues to increase. What is our vision for preparing Wisconsin learners for the 21st century? How can we build the bridge of lifelong information literacy to help students at all levels to navigate these new environments?”  I learned a terrific amount in putting the presentation together with Jo Ann Carr, she is an amazing resource since she is so involved in many of these initiatives.  I’ve posted our slides and handout and I think the presentation will be archived eventually.

Here are some interesting points I think:

• There are some strong parallels between the LEAP initiative in higher ed and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills in K12.  Wisconsin is very involved in both of these initiatives.
• The framework for information literacy of educators presented by Shinew and Walter in “Instructional Literacy Instruction for Educators: a global perspective on needs and opportunties” has very interesting parallels to our interest in faculty consultation / assignment design in higher ed.
• The Council on Library and Network Development (COLAND) draft vision report is an important document for us all to read.
• We have some amazing outreach efforts already underway across campus, but particularly in College and Ebling.
• Steve Baumgart will participate in a panel on this topic at WLA, where we should learn even more.

First Generation Students

Do you ever feel like you’re stating the obvious to new students?   Don’t take for granted that they already know it all.

A campus news item this week details a study by Claire Huhn that “takes an in-depth look at the characteristics of first-generation students at UW-Madison and the ways in which UW-Madison supports this population.”  Things I found interesting:

• 21% of our 2008 freshman class are first generation college students
• first generation students are female to a higher percentage, slightly older and more frequently come from rural Wisconsin.
• 49 percent of first-generation freshmen are eligible for financial aid, in contrast to 19 percent of freshmen whose parents have college degrees

I’ll listen for presenters at campus meetings who can talk to us about these kinds of studies, which really help to understand the students we work with.

Who has responsibility for learning experiences outside the classroom?

The Chronicle of Higher Education has published an article about the debate about who has ownership over learning experiences outside the classroom.  The trend has been that Student Affairs professionals and other campus groups manage these experiences, but the National Association of Scholars has issued a statement that faculty should reestablish ownership.  On our campus, you can see the great things student affairs professionals have done (often in partnership with faculty and other groups) in the new Center for the First Year Experience.  The library participates in the planning and delivery of these programs in a variety of ways, and I would say that student affairs people are doing an amazing job leading and delivering these key, large-scale programs.  If you’re interested, the debate is raging in the comments area of the online article.

Aaron Brower talk at the LILI Forum

Aaron Brower, Professor of Social Work and Vice-Provost for Teaching and Learning, visited the LILI Forum last week. Aaron reminded us that his research interests have long been the transition to college and how we might “pre-format” college life to create niches for new students. He discussed some educational research about effective learning environments, including the NSSE elements of effective engagement and the “learning pyramid,” which tells us that people learn best when they are active participants (doing rather than just listening).

In his year-and-a-half as Vice Provost, Aaron has been working closely with Lori Berquam on how we can best characterize the educational mission of the university; how is it unique and special? This echoes John Wiley’s frequent, broader question, “ What’s so special about UW Madison?” and the Wisconsin Idea.  They developed the Wisconsin Experience draft document based on this question. The Wisconsin Experience includes both curricular and co-curricular learning experiences – librarians are in a somewhat unique position since we support a variety of learning experiences for courses and individual students.
For the library, a key element of the Wisconsin Experience is substantial research experiences that generate knowledge and analytical skills. Information literacy is listed among the Essential Learning Outcomes for UW Madison Students and is an essential part of turning research opportunities into effective learning experiences. We reviewed a list of experiences including sustained study abroad, FIGs, Delta, internships, the BRIDGE program, Wisconsin Experience capstone experiences, Biology adaptation of the Leadership Certificate, CALS adoption of the First Year Experience goals, Greater use of peer mentors, TA-ships as professional development, hybrid courses and classroom of the future…

Voluntary System of Accountability Report

I learned last week that UW-Madison is participating in the Voluntary System of Accountability and created a College Portrait of Undergraduate Education.

In November, 2007, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article on the system (subscription, also in Lexis-Nexis and other online databases): “In one of the most sweeping responses yet to calls for accountability in higher education, a public-university association has adopted a template, called the College Portrait, that will allow institutions to share with outsiders online data about such matters as students’ academic progress.  Use of the portrait will be voluntary, but its approval this month by the Board of Directors of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges marked the beginning of a formal effort by the association to encourage institutions to use it.”

The short portrait includes data on the campus, as well as data related to student learning outcomes from three standardized instruments.  Perhaps more significantly, it includes data on how UW Madison intends to measure student learning outcomes locally.   For those who have been following the ongoing struggle over accountability measures in higher ed, this represents institutions’ push to be proactive in defining and controlling their own measures of student learning, rather than having something imposed from the outside.   Here at UW, the effort to supplement long, scholarly reports on student learning outcomes with shorter “nuggets” to share with the public is a very important campus effort.

First Year Interest Group (FIGS) – lots to learn!

I was invited to the First Year Interest Groups (FIGS) faculty orientation to this to give our usual short presentation about how the library can support FIGS courses, and I did speak for a few minutes about how the library can work with faculty to design support the kind of inquiry-based learning experiences these faculty were hoping for. I showed examples of a Library Course Page, an Undergraduate Research Guide for a FIGS class, and talked about library instruction. Janice Rice joined me to talk about how College Library supports new students, and how she sees students using College as a place to get together to work, which faculty were interested in because community-building is such an important part of these courses. A few faculty members talked about how much working closely with the library’s instructional staff (College in one case, Steenbock in another) had helped their class and improved student success, and they were so eloquent that I may contact them to get them to share these stories in other venues.

By sitting in on the full event, I learned quite a bit that others may already know:

• FIGS students have higher GPAs over time, even though they begin with a lower “academic profile.”
• Effects seem particularly remarkable for students of color. Each year, FIGS partners with other units to promote enrollment by students of color, who are 25% of the students in these classes.
• A survey of “FIGsters as Seniors” is underway and we got a handout with some of the early responses. An analysis will be published at the end.

Breakfast Meeting on Essential Learning Outcomes – history in the making?

This morning, I was a facilitator at a meeting on essential learning outcomes sponsored by Vice-Provost for Teaching and Learning Aaron Brower, the University General Education Committee, the Offices of the Dean of Students, the University Assessment Council, Academic Planning and Analysis, Orientation and New Student Programs, L&S, and L&S Academic Affairs. Phew! I serve on UGEC and the Assessment Council. The purpose was to invite selected faculty who teach large Gen Ed courses and courses that serve large numbers of new students to discuss the question: what do we hope our students will learn which transcends content (essential learning outcomes).  We addressed the question in a few different ways.

Aaron Brower opened the session by saying that this was the first time faculty had been asked to address this question, so history in the making. Jolanda Vanderwal Taylor talked a bit about LEAP and then we addressed the question in two table groupings: one across disciplines and a second with people in the same subject area (STEM, quantitative reasoning, communication, humanities, or social sciences).

At my first table, there was a real feeling of shared responsibility for developing the skills that help students succeed: everything from learning to take notes to how to analyze readings. There was also a sentiment that large GE courses can get students engaged, but cannot hope to equip them with the methodologies of the discipline they are taught in. Instead, they should enable students to approach a subject (science, political science) critically over the course of their lifetimes, and also understand the “limits of a discipline.” The second table I facilitated was the people who manage and teach courses that meet the Communication requirements. I have frequent conversations with this group, and we already have a framework of shared learning outcomes. The discussants felt that other faculty should understand that these courses do have their own “content,” and should not become the place to teach all baseline skills. We also talked about intentionality; how we share learning outcomes with students.    While information literacy was not discussed explicitly, most of the conversation was about “learning to learn,” so directly related to our work in this area.

It was a brilliant group of people, so facilitation was a very easy job. I agreed with Aaron Brower that it was a(n) historic moment — working together to make our goals for student learning explicit. I look forward to sharing the notes and handouts when they are posted. I asked for permission last week but it was felt that they were “not ready for prime time.” I think we can begin to examine them in meetings to inform our own planning, but it’s not a good idea to post them in this public forum until they are made available publicly.

Impact of the library on retention and student success

About a week ago, Amanda Werhane posted a query to infolit-l looking for studies on the impact of the academic library on student success. She had read a news item about a NY K-12 study, “Syracuse Researchers Link Higher Test Scores with Certified Librarians in Schools” With Amanda’s permission, I sent the query out to the national Information Literacy and Instruction List, ILI-L. This is a list sponsored by the ACRL Instruction Section, and I think the list of studies I got show what a great resource it is! We got the following suggestions. I posted this list to our infolit-l listserv and ili-l as a summary, and hope to create a fact sheet in the near future to make it more convenient to repackage this type of information for various presentations, publications, etc.