Teaching College Masterclass

Just in time for the new semester!

Hilarious end-of-semester article: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/18/us/professor-syllabus-money.html

Professor Put Clues to a Cash Prize in His Syllabus. No One Noticed. Tucked into the second page of the syllabus was information about a locker number and its combination. Inside was a $50 bill, which went unclaimed.

If you follow my blog, you’ve heard of my series, What Do Students Wish You Knew? Each semester, I ask my students what they wished their professors would better understand about what they go through. Professors, here’s your chance to get an inside perspective!

Unlike previous posts, this one focuses on online teaching. I won’t cover topics that apply to face-to-face courses, such as “student workload” and “PowerPoint slides.” They are universal challenges addressed throughout this series.

Instead, I give you 10 insights that can shape your online instruction going forward, courtesy of our students’ voices. At the end of each topic, I summarize/offer potential solutions.

INSIGHT #1: Teaching live is not always better.

"I like how [one of] my professor uses the video conferencing option and records videos that gives me the [opportunity] to watch it in my own time. English is not my main language.”

[Click the link below to continue reading...]

https://normaneng.org/teaching-online-what-do-students-wish-you-knew-2021-edition/

My newest podcast interview by Dr. Barbi Honeycutt! Check it out: https://barbihoneycutt.com/blogs/podcast/episode-94-how-to-improve-the-learner-experience-in-your-online-course-what-we-can-learn-from-marketing-with-dr-norman-eng

"I teach Anatomy and Physiology, with competencies ranging from the levels of knowing (Anatomy mostly) to analyzing (mostly physiology).

When doing a final exam online, I struggled with the risk of cheating, so I decided to change my final exam to an individual interview style (I had a group of 25 students).

I created five different scenarios (i.e., case studies) with a set of somewhat complex questions based on physiological concepts.

I gave these cases and questions to the students two weeks ahead of time and told them that at the time of their interview, they would find out which case they would have to answer. They would only get one case to answer.

Students could prepare for the physiology questions, but they were told that following these questions, they would have 3 anatomy questions to answer (not known to them and different for each student).

This got them working on all five cases, so that they would be prepared for any one of them. It also got students discussing, sharing and exchanging ideas.

I had prepared a detailed rubric for each case to make sure I could quickly annotate during the interview.

The results were really exciting: the students went deeper, spent more time on learning than for previous examination, and did relatively well.

I also got one-on-one time with each student as they finished my course. It was wonderful to have that time with them, connecting one last time.

The trade-off?

It is manageable with 25 students, but with larger groups, the time to do interviews (30 minutes each) would have been too demanding."

- Isabelle M., Champlain College Lennoxville, Biology
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I particularly love the idea of creating a set of questions to prepare for...then giving students a random subset to answer. To make this work, the questions must be open-ended (as they are in case studies).

How do you prepare for online tests? Would love to hear your thoughts!

Give students a choice as to HOW they want to work, especially when they're synchronously working on an assignment or task.

One way is to create different breakout rooms or channels to decide which working situation they want to engage in:

TEACHER HELP ROOM. For students who want to get extra help from the teacher, they will join this room when they need to.

Note: My students in the group rooms tended to invite me to their Room/Channel when they needed help instead of joining the teacher help room. This actually worked well too.

OPEN GROUP ROOM. For students who wish to turn on their camera and microphone to discuss the topic with other students.​ (Great for extroverts and those who need to share screens.)

QUIET GROUP ROOM. For students who want to work quietly with other students and only use the chat instead of cameras and videos.​ (Great for introverts!)

QUIET ROOM. For students who wish to work alone.
With these rooms or channels, the professor can move in and out to see how students progress, to ask for questions, or to clarify any issues.

Just make sure to enable the feature that allows participants to move from room to room. In Zoom (version 5.3.0 or later), this option is called Self-Select Breakout Rooms.

This method kept my students on task and work was completed within the given timeframes.

(I love this idea! It taps into so many best teaching practices: i.e., giving choice & autonomy, cultivating ownership, and implementing universal design. – Norman Eng)

**Thanks to Angela B., Sports and Recreation Management @ Lambton College, for this tip, as well as to Dr. Barbi Honeycutt’s Lecture Breaker’s Newsletter for inspiring Angela!

Thoughts? Please share below.

Try providing an optional final.

This is a collection of questions pulled from the weekly quizzes. It your course is scored out of 1000 points, this final could be worth, say, 100-150 points.

This relieves you of negotiating every missed quiz or assignment. Students all want an exception made for them, so instead, tell them not to worry. They can make up those 20 points by taking the optional final.

It also serves as a nice review of the course.

Obviously, not every instructor can do this, but giving students choice is an idea that can be applied to other areas of teaching.
I just like the idea that some students may decide to forgo the final if, for instance, they've already scored above 940 points during the semester, which would qualify as an A! Something to think about next term as we think ahead.

Thanks to Lisa P., who teaches for the Film program Nicholson School of Communication and Media
Might an optional final work for your course? Leave comments below.

HOW TO HELP STUDENTS STAY ON TOP OF THINGS (HINT: USE CHECKLISTS)

You ever have students miss an assignment?

Or forget to do something they’re supposed to do?

Or just in general get easily confused about class?

I do. It frustrates the heck out of me, because I feel like I’m SO CLEAR. Like, Were you not paying attention?

Now I realize that being clear is just one part of being a good teacher. Students have so much going on, so it’s easy for them to overlook your tasks and assignments.

That’s why I use checklists now.

They’re so simple. But they WORK.

How I Use Checklists

For each weekly module, I list the assignments that students need to complete, and then add a checkbox in front of each one.

Also, include not just assignments, but small tasks too if needed. Things like:

-Sign up for Office Hours!
-Coming up: Fieldwork report (in three weeks!)
-Complete at least 2 hours of clinical observations this week

When I use checklists, students appear to be more on top of things.

The Power of Checklists (A Quick Story)

In his bestselling book The Checklist Manifesto, surgeon Atul Gawande explains how checklists completely transformed patient safety:

In 2001, a critical care specialist at Johns Hopkins Hospital named Peter Pronovost decided to give a doctor checklist a try. He didn’t attempt to make the checklist encompass everything ICU teams might need to do in a day.

He designed it to tackle just one of their hundreds of potential tasks: central line infections.

On a sheet of plain paper, he plotted out the steps to take in order to avoid infections when putting in a central line. Providers are supposed to:

-Wash their hands with soap.
-Clean the patient’s skin with chlorhexidine antiseptic.
-Put sterile drapes over the entire patient.
-Wear a mask, hat, sterile gown, and gloves.
-Put a sterile dressing over the insertion site once the line is in.

Check, check, check, check, and check.

These steps are no-brainers; they have been known and taught for years. So it seemed silly to make a checklist for something so obvious.

For a year afterward, Pronovost and his colleagues monitored what happened. The results were so dramatic that they weren’t sure whether to believe them: the ten-day line infection rate went from 11 percent to zero. So they followed patients for fifteen more months. Only two line infections occurred during the entire period. They calculated that, in this one hospital, the checklist had prevented forty-three infections, eight deaths and saved two million dollars in costs.”

Pronovost recruited more colleagues, and they tested some more checklists in his Johns Hopkins ICU. One aimed to ensure that nurses observed patients for pain at least once every four hours and provided timely pain medication. This reduced from 41 percent to 3 percent the likelihood of a patient’s enduring untreated pain.

They tested a checklist for patients on mechanical ventilation, making sure, for instance, that doctors prescribed antacid medication to prevent stomach ulcers and that the head of each patient’s bed was propped up at least thirty degrees to stop oral secretions from going into the windpipe. The proportion of patients not receiving the recommended care dropped from 70 percent to 4 percent, the occurrence of pneumonias fell by a quarter, and twenty-one fewer patients died than in the previous year.

The researchers found that simply having the doctors and nurses in the ICU create their own checklists for what they thought should be done each day improved the consistency of care to the point that the average length of patient stay in intensive care dropped by half.

These checklists accomplished what checklists elsewhere have done, Pronovost observed. They helped with memory recall and clearly set out the minimum necessary steps in a process.
Checklists, he found, established a higher standard of baseline performance.

For students, checklists can help organize their work. Did they finish everything that was assigned for the week? Did they leave anything out? That’s probably their biggest concern.

Secondly, having a checklist summary at the top of the module acts as an easy reference.

How Do You Actually Insert Checkboxes into Your LMS?

That might require creativity.

For some, maybe you create a word document and then save it as a PDF for students to download. Many students like having that physical copy. This way, they can check off each task with a pen when done.

If you’re on Blackboard learning management system (LMS), simply click the “html” view in the tool bar. Paste the code:

YOUR WORDS GO HERE

If you’re on Canvas, it’s less straightforward. But there are workarounds posted on the discussion board here.

If you’re on Moodle, there’s also a workaround video posted here.
If you’re on other LMS’s, like Google Classroom, just search “how to add checkboxes [or checklists] for [your LMS].”

What Do Students Think of Checklists?

Checklists can help your students do well in your class, but don’t take my word for it. Below are the actual feedback from my students last term.

(Note that their responses were based on the question: What worked well in my class? Responses about checklists were unprompted.)

"I thought writing out all of the assignments the students had to complete in the weekly content tab was very helpful, especially the boxes you added that students could check off after completing an assignment."

"Our checklist for the week; it allowed us to see what we need to do and what we have done already."

"I loved reading your weekly content posts. They were easy on the eyes and I really appreciated you putting the checklist for us because I was able to see what I still had left to complete."

"[What helped was] The fact that every week there was a checklist and a timeline. I knew exactly what to expect on a weekly basis."

"It was also really easy to see what work we had to complete and I liked the little checklist you created in [Blackboard]! I think it was really nice as I liked being able to know what I have completed."

"The weekly content was really helpful and the checklist because it allowed me to be on track of my work."

In summary, you can mitigate the overwhelm. Checklists can help students manage the workload better by allowing them to check off, one by one, each task they complete. In this way, they won’t miss anything!

Please let me know your thoughts below!

A Low-Tech Document Camera for Teaching Online

https://www.loom.com/share/721b5f3b57a14dbfa2e8d51b8978cb6a?sharedAppSource=personal_library

A low-tech document camera that shows your writing, materials, etc. online to students Check out a video I made via Loom

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