Teaching for Student Success

Grades demotivate student learning.  That is a problem.  Faculty also often spend significant amounts of time grading.  Another problem.  So, if we know grading demotivates learning and we are spending lots of our time grading, are we working against ourselves? Are we working against the goals of our courses?  Isn't our goal to motivate students to learn, and then provide them with the resources they need to move from novice towards expert?  In this episode Dr. Jesse Stommel talks about the problems with and possible solutions for the traditional grading system in which most of us participate. 

Content isn't enough!  The classroom environment that you create can foster learning or impede learning.  If you really are here for all of your students, and I think you are, then it is critical to ensure that the environment you provide is one the fosters learning for all students.  In this episode Dr. Oscar Fernandez discusses Inclusive Excellence at Wellesley College, an effort to create a community of faculty, students, and staff working to ensure that all students feel a sense of belonging in their higher education community and that all students are supported in their efforts to excel.

A huge amount of information must be provided to students at the outset of every course.  Enter the SYLLABUS!  A universal one-way communication tool that can set the tone for your course and for your relationship with your students.  It defines the rules of engagement - the struggle for power between student and faculty.  In this episode we talk about the syllabus; how it is used, how it can be used and how it can be abused with Dr. Matthew Cheney who has written extensively about the cruelty-free syllabus.

For decades, the United States has been trying to increase the number of STEM professionals from underrepresented groups - with limited success.  Retention and persistence at the undergraduate level, and advancement to graduate degrees continue to be problematic areas.  In this episode we talk with Dr. Nilanjana Dasgupta about her fascinating long-term study on the impact of peer mentors on the persistence, retention, and advancement to graduate degrees of female engineering students.  This is an amazing study following 150 students through their entire undergraduate academic career and one year beyond! The simplicity and success of this intervention is surprising.  There are lessons here for all disciplines that experience equity and inclusivity issues.

UNGRADING! You might already implement some form of UNGRADING but it is more likely that you don't.  Perhaps you heard of UNGRADING and dismissed it, or thought about it but decided it wasn't the right time, or decided it wasn't right for you or your students, or thought the whole idea was insane, or perhaps you don't know anything about UNGRADING at all.  Perhaps this is the first time you have even heard that term.Whatever your prior knowledge is or isn't about UNGRADING - please listen Dr. Sue Steiner of Chico State talk about her motivations to implement and her experiences with UNGRADING.  This conversation may convince you that now is time to take the UNGRADING plunge.  

OLD NEWS: A 2014 meta-analysis by Scott Freeman and colleagues of 225 peer-reviewed studies concluded that students taught in an active learning environment significantly outperform peers taught using more traditional formats.  CURRENT STATUS:  Most colleges and universities are still a long way from full adoption of these practices.  The reasons are complex.  Resistance comes from institutions and often from faculty, but also from students.  We have trained our students to think that traditional lecturing is THE way to learn, in spite of mountains of evidence to the contrary.In this episode, we discuss an elegant, controlled classroom study by Louis Deslauriers and colleagues that again tests the value of active learning, but importantly then pays attention to the student perspective and provides suggestions about getting students on board the active-learning band-wagon.  This is a beautiful and important study.  Enjoy!

In higher education our introductory classes are more diverse than ever.  That's great!  Our graduating classes?  Less diverse. That's bad!  Faculty play a critical role in this loss of diversity and therefore have a responsibility to address the issue.  In this episode, Dr. Viji Sathy and Dr. Kelly Hogan, authors of “Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom” (2022) discuss a wide range of evidence-based practices that can help our most challenged, our most diverse students succeed, improving classroom equity.  Please listen, then take action! 

Higher education is recognizing the importance and value of diversity and inclusivity in our institutions, our classes, our majors, and in the workforce.  Along with this recognition are efforts to increase the success and graduation rates of all students with particular attention to our historically excluded, minoritized, marginalized, and first generation students.  Many approach this work from a perspective of deficits:  students aren't succeeding because of what they are missing.  An alternative perspective is anti-deficit:  recognizing what students are doing to succeed.  For example: Instead of the deficit perspective: “Why don't certain groups of students persist?”  One might reframe the question and ask “How do certain groups of students manage to persist and earn degrees despite any number of negative forces that are working against them?“.  Dr. Julie Stanton, Associate Professor in the Department of Cell Biology at University of Georgia in Athens Georgia talks about her Participatory Action Research project that informs us about strategies that black students use to succeed at a primarily white institution. Please listen for an engaging and fascinating discussion of community cultural wealth.

As researchers study the success of students in active classrooms, they expose new questions to ask, they generate new data to analyze.  These data put classrooms implementing active learning practices under the microscope.  In looking closely at the details of implementation, researchers are now uncovering evidence of practices resulting in inequities, in some and perhaps most active learning environments.  In this episode, we talk with Dr. Daniel Reinholz about his classroom observational analytical tool, EQUIP, and discuss how Daniel and his co-authors have used this tool to identify inequities in classrooms, inequities that may underlie differences in student performance.  Fixing these inequities may not be hard, but one has to identify the problem first.  EQUIP may be one tool we all need.  

In this episode we parse the massive Active Learning Umbrella and discuss a particular type of active learning classroom, the generative classroom in which students generate their knowledge.  Dr. Tessa Andrews (University of Georgia) discusses her research investigating how expert instructors think about, prepare and implement active learning in their generative classrooms versus how novices think about, prepare and implement active learning.  The results are fascinating and instructive.Please listen, learn, and share.

Who were your role models growing up?  In particular, who were your role models that led you to your career in academia? I'm going to guess that most of your academic role models were teachers who look like you or might have similar backgrounds to you.  Think about the power of that - seeing an inspirational teacher/educator/thinker/academic that has a similar background to you.  If this happened to you, try to remember how inspirational that was.  It might have been a parent, a family member, a teacher, a professor….Now imagine a post-secondary academic environment in which you didn't look or sound like your professors.  Imagine you had no cultural connection to the faculty you saw on campus or online every day.  Imagine the unspoken message this might send.  Imagine feeling like a stranger in a strange land.  Now, think about the students in your classes.  How many of them look or sound like you?  How many share your cultural identity?  Can you be their role model?  Can you help your students see themselves as colleagues in your world?  In this episode, I have a conversation with Jeff Schinske, Professor of Biology of Foothill College, part of the California Community College system about the impacts of the NIH-funded  Scientist Spotlights Initiative. The Scientist Spotlights Initiative (SSI) empowers middle/high school, college, and university science educators to implement inclusive curricula that help ALL students see themselves in science. The SSI provides access to easy-to-implement assignments/activities that link course content to the stories of counter-stereotypical scientists.

In daily life, we seem inundated by negative talk and negative messaging.  Open the newspaper, listen to talk radio, don't even start me on social media!  But our classrooms, our classrooms should be a sanctuaries, safe places to have civil, open discourse on contentious and non-contentious issues.  Whew!  That sounds like a slice of heaven, doesn't it? Peace.Even in these ideally safe places, we need to be aware of inappropriate aggressive language that can creep in, that can negatively impact the security of this safe zone, that can negatively impact the performance of students.  The aggressive language can be so subtle in some ways, that they have been termed “microaggressions”.  These microaggressions that we will talk about may come from anyone in our classrooms, students, the jokester in the back, or faculty.  But these microaggressions, these words can influence the experiences, persistence, and performance of students in our courses, particularly our underrepresented, marginalized and historically excluded students.So, if we are concerned about ensuring that all students feel that they belong in our classrooms, if we are concerned about the success of each and every student, then we need to think about this issue of small aggressions and we must confront them.In this episode, I welcome Dr. Colin Harrison to talk about his 2018 CBE Life Sciences publication “Language Matters: Considering Microaggressions in Science” co-authored with Dr. Kimberly Tanner.

In Episode 2 Dr. Kimberly Tanner introduced us to Instructor Talk, the non-content language used by instructors.  In this episode, listen to a fascinating discussion with Drs. Ovid and Rice about the student perspective of instructor talk.  How do students view instructor talk?  What do students hear?  What do students think? And interestingly, what do students remember?  It may, and probably should,  give you reason to pause and think before you speak in your next class.

How can you best help ALL of your students learn when they are all different?  They each have their own complex lives and life histories.  Listen to Kirsten Behling and Thomas Tobin talk about bringing the principles of Universal Design for Architecture to the learning environment to help manage this seemingly intractable problem.  Universal Design for Learning promises to reduce more barriers for more of your students providing opportunities for more of your students to succeed.  When adopting the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Behling and Tobin encourage faculty and staff to make one change at a time.  Plus One Thinking.  To start, use UDL principles to change just one aspect of your course or your learning environment at a time.  Don't try to overhaul the entire course at once.  The result is almost certain to be failure and frustration for you and your students.  Everyone will be unhappy, you will abandon UDL, and you will go back to your old ways reassured that everything was fine before.  Except of course that you were failing too many of your students.  Plus One Thinking reminds me of a good friend that plays the guitar.  How many guitars does he need?  Just One More!  Maybe that is the attitude to successful implementation of UDL principles.  Incremental.  Begin with just one change……….

 Episode 16 is  Part 2 of my conversation with Dr. Jessamy Neuhaus.  We discuss the importance of time for reflection, the practice of gratitude, and the challenges of student evaluations of teaching: the most contentious subject in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

“The Research is Pretty Clear that there is one thing and only one thing that across the board improves teaching.  Do you know what that is, Steve?”  This is the first episode of two part series with Dr. Jessamyn Neuhaus, author of Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds who want to be effective teachers. published in 2019 by West Virginia University Press.  For all the geeks, introverts, and nerds out there - this episode is for YOU!  So much so, that this book creates a new acronym - at least new to me:  GIN:  Geeks, Introverts, and Nerds.  There is of course some likelihood that all of my listeners, or a great many already self-identify as GINs or others - such as your partners, children or students - might identify you as one….so, keep listening for a special episode specifically to discuss how geeks introverts and nerds - those who might not want to play the extrovert in the front of the class - might adopt practices that can help us to be more effective teachers - resulting of course in improved rates of student success.

Many faculty participate in professional development programs that promise increases student success and decreases in the opportunity gap.  Programs that train faculty in evidence-based practices have reason to promise these outcomes.  However, some faculty that go through these trainings implement theses practices, others don't.  What are the factors that underlie this choice to adopt proven practices or not?  Gender?  Seniority? Concern about teaching evaluations?  In this episode, we discuss a hidden bias that impacts the adoption of evidence-based teaching practices: Mindset!  Faculty that have a growth mindset about their students adopt evidence based practices at a higher rate than faculty that have a fixed mindset about their students.  Since active learning and other student-centered teaching practices have been shown to improve student success, equity and inclusivity, understanding barriers to adoption of these practices is a critical issue.  It's a critical issue especially for the students whose performance would be positively impacted by the adoption of student centered practices.  Perhaps professional development workshops related to evidence based practices should spend more time addressing faculty mindset about students so that more faculty commit to and implement active learning practices in their classes.  

The percentage of students on our campuses suffering from depression doubled from 2009 to 2019.  Student suicides increased 50% over the same period.  The pandemic probably hasn't helped. Campuses nationwide are responding by increasing access to health care professionals and training staff and faculty to identify stressed students.  However, most campuses are not dealing with one of the most significant stressors in student's lives, GRADES!  In this episode, we talk with Dr. Joshua Eyler, Director of Faculty Development at the University of Mississippi about the stress of grades and how institutions and faculty need to rethink approaches to decreasing stress by changing how we think about and act on grading and evaluating students.  We rely on grades, a time tested but inaccurate and misleading assessment system, a human construct, first brought into higher education in the 1790s.  Time for a reboot, perhaps?

Many of your students grew up economically disadvantaged.  Without intervention, economically disadvantaged students are more likely to leave the academy than economically advantaged students.  While no one expects faculty to solve students economic problems (well, maybe we can help by minimizing costs of textbooks), we as faculty can significantly impact the academic performance of these students with a few simple,  no-cost interventions.  Interventions for both the faculty and the students.  If you want to help your economically disadvantaged students succeed, if you really want to help all of your students succeed, you must listen to Dr. Susan Claro in this episode.  Deans and Provosts, pay attention!

Dr. Tracie Marcella Addy, Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning at Lafayette College discusses her 2021 book “What Inclusive Instructors Do.  Principles and Practices for Excellence in College Teaching”.  In this episode, we discuss why instructors and institutions should embrace inclusive practices.  We also discuss practices that improve engagement, persistence, and success.  Wherever you are on your journey of providing the best learning environments for all your students, listen to this episode for new perspectives, support, motivation, ideas, and possibly a new book to add to your book club or journal club.

Dr. Robert Ariel, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Virginia Wesleyan University discusses his research on a simple approach that may help students adopt a proven study method - retrieval practice - that improves long term student learning and student success.  If you are unfamiliar with retrieval based learning, please listen to my interview with Dr. Jeffrey Karpicke in episode 4.  Helping students adopt evidence-based study practices, breaking years of experience with less effective and possible useless study habits, isn't easy - but it can be a very important piece in helping students succeed!  If you are looking for a simple way to help your students study more effectively and more efficiently, then please listen to this episode.

Enjoy a conversation with Dr. Bryan Dewsbury about an approach to inclusive instruction that goes beneath the mechanics of your courses. We don't talk about what your syllabus looks like, how you engage students in your learning environments, or how you assess students.  Instead we discuss an approach to inclusive instruction that first and foremost focusses on the criticality of developing an enriched and enhanced understanding of your students.  The ideas we discuss in this episode have the power to change your relationship with your students allowing you to develop an inclusive classroom that enriches the personal development of all your students.  In this episode, we do not discuss what your students need to learn, we do not discuss what your students need to be able to do.  We talk about issues that address the question “Who do you want your students to be”.  

Welcome to Part 2 of my conversation with Peggy Brickman about group work.  In part 1 of this episode, we discussed her 2018 paper entitled WHEN GROUP WORK DOESN'T WORK.  INSIGHTS FROM STUDENTS.  In this paper Peggy discusses her research on group work identifying a number of problems concerning standard practices that one might implement in courses.In Part 2, we discuss her follow-up paper: What to expect with group work: Problems, frequency, and success of mediation.  This paper is provides some quantitative data on the percentages of groups that have problems and discusses the successes and failures of mediation.Stick around for a fascinating look into the details of group work.

If you are interested in using group work in your courses but might be a bit intimidated, if you are using group work but are frustrated by it, if you have used group work but have sworn it off, I encourage any and all to listen to this two part series on the problems of group work and possible solutions.  In this episode I have a conversation with Dr. Peggy Brickman of the University of Georgia about group work but from an unusual perspective.  Instead of discussing the evidence demonstrating the positive impacts of well-designed group work on student success, we discuss the problems of group work.  These discussions may provide the encouragement you need to finally implement group, or may provide a solution to reduce your frustration with group work, or may convince you that group work is worth another try.  Listen and see.

In less than a minute and a half, I describe a group work method referred to as a Jigsaw.  It was referred to in Episode 8 Part 1.  I realized a definition might be helpful.

Dr. Mark McDaniel of Washington University, author of “Make It Stick”, discusses learning and the importance of recognizing that learning is a skill.  A skill that can and should be learned, a skill that can and should be taught.  A variety of researchers study how people learn.  There are reams of data about the effectiveness of various learning strategies.  We have evidence about which strategies are more effective than others.  We certainly don't know everything there is to know about learning, but we know quite a bit and this knowledge can and should help students succeed.Yet We enroll students in schools and we expect students to learn without ever teaching them effective strategies for learning.  Why are we keeping these strategies a secret?  Why do we expect our students, our children, to discover effective strategies for learning on their own?In this episode, Dr. McDaniel will discuss a new proposal, a new framework for how we might teach students to learn and how to apply this knowledge about learning, giving our students, all students, our children, all children, the skills they need to learn efficiently and effectively.If you are interested in how you can really help your students succeed, how you can help your students become life-long learners, how you can help your students learn the SKILLS needed for learning, then please, listen to this episode.

Dr. Susan Blum (University of Notre Dame), a Renaissance Humanist (look it up) discusses her recent book, UNGRADING: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and what to do instead).  In this episode, Dr. Blum discusses problems associated with the long established system of grades and grading and discusses a recent movement, UNGRADING, which is a call to arms to provide learning environments that motivate student learning by changing the way students are evaluated.  If you have never heard of the concept of Ungrading this interview is likely to be disturbing, raising issues about our educational system that may challenge educators who have not questioned our model of student evaluation.  If you have some familiarity with Ungrading but have yet to incorporate some of these principles in your courses, we hope that this discussion might provide the support you need to dip your toes metaphorically in the “Ungrading waters”.  Lastly, if you are an expert in Ungrading please sit back and enjoy the discussion.  Perhaps you can pass this episode on to colleagues that might be ready to take the plunge.

Dr. Harriet Schwartz of Antioch University discusses her recent book, “Connected Teaching: Relationship, Power, and Mattering in Higher Education”.  Most faculty spend a significant part of their lives interacting with students.  Dr. Schwartz's book reminds us that so much of teaching is about moments with students.  These moments can be brief or extended, but these moments, whatever the duration, can be transformative for students.  Dr. Schwartz discusses the importance of these relationships and how to attend to these relationships so that students can be heard, seen, and most importantly, successful.  Listen for an inspiring and helpful discussion that really is at the heart of why many of us teach.

Dr. Jeff Karpicke of Purdue University discusses his research on retrieval based learning showing that repeated testing of students without repeated study sessions results in higher rates of learning over the long term compared to students who repeatedly study but are not tested.  This discussion might alter the way you think about studying and learning and might force you to reconsider how the structure of your course impacts student learning and student success.  If you teach, if you learn, this episode is a must listen!

 Dr. Bill Davis of Washington State University discusses two simple, non-content interventions that improve student success and decrease the equity gap.  You will be amazed how a simple wording change to a syllabus, and how a straightforward email of encouragement can improve student success and decrease the equity gap of your courses.  This is an important episode for all faculty.  A few positively worded statements can help your students succeed.  All of your students.  Listen and let us know what you think at teachingforstudentsuccess.org.

Dr. Kimberly Tanner of San Francisco State University discusses her work documenting and coding the non-content talk that facutly use as they speak to students during class sessions. This work establishes the framework for future studies on the impact of “Instructor Talk” on the performance and attitudes of students.

Dr. Carl Wieman, who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Physics in 2001, discusses his motivation to move away from fundamental physics research to the world of education research. Dr. Wieman tells a story that will resonate with those interested in ensuring that students are provided with the best possible learning opportunities for their success.