Experts | University of the Sciences

Setting right tone at course beginning

Faculty have preferred ways to conduct their classes and have individual policies.  However, these practices and policies differ from one instructor to another and students do not know your policies unless you explicitly inform them.  On the first day of class and on the course page in your learning management system ( i.e., BlackBoard), you might address the following issues, among others:

1.  Do you prefer to finish your presentation of new material before students ask questions or can students interrupt with questions any time?

2. What kinds of student collaboration are encouraged, acceptable and what is not allowed.  We often give mixed messages that students can interpret differently.  For example, if they can collaborate on project work, such as labs, you need to tell them if they can also collaborate on the written reports coming form the projects, such as lab reports.

3.  What is your policy about how material is to be handed in- must be on paper, in your drop box in the learning management system or emailed to you through the university email?

4.  Do you allow students to come late to class or prefer that they skip the class?      

5.  What reference citation style will you accept for their writing?

6. How should they contact you if they need to see you outside of office hours?

7. What is acceptable in terms of how formally or informally students send you electronic messages and in what medium would you prefer to receive them?

There are many others.  As you think of the answers to these questions, you might start developing an information sheet that you can attach to all course shells on your course page in your learning management system.  You can add more ideas to this list over time.

When students know these policies and practices, they are more likely to get off to a good start in your course and not violate rules unintentionally.

 

USciences faculty win teaching awards

The Teaching and Learning Center of the University of the Sciences recognizes teaching excellence through giving awards.  Five faculty members won Bright Idea Awards for innovative teaching and three adjunct faculty members won awards for excellent teaching.

 

The Bright Idea Award winners were selected by a panel of department chairs as the most innovative.  The winners along with a dozen of their colleagues presented at a competitive poster session on educational innovations in May, 2011.  Over seventy faculty, administrators, and staff attended the poster session.  Abstracts of these projects, along with all of the other posters may be found at the Center’s website at www.sciences.edu/teaching.

We are happy to recognize the following faculty who won the Bright Idea Award for their projects:

• Lora Packel, of  Physical therapy “The impact of hearing versus seeing feedback on written assignments”
• Lindsey Curtin, Laura Finn, Michael Cawley of Pharmacy Practice , “Impact of computer based simulation on learning objectives in mannequin based simulation” 
• Grace Earl,  of Pharmacy Practice “Evaluating the quality of online discussion forum posts to improve teaching methods that promote critical thinking in pre-professional students”

 

Students, faculty and chairs can nominate adjunct professors for recognition as an outstanding adjunct professor.  Adjunct professors teach one or two courses in their specialty while holding other full time jobs or doing other things.  The deans selected the winners from among the many nominations. We are pleased to announce this year’s adjunct professors:

• Sergio Guerra – Biology – Forensic Anthropology
• John Muccitelli – Chemistry
• Nicholas Spring – Pharmaceutical Business

 

USciences faculty present on teaching

Eighteen University of the Sciences faculty made 15 presentations at four, peer –reviewed and competitive conferences. (for example, at the Lilly-East Conference, USciences faculty made 8 presentations. Competition was especially keen to present at this conference as there were over 259 submissions.) Peer reviewed Conference Presentations made by faculty on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning topics. The Teaching and Learning Center helped to fund the faculty to attend these conferences.

• Jeanette McVeigh, Finding the right resources for your scholarship of teaching and learning Pa Library Association conference

• Pam Kearney, Jennifer Pitonyak and Phyllis Blumberg short course presentation on learning centered teaching at American Occupational Therapy Association

• Anne Marie Flanagan, What Will Students Think of Next?, Association for Core Texts and Courses (ACTC)

 • Alison M. Mostrom, Are IF – AT Practice quizzes Superior to Tradition Paper Practice Quizzes presented at The Teaching Professor Conference

 • Andrew Peterson, Phyllis Blumberg, and Alison M. Mostrom Keeping Your Teaching Fresh: Are Teaching Mentor Relationships for you? presented at The Teaching Professor Conference

 • Phyllis Blumberg, Keeping Teaching Invigorated through Self-assessment and Scholarship of Teaching/Learning presented at The Teaching Professor Conference

• Jeanette McVeigh, Finding the Research on Teaching and Learning. Presented at the Lilly-East Conference

USciences faculty: skillful teachers

>During 2010-2011, the Teaching and Learning Center of the University of the Sciences offered or cosponsored 81 different educational events for the faculty. Overall 79% of the full time faculty participated in at least one of them. Therefore, USciences faculty may be some of the best trained teachers at universities in America. 64 (35% of the total) full time faculty presented their ideas through Teaching and Learning Center venues. For more information on the presentations go to the Center’s website www.usciences.edu/teaching.

Test reviews to benefit students and teachers

Develop very challenging multiple choice questions that you can use as a review for the students.  These questions should go well beyond factual but involve the highest levels of cognitive processing that you want your students to be able to do.  This review should take place almost a week before the test so the students have time to study appropriately. You can administer these questions in a variety of ways, but the most important part is for you to be able to collect the answers to see where students struggled. 

• You can put them online and be sure the computer can record how many tries it took each student to get the right answer and which alternatives they selected.
• You can use IF-AT (scratch- off) answer sheets.  Here collect the answer sheets to see where there were multiple attempts to get the right answer
• You can use clickers and look at the distribution of selected answers

These challenging questions should motivate the students to study harder and concentrate more on the higher levels of cognitive processing.  You can determine what topics the students had the most difficulty and offer additional help with these topics.  You could put this additional help online, refer them to resources or ask the supplemental instructor to focus on them.

Thoughts on student group work

People who employ our graduates consistently tell us that the ability to work effectively in groups is a necessary skill to succeed in their jobs.  For this and many other good reasons more faculty are incorporating small group work into courses.  It is important to use the groups appropriately for effective learning.  Here are some guidelines supported by research to consider for group work:

• The faculty member should assign groups in beginning level classes on the basis of previous performance (divide the class into upper and lower half) and randomly assign students to groups within the top half and separately within the bottom half) and also checking to see that diversity is spread among the groups, but avoid groups that have only one person of color or non-traditional student, if possible.
• Allowing students to make their own groups often results in like minded and like motivated people to work together
• Create some accountability for individual’s work within the group.  This often involves peer assessment of effort, ability to work with others, meeting others expectations, etc.  These peer assessments should impact on any group or final grades.
• Spend time on group process.  Ask the groups to develop their own expectations of each other, even creating a group contract.
• Tell the students that they should try to resolve differences among themselves, but that the instructor is available if necessary. 
• Ground rules can include the ability of the instructor to fire a student from a group given sufficient cause, and the instructor can also reorganize groups if necessary.

 

Melanie Oates uses the following approach for graduate/professional level classes to allow groups to self select in upper level courses.  However, the selection becomes a mock job interview process.  Every student presents their qualifications to the class.  The Project Managers then submit closed bids for the students that they wish to “hire”.  Eventually, all of the students are placed in “jobs”.

Reflecting on your teaching

As you hand in final grades and organize your materials to save from each course, spend a little time reflecting on how well you taught your courses.  Think about and write down what you think and what others including students have told you went well or could be improved.  General areas to consider in your reflection are:

o        Course planning and how the content was covered and used

o        Organization

o        Pedagogy

o        Student engagement with the material to promote learning and motivation to learn

o        Development of the students’ ability to continue to learn and to self-assess

o        Providing constructive feedback to students in a timely way

 

Short term help; negative consequences

Sometimes we do things which we think will benefit the students, but may not be advantageous in the long run.  For example, if students request your complete lecture notes or presentation slides, you may be hel

ping

them master the material for your course.  However, by giving them your complete slide set and notes, you may be denying your students the opportunity to organize and integrate the content.  They not be practicing note taking skills. Worse, they may see no benefit of coming to class.  The biggest consequences are the students might not engage in the material and they are allowing you the teacher to take more responsibility for their learning.  This can lead to students who cannot learn material on their own once they leave school.   Instead give out the complicated figures as handouts and headings for your lecture.  Let the students be active listeners when they come to class. 

Importance of self-assessment

If the teachers are the only ones who assess students, students never learn the important skills of self-assessment. Throughout our professional lives, people need to assess their abilities, their strengths and weaknesses. Yet, many college graduates do not have good self-assessment skills. While it is uncomfortable to do so, students need practice assessing themselves. What instructors ask students to self-assess varies with the type of course and the content of the course. For example, students might assess themselves on their writing abilities, on their functioning in a group or class participation. Students can always be asked to assess how well they are learning or to reflect on their own learning processes. When students gain self-assessment skills, they also gain confidence and move more to becoming a self-directed, lifelong learner.

For more information see http://www.usp.edu/teaching/Learner-Centered/Blumberg_Developing_Learner_Centered_Teaching.pdf

Helping students to see the big picture

Students often have trouble seeing the big picture in our courses. They remember facts, isolated concepts, but they cannot integrate the facts and concepts together to really understand the discipline. Some of their problem may relate to how we teach. All disciplines have organizing schemes or themes from which most content can be derived. For example, the structure- function relationship is an organizing scheme in biology whereas individual differences in human behavior is an organizing scheme in psychology. The more we teach using these organizing schemes, the better students will understand the way our disciplines work. You can use them to organize your entire course, explicitly teach using them, and give assignments that require the integration of content into organizing schemes. For more discussion of organizing schemes see Developing Learner-Centered Teaching published by Jossey-Bass.