Welcome Back: Fall 2012 Edition

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We hope everyone had a great summer, and looking forward to another great fall semester at Penn State. After a summer of planning, the Schreyer Institute is excited to once again offer a wide variety of workshops, presentations and seminars for Penn State faculty and graduate students. This year, we are specifically focusing on the theme ‘Student Engagement’ in the vast majority of our programs. Throughout the semester, members of the Institute will be taking to this blog to discuss various aspects of student engagement, so be sure to bookmark this page, keep abreast of current topics and add your voice to the discussion. Some specific resources you might find valuable include:

Schreyer Events – a listing of all our events for each month of the semester. Be sure to check this page periodically as we continue to update the page with more events.
Drop-In Consultations – something new we’re trying this semester. Our consultants will be in a building near your, excited to engage in conversations around teaching and learning. Have questions about crafting exams? Syllabus creation? Assessing team work? Feel free to drop in at a location near you. You can also email us any time (site@psu.edu) to schedule an appointment to speak to a consultant.
Yammer Group – like many other units across Penn State, the Institute is experimenting with Yammer to share resources and facilitate discussions around teaching and learning. You can find us by logging into Yammer, then searching for “Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence”, then click ‘join’. Or try this link. 
Once again, welcome back and have a great fall 2012 semester!

Participate in a community of faculty peers by coming to our new faculty seminars

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If you are a new professor here at Penn State, please consider joining us for our new faculty seminar series. Four times this academic year we are offering seminars that should not only get you more in the know about various aspects of your new role, but they will also serve as an excellent forum for meeting other new professors who are going through the same kind of adjustments as you. Who knows when you may need a colleague across campus to partner with on a proposal or to go hiking with on Mt Nittany?

Please join us at any or all of these events by going to: http://www.schreyerinstitute.psu.edu/Events

 

Top 10 Things Every New Faculty Member Should Know

Tuesday, September 11, 2012, Noon – 1 pm, Rider 315

Two pre-tenure faculty, Dr. Erika Poole and Dr. Kamesh Madduri, will share what they have learned about teaching and learning, workload issues, and faculty expectations during their first few years at Penn State. Their insights are worth hearing and joining in will be a good way for you to begin developing a community of new faculty peers.

 

Using Your Voice in the Classroom

Wednesday, November 7, 2012, 12:15 – 1:15 pm, Rider 315

University professors are professional public speakers and the skill to speak healthily is just as important as keeping current in research and being able to create a stimulating environment in the classroom. Make sure you are getting your message across in a confident, sustainable manner by joining Professor Jennifer Trost, School of Music, who will discuss the proper care of the voice and offer suggestions to increase your stamina and ability to project.

 

Analyzing Your Student Evaluations

Thursday, January 24, 2013, Noon – 1 pm, Rider 315

You just got your first set of student evaluations back. Would you like to discuss them in an environment where others, just like you, are figuring out for the first time how to interpret and utilize the results? Come to this session to take a closer look at the SRTEs and to figure out how to use these ratings to guide teaching improvement.

 

Getting the Most from Your Mentor

Wednesday, March 27, 2013, 12:15 – 1:15 pm, Rider 315

Going it alone is not a recommended path for new professors. With all of the new opportunities and expectations, you may feel you don’t have any time for relationships. Yet you need support and guidance. During this session, we hear from a faculty with mentoring expertise and we will listen to your perspectives on the mentoring you have received so far. At the end, you should leave with some new ideas on how to enhance your mentoring experiences.

 

Part-time Faculty welcome at Penn State’s teaching center

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The article below from the Chronicle of Higher Education found that Part-time Faculty, aka Adjuncts, feel that they lack instructional resources.  Please help us get the word out to all part-time faculty teaching Penn State students that they are welcome to work with the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence instructional consultants, participate in our programs, and access our resources!  

Adjuncts’ Working Conditions Affect Student Learning, Report Says
By Audrey Williams June
Short-notice hiring and a lack of instructional resources are major impediments to effective teaching, says the report, based on a survey of adjuncts last fall.

Give Penn State Learning your Inquisitive, by Neill Johnson

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This post was authored by Neill Johnson, Director of Penn State Learning.

“Give me your tired, your poor,” says the Statue of Liberty in that famous poem by Emma Lazarus. If we take this approach to tutor referrals, we perpetuate the image of academic support resources as anchors for students adrift.  In learning as in life, nobody wants to be lost, not even temporarily. However, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want to be skilled at asking and answering questions. That’s why I implore you, please, to “give Penn State Learning your inquisitive.”  We want and need students who enjoy asking questions, who are eager to be challenged, and who are eager to help their peers “get it.” We also want students who aren’t afraid to say they don’t know. We annually employ over 100 inquisitive writing, foreign language, and math tutors and over 20 equally curious leaders of drop-in study groups for various accounting, economics, math, statistics, and physical science courses. All members of these learning communities are undergraduates, all are fairly compensated, and all take either English 250 or Curriculum and Instruction 200 and receive ongoing feedback from mentors and supervisors.

 

Without these inquisitive student leaders, no peer tutoring operation has a ghost of a chance of helping all the students who haven’t yet figured out how to ask their own questions and who dread being asked something they can’t answer. So in addition to your inquisitive, yes, give us your shy, your timid, your quiet novices yearning to speak free. We want them, too. In your syllabi and on your ANGEL course sites, please encourage your students to stop by our labs, visit our study groups, and check out the “Employment” and other links from our home page, http://PennStateLearning.psu.edu/.

 

SITE Stories: Increasing Student Outcomes in Nursing Research

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This is our first entry in SITE Stories, where members of the Penn State community share information about projects in collaboration with the Schreyer Institute. If you have an idea for a story, please email Bart Pursel at bkp10@psu.edu.


This story comes from Michael Evans, Instructor of Nursing and Tierney Lyons, reference Librarian, both from Penn State Worthington Scranton. If you have any questions, or would like to learn more about their research, please do not hesitate to contact them directly.
Traditionally, nursing students view Nursing 200w: Understanding and Applying Nursing Research as one of the more boring and labor intensive courses, often wondering why they need to understand nursing research as a bedside nurse. However, it is a necessary challenge for it promotes both better patient outcomes and graduate education predisposition.  To spark students’ interest in nursing research, Penn State Worthington Scranton’s Michael Evans, Instructor of Nursing, and Tierney Lyons, reference librarian, piloted a blended learning approach during Fall 2011 using ANGEL’s asynchronous discussion boards to promote reflective thinking and increase student satisfaction.  This research was supported by a SITE grant with the guidance of Dr. Kathy Jackson, Senior Research Associate and Instructional Consultant.
For this study, Mr. Evans and Ms. Lyons applied the supplemental model for blended learning to the research class. Instead of decreasing traditional classroom time, they supplemented the students’ in-person interactions with their instructor, Dr. Milton Evans, Penn State Worthington Scranton Instructor of Nursing, by incorporating online, asynchronous forums.  After obtaining IRB approval and participant consent (n =20), the researchers monitored the ANGEL forums, asking students to respond to researcher-driven discussion questions. Students posted their own original response by midweek and responded to their classmates’ online comments by the week’s end using a “thought extending” statement, such as a question, a reference, or an additional idea for their peers to consider.  All posts were expected to be substantial and scholarly in nature.
Reflective thinking was evaluated using a modified version Dr. Stephen Brookfield’s tool, the Critical Incident Questionnaire. This tool provided qualitative feedback and recorded an increase in reflective thinking. Students commented that they felt engaged, motivated, knowledgeable, and appreciative of the collaborative learning environment.  To measure student satisfaction, a course evaluation survey was conducted at the course’s completion using a modified version of a Site tool and yielded positive results.  The majority of students found that using asynchronous discussion boards was valuable, would recommend taking other classes that used this teaching modality, will apply something that they learned in their professional or academic careers, gained knowledge in nursing research from the discussion forums, and agreed that the postings led them to think more critically about the course material.
Limitations to the study included the researchers, instead of the course instructor, leading the online discussions and the uninspiring, text-based interface of the discussion boards. However, Mr. Evans and Ms. Lyons plan to improve participation rates in future research by serving as the course instructors and incorporating user-centric technology. Introducing digital storytelling via VoiceThread and mobile computing through iPad tablet distribution, the researchers aim to increase student engagement.  While the study lacked statistically significant results, it demonstrates the value of interdisciplinary blended learning in increasing student outcomes. The researchers believe that this strategy is valuable in nursing education as well as in other disciplines.

“Syllabus” a new resource that may help with “grade inflation” investigations

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A recent article in the Chronicle, A New Journal Brings Peer Review to the College Syllabus tells us about a journal called Syllabus.  Not only are the example syllabi a good source of ideas, the journal has the potential to be an excellent resource for faculty who want to calibrate their syllabi with others’. 

Why would you want to calibrate your syllabi?  I sometimes recommend this course of action to faculty and administrators concerned about “grade inflation.”  Accusations of grade inflation are typically based solely on the preponderance of A-grades.  While skepticism is understandable, rarely do critics provide substantive evidence that those A-grades are undeserved. 

Two common assumptions underlying claims of grade inflation are:

  1. Grading standards are not high enough
  2. Students are not being asked to do enough work for an A-grade

Comparing syllabi is one way to investigate both of these concerns.  If a faculty member is told her course is “too easy” by colleagues, she can investigate whether faculty teaching similar courses at other institutions use a similar scale.  If this faculty member is using 80% as the boundary between an A and a B, but everyone else is using 90%, then she might indeed be viewed as being too lenient.  However, if that faculty member’s standards for 80% are equivalent to another faculty member’s expectations for a 90%, then she may be able to justify her grade distribution and student work may provide supporting evidence that her grades are not inflated.

Success with Course Videos

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Chuck Ghilani teaches courses in surveying engineering at Penn State Wilkes-Barre. A few years back, a publisher asked him to produce some videos to accompany a textbook he had written. Realizing that these videos could aid his students, he started developing videos of his class notes. The following semester, he and colleague Thomas Seybert piloted the videos in their own classes; when students’ exam scores increased compared with those from the previous year, Chuck knew he was onto something powerful.

Since then, he’s produced about 140 videos, typically about 15 minutes long. In each video, he animates PowerPoint slides so students can revisit lecture material whenever they find the need. All the while, he’s providing narration that explains the concepts. “This allows students to go back when doing homework,” Chuck says. “Student satisfaction went up, as well as their understanding of the topic. And they’re doing it on their own, in a format they’re very familiar with.” (See one of the videos by clicking here.)

In addition, he reports in a paper co-written with Thomas Seybert that students continue coming to class–it seems they’re using the videos mainly to review unclear concepts. His latest videos involve information on how to use the software and hardware to perform a GNSS survey in the practical field exercises. Students can access these short videos (less than 5 minutes) using their smartphones via a QR code. This allows the students to get help from Chuck even when he’s on the other side of his 52-acre campus.

In the two years since Chuck started making videos, his process has evolved. Early on, when trying to edit out mistakes, he got good at editing out single words. Then he realized it was easier to redo a sentence rather than a single word. Now he redoes the entire narrative for a slide if he’s unhappy with the results. (He uses the software Camtasia Studio for the recording and editing.)

Making good course videos requires a large time commitment, but remember that every Penn State location has a Media Commons installation where faculty can get support in making quality digital products. If you’re interested, start out small, with a single video….

Free Range Learners

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Ever wonder why students don’t read your carefully-chosen course materials and instead look for other sources of information on the web?

I peronally have always found this habit annoying. A recent (albeit informal) study published in the Chronicle of Higher Education suggests students have good reasons for treating the web as their textbook. Most notably, students surfing the web may be looking for the same information in their textbooks, but in a format that is more understandable to them.

This strikes me as an area ripe for further inquiry. I mean, who hasn’t looked for another source of information when a given source doesn’t make sense?

Comments?   

 

 

 

Getting Inspired at the Undergraduate Exhibition

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Undergraduates get a lot of bad press these days. I guess that has always been true, but sometimes the laments about the “millennial generation” seem especially loud. So I found it a useful counterbalance to serve as a judge for this year’s Undergraduate Exhibition.

Picture the scene yesterday in the HUB-Robeson Center’s Alumni Hall: Dozens and dozens of research posters produced by Penn State undergraduates, with representation from the arts and humanities, engineering, health and life sciences, physical sciences, social and behavioral sciences, and course-based projects. I was a judge for social and behavioral sciences and got a chance to talk with some extremely smart and articulate undergraduates.

Strolling around afterward, I enjoyed seeing the variety inherent in the research — everything from posters on biosynthesis of Thiostrepton A to analysis of a poet’s oeuvre to an examination of ways that infants’ crawling behaviors affect their communicative development.

It was a humbling and inspiring way to spend an hour.

Learning Analytics: Tread Carefully

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Over the last 8-10 months, a handful of folks from the Schreyer Institute, Teaching and Learning with Technology and the Office of Institutional Planning and Assessment discussed and researched the topic of learning analytics. If you never heard the term learning analytics before, the easiest way to explain it is by looking at companies like Netflix and Amazon. These companies leverage your personal renting or buying habits to compare you to hundreds (or thousands) of similar users to provide you with recommendations on what to rent or purchase next. Learning analytics is the application of these same practices, but in support of education. Specifically, learning analytics is:

 “the use of analytic techniques to help target instructional, curricular, and support resources to support the achievement of specific learning goals”. (Barneveld et al., 2012)
Many of these early efforts, such as the Signals project at Purdue University, live within a University’s course management system. These tools generate a risk assessment for each student in a course by taking into account a student’s demographic and historical data (age, gender, past GPA, SAT scores, etc) and then combines CMS activity data (how many logins, grade book data, number of forum posts, etc). A faculty member usually initiates the risk assessment and then receives a ‘risk level’ for each student. At this point, the faculty member can intervene with those at high risk of not succeeding in a course.
Overall, I think this is a wonderful idea, and the folks at Purdue ran a few studies that illustrate how effective this system can be at keeping students at a “C” or above. A new system from Austin Peay State University just crossed my desk that exists outside of the CMS. This system resides at the course registration level. When students login to register for a course, they are presented with two ratings:
  • The highest rated courses you should be taking (based off your major, semester courseload and other data)
  • Your predicted grade for the course (this is generated by comparing your historical transcript data to 10 years worth of other students that have similar characteristics).
This is a very interesting idea, but how will students interpret the data? Will they intentionally register for courses where the system predicts a “B” or above, even if they are not interested in the content? Will students only register for highly recommended courses, and not pursue other interests due to the system’s recommendations? A colleague mentioned that this could spiral into a self fulfilling prophecy for students rather quickly, where they take the prediction data as fact and don’t deviate from any of the recommendations. Scary stuff. 
With any learning analytics system, a key challenge will be educating and training the end users on how to best leverage the data. In many instances, that means being skeptical of the data, and using it as one of many different factors that contribute to a decision that, in the end, contributes to student success.