Hi, TAC blog readers! My name's Matt; I'm an anthropology PhD student and a 2nd year fellow and teaching consultant at The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL). I'm excited to join my returning and new colleagues in sharing our knowledge, thoughts and practices with the wider graduate teaching community. And I'm especially excited about the possibility of learning about what has been happening in classrooms across campus. For all of us at CETL, teaching and making a difference in our students' education matters. We're ready to work with you to make your classrooms rewarding and collaborative learning spaces. You can find me in Young Hall 2Q; my office door is always open, and I hope you'll stop by to talk throughout the quarter!

As one of this year’s brand new TA Consultants, I’m excited to plunge into the work of supporting other educators here at UC Davis. Teaching has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my graduate career both here at UC Davis and at the University of Montana. It has also been one of the most challenging. I have probably encountered (or caused) just about every classroom issue you could imagine. Fortunately, I have benefited from excellent teaching mentors who have helped me to learn from these experiences, and I’m constantly seeking ways to improve my teaching. The more I learn about teaching, the more I enjoy it. I look forward to sharing this enthusiasm with other graduate students.

In addition to being a TAC, I’m a PhD candidate in the department of English with a Designated Emphasis in Native American Studies. I’m particularly interested in nineteenth-century American literatures and Native American literatures. My dissertation explores literary expressions of alternative nationalisms in the nineteenth-century United States, focusing on some of the different ways that nineteenth-century writers imagined the future of the space now occupied by the United States.

When I’m not teaching, reading, or working on my dissertation, you can usually find me outside. I love to explore California’s mountains, valleys, and coastlines.

NEW TAC: Dalia Magaña

¡Hola! I’m thrilled to be joining the cohort as a new TAC! Teaching has been one of the most rewarding parts of graduate school (most of us probably have this in common!). Teaching, to me means being immersed in a learning environment since not only do students learning from me but, I am also constantly learning from them. Student’s investment in learning has driven me to pursue a career where I will have opportunities to learn about the diverse approaches to teaching giving me the tools to provide fruitful outcomes for students. For these reasons, I look forward to a collaborative enriching opportunity as TA consultant to learn from others and share my experience and passion for teaching.

I’m a 4^th year graduate student in the Spanish Department where I have been teaching for the past 4 years. My research involves medical Spanish from a linguistic perspective (how Spanish speaking patients interact with their doctors in Spanish with or without an interpreter and based on this how to teach medical Spanish). In the future I hope to continue my research and specially continue teaching college students.

Aside from research and teaching, I don’t really have hobbies of my own at this time. For now I enjoy occupying my free time by my children’s hobbies: play-dates, watching rated G/ PG movies, bike-riding, Farmer’s market etc.

TAC Member: Sarah Dalrymple

I have been a TA Consultant for almost 2 years and this school year I have also been one of the TA Consultant Co-Coordinators. During this time, I have really enjoyed the opportunity to work with other graduate students to improve their teaching. My favorite aspect of the TAC position is that our interactions with TAs are mutually beneficial. I walk away from every consultation and workshop having learned something new. This has allowed me to improve my own teaching tremendously!

Sadly, I need to finish my dissertation and will leave the group at the end of the spring, but I'm looking forward to one last quarter of consultations! I'm pretty much the biggest fan ever of the Mid-Quarter Interview (MQI) consultations that we do for TAs. During the interview, students generate specific suggestions for how their TA can improve their teaching. Then the TAC shares the suggestions with the TA in a consultation afterwards. Having had an MQI done in one of my classes, I know first hand that the suggestions are helpful and that the interview itself can make a big difference in students' attitudes about the course and you, the instructor. I would recommend that everyone do an MQI if they are interested in improving their teaching!

I am a fifth year Ph.D. student in Population Biology and am doing my dissertation research on ants and fire severity patterns in the Eastern Sierra. This means I spend my summers in high dessert forests with perfect weather and picturesque vistas. It's not a bad way to collect data... When I'm not thinking about teaching or biology I also enjoy cooking, painting, and climbing, and figuring out how to work those activities into my work whenever possible.

New TAC: Heather Dwyer

Hey everyone, I'm really excited to be a part of the TAC group! Similar to a lot of grad students, I came here with no interest in teaching but quickly found that teaching is my favorite part of graduate school. As a TAC I'm hoping to help others improve and get more comfortable with teaching. I'm also excited to learn a lot from other TAs and spend more time talking and thinking about the classroom.

I'm a fourth year in the ecology graduate group and my research focuses on the response of butterflies to regional warming. In addition to being a teaching assistant a bunch of times, I've participated in teaching seminars and creating teaching tools. At some point I'd love to get some real experience in course design. I hope to continue teaching at the college level after graduate school—anything from intro bio to upper-level, specialized classes.

My interests outside of teaching and biology include art, literature, and exploring the Bay Area.

TAC Member - Ann T. Chang

Hello! I'm a 2nd year TA Consultant, a first year TA Consultant Co-Coordinator, and a 5th year in the Graduate Group in Ecology specializing in behavioral ecology.

I am excited to be serving the UCD graduate student community for another year. My career goals are to teach ecology and/or to continue helping others improve their teaching through learning and teaching centers like UCD's Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL). Being a TAC has helped me so much in my ability to react to challenges in the classroom that I find I am a much more confident instructor now. I hope to be able to pass that to my peers for years to come.

Outside of researching and the TAC, I like to knit, play with my dog, have marathon tv show watching sessions, read, and look for wildlife in urban settings. Long walks on the beach are great too...

I look forward to meeting you at the TA Orientation, in workshops, and in consultations!

The 2011-2012 new TACs cohort is here!

We are proud to announce the newest cohort of Teaching Assistant Consultants (TAC).

Senior TAC Coordinator – Mara Evans

TAC Co-Coordinators:
Sarah Dalrymple (Spring)
Ann Chang

Senior TACs:
Richard Osibanjo - Chemistry (Spring)
Matt Nesvet – Political Science

New TACs:
Jeff Anderson – Mathematics
Jamiella Ortiz Brooks - French
Hsiao-chi (Angel) Chang - Education
Heather Dwyer - Ecology
Erin Hendel - English
Dalia Magana - Spanish
Henry Yeung - Food Science/Nutrition

Congratulations to the newest members joining our group. Please stay tuned for profiles on each of the members of the 2011-2012 TAC cohort!

To Test or Not To Test?

After six weeks of discussion about student participation and engagement in our classrooms we arrived here: how do we know if our students are actually learning? Especially if we might find ourselves getting answers like these.

Participants in the last TA Consultant workshop were asked to evaluate different strategies for assessing and evaluating student learning. Participants were also introduced to and asked to analyze “backward design” strategies for lesson-plan development. We culminated with a discussion of actual assessment tools, including an in-depth discussion of the pros and cons of using a pre-post test (or “diagnostic assessment”) to gauge student learning. What follows is a brief description of our activities:

It began with a quick write. Take a minute and answer the following questions yourself:

Emily then led us on a discussion of backward design for lesson plans. Participants were asked to describe their basic protocol for developing a lesson or developing a course. It requires three steps:

1. Identify the desired outcomes of your lesson: what do you want your students to learn?
2. How will you know if your goals have been achieved? What evidence do you need?
   
3. Plan the activities and identify ways that you can help your students meet the desired outcomes.

Some participants already planned their lessons using this method, others used a more linear strategy (topic, activity, assessment, reflection). But backward design gets us started in a different place – we start where we normally finish—with the assessment!

We then moved on to a discussion about actual assessment and evaluation techniques. Different (broad) learning goals were posted around the rooms and participants had a chance to walk around in small groups and write down ways to assess if these goals were met. Goals included “Students will be able to organize and communicate their ideas” or “Students will demonstrate understanding content about a specific subject”. It was great to see ideas generated from other workshops pop on these lists (Blogs! Skits!). Individually, participants then walked around and read all of the suggestions and put blue dots by strategies they commonly used and a red dot by one example of an assessment strategy that actually evaluated teaching.

During our discussion we generated a list of direct ways to evaluate teaching. This included student evaluations at the end of the quarter, and mid-quarter interviews half way through. Minute-papers were suggested, where students are given a minute to respond in writing to the following questions “What did you like about class? What didn’t you like? What are you still confused about?”

So here’s a thought: remember that quick-write from the beginning? Take it again. Answer the same questions again! What changed?

The quick write was meant to serve as an example of a pre-post test you could give your students to gauge where they’re at with the material. We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of such an assessment. The advantages include: it doesn’t have to be multiple choice, it can provide students with some idea of what to expect over the course, it can help you tailor the course to their level. Some disadvantages include: it might make the class intimidating, it’s one more thing to grade, and it may not be the most accurate tool (especially if the questions are not worded well).

We ended as we do every workshop: with an evaluation! How appropriate for this time around, right? One of the questions on our final evaluation was: what other workshop topics would you like us to cover in the future? If you’ve been lurking, reading these posts, please comment! We would love to hear what you’re interested in!

And finally, a big, heartfelt thank you to the participants who stuck with us for all 6 weeks; we valued your participation, and we hope that you gained as much from this experience as we did!

Tech-Savvy Teaching

The theme of this workshop has been increasing student engagement. Even if we haven't stated it explicitly, the expectation is that by engaging students in a course, we will enhance student learning. Therefore, we started this workshop by having participants write about learning goals they have for their students. Some people thought of learning goals for a specific lesson while others thought of more broad goals they wanted students to reach by the end of the quarter.

Next we presented an analogy to introduce the workshop. You can think of your learning goals as a destination you are trying to reach with your students and the learning process it takes to get there as a road trip! Extending this analogy, the teaching methods you use are the vehicle that can get your students to that destination.

We all have our own style of teaching, hence the vehicles we use are diverse! Nonetheless, in order to teach effectively, we need to make sure students are on board and engaged!



Technology is one way we can upgrade our vehicle and enhance student participation. If technology is used correctly, it can enhance student engagement both inside and outside of the classroom. However, if technology is used for the sake of trying something new and flashy, it can even detract from student learning. In this workshop we wanted participants to weigh the pros and cons of each technological tool and evaluate whether any could help them achieve their personal learning goals.

Social Media (Facebook and Twitter)

In this workshop Mara led participants through a discussion of how facebook and twitter can be used to engage students.

Facebook can be thought of as the place where you go to meet your friends. Here are a few usage options:

TA as manager:

- Have a teaching profile, separate from your personal profile

- Create a group for each class

- Create a teaching page (that you manage from your profile page)

Students as managers:

- Students create fb pages for famous (deceased?) scientists

- Students create fan pages for important concepts in your discipline

- Have students friend each other

Concerns about using facebook:

- privacy concerns (should sites be public or private?)

Benefits of using facebook:

- Interactive!

Twitter can be thought of as the place where you go to make friends. Here are a few usage options:

TA:

- Start your own account and tweet only about classroom/subject related issues

- Start your own account and tweet about your professional and teaching life

Students:

- Have students start their own accounts and follow each other

- Give students assignments

- Start a conversation with a famous author/journalist/thinker

- Tweet as a famous deceased person relevant to your field

Blogs

Blogs can be used by teachers to post course content, discussion prompts, pictures, or links to webpages of interest to students. Students can then make comments on posts or respond to comments of other students. You could also make students contributors to the blog and allow them to write their own posts. The two most popular blog sites are Blogger and Wordpress. Setting up a blog on either site is incredibly easy!

Benefits of blogging

• allows students to engage with course material outside of classroom
• provides an alternate forum for discussion (good for quiet students?)
• allows students to collaborate/ build on one another's ideas
• your posts show up on their RSS feed: interject course content in their everyday lives
• can be used as a space for students to reflect on their learning

Challenges of blogging

- How do you make sure students read the blog?

• Make students follow or subscribe to the blog
• Downside: many students may not already use RSS feeds so your posts may not be on their radar as much as you would with facebook, for example

- How do you encourage commenting? Do you grade participation?

• Make commenting a part of students' participation grade.

§ Certain number of comments required

§ Students choose their best comments at the end of quarter and turn them in

§ Students required to post different types of comments: questions, responses to other students, etc.

• Set clear expectations at the beginning of the class for what kinds of comments you want!

- Blogging is time consuming!

• Decide ahead of time what your goals are and what type of content you want to include
• Make posts minimal: Just list discussion prompts or links to resources, etc.

This fall I kept a blog for the entomology 1 studio I teach. I spent a lot of time keeping the blog up to date, but was extremely happy with the outcome. I used the blog as a space to reflect on each week's lesson, document my teaching methods and give students a place to reflect on their experience. If you decide to keep a blog for a class it may look completely different from this one, but this gives you an idea of what's possible.

Wikis, chatrooms, messageboards (with Smartsite)

How to set up smartsite with a chat room, forums, and wiki (in brief):

1. First, you need to have permission to modify the class smartsite site. This means being labelled as an instructor, or maintainer. (see this document for info about setting permissions https://smartsite.ucdavis.edu/smartsite/ucd-gateway/Self_Paced_Learning/Quick_Start_Guides/PermissionsQuickStart.pdf)
2. Navigate to your course site and click on “Site Info” in the sidebar.
3. At the top of the screen, click the “Edit Tools” link.
4. Check the boxes for what tools you want on your site. For our purposes, you’d want to check “Chat Room” “Forums” and “Wiki.” Click the Continue button at the bottom, and you should see your new tools appear in the sidebar on the left.

For chat: You are basically set. If you click on “Chat Room” in the sidebar it will take you to the room, and allow you to post a message, as well as view older messages.

For Forums: You have to create a forum for topics to go into

1. Click “New Forum” It will ask you to fill in a title, and you can fill in a short description.
2. Check out the Permissions and make sure each type of user (Instructor, TA, student) has access to the things you want. You may want to make sure that TAs and students can create new topics, for example.
3. Hit “Save Draft” or “Save and Create Topic.”
4. You can create new Topics at any time using the new topic button. A Topic is the highest level of organization ( the hierarchy goes Topics -->Threads-->Messages). You might decide to create multiple Topics.
5. Threads are started within Topics, and need titles and a starting message.
6. Other users can add messages to any open Thread, and depending on your settings, they can start new Threads themselves (or even Topics).

For Wikis: You are ready to start using your smartsite wiki. The help guide on smartsite is quite good and will provide you with step-by-step instructions, which is beyond the scope of this quick guide:

https://smartsite.ucdavis.edu/smartsite/ucd-gateway/Self_Paced_Learning/Quick_Start_Guides/WikiQuickStartGuide.pdf

More Resources:

Information and Education Technology main website: http://iet.ucdavis.edu/

Smartsite Support: smartsite-help@ucdavis.edu

The “Message of the Day” typically tells you when the weekly drop-in Clinics occur, as well as schedules of specialized workshops on the various tools that will be occurring. You can also (as of 2.15.11) find a schedule at: https://smartsite.ucdavis.edu:8443/access/content/group/a023338b-0e80-475f-80e3-9d4bdca6187f/CurrentSchedule.html

Wikis:

What can you do with a smartsite wiki?

https://smartsite.ucdavis.edu/smartsite/ucd-gateway/Self_Paced_Learning/What_Can_I_Do_Idea_Guides/WikiMTT.pdf

List of 50 ways to use wikis: http://www.smartteaching.org/blog/2008/08/50-ways-to-use-wikis-for-a-more-collaborative-and-interactive-classroom/

General strategies for using wikis: http://www.suite101.com/content/5-strategies-for-using-wikis-in-the-classroom-a124331

Professors present how they’ve used wikis in their classes (video): http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/nme2006/panel_3_new_technologies_serving_educational_goals.html

“Ten best practices for using wikis in education” http://itcboisestate.wordpress.com/2008/05/21/10-best-practices-for-using-wikis-in-education/

Forums/Messageboards:

What can you do with smartsite forums?

https://smartsite.ucdavis.edu/smartsite/ucd-gateway/Self_Paced_Learning/What_Can_I_Do_Idea_Guides/ForumsMTT.pdf

Chat:

What can you do with smartsite chat?

https://smartsite.ucdavis.edu/smartsite/ucd-gateway/Self_Paced_Learning/What_Can_I_Do_Idea_Guides/ChatMTT.pdf

Discussion Prompts:

Please post a comment to discuss the following questions.

Can you use any of these technological tools to further your educational goals and promote student engagement?

Do you have a plan in place for how you will do this?

If none of these technologies are appealing, why not? Have you gotten ideas for teaching methods from other workshops that are more applicable to the classes you teach?

Problem-based Learning

Is there anybody reading this who hasn't acted like a 'helicopter instructor' at some point? Sometimes, telling our students what we want them to learn is the quickest, most straightforward way to teach. In a large lecture hall or even a smaller classroom with more material to cover than time to do so, lectures, demonstrations, step-by-step explanations can make sense. Other times we hope to help students think knowledge into existence, not just receive it already formed. One of the ways we can encourage students to do this is through 'problem-based learning.' Suppose we're asked to teach an epidemiology seminar. We could present some different ways to model and explain the distribution of disease in a population. Or we could give our students artifacts from an imagined or real community in question - illness narratives, health department reports, community and patient histories, newspaper clippings, maps, and so on, and ask them to explain why one group appears to be disproportionately suffering from one or another illness. Last week, Emily, Jon, and I led a workshop on teaching this latter method. We were lucky enough to have Donal Walsh visiting our workshop. The recent incarnation of problem-based learning was formalized and developed in medical school curriculums, and Dr. Walsh played a part in that early history. At one time, Dr. Walsh reported, 90% of some medical programs' curriculums consisted of problem-based learning. However the depth this method offered came at the cost of curricular breadth; now, Dr. Walsh said, many medical schools reserve 30% of their class time for problem-based learning and draw on more traditional methods during the rest. Have your students benefited from problem-based methods? How do the challenges and rewards of problem-based learning differ across different disciplines? Stop by the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) or next week's workshop or leave a post here and let us know. And if you'd like to learn more about problem-based learning check out Hans Langer's case history, be sure to check out Hans Langer's case history, which Donal Walsh created for a class he teaches and kindly agreed to share with us. - Matt

TAC Winter Workshop Series: Workshop 3 - Improving Discussion

Each of the workshops to this point have reminded participants that setting the tone early and clearly in the course term is vital for student participation. This workshop elaborated on that concept and went a step further by showing participants how we could include our students in helping to define and set standards for participation and classroom respect.

For this workshop we adopted many of the tips from Jocelyn A. Hollander’s 2002 paper, “Learning to Discuss: Strategies for Improving the Quality of Class Discussion” published in Teaching Sociology (v.30, pg.317-327). While the paper was written about a sociology course and published in a sociology journal, as a SCIENTIST who is planning on teaching biology as a career, I find Hollander’s techniques useful for my field too. The techniques are particularly useful for discussions that will inevitably arise from topics that are agreed upon in my field but not in mainstream America such as climate change and evolution.

The basics are this, 1) allow students a chance to identify characteristics of a good and a bad discussion - including what respectful discussion is like, 2) decide as a collective what discussion should be like for the term in your class, 3) have students reflect on how they’d like to participate at the beginning of the quarter, 4) have the students reflect midway or at the end of the quarter on how they actually participated and why they participated the way they did. This serves two purposes, it sets clear expectations and rules and allows the students to feel valued - thereby setting the tone and expectation that their participation is also valued.

We illustrated this technique in our workshop by collectively defining good and bad discussion, and having a conversation about respectful behavior.

During the discussion it was pointed out by the participants that respectful behavior can vary widely depending on background and culture. One participant noted that in her culture interrupting was very rude and that she had to adjust when she started her schooling in the States. Another participant noted that he was uncomfortable interrupting his students during discussion even when he felt a need to re-direct the discussion. He used the technique of raise your hand to start a new discussion, and raise one finger to reply to a topic. Depending on your class environment you may or may not want students to interrupt each other. The upside of interrupting it it could allow discussions to build and flow naturally. The downside is if you have a lot of quite students that don’t feel comfortable interrupting, you won’t have a wealth of ideas or participants in discussions.

For these reasons Hollander’s technique of deciding as a collective how discussions should be lead is useful.

Another useful technique we covered is questioning skills. We all use questions to start discussions, but not all questions are created equal. Some questions by their very nature promote discussion while others have such straight-forward, narrow answers that discussion is halted quickly. In our workshop we identified open vs. closed questions and quickly went over Bloom’s Taxonomy/Hierarchy of Questions.

We then discussed types of questions that dampen discussion (see below). Of the questions that dampen discussion, only the put-down and ego-stroking questions are questions that should never be used.

Closed questions along with low-level and programed answer question are essentially memory and knowledge questions that have narrow and straight-forward answers, which are hard to build a discussion off of. They aren’t the best for discussion, but they are great for reviews or summaries to evaluate if the class is understanding the material before you move on to a new topic.

Fuzzy questions can be hard to identify before you ask the question. But once said you can judge by the perplexed looks on your student’s faces that the question was unclear and follow up with another question.

Rhetorical questions can be great to emphasis a point, but when used during discussion they can confused students about whether they should reply to real questions.

Being comfortable with a longer wait times is best way to counter act rhetorical question confusion. Tips to help with wait time are to run through the alphabet in your head, count to ten, or my favorite - pull out a candy bar or banana and slowly unwrap it and eat it while you wait. One participant pointed out that Dorothy Leeds has written books on questioning, specifically “Seven Powers of Questions:Secrets to Successful Communication in Life and at Work” (first published in 2000).

We also talked about different discussion techniques. We specifically tried a Round-Robin exercise to practice our listening (and memory) skills. We asked participants to break in to small groups and state one thing they did that weekend. Then everyone in the group wrote what everyone else in the group did. This helped to illustrate that discussion is more than just speaking, it’s also LISTENING, THINKING, AND RESPONDING to those around you.

We also used a Town Hall and Post-It note structure as suggested by Chad Hanson (the full article can be found here). Hanson noted that by using this technique he was able to grade on participation, encourage quite students to speak up, and subtly remind more dominate speakers to give others a chance to speak. We had a chance to test out this structure by passing out two post-its at the beginning of the workshop and asking participants to stick one on their shirts when they spoke during whole group discussions.

Initially we did not tell participants why they were doing this. But when we introduced this structure we explored how participants felt about advertising their participation and how they would feel if they knew they were being graded on the use of the post-its. This lead to a more general discussion of grading on participation.

Some of the costs of grading participation based only on speaking is that it puts quite students at a disadvantage and may affect the quality of discussion. However, setting the tone and having clear expectations may alleviate some of these concerns.

After giving our participants a chance to discuss in small groups different difficult scenarios they may encounter in their discussion sections, we reminding participants of Hollander’s use of collectively defining discussion.

We noting that she also asked students to reflect on their participation at the beginning of the course and either in the middle or end of the course. This reflection would help them define (at the beginning), improve (middle), and evaluate (middle and end) their discussion.

We ended by asked them to reflect on their participation in the workshop series.

So, how do you participate (in this workshop series or in your classes)? and Why do you participate in that way?

Last week, Richard and I led a workshop on teaching in an "international classroom." Most workshops of these sorts emphasize what people fear could wrong if students and instructors have different educational, national, cultural or linguistic backgrounds. The workshop we taught foregrounded something else: that difference can make a (good) difference in teaching and learning. We discussed different ways that we draw on some differences we observe and learn about to make what we teach speak (loudly!) to our students. Then we redesigned our lessons with this discussion in mind. From showing how visual emphasis and exaggeration can be used in teaching even when the students don't speak the same language as you, to suggesting that ESL speakers in a literature class bring in translations of a Shakespeare play as a way of helping all students in the class make sense of the different ways meaning can be constructed in a script, to reminding instructors of the value that their backgrounds give students, many offered great suggestions and insights for revising our lesson plans as we envision the scope of our students' backgrounds more broadly than we might have. Have you revised a lesson to better speak to heterogeneous classrooms? Reply to this post, drop Richard or I an email or come to this Thursday's workshop and let us know how!