Helping Students Study Smarter

Leave a reply

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.  Abraham Lincoln

Planning and reflecting on long-term goals have been shown to significantly improve studying and grades. Effort alone is not enough; students need to work smarter, not harder. This is a general problem and I’ve created a free template you can download and customize. The theory and process are from my forthcoming book (A New 3Rs: Learning to Change through Relationships, Resilience and Reflection, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021)

Covid-19 is going to increase the importance of being able to self-manage study time, so I have also a Study Smarter template for this fall that anticipates students spending more time in isolation and perhaps working only online. 

Students study more effectively (and more!) if they have both scaffolding and feedback (even if that feedback is generated only through self-reflection). Students need to know what support is available and that there are different ways to spend study time. This is a process for you to guide student self-awareness of how to structure and evaluate how they use their limited study time. 

Initial data is from experiments starting this process ten days before an assignment was due. Regardless of race, gender, class, or performance level on previous exams, students using a brief planning and reflective process received, on average, one-third of a letter grade higher at the end of the course. Students who reflected in this way also reported considerably less stress and a greater sense of control over their own performance.[i]

The templates (Part 1 and Part 2) each consists of 3 short sections that a student should be able to complete in 5-10 minutes. Students are first asked what grade they want, how likely they think this is, and how much preparation might be required to achieve this goal. They are then asked to choose from a list of study strategies how they think they should spend their time studying. The list of study techniques in the template is too long (and designed as a template for a wide variety of disciplines and exercises): customize for your students and make sure to suggest discipline-specific resources or techniques, but no more than 15. Since this is different for every class and discipline, I have created a template that you should customize. 

Finally, students are asked to identify what they will do (which study technique) and when and where they will study. There is strong experimental evidence that we can close the human “implementation gap” by asking people to articulate a plan. Even just being asked if you intend to do something increases the odds that you will. Research from the 1984 election found that simply asking people if they intended to vote increased voter turnout by 23%. Similar studies have found that you are also more likely to recycle, visit a health club, buy a new car, or refrain from cheating if you are asked in advance to predict your behavior.[ii]

Getting people to plan is even more effective. In 1965, Yale researchers had no trouble convincing a group of seniors that they should get a tetanus shot, but only 3% showed up to get the shot. When the information was combined with a map and a request for an action plan—look at their weekly schedule and determine when they could actually go—there was a nine-fold (!) increase (to 28%) in students getting the shot.[iii] Similarly, asking people in a phone call to articulate their logistical plan increased voter turnout by 4.1% (vs. just encouraging them to vote, which had no effect). While figuring out how and when you are going to get to the polling station may seem trivial to regular voters (or studiers) it is just enough cognitive effort that if you put it off, you are less likely to follow through.[iv] The specificity of the plan also seems to matter, so it is better to get people to identify their polling place, when they will vote and how they will get there. These “implementation intentions” have been widely studied for a variety of behaviors (eating more fruit, taking your medicine or making a will) and demonstrate that humans are more likely to do the activity if they have already visualized doing it.[v]

The point of step one is both to make a plan, but also to help students think about the different types of study techniques. I pair this with the “Cognitive Wrappers” which Eddie Watson and I describe in Teaching Naked Techniques[vi] and which also have a free template you can download and customize. Again, I have created a special “Study Smarter” Part 2 of the cognitive wrapper technique.

This Study Smarter Part 2-Reflection begins by asking students how many hours of actual studying they did and to reflect on which study techniques were the most effective. (This works best when students are asked to interpret your feedback about their work, as it appears on the original template, but still provides some value even as self-reflection.) The two lists of study techniques are the same and your customized version should also use the same list for each. Students are then asked to determine which types of study were most effective and to plan for the next time.

Again, I’ve provided two versions of each exercise. One to be done before and after an assignment, and another as a weekly study structure (which might be especially useful for students during this fall semester.) I would probably mix the Study Smarter Part 1 and Part 2 with the Assignment-Based Study Skills and Cognitive Wrappers). In other words, I’d ask students to do a plan for most weeks, but also before and after assignments where they will get feedback.

Customization for your discipline should be quick and easy as the templates are in MSWord. Just make sure the lists of study/practice/writing/lab techniques match in both the before and after version.

TEMPLATES

Study Smarter Pt1 PLAN Template (download)

Study Smarter Pt2 REFLECTION Template (download)

TN Study Strategy TEMPLATE (download)

TN Cognitive Wrappers TEMPLATE (download)

[i] Chen, P., Chavez, O., Ong, D. C., & Gunderson, B. (2017). Strategic Resource Use for Learning: A Self-Administered Intervention That Guides Self-Reflection on Effective Resource Use Enhances Academic Performance. Psychological Science, 28(6), 774–785. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617696456

[ii] Greenwald, A.G., Carnot, C.G., Beach, R., & Young, B. (1987). Increasing voting-behavior by asking people if they expect to vote. Journal of Applied Psychology, 72, 315–318. Note that Smith, J.K., Gerber, A.S., & Orlich, A. (2003). Self-prophecy effects and voter turnout: An experimental replication. Political Psychology, 24, 593–604 were unable to replicate the results of Greenwald et al for voter turnout.

 Morwitz, V. G., Johnson, E., & Schmittlein, D. (1993). Does measuring intent change behavior? Journal of Consumer Research, 20(1), 46-61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/209332

Spangenberg, Eric R. (1997), “Increasing Health Club Atten- dance through Self-Prophecy,” Marketing Letters, 8 (1), 23- 31. 

Spangenberg, Eric R. and Carl Obermiller (1996), “To Cheat or Not to Cheat: Reducing Cheating by Requesting Self- Prophecy,” Marketing Education Review, 6, 95-103.

Dholakia, U.M., & Bagozzi, R.P. (2003). As time goes by: How goal and implementation intentions influence enactment of short-fuse behaviors. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 33, 889–922. 

[iii] Leventhal, H., Singer, R., & Jones, S. (1965). Effects of fear and specificity of recommendation upon attitudes and behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2(1), 20-29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0022089

[iv] Nickerson, D. W., & Rogers, T. (2010).  Do You Have a Voting Plan?: Implementation Intentions, Voter Turnout, and Organic Plan Making. Psychological Science, 21 (2), 194-199. DOI: 10.1177/0956797609359326 

[v] Rogers, T., Milkman, K. L., John, Leslie, K., & Norton, M. I. (2015). Beyond good intentions: Prompting people to make plans improves follow-through on important tasks. Behavioral Science & Policy. 1. 33-41. 10.1353/bsp.2015.0011.

Achtziger, A., Gollwitzer, P.M., & Sheeran, P. (2008). Implementation intentions and shielding goal striving from unwanted thoughts and feelings. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 381-392. 

[vi] Bowen, J. A. & Watson, C. E. (2017). Teaching Naked Techniques: A Practical Guide to Designing Better Classes. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Alternative Ideas for Fall 2020

Leave a reply

Any way you slice it, this fall is going to be hard on everyone and everything. Colleges are desperate for some tuition revenue, but we all know we are not offering the usual college experience. So far, most universities are planning some combination of 

            Fewer students on campus: some (like the University of Texas) are simply offering the option of taking remote classes only (but with no reduced tuition) while others (like Bowdoin College) are only letting first-years come to campus (along with a few senior honors thesis students and also, importantly, those who have home situations that make online learning nearly impossible.) Stanford is going to rotate students with half on campus for one quarter and then another half the next.

            Fewer students in class: Many campuses have made all large classes online only and are reducing the capacity of rooms. Students spaced 6 feet apart and wearing masks has led to its own set of concerns about pedagogy: what active learning will work, for example. But recent analysis suggests that colleges are massively overestimating how many students they can safely have in spaces. A Cornell study found that colleges should be planning for only 13-24% of capacity. A CalTech study assumed 8 feet of distance—since longer proximity demands more distance and airflow is uncertain. They concluded (and did simulations with graphics you should see) that 11% was the maximum safe capacity, so only 16 students in a 149 seat 2000sf classroom! 

            Social isolation outside of class: students can expect singles, bathroom assignments, boxed meals and severe restrictions they won’t like. But in the words of the most recent academic mathematical models: “It is extremely important that students refrain from all contact outside of academic and residential settings.”  The CalTech study also has dining hall simulations. It is summer and already the stories of transmission through social gathering has begun, but presidents seem to think most students will follow the rules when not being watched.

            What this means for students is less incentive to come and if they do come (and pay with no refund option), the prospect of isolation and quarantine on top of a compromised education. For faculty this means some combination of virtual and F2F teaching (i.e. more work) and preparation even in small classes for some students in quarantine and online for part of the semester. I’ve already suggested that virtual and F2F are not easily done together and simultaneously; spending money on webcams and screens in every classroom is unlikely to improve the quality of instruction or any feeling of engagement. Below are alternative ideas.

            Part of the problem is that we always want to replicate rather than innovate. Forget about the past. This disruption is real and massive. It is time to look at some wilder ideas—even some beyond the 15 scenarios Joshua Kim and Edward Maloney have proposed—although some of these are updates of those. I will look first at the institutional level and in the next blog at things individual teachers can do. Before you say no, consider the following: 

(1)  What you are currently considering is already a lot of extra work, motivated by a potential budgetary collapse, unappealing to almost everyone, could fail terribly, and will increase inequity. Relationships are fundamental to good education, especially when cognitive bandwidth is compromised through stress and uncertainty, so our goal should be to maximize faculty time and ability for supporting students. Asking faculty to redesign all courses for a complicated set of technical specifications (simultaneous F2F and virtual) does not play to our strengths. 

(2)  Really big ideas are iterative. None of these are fully baked and all will need adaptation to your campus and your students. Many could be combined and maybe only a piece of something works for you. You are already planning on spending tremendous amounts of effort and money to replicate very poorly what you offered last fall. 

(3)  Yes, these might fail, but everything we are trying comes with risk. Which is most likely to prepare your institution for success this fall and in a few years? Try asking “how might we make this work?” first and generate a few more detailed alternatives for your campus, and then decide which two or three to pursue in greater detail.

(4)  Yes, time is short, but the situation is also changing quickly: what will you do if your state demands a 2-week quarantine for students coming from California, Arizona, Texas or Florida? Is your campus already reporting COVID cases in staff and students? Now is the time to start generating more options.

1. Family-Style Quarantined Residential Learning Communities 

            In many neighborhoods, groups are families are deciding they can cooperate and quarantine together: after two weeks of individual quarantine they remove the social barriers between their households and act like one extended family. Similarly, small (20-50-100?) groups of faculty, staff and students could live together people in isolated clusters for a few weeks or an entire semester, WITHOUT social distancing (after testing or a short quarantine). Think of this like one of the 38 Oxford colleges—an isolated social and educational unit as part of a larger university. Students might need to isolate in dorm units, but faculty could quarantine at home as the recent SpaceX astronauts did. That is a serious adjustment, but with serious benefits too. (Many people who work as first responders or hospital workers have spent months without hugging their own children.) 

            Within this unit there would be no need for low density. Students could eat, sleep, party and have sex together. (Some older dorms have their own dining halls, but a housing unit could also eat in its own group shift in the main dining hall without restrictions.) Even double rooms (with some reserved singles for quarantine perhaps) might be fine. Faculty who were willing and able to live in the dorm might teach a double load for a semester (or perhaps a shorter block within the semester of 4 or 8 weeks) and then be off the next block. (They would have to pledge to self-isolate when away from the campus to be most safe.)

            Each “family-style” learning community would operate a little like an individual isolated college. As is the case at Oxford and Cambridge, individual colleges would have limited subjects and faculty, but students can take (virtual in this case) courses from any other part of the university. But this way, (1) they get some of the other social benefits of college and (2) some great F2F classes.

            Since this is a temporary situation, students could join different cohorts of subjects in different semesters (since all of this is probably going to be in place for spring as well). The first-year STEM kids mostly take the same 3-4 courses anyway—maybe they lose the choice of an English topic, but they get to come to campus and have some college life. Or they take a couple of core subjects together in the dorm/college and then take an elective online. Most universities are already planning a lot of online only courses.

            The advantages would include almost full capacity and full revenue. You no longer need low density. You have to social distance when you leave your dorm or hall, but you get to party within your cohort. If the entire campus is isolated in this way, then after two weeks larger groups could be allowed to mix—depending on the risk you want to take. 

            This model would also work for graduate students in the same program. The incoming cohort of physics or history PhDs will take some group of courses together anyway. Many of us lived together or in isolation in grad school and building a cohort might even increase retention and a sense of community.

2. Cohorts and Streamlining Curriculum

            Cohorts would be less radical and less effective at slowing viral spread. Cohorts are underutilized because we are so fond of choice—everyone wants a unique English class at the time they want it and faculty want the freedom to design classes with individual approaches. All good things, but reducing some content choice will allow for more and better teaching options this fall. Streamlining the curriculum could allow a larger group of students to work together and support each other through a series of courses. This works best for first-year students, where cohorts are already most common, but would also work for big problem interdisciplinary courses (see below). 

            First, it makes it easier to schedule students and reduces some of the inherent infection problems that campuses will have. Even with small classes, if students are with a different group of 20 students every hour, an infection can still be spread rapidly. A cohort moving from class to class together reduces this risk. Cohorts also create community and shared experiences.  

            Even if the same students are not simply moving from class to class together, streamlining has other benefits. If sections that meet in the same week are more interchangeable (i.e. they present the same activity about the same content) then students still have choice of times and format, and online and F2F groups can be separated. Students can easily move from quarantine to physical class and back again. Second, compromising a little on individual approach (where every section taught by an individual faculty member varies dramatically from every other presentation of the same material) means that work can be shared. During the current crisis, many of these benefits are magnified and perhaps begin to outweigh the other compromises being made.

3. Big Problem Interdisciplinary Seminars 

            Offering a couple of larger interdisciplinary courses would create engagement, relevance and focus, allow for small group projects and experiences, and build community through shared experiences for students. It would allow for higher quality shared asynchronous video content (if individual faculty are recording only a few lecture videos a semester, they can be really good and not everyone would have to or would want to do what is a highly specialized skill) combined with synchronous small group high-touch faculty and student interactions. This is work that can be divided and shared. Not everyone has to design and teach every part of the course. At a time when work has annihilated summer research, perhaps we are ready for more collaborative efficiency. (I’ve already written about teaching pandemic courses and combining sections of large classes, what I call the HyFlex Flip.) Most campuses already has some structure for this.

            Take this to scale and imagine every student on campus taking one of three or four big ideas courses (or even just one big course on the pandemic). Weekly sections could involve giant jigsaw projects and individual faculty could still supervise small groups doing individual projects. This would significantly ease the complexity of the schedule (especially with the need for more time between classes and over-capacity rooms, but mostly for trying to accommodate all of the usual choice in time and format of courses.)  

            Our students need community and engagement more than ever and faculty need some relief from the endless permutations of planning now being done. 

            This could also be done virtually—in fact most of the planning for this fall was done this way—in large interdisciplinary committees. Many of us have now attended a virtual conference and students routinely use social media and other virtual tools to think about how to solve large social problems. 

4. Focus on Racial Equity 

            Has your campus issued a statement about how deeply you care about racial equity? There is a topic for one of your large interdisciplinary seminars. There will be plenty of naysayers who say that chemistry or engineering is immune from this, but what would happen if you really looked at the potential for how everyone feels in these classes? Are there really no women or scientists of color that could be discussed? Why are certain diseases and projects funded? Who benefits? How might science be done more equitably? Again, not everyone has to design an entire semester of material, but could you change your campus culture and curriculum going forward if the science faculty focused on two weeks of content but spent the rest of the semester involved in this collaborative exploration and working with students to understand the issues? I challenge you to think of a more important or transformative project for your campus.

            You could go even further and create a single campus seminar or focus virtually all of the fall curriculum on race and equity for your campus. You would probably still want to offer a few other required courses for majors, but could you design a large (say 3, 6 or 9 credit) course for everyone that would focus on a problem that virtually everyone thinks matters right now? Groups of biology or history majors could work on their own projects, but there would be a bold campus commitment to something that is engaging and important. What about how to do campus policing and public safety more equitably? This could also be the focus of a new gap year program (see below).

5. Some Students in Residence, Most Classes Virtual. 

            Before we understood quite how reduced residential capacity was going to be, Joshua Kim and Edward Maloney proposed all students in residence but learning virtually. Capacity will be reduced further now because everyone wants a single, but that is still some residential revenue and one predominate delivery method of instruction is easier to deliver well. If faculty know now they are going to be teaching online (and circumstances might still force everyone into this mode) they can prepare better courses. We are also already seeing that many faculty will not be able or willing to teach F2F, and as cases and quarantines multiply in the fall, that number will grow. Plan now for better instruction and take advantage of the asynchronous potential of real online teaching.

            With some students in residence, there is also the option to hold some small F2F sessions, and some separate but synchronous virtual classes. Combine this with some of the potential of idea no 1 above. Relieved of trying to do the impossible—simultaneous virtual and F2F—faculty can prepare better online courses and some can still deliver the high touch relationships of a physical campus. Faculty can still meet individually or in small groups with students in dorms or offices (although my suggestion in any case is that F2F office hours be moved to unused classrooms or other large spaces with excellent ventilation and good coffee) and separate sessions for virtual students.

6. Structured Gap Year

            Gap years (and structured group internships have been growing in popularity and often result in students who return to campus with more focus and maturity. It was fourth in the InsideHigherEd survey of what appealed to students for Fall 2020 and should get more attention. 

            Gap years struggle at the concept level because we think of them as lots of individual events without a revenue stream, but if colleges design them, both problems can be eliminated. Could you charge students (a small amount) and then hire them out to do work for someone else? Yes, if you really provide value and structure—and if you price it right, federal aid might cover it. Further, you might also be able to house them while they do work in your local community. This won’t solve the density problem, but for many campuses under-enrollment may be the problem.

            Start with meaningful projects that exist on your campus. Do you need to rethink environmental sustainability or the history of racial injustice on your land? For many campuses there will be a pressing need to re-evaluate what services are necessary and affordable? Could you rethink work study? Streamline support? Could students form a co-op to grow food? (I spent 2 years in college in a co-op where we cooked all of our own food and had no university cleaning service; a mess, but a happy mess.) Is there a massive digitization project that needs to occur? More broadly could students now become a major factor in redesigning your institution to survive? Northeastern has made co-op programs and experiential learning a central part of their experience and you can learn from them.

            You could equally start with the needs of your local community. There are surely hundreds of projects that could benefit both your town and the town gown relationships. Do you have a feeder campus with a few students waiting to transfer? Do you have an alum who lives near them? Start with a set of meaningful projects and then integrate with existing curriculum and grant some credits that will generate revenue. With the maximum Pell grants for 2020-21 set at $6,345, $7000 for 6 credits plus room and board might create some revenue and still provide access to transformative work.

7. Virtual Structured Gap Year

            If keeping students away but engaged is the goal, then a gap year might need to be virtual. Champlain College is charging about a third of its $21,000 tuition for a 6-credit Virtual Gap Program described as “a semester-long, inspiring journey into academic college life, holistic well-being, and finding meaning through virtual internship and service experiences.” The Global Citizen Academy offers leadership training and usually a  global fellowship, but this year it will be virtual. 

            Thanks to the internet, the ability to form a global network and have real conversations with people on the ground in different countries is much easier—easier than it is to visit. Faculty already have connections around the globe; perhaps those connections could be used to create some student projects. Work, yes, but perhaps less work than the current redesigning of courses.

            There are also thousands of new local Covid-19 problems (to add to all of the existing ones). Could you combine some existing data-analytics course, leadership, sociology or public-policy course with a problem that most local communities might be facing and let students do work in their own communities for a year? Or perhaps you outsource that to the local community college and offer the other 3-credits of structured gap year internship/work.

            Note that there is already gap year competition from institutions that accel at online education. Park University, for example, is offering a flat fee ($9000) virtual “gap year tuition” that is really just a clever marketing ploy. It is not a gap year program, but with years of offering online degrees, student could reasonably anticipate that a year at Park, or Western Governors University or Southern New Hampshire might deliver better courses at a lower price point. Outlier and the University of Pittsburgh are offering asynchronous transferable courses (Calculus and Intro to Psych so far) with tutoring and study groups for $400 for 3 credits (refunded if you do the work but do not get a passing grade!) All institutions, will certainly make transferring credits back to you sound easier than it is, but if a virtual experience at a lower price delivers higher quality instruction than you do, students may just transfer. As ToysRus and other have discovered, there is more competition online. Here is an opportunity to design a different sort of transformative college experience, but you have to think beyond just “courses.” With the barrier to online education lowered, your price point is about to come under attack. Now is the time to look for a compromise, even if it means looking at the sacred cow of “only we can teach that.”

8. Virtual (and Global) Partners

            While classroom discussion and relationships are virtual, perhaps now is the time to find a partner university, organization or even corporation somewhere far away. This could be a simple virtual exchange program—with professors swapping teaching assignments in another country. More complicated but better would be to take the virtual classrooms that you are already creating and use this opportunity to create much more diverse classrooms. Most campuses suffer from some problematic homogeneity in classroom discussions—students are from similar places, backgrounds or academic orientations. That is being replicated in virtual classrooms, the world awaits online. 

            Normally we think of local when we look for partnerships or consortium, and there is a benefit in sharing services, academic support or course design with another institution. But with more classes going virtual, you could pick a partner institution or two that has a complementary mission, but is across the state, country or planet. If your student population is too homogeneous, find an institution that has different students. Partner with an HBCU an HSI or an institution that serves a different region, age or demographic. That will indeed create new problems, but it might also increase learning.

            The Stevens Initiative of the Aspen Institute has resources (and even grants!) to help you set up something. It might just be a single project, like the COVID-19 Virtual Global Design Challenge that the Johns Hopkins University Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design created this spring (with over 200 teams) or IREX’s Global Solutions Sustainability Challenge, which uses a project-based learning model. You could look to share a course and create more diverse discussion groups or find a partner institution that already uses your LMS—although with Zoom as a common format for so many classes, this is much easier lift than you imagine. There are lots of English-speaking students at Indian universities, and India also has a growing number of new liberal arts universities and a shortage of faculty.

            Maybe you could partner with an institution that has more online experience then you do? Many of them serve more older or active-duty military populations. Once again, if some faculty were willing to use some existing designed for online content and focus on leading small group discussions, then your (usually higher) student tuition might present a good partnership opportunity: your faculty teach and assess for the credits you will award, but classes are mixed. Again, some financial potential and a better use of faculty time, but also maybe better learning.

            Even more widely, is there an organization somewhere where your students might add a GenZ perspective? Is there a country or corporation that a faculty member is already working with? If we say we are preparing students to work in a global world, maybe they can start now.

9. Real Tutorials

            Joshua Kim and Edward Maloney have already outlined some ways that American universities might “modify the Oxbridge tutorial model. As they point out, small group meetings could be combined with lots of other ideas and I have combined it with flipping in my HyFlexFlip. Here is a more radical idea—one also closer to the Oxbridge model.

            Many residential colleges have a 20/1 or even 15/1 or lower student/faculty ratio. Suppose that instead of redesigning all of our courses, that we used the incredible breadth of free courses that already exist from Courera, EdX, OpenYale, CrashCourse, Khan Academy, Open Culture, Merlot, Carnegie Mellon Open Learning or YouTube and took the tutorial model seriously. Faculty would meet with all 15 or 20 students every week (either virtually or F2F as available) or in small groups of 3 or 4 when subjects overlapped. As with the 1-1 Oxford tutorials or the University of Cambridge small group supervisions, this works best when student and teacher share interests, but relationships lie at the heart of the approach. No tutor will know all of the subjects a student will want to study—that is why there are also optional lectures—in this case free online lectures and entire courses. The tutor provides accountability and supervision, helping the student decide which content might be most useful

            Faculty could still provide lectures and content they thought was needed, but this really only works at scale if we use existing textbooks and online videos as content. Once we make this leap, we can then focus on learning, support, assessment and awarding credits.  This combines with many of the previous ideas.

10. Relationship-First Hybrids

            One common model for hybrid distance graduate programs is to start by bringing people together first; these are sometimes called low-residency programs. The key is that they usually START with a residency, perhaps a week or two when people get to know each other. As has been noted about this spring: relationships already formed in person are easier to continue online. Low-residency programs were designed to allow an international group to come together, become friends and then leave, but still learn together while dispersed all over the world. During a time of travel restrictions that won’t work, but the idea might be adapted to our need to limit physical interactions, even if we live near each other. 

            Could we meet students where they are—literally. You already know where your students live. This might be in which cities if you are a national institution or in which neighborhoods if you are local. One version of this would be simply to create neighborhood or local “cohorts” of students who could get together physically to create some relational bonds. Let students know who is already around them at your institution.

            To create true relationship-first hybrid courses (probably mostly for regional institutions, but think also about your feeder schools), students would get together initially in groups physically with the professor. This would require social distancing, but at least being together physically, even for just a day, does create a sense of connection. You could use your largest spaces and rotate who comes when. For commuter campuses or community colleges this could massively change the engagement and perception of support. For the first day of class (and perhaps once every two weeks or once a month after that) groups come together physically and then spend the rest of the time online. Online groups can create a similar sense of community, but for those of us who teach mostly F2F, this might be a safe and easy way to simulate the positive feelings of community that we took into our online transition.

Transition Now toward the Growing Market

            A crisis always shifts short-term attention to the tactical, or “business continuity” or how we keep doing what we were doing. But strategy is about what will improve our odds for the future. You have been told for years now that a huge demographic shift is coming. Covid-19 will only accelerate your need to shift in that direction.

            A new survey finds that with massive potential job losses, 35% of Americans say they would change FIELD if they lost their job, but only 44% say they have access to the education they need. A quarter of all Americans say they are planning to enroll in some sort of training or education in the next six months, but most (62%) say they want skills training and not a degree.  46% want that training online. Add to that the Trump administration plan to focus federal hiring on skills and not degrees (and campaign that others do the same) and the public sense (however mistaken) that a tradition college degree is not worth the expense, is likely to grow. This may not be the market you want, but it is the market you now have.

            In other words, Covid-19 presents a crisis that is not likely to be only short-term for most colleges. It will accelerate some trends and generate its own set of new behaviors. Restaurants, the arts and the airlines are starting to think about what happens as behaviors change. Consider that few would question the value or quality of a Broadway show, but would you be willing to go? There will finally be tickets to Hamilton in 2021, but are you sure you want to invest money in a trip now or just stream it from Disney Plus? For years movie theaters have survived against VCRs and now streaming services, but they might not survive this pandemic.

            Now, for example, is an important time to ask: which of our courses and degree programs can really only be taught F2F or residentially, and which might now be moved, and even improved, online? That does not mean the end of residential education: the value of community has only be affirmed by the pandemic. But we have also learned that some working from home can be more productive and that well-designed online learning can be effective. You have new data, market conditions, assumptions and behaviors. Use them.

            Market share tends to shift more dramatically during volatile times and higher education will not be immune. Your planning time for fall is short, but at least some portion of your time and some collective group on your campus needs to be thinking wildly outside of the box right now. You need options. You need also the be thinking strategically about the bigger “what if” scenarios and the “how might we” questions. Try a pilot program of something, anything, new this fall—just in case your attempts to recreate Fall 2019 fail.  Strategy is the art of sacrifice. What do you need to be considering for this fall that can also improve your odds for success years from now?

NEXT: Individual strategies for faculty planning for simultaneous virtual and social distanced classrooms.

The HyFlex Flip: Planning for Courses in Fall 2020

Leave a reply

Many faculty are being asked to plan classes simultaneously for online and F2F students (6 feet apart) with both equally engaged and well-served. Some universities will only allow 1 in 4 students in the F2F class at a time, and large classes will need to be reduced in size. EVERYONE (even in small classes) needs to plan for some students to spend some time in quarantine. In an effort to reduce the numbers of students going to class (quite the novel problem!) many institutions are asking students to rotate (you get to go F2F once every few days and have to watch online the rest of the time) but others are asking faculty to do double or triple sections (assuming at least a quarter of students will remain online all the time). This has the potential to be the worst of both worlds. Here is a proposal to abandon the synchronous (especially repeated) lecture (both large and small) and reallocate time to smaller groups of more engaged active learning. (I’ve included some time calculations for different class sizes below.)

1. Combine Sections with Shared Content 

It was never efficient (or good pedagogy) to have the same lecture repeated during the day, but we were limited by the size of lecture halls. Put aside, for the moment, any arguments about the value of the inspiring lecture: yes, and sometimes, but circumstances have changed and your capacity has shrunk. Students also now need more engagement, more care, and more active learning. A smaller lecture provides none of that and a larger (or even asynchronous) online lecture is not the same.

With hyflex, there is less need for large synchronous gatherings and even your on-campus students will appreciate the flexibility of asynchronous video content. Once you start making your lectures available asynchronously, your campus students will stop coming to class anyway—and that might be safer too. You will still want to see your on-campus students F2F but not in such large groups. Remember private conversations are alsogoing to be harder this fall too, especially if your office is small. Given that we will probably also be in similar conditions for Spring 2021, if you design this now, you can reuse this hyflex flip in the spring.

2. Use Asynchronous Video Lectures

If you must lecture and you already have these from last year—use them! Unless they are going to get massively better (i.e. you have the technology, time and talent to produce Star Wars quality films), you have much more important things you should do with your time. If you do not already have video lectures, but you would normally lecture, then you can either (a) make videos this summer, (b) distribute the job of making video lectures among the various faculty assigned to this course all year or (c) (hint–best option) find close-enough content videos online that already exist. If this is a standard intro course, then an OER course textbook, Courera, EdX, OpenYale, CrashCourse, Khan Academy, Open Culture, Merlot, Carnegie Mellon Open Learning or YouTube etc. can probably relieve you of this burden. Better video lectures are better, but repeating live lectures—even if it seems like less work—is not a useful way to spend your time. If you are going to make your own lectures—shorter is better and you need to learn from Michael Wesch.

Some faculty worry that if they use free lectures from Stanford, then students will think they are not getting their money’s worth. It is true that there is something that feels valuable about attending live lectures, even if you are distracted by Instagram, but there are better things you can do and now more than ever, students crave active attention. If you ok using textbooks by other faculty, why not their verbal explanations? What matters most to students is the attention and support we provide. It may not be why we attended graduate school, but your original lectures are not what matters most. Students want to know you will support them in learning: if you don’t care, they don’t care. 

3. Offer More Small Sections for Active Learning and Support 

Create small high-touch active learning sections and focus your pedagogy and time on small groups. If you’re your campus won’t do it—create smaller meeting groups yourself, but hopefully you can discuss this with department chairs and registrars.) With all of the stress and uncertainty of these times, student bandwidth for learning (and faculty bandwidth for change) is diminished—especially for less privileged students. We all need community and support in uncertain times and if you care about equity then this is where you should focus.

Smaller and separate group sessions also solve a lot of the logistical problems. One of the big issues for hyflex is how will online students hear students in a socially distanced F2F classroom? If your chairs are in a circle or you have a couple of good quality microphones, then perhaps you are fine. But most of us have experienced being the one phone or Zoom participant in a F2F meeting and feeling left out. Having an entire group on Zoom can be much better (and circumstances now dictate that you can’t have everyone F2F). Now you can offer many different synchronous F2F and separate virtual sessions at different times during the week. 

Think about the most difficult hyflex problem—how will you provide a similar quality experience, especially as ALL students are likely to spend some time in quarantine. While there are more complicated techniques, two things are easy:

            A. Mixed groups of F2F and online together is harder. Adding webcams and screens to every classroom is expensive but won’t improve the experience by much. It is MUCH easier to deal with only F2F or online at one time. This is true for both faculty and students.

            B. It is easier to hold an interactive or active learning session in a small group. 

4. More Individual Support

That time that you were devoting to repeating lectures can now be redirected. If you have multiple professors and a large group of TAs, you might even consider extended nights and weekend support. This can be done both virtually and F2F.

5. Active Learning Days

Our usual (pre-Covid) models tend to assume that lectures can be large—limited only by the size of the hall, and so now more limited—but that sections should be small, below 20 when possible. But once we relinquish the lecture as the central pedagogy, then we can start to think about active learning and what we might do with 50 students, perhaps in 5 groups of 10. For example, this is a great size for jigsaw pedagogy: 5 groups of 10 students each are given 5 different aspects of a topic to investigate. Then they are recombined into 10 groups of 5 to share, teach each other and create a coherent picture. With only 5 groups, there is time to share all together and for faculty to visit each group in turn. There are a host of great pedagogies like jigsaws that works for large groups, but are easier to implement in midsize ones.

The advantage in this model is that faculty only need to design one every week or two. Smaller groups make it easier but also provide an opportunity to repeat and PRACTICE this more engaging pedagogy in more manageable groups. 

If you are shifting your pedagogy from primarily lectures to more active pedagogy, that is fantastic, but remember that you too are learning a new skill. If you have lectures honed over a lifetime of teaching, you are probably pretty good at that. Your first experiments in active learning will SEEM less effective, and the first time, they might be.  But you will get better. You will need to practice, just as you did with lecturing, and practicing exactly the same learning exercise multiple times will help you improve faster. Given that it is easier to execute in a smaller group (especially with only F2F or online and not both at once) and you will get more practice, try planning only ONE active learning session per small group per week. Your time will now be spent repeating these small groups, and students will only get one each, but remember—they also have asynchronous video content and one high quality session is better than three dull ones.

Some places to start:

How to Make Your Teaching More Engaging, Sarah Rose Cavanagh

Active Learning Teaching Guide @BU CTL

Active Learning Guide @ Auburn CTL

Active Learning Online @UC Davis CTL

Active Learning in an Online Course @Ohio State

Active Learning Explained with 8 Real Life Examples, 

6. Make Personalized Support Videos

Especially in a large class, students still want to see your face and know you care. Short encouragement can take place in video format. This might just be a reminder to study for a quiz or a quick tip on the reading. Short videos from you are much more likely to be watched, AND they create personalized value. Students will understand that if your course is only free videos from Stanford that they could do that for free. The weekly—daily?—attention from you in short support videos can provide some structure and human connection for both F2F and online students.

The Calculation for Students

I am suggesting that instead of 3 hours a week of large group lecture, that instead students watch recorded video lectures and then have 1 hour a week in great active learning small group. You could support this with another (easier to design) hour of discussion, support for problems or just question time. Small will make this work.

There is, of course, the danger, that students will skip the video lecture and just ask you to explain in your small groups. Tell them to watch the video, but using the wisdom that one good question probably indicates other students have the same question: answer questions with new short videos. You can also ask students to make video explanations for each other.

If students watch all of your video lectures, then this is more contact hours week for students, but better contact with you.

The Calculation for Faculty: Scenario 1

Here is the math for a huge course of 2100 students with multiple sections and lots of TAs.

Your 101 course currently meets MWF and three faculty offer lectures at 9, 10 and 11 to 800 students each hour with 50 TAs and 2400 students total. Every TA currently leads 3 sections and grades all student work. That is 150 one-hour TA-led sections of 16 students each. (This is a real example from a large public university). Assuming NO prep time, that is 9 hours of faculty work and 150 hours of TA time available. Remember that many places are currently assuming that the number of lecture hours will double—so class meetings MWF 9, 10, 11, 1, 2, & 3 so more hours for faculty.

In groups of 16, the same faculty hours could now be distributed to 144 students a week, which gives every student one hour in a small group with faculty during a 15-week semester. Increase the groups to 20 and assume 18 faculty hours a week and those numbers more than double to 360 students per week in a one hour small section with faculty: students would now get two sessions a semester with faculty, and the rest with TAs.

Once a week or month, faculty now take turns designing a one hour active learning pedagogy for medium size groups. In this scenario, 18 faculty hours would mean groups of 133.

If you are being asked to offer triple repeat sessions, you have even more time. Remember too that not spending your summer recoding videos also gives you loads of extra time.

Scenario 2

Here is the math for a large course with 800 students and no TAs.

Your 101 course has 800 students and no TAs. There are currently 4 sections (perhaps with multiple faculty.) If you double your time to repeat lectures, that is 24 hours a week of time. If you use video lectures, you could then see students in groups of 33 once a week. (Remember you can now offer some of them as F2F only and some as Zoom only, so you simplify the logistical problems.) To get down to 20 students in each group, you would need 40 total hours, but if there are four of you, that is 10 sections each.

Scenario 3

Here is the math for a large course with 300 students and only you.

Your 101 course has 300 students and no TAs. At the moment, you lecture 3 hours a week and if that doubles (or triples!?) you will have more hours in the classroom, for no gain. For ten hours a week, you could see students in groups of 30, or every other week in groups of 15. With just one TA, you could alternate weeks and see students in groups of 15. 

Scenario 4

Here is the math for a small course of 35 with only you.

Your course has 35 students, but with the requirement for hyflex and classroom social distancing, you still have a problem. Perhaps your classroom really only had 30 seats, but now will take only 15 or maybe only 10 are taking it online. Even you primarily use discussion, think about taking the moments when you do talk (almost certainly more than you think) and recording those and then holding separate meetings for online and F2F students. 

If you really have to hold synchronous hyflex sections, note that a fishbowl discussion can work. One group actively discusses and the other group observes, awards points, scores using a rubric, or makes written commentary. Then you switch. If you switch between F2F and online then both groups get a crack at being center stage and you solve some of the microphone and other issues.

While the hyflex model seems to offer a way both to charge higher F2F prices and accommodate virtual learning, it offers an incredibly difficult problem for faculty. Just ONE of these problems – either students 6 feet apart in class without the ability to lean over them and look at their paper or screen, OR all classes being offered F2F and online–would almost certainly change our pedagogy and probably lower the quality of what we do. Hopefully during the spring you experienced that F2F and virtual work in different ways—synchronous sessions that mimic F2F teaching mostly fail and this will be much worse when online students feel they are interlopers in a better F2F experience. 

This matters for classes of all sizes, but especially for the largest introductory gateway courses, where equity is already compromised. Given many university statements about race and equity at this moment, consider that the large lecture class itself currently grossly privileges the most prepared students. These students understand the conventions, take notes dutifully, maybe ask questions and attend office hours. Without concerns for family safety, racism or food security, they have more bandwidth for focus and attention. Large gateway courses, as they are generally practiced, are a form of structural racism. They amplify and preserve the advantages that only some students enjoy. Now that large lecture halls look like COVID petri-dishes, universities are being forced to limit F2F capacity and offer multiple sections. My suggestions may initially seem counter-intuitive, but even for small courses, the current plan to prepare for low capacity F2F and online at the same time is going to further amplify inequity.

The HyFlex Flip is a way to rethink how we can provide better and more equitable instruction at scale during this time of crisis. I am actively exploring this model with a number of institutions, so please comment and let me know problems and improvements. Let’s help each other.

Planning for Fall: Pandemic Workshops and Consulting

Leave a reply

New workshops from José Antonio Bowen offered virtually. Contact me for more info. Read Is Higher Ed Asking the Wrong Questions? in InsideHigherEd. OR watch my new TED talk on the New 3Rs.

Teaching 1/2 Naked: Preparing for Uncertainty

How can you prepare to create the most significant learning experiences possible for students this fall, regardless of the mode? Most faculty have neither the time nor expertise to create either an online course that utilizes the best new technology or the ability to pivot quickly to online in the case of a campus outbreak. Here is a way to plan for whatever comes and continue to support your students while also taking care of yourself. There are a few technical tricks, but mostly it is about setting up flexible communication channels, designing learning that motivates students, focusing on the most powerful experiences, and prioritizing your own efforts. Here are ways to lower stress and reframe rather than replace. Nimble design can prepare you for excellent teaching whether you are home (with no pants or 1/2 naked…) or in the classroom.

Pandemic Strategy: Planning for Uncertainty

The hope for stability is a powerful cognitive bias. With uncertainty comes fear. For leaders that brings the fear of missteps and a bias to reassure and delay. If we just had a little more information, we could make a better decision. Covid-19 is an ambiguous threat. We do not know for how long it will continue and we certainly do not know how it will change people’s behavior. This is not the time to stay the course and downplay. Hope is not a strategy and there is no best rational response. There is no knowable “new normal,” only more chaos, volatility, stress and disorder to come. We like plans, but what we need is nimbleness. Efficiency becomes a vulnerability during rapid change: the more efficient supply chains of milk and toilet paper, for example, were not easily adaptable. Humans have a bias to wait for more certainty, but when new information is almost certain to be contradictory and random, we are waiting in vain. We need optionality and asymmetric opportunities. Leaders need to accept that we will make mistakes, but still act with urgency, transparency and honesty that you do not know the future and then iterate. 

Virtual Leadership

A crisis reduces motivation, creativity and cognitive bandwidth—for everyone. An ambiguous threat, like Covid-19, only intensifies the uncertainty that reduces performance. Loss of choice, only compounds this; so being forced to work from home is further demotivating. Virtual leadership requires new definitions of process, purpose and permission. Relationships, care and belonging matter more, but so does the opportunity to experiment. How can we create new ways for people to add value? Variety and extreme examples become more valuable during a time of uncertainty, so we need to create more potential for meaningful and creative work. Given the opening, anyone can become a hero in a time of crisis; now is a great time to support and encourage agency and forward thinking.

Crisis and Innovation 

One of the first things to go in times of crisis is innovation. This happens both because we are out of bandwidth, but also because we falsely perceive that now is not the time. There is a tendency to focus on the tactical (making sure people can do their jobs from home), but disruption is the time when market share moves the MOST. There is much more opportunity for strategy when a situation is fluid, especially if the basic business model seems to be failing.

Innovative ideas start as subtle, awkward ideas, but they benefit from disorder. In a chaotic situation, it is impossible to predict which new idea or which plan may be most useful in advance. But more options, more experiments and the ability to respond quickly are essential to thrive. We will explore a process for greater tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty.

Your New Virtual Course: A Quick Primer

Leave a reply

The transition to online teaching as an emergency contingency for the COVID-19 pandemic is causing concern, even panic, amongst both students and faculty. Faculty need technical training and support but the best online courses are not simple transfers of face-to-face instruction. You have limited time, you did not design your current courses for online, your have limited resources and experience, and the circumstances are highly unusual. I suggest that mastery of online teaching is not the short-term goal. 

Relationships First 

Start instead with relationships. The best online experiences embed a sense of presence, engagement and community. There are different ways to do this, but hopefully your F2F course has already created a sense of shared purpose. 

Students will be feeling anxious, unsettled and probably angry about this move to online. They came to your institution precisely because they believed in the power of relationships with you. They now need to be reassured that you still care and that even though you are separated by miles, you still value and can deliver these relationships. 

Now is the time to be high touch. This is something all online instructors already know—online teaching is about 24/7 responsiveness. Since all communication is online, it comes at all times, and there is more of it. Be prepared for that, but also lean into it. There is an old-fashioned technology called the phone. You would not normally use this between classes, but talking to your students in small groups or individually as much as possible will provide a similar (but yes, still different) value to the F2F experience. (Use whatever platform your university is providing, but add your phone to the list.)

This idea of presence has been key to good online teaching from the beginning and is captured in this image of the communities of inquiry model. Your first questions should be about how you can create community and support learning, and then ask what technology you might need.

page1image1062933568

(Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2 (2-3), 87-105)

You did not ask for this, and hopefully it is temporary, but it is still a chance to try connecting with your students in a different way. You will need to be MORE available to them: hopefully relief from your commute will provide you with the extra time.

Content

Students will still need content, but this should not be the hardest part of the transition, or what occupies most of your time! Your explanations or lectures may be the best on the subject, but for most subjects, there will be plenty of ways to get content to students. There is no shortage of great content from elite universities (edx, coursera, Open Yale) well-funded serious educational sites (Crash Course, Khan Academy, Merlot) and even YouTube and Google are loaded with content. may even provide you with all you need. SmartScholar.com has meta listings of content (including free courses on learning to teach online.) My point is that your time is best spent on continuing to provide the high-touch relationships that brought them to your campus in the first place. 

Don’t try just to move your F2F class into a virtual space using new untested (for you) technology. Even with all of the resources, time and money, that never works. 

Making a few (short!) videos is a good idea, but mostly as a way of communicating that you as a person remain committed and interested in your students. Seeing and hearing you is more important that any content you transmit. I would not make long lecture videos.

Think beyond just content. Merlot, and PheT, for example, offer many free simulations, interactive experiments and games. Edpuzzle allows you to embed questions in video

Engagement and Motivation 

Prioritize motivating students to do the work. In learning, only the person who does the work, gets the benefit. Watching someone else do pushups is not that useful—even if they are intellectual pushups. Attending your riveting lectures may have been slightly motivating, but it was never as useful as doing the work yourself. Teaching is largely about designing for motivation. Yes, interaction with you is motivating, which is why I’ve suggested this be your focus. But thinking about that interaction primarily as engagement and motivation.

Students are going to be isolated and separated from their friends. This might create more time for study, but it will also be hard to focus and stay engaged. Again, there is a version of this in online design, but it is different when both you and the students chose to be woring together online. It will be even more important under current circumstances to build community, to keep them engaged and to think about what work is most important and what will keep students motivated. 

For example, students can join in the hunt for good content and share content they find (it is a good digital skill.) Or they can make videos to explain content to each other: they will use examples you would not and this will also help them continue to interact and build community. Use polling tools like survey monkey and Socrative.

Now would also be a good time to talk about the pandemic. Students are highly motivated to learn more about this topic and it is the ultimate interdisciplinary problem. I’ve written here about the various ways you could intersect your course with this topic. 

Reading and Writing

One thing finally less in short supply: time. Students will be spending even more time online in the coming weeks and will be hungry for a break. Now is a great time to talk about the value of reading and to help students learn to learn on their own through reading. You will almost certainly have to be far more specific than you ever imagined about how to do this, but try it.

Then have them write—a lot. This is a great exercise to do in isolation. This writing can also be shared and responded to. My colleague Gretchen Kreahling McKay uses learning journals (set to private!) so students can write anything they want, but connect with you. Note: you must answer them or at least let students you know you have read some of their work.

Clarify Expectations

First generations students already have a host of disadvantages. They have had to come to your campus and must learn a new culture, but the behavioral rules they may have extracted may not translate online—and they may also have less access to broadband or laptops at home. Some of them will mostly be using their phone. (Another reason to call them on it.) 

Transparency and clarity are good learning tools for everyone in most situations, but they are more critical now. Use checklists, rubrics and explicit instructions to guide student learning experiences. I always include timings: when students know that this reading or problem set will take 15 minutes they both plan—to take long enough, but also have a way to self-regulate when something goes wrong and they are stuck after an hour. 

Make as much visible as you can—especially things YOU consider common sense like stopping to think and paraphrase after you read or before you start a paper. Make a concept map to clarify your thoughts and help you remember what you just read (5-8 minutes). This is a good time for more focused and less open-ended assignments.

Learning Together

Purpose, proximity to a goal and relevance are all motivating. So is community. This might be the perfect time to engage students more in supporting each other in learning. This might be using technology that your campus CTL is so eagerly offering to teach you, but it also might include more clarification of expectations.

Many students will already know and understand apps we have never encountered—they may need little guidance in finding ways to communicate with their classmates (apparently 1 in 4 were sexting in high school): but they might need permission. They might need clarification of what shared learning looks like.  

This would be a great time to get students to stay in touch with each other by reading and editing each other’s papers or having one on one conversations about ideas and books. We assume these things happen on our campuses, but now would be a good time to be explicit about the value of learning together and even better, to provide some structure for this. 

Note too that discussion online is writing: that is good but also different. It also offers a chance for more inclusive dialogue. We know from Solomon Asch’s famous experiments that if you go 4th or 5th in the discussion you are being influenced.  If you follow wrong answers, some people will just go along, even when they know the group answer is wrong. Humans are highly sensitive to social status and group harmony. If we like you or your group, we are more likely to believe you (ask any salesperson). All of these dynamics are a part of F2F classrooms: we wait to speak and then agree with the consensus. A good F2F discussion technique , therefore, is to ask students to write first how they would respond—before they hear any other responses. This can actually be an advantage of online discussions. Help students think more for themselves and with polling and mobile tools (like survey monkey and Socrative again).

Testing and Cheating

A student asked me last week if I had ever cheated in college. I said I had learned a lot by looking at my roommate’s problem sets. This led to a robust exchange of views about what was permitted and had I indeed cheated. Is comparing answers ok? Work too? It occurred to both of us that this was a gray area. 

One of the challenges we are about to face is how to assess learning. If students really spend more time writing and doing work and you spend less time delivering content—you might just have more time for feedback. But I would also rethink what assessment means for your course. What is it that you most want students to be able to do? Is there a way for them to just do that without have to go through the intermediate step of reciting content? Can you do a final project instead of an exam?

If you need exams, I would do more not less. Is doing something over and over again until it is mastered cheating or learning? If there are enough exams, then cheating becomes more of a chore and starts to look more like learning work. All LMS allow you to do timed tests too. This is an adjustment for students—so do many of them—but it reduces the ability to google everything or get help. 

Synchronous or Asynchronous 

Online teaching is different. It probably prohibits some things you do naturally, but it also provides some opportunities to try new approaches. The most important difference is that you will need to think very differently about your synchronous time together. 

Do you really need the entire class at once? Or can you meet in smaller or individual sessions less often? Do you need synchronous sessions at all? When you meet synchronously you need to do more than what you could deliver in a video—so not just you talking. That is a video I can watch whenever. 

Every LMS will also have discussion boards and they are critical. Again, you will need to monitor more often than you normally do, but the less you say the better. Help students help each other and build community. These are both high value relational practices that are time consuming, but relatively easy to implement.

Technology

You should still avail yourself of the wisdom that online instructors and designers are offering, but with limited time, play it safe—especially with the synchronous tools. Your time will be better spent creating engaging and motivating assignments with clear and detailed instructions and a rubric for success. As has been noted in many places—making sure everyone has access to whatever technology is being used is also essential

There also a host of new edtech companies eager for new business and seeing this pandemic as a market opportunity. Packback, for example, is an AI-powered discussion platform for higher ed to increase critical thinking and curiosity for students and is offering free licenses  temporarily. 

Why Try?

As far-fetched as it is to imagine that COVID-19 is a conspiracy designed by China, a Harvard Chemistry professor and neo-liberal administrators to further disrupt American higher education and move it all to online so that it can all be done by cheap adjuncts, let’s assume (for a very brief moment) that your college leadership is as timid, risk averse, conflict avoidant and even as incompetent as you imagine. When colleges and universities were last forced to come up with a plan for this sort of disruption (for H1N1 or 9/11 or some other disaster) some sort of remote learning was the obvious and seemingly easy way to reassure ourselves that “we have a plan.” We didn’t. Disaster contingencies feel off a lot of to do lists. In the end, the pandemic is here, and we need to teach with physical distance.

Many colleges and universities are already in weaker financial positions because of lower birth rates, student debt, shifts in public perceptions and skyrocketing tuition. COVID-19 is about to add financial strain. Endowments just took a massive hit and, at least a portion of room and board is going to have to be refunded, especially if students are home for the rest of the year. It will also not take long for parents and students to remember that they paid higher tuition for F2F instruction and there will be considerable pressure either to return a portion of tuition dollars (which will mean less revenue and more budget cuts) or to resume face-to-face instruction (which will carry other massive risks and seems forbidden by the new CDC advice). If your new online teaching is bad, this pressure will mount and that helps no one. 

To the financial part of the conspiracy theory: online teaching is generally NOT cheaper or more efficient. It saves a bit on building maintenance, but it also requires massive investment in technology and course development (accelerated development labor you are indeed being asked to provide.) But, as discussed here, it is also very high touch when done well. Yes, the content distribution scales, but many universities already do that in huge lecture halls. We know how well that works… Students still need relationships, support, and engagement, and that is much more personal. It can happen online and it is different online, but it is not cheap and does not easily scale. If you are teaching a small class, that remains an expensive advantage, but only if you continue to connect with students.

It is reasonable to be afraid that the skills we have developed for our current classrooms will not all automatically transfer, but it hard to image this will become an argument for all teaching to go online. Relationships now will go a long way to demonstrating the value that justifies the extra cost of F2F instruction and campuses.

Virtually no one is prepared for this new contingency, so it is going to be bad. If it is really bad there will be other consequences, so at a practical level, we should try and make it less bad and maybe hope to save our institutions. But we also owe it to our students.

Learning to teach online is surely a daunting task and few of us were trained or have experience here. If you are new to the game, don’t try to take on LeBron in your first game. Yes, learn new tools, but mostly to look for ways to stay connected, show your care, create community and provide agency, engagement and motivation. Less is more. Be gentle on yourself and your students. All of this may change your teaching forever. 

MORE Quick Conversion to Online Resources for Faculty

Completing a Face-To-Face Course Online Following A Campus Mandate from Todd Zakrajsek and Kathryn Smith: https://www.scholarlyteacher.com/post/completing-f2f-courses-online

Stanford Teac Anywhere site: https://teachanywhere.stanford.edu

Practical advice from IHE:  https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2020/03/11/practical-advice-instructors-faced-abrupt-move-online-teaching-opinion 

Harvard Best Online Pedagogy Practices: https://teachremotely.harvard.edu/best-practices

UMass guide to Teaching and Learning Online (communicating clearly, creating community, and assessing student learning)

University of Central Florida Blended Learning Toolkit

Duke’s Online Teaching Guide 

A great list of tools for building online community: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ux3lTnUTpzZRuvxE3rAsSQ4Ihub96S8_OYECNh8wv-A/mobilebasic#cmnt1A great summary of COVID-19 and Higher Education: https://bryanalexander.org/education-and-technology/covid-19-academia-and-the-big-push-online-an-update/

Teaching the Pandemic

Leave a reply

Should you teach a stressful topic during a stressful time? While there are risks about focusing about what is on every student’s mind right now, there are good reasons to try. And yes, this is all works for your new online teaching.

First, virtually everyone is hungry for information about this quickly changing situation and the urgency and our natural curiosity are leading most people to click on anything coronavirus. Why not redirect this curiosity to a more productive purpose? Second, teaching is about motivation: only the person who does the work does the learning. Students are highly motivated to learn about this right now. Third, it is a complex interdisciplinary problem that involves ethics and judgement, precisely the sort of skill that employers say they want and we say we teach. Finally, it might even be a public service. With all of the misinformation available, helping students practice understanding sources and credibility could save lives and also demonstrate the value of this life skill.

I’d start with support and empathy—this is a great moment to demonstrate you care and build some community: both essential for good teaching and especially important as students are anxious and probably isolated. Then a pause to make sure students are ok diving into this topic, with acknowledgement some may have hesitations or other issues. I’d perhaps also say that staying healthy requires good information and the ability to find and analyze conflicting advice and sources.

There are connections with virtually every subject we offer on campus. There is certainly math, modeling, science, epidemiology and networking in abundance. Why would a small change in the mortality rate or the infectiousness matter? Why are airplane cabins safer than your gym right now? If some are finding it hard to understand the severity of precautions, that is an entry into the psychology of our bias against the future or how politics bias how we view evidence. Culture, history and sociology? Why do we shake hands anyway? Would we be healthier with different cultural greetings? Will people really self-quarantine? 

Music and art might seem less promising, but as Ted Gioia points out in his new book, Music: A Subversive History, people who survive a crisis, stop taking things for granted, and look at the familiar with fresh eyes. He argues that the Renaissance, Shakespeare and jazz all emerged in places and times that made them “sources of virality from both an artistic and epidemiological standpoint.” Discuss.

This is a particularly good moment for philosophy and ethics. With young people at relatively low risk for the most serious consequences, why were schools among the first to close? What are the obligations of individuals to society? How should people and governments (political science anyone?) make decisions to restrict the movements and lives of low-risk people for the benefit of high-risk people? 

With the stock market crash, empty shelves and questions about what stimulus might work in a situation where money isn’t the problem, business and economics classes should be equally interesting right now.

Teaching begins with engagement and there could hardly be a more engaging subject right now. 

Inclusive Teaching

Leave a reply

I have always been interested in inclusive teaching and with the changing demographics of higher education, I’m creating a workshop for college faculty, which I will add to the technology, course design and nudge workshops I have been doing for years. (This is also starting to form as the next book project after I finish the Nudge Learning book this summer; there is a LOT of overlap with my work on relationships, communal thinking and understanding how we can overcome the difficulties of change.) 

To me, the core principle of inclusive teaching is connected in every way to the design ideas I’ve advocated for years: Can we design better and more inclusive practices that help everyone but have a disproportionate positive effect on new, first-gen, non-trad or under-represented students.  (john a powell calls this “targeted universalism.” (2008, Post-Racialism or Targeted Universalism Denver University Law Review, 86, p. 785-806) 

Transparency and rubrics, therefore, are already inclusive pedagogies. Knowing what is expected and getting clear instructions helps everyone, but it is even more valuable to first-generation and other students who are trying to unravel the code of our academic culture.

There is a lot of literature that looks specifically at racial and other equity in the classroom but not as much (that I have yet encountered) in terms of general pedagogy guidelines. I am most interested in reaching faculty who teach general subjects, especially gateway courses and especially STEM. 

I have started to draft a few core practices:

  1. Acknowledgement and Self-Awareness: understand, articulate and examine human biases and your cultural “common sense”—all of us think with an accent. Inclusive teaching is a mind-set shift form “weeding-out” to reaching everyone.
  2. Demonstrate Caring and Support: Acknowledge differences in student backgrounds and demonstrate your own failings often. Take the time to learn names, articulate difficulties (that was a hard test) and build relationships. 
  3. Transparency: Structure, clarity, scaffolding, checklists, and rubrics help everyone. Make visible your own assumptions, biases and expectations for teaching and learning. We all have them. More structure can be a huge equalizer (explaining the rules and why we are having discussion for example). 
  4. Content: can you diversify your content? If not, can you diversify perspectives? Ken Bain demonstrated long ago that all students benefit from hearing and understanding that our perspectives and disciplinary knowledge change. Can you include a non-Western critique or related version of this text or idea?
  5. Diversify Examples and Analogies: Do your test questions, essay examples and problem sets use a variety of names and analogies that will connect with a wide variety of students? (I have a further project to create a shared set of inclusive math problem sets with more diverse names and analogies. I don’t care when train A will catch up with train B.)
  6. Different Questions: The science you teach is determined, but what questions led to the discover of that science? Who benefited from that research and who sacrificed? Why were there not more women scientists or composers? Simply allowing the question creates agency for students.
  7. Highlight scholarly achievements of minorities: You can and should continue to discuss the contributions of White Europeans, but can you also find others to name and highlight
  8. Ask for early and specific feedback: Tell students you are trying to be more inclusive and asking for their help.
  9. Provide early feedback and assessment: Be the tennis net with immediate and non-judgemental feedback. Learning requires practice constant feedback.  
  10. Vary teaching strategies: You don’t need to abandon all lectures, but can you should consider who is being left out with each type of teaching. Can you try some different class exercises, strategies, discussion techniques? Technology, for example, can be a useful way to provide an additional different forum and format for discussion or allow for anonymous suggestions, responses, ideas or feedback
  11. Vary demonstrations of learning: You do not need to abandon all tests, but you do need to consider who is left out can you also create presentations, short-papers, creative videos and alternative assignments that might provide different opportunities to demonstrate learning?
  12. …lots more to do

Teaching is an equity enterprise: we should judge our success by the learning from the bottom half of the class. (The top half of the class are more likely to be successful even without us.) It is a tendency of humans (including teachers) to assume that our success is a result of our own behavior and our losses due to some other interference or what social psychologists call the fundamental attribution error, correspondence bias or overattribution.) 

Inclusive teaching is good teaching for everyone. And if it is really good teaching then it should always be inclusive. Quite a lot of what I think of as inclusive teaching (more structure, lower stakes for exams, demonstrate caring, building relationships) are the same things I think of as good for all teaching, but I think there is value in re-framing all of this as inclusive teaching now.

This project is at its very beginning, but I would welcome texts, suggestions, connections and recommendations to other people working in this space. 

Thinking for Yourself

Leave a reply

My series on WYPR continues here https://www.wypr.org/post/bowen-three-rs-education with this discussion of my focus on a new 3Rs of process instead of just content.

Think for Yourself: what does this really mean?  The new convergence of behavioral economics, neuro-science, and cognitive psychologysuggest a new educational 3Rs of “Relationships, Resilience and Reflection” and new ways for this to be designed and delivered including “nudges.” If we want the new learning economy to be inclusive, we will need education to focus more on the potential we release and less on the content we input: graduates will need to be voracious self-regulating learners. 

The rapid pace of knowledge creating and a changing job market could mean that colleges have to adapt faster and update content more often. That is true, but even the most nimble college curriculum is likely to be four years out of date if it only focuses on content. We need to focus more on the process of learning to think for yourself. 

This is sometimes called, the meta-cognition of learning. Do you as the learning, understand how to help yourself change your mind and reflect on how new content must change your old habits and assumptions? Can you abandon your own preconceived ideas?

As a teacher, I most want to make myself obsolete. I want to help my students discover new content and process it for themselves, so that eventually, without me, they will be able to ask better questions, seek new information, understand how this will create discomfort, and generate new mental assumptions. So instead of telling students that this paper, experiment or musical piece needs more work, I ask them if they think their work is ready for public performance yet? Eventually that is the question they will need to ask and answer themselves.That is thinking for yourself.