Course Structure Rationale

 

Below I outline how I implement and continue to grow in my understanding of the learning, pedagogy, and androgogy literature in my teaching.

Building the Foundation

My courses are structured and carried out differently than most students have encountered. While I believe all teachers should share with their students the philosophy underlying their teaching decisions this is perhaps most important in courses where they will encounter new modalities. Thus, the first week of class is dedicated, primarily, to this endeavor. Empirical research shows that a growth mindset, the belief that intellectual abilities are not fixed but are capable of growth, has profound positive impacts on student performance¹, is particularly impactful in students coming from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds², and that mindset can be powerfully influenced by short interventions educating students about the growth mindset¹. Further, in traditionally underrepresented populations, specifying to test-takers that an assessment did not have the capacity to reveal anything about their group as compared to groups of privilege (thereby reducing stereotype threat) significantly improved performance³. Finally, research further indicates that the attempt to assimilate knowledge that directly contradicts strongly held beliefs can be emotionally traumatic⁴.

The above information forms the basis for my introductory unit which explores and explains research on the power of the growth mindset and the incorrect spoken or unspoken cultural assertions about who is ‘cut out’ or ‘not cut out’ for science. I further step students through an explanation of what science is as a process and a body of knowledge, how science evaluates and corrects itself, and why that makes the peer-review process reliable but not infallible. I use this information to emphasize that science is a tool and a body of knowledge about the natural world, remind students that there are other ways of knowing, and ask that if they are feeling tension in their growing scientific knowledge to experiment with holding multiple ways of knowing simultaneously. Every semester many students comment on the intellectual freedom they experienced in learning about the research supported growth mindset and inaccuracies of identity-based assertions of science capability or incapability. In short, this is step in the process toward vitally important student agency. Further, while I’ve had many interesting and challenging discussions about evolutionary theory, I’ve never had a student express rejection of the science based on religious grounds and, because I teach very small evolution courses, I know that each student has developed a solid understanding of evolutionary concepts (see assessments for more on this).

Course Structure and Schedule

I work to free my student’s attention for learning course content by implementing a consistent schedule and streamlined Canvas course structure. The homepage features an embedded blog page where I emphasize important pieces of information and offer course-wide encouragement. The modules page consists of an ‘Important Links’ section at the top that contains links to Canvas pages and external sources students will reuse frequently throughout the semester. Below is ‘Weekly Objectives and Tasks’ where, each Monday of the semester, students will find a page for that week (e.g. Week 2 – Jan 17). Each weekly objectives and tasks page is structured with the same set of headings in the same order. From this single page students access every instructional material and assessment for the week. Assignments and Assessments open and close at the same time each week and are consistent from week to week. This strategy reduces extraneous cognitive load freeing students to focus their attention and energy on course content⁵.

Course Content

My courses integrate multiple teaching modalities across synchronous and asynchronous formats. Below I briefly overview my courses organized as asynchronous or synchronous components, highlighting the research and personal experiences that underlie my teaching decisions.

Asynchronous

 
Learning Materials

Learning videos are short^6,7* and created by me or are sourced from freely available content that I vet. These videos begin with approximately 1 minute of ‘emersion material’ (e.g. audio + video of ocean waves) to reduce anxiety and provide transition to learning cues in the absence of those that would be present by default in a physical classroom. Next, I briefly introduce the instructional content while visible on the screen. Here I provide an overview of the ‘what to look fors’ in the following lesson. Being visible and conversational during this part of instruction provides personalization while the overview induces intellectual activation^8,9. After personalization and activation, I (usually) remove myself from the video and content is presented in different visual styles with me narrating (PowerPoint-style, tablet-drawing, animated processes, static images) according to the multimedia principle¹⁰. Each video is interspersed with embedded questions designed to engage the learner and emphasize important and/or often misunderstood concepts⁹. Videos are all closed captioned, and many have accompanying transcripts.

Direct links to relevant web-based reading or sections (e.g. 11.1 & 11.2), rather than entire chapters (e.g. Ch 11), of open educational reading resources are assigned to each video or block of videos to narrow student focus to the relevant content, increase probability that students will read the material, reduce cognitive load, and improve access equity to all course materials^5,11.

Occasionally podcasts are used as learning materials to increase the variety of learning modalities and expose students to active researchers and interesting historical stories in the field. When podcasts are implemented, students answer a series of questions in accompaniment⁹.

Assessments

I assess learning through one-on-one engagement during small group meetings, weekly low-stakes quizzes, weekly in-depth homework assignments, learning questions embedded in learning materials, student blogs, and projects. Assessments are designed to support student learning and to be an opportunity for growth¹².

Weekly Quiz - Students are permitted (and encouraged) to take their weekly quiz twice. Questions are randomly pulled from a large bank that I (and my TAs in genetics) have personally written limiting the likelihood students will encounter many of the same questions on their second attempt. The goal of the two-attempt structure is to encourage students to identify questions ask about concepts they do not have a solid handle on and return to their notes and learning materials to review prior to their second attempt.

Homework – Homework questions require information synthesis and, often, process diagramming or drawing and require students to construct original work and write in their own voice. I emphasize to students that these requirements are to deepen and solidify their learning, as we each have a slightly different perspective, our assimilation of information will be slightly different. Students are permitted (and encouraged) to complete a dissection of one homework question a week to earn up to full question credit. Single questions typically have multiple parts so a single question can be worth a large portion of the grade. A dissection requires students to demonstrate that they understand the differences between their answer and the correct answer.

Embedded Learning Questions – questions embedded in or accompanying learning materials. Students are permitted and encouraged to re-do these questions as many times as they need to determine the correct answer. These questions emphasize important points, clarify typically misunderstood concepts, and increase student engagement in videos and podcasts.

Blog posts – In evolution each student creates a course blog. The respond to a prompt each week asking them to explore a topic presented in the learning materials that week. They then respond to a classmate’s blog post from the previous week. I’ve found that the blogs engage students more than discussion board posts, perhaps because of their feelings of ownership over their personal blog. The blog also serves as a ‘testing ground’ for components of their final project (see below). Students receive feedback from me on their blog posts, rather than grades. Students frequently comment that a concept they were struggling with finally ‘clicked’ when they read the way a classmate explained it.

Final Project – In evolution each student spends the semester creating a final project that demonstrates their growth in conceptual understanding throughout the semester. Parts of the project are due incrementally throughout the semester. When each section is due the student is encouraged to present the material as a ‘work in progress’ emphasizing areas where they would like feedback or input from me and the class. Students self-grade each midsemester presentation based on an outline of expectations given in the project document and rubric. The self-graded portion of the assignment is worth 38% of the total assignment grade. Please see Appendix B for the final project document and rubric in full.

The two-attempt quiz structure, homework dissection, ungraded blog posts, and incremental final project presentations encourage students to correct misunderstood concepts, reduces the demotivating effects of grades, and helps to create a positive error climate^13–18.

Synchronous

Each course has a synchronous meeting component. During the height of the pandemic I, and/or the course TAs, met with students in small groups via video conferencing. Currently we are conducting synchronous small group meetings in-person. We work to keep meeting sizes small to make our class environment more equitable¹⁹.

Because learning is complex, it is best accomplished when many modalities are incorporated. In student’s asynchronous materials they encounter many visual and auditory styles and are likely in a solitary learning environment. Synchronous meetings are intended to engage active learning, which improves learning outcomes in STEM fields²⁰ particularly those from underrepresented groups & first gen students^20,21. The active and purposely cultivated psychologically safe group-learning environment also enhances sense of belonging²², and improves motivation^22,23.

In these meetings students work together to perform activities like manipulating pipe cleaners to simulate mitosis and meiosis in genetics, assemble paper cut-outs of the nephron to determine the flow of filtrate in physiology, or build a phylogenetic tree mobile in evolution. Students are encouraged to work together and use any resources they wish. We (the TAs that are my collaborators on the genetics teaching team and I) repeatedly and consistently emphasize to the students that this is a forum for exploration and struggle. Students are never required to turn in a finished product from these active learning sessions, nor are they graded. They are only required to participate, and they determine what is acceptable participation for themselves. The absence of grading, emphasis on exploration and social learning, and student agency in determining their own gauge for participation emphasizes learning goals, rather than performance goals, reduces the demotivating effects of grades, and creates a positive error climate^13–18. While it generally takes a few weeks for students to believe that they aren’t going to be suddenly graded on their performance or reprimanded for their misunderstandings, once they begin to lean into these activities’ conversation flows, they begin to ask deeper thought questions and try things that may not work. One of the most exciting outcomes of these activities has been student self-identification of their own knowledge gaps and where they need more information (“metacognition”)²⁴. These moments are when the breadth of the learning material solidifies into understanding.

Communication and Community

During the height of the COVID pandemic when I was teaching fully remote, I felt entirely cut off from my students. I felt like I couldn’t get a feel for if they were understanding, if they were even doing ok, if it was one of those days when I needed to dial back the amount of content I had planned to cover etc. Essentially, I was feeling a need for social presence, the ability to perceive others in an online environment²⁵. My solution to this, in addition to frequent small group zoom meetings, was the Slack app. Slack is a messaging platform that allows me to create a virtual community space for each of my classes. Within that space I created channels for each small group, homework questions, random, etc. Students can quickly and easily message me, any member of the teaching team, and each other in this app. I worked very hard to make our Slack space a psychologically safe place for students, to encourage them to ask anything and everything and to freely discuss content with their peers. It was incredible to see the conversations about the ins and outs of transcriptional regulation or the funny genetics memes students posted (and understood!). Sometime after creating this space, I came across a paper specifically exploring sense of belonging. The quote that might just sum up how I teach is “Effective learning emerges from an instructor’s ability to express care and intentionality for students, and to create an environment of social belonging²⁶”. In all spaces, but particularly online spaces, student’s learning hinges largely on the quality of engagement with their teaching team and their peers^22,25–27 and their perception of an online community presence²⁵. The environment I work to create in this Slack space, paired with synchronous learning activities, and my efforts to personalize instructional content seek to meet that need for engagement and community.

Does it Work?

In any endeavor to measure teaching or learning it is important to note that what to use to empirically measure these complex things is a moving target and little agreed upon. For me, the conversations I have with students where they start throwing around words like ‘spliceosome,’ make mutation jokes or ask questions that I don’t know the answer to are exciting and affirming indications. More empirical indications of teaching excellence are my nomination by my students as the Arts and Sciences Distinguished Teacher in 2020 and 2021. When initially implemented in Spring 2020, the evidence-based strategies detailed above produced a 37.72% increase in student retention and passing scores (DFW = 1.7), as compared to the average across this course from 2015 – 2019 (DFW = 39.42; n=10 sections). My teaching evaluations are consistently above average (and I am female), and students comment repeatedly and consistently that they feel they learn more in my courses than any other course they’ve taken. In the future, implementation of a pre and post assessment will help to specifically identify the learning gains and areas in need of improvement in these courses.

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