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CETL in the News – September 2023 Roundup

· Oct 1, 2023 ·

In a recent Inside Higher Ed blog post, John Warner writes that teaching is a wicked problem, that is, a situation where the nature of the problem and the tools for solving it are constantly changing. (This is “wicked” in the sense of tricky, not evil!) Warner argues that tackling this wicked problem requires a different kind of educational research than what is typically valued in higher ed: qualitative research. “In short,” Warner writes, “we gotta go qualitative over quantitative in a big way. As a wicked problem, creating valid quantitative studies related to instruction often requires either ignoring or sanding away many of the complexities that inevitably exist in teaching.”

As an example of the kind of qualitative research he’s calling for, John Warner cites Unmaking the Grade, the newsletter written by Emily Donahoe, CETL associate director of instructional support. Emily has been using this platform to chronicle her experiments with ungrading in her courses. Warner appreciates the nuance Emily brings to her newsletter: “Read entry to entry, the experiment takes on a narrative form, which not only makes for more compelling reading but also provides a lens for Donahoe to reflect on what’s happening in her class. We see the layers of complexity at play in the teaching experiment.”

If you haven’t been reading Emily’s newsletter, you can read all of her posts at Unmaking the Grade.

Meanwhile, CETL visiting associate director Derek Bruff continues to make the rounds on podcasts talking about generative AI and its impact on teaching and learning this fall. His latest appearance is on the Limed: Teaching with a Twist podcast from Elon University’s Center for Engaged Learning. Host Matt Wittstein interviewed Elon strategic communications professor Jessica Gisclair about her goals for teaching with and about AI this fall, then talked with a panel of students and faculty, including Derek, about possible approaches for meeting those goals. You can listen to the entire conversation here, or search for “Limed: Teaching with a Twist” in your favorite podcast app.

Recap: A Pedagogy of Kindness with Dr. Cate Denial

· Sep 26, 2023 ·

by Emily Pitts Donahoe, associate director of instructional support

This past Wednesday, CETL was thrilled to host guest speaker Dr. Cate Denial, the Bright Distinguished Professor of American History and Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College. Cate is the principal investigator on a Mellon Foundation grant exploring “Pedagogies, Communities, and Practices of Care in the Academy After COVID-19.” She is also the author of a forthcoming book titled A Pedagogy of Kindness. In short, she has a lot of wisdom to share about compassionate teaching.

Academia and Kindness

Cate began her talk by defining kindness, both by what it is and what it is not. Kindness, Cate stresses, is not the same thing as “niceness.” Being “nice” often means lying about or minimizing the deep wounds caused by precarity, power imbalances, burnout, and other toxic elements of academia. Instead, practicing kindness means being honest about the challenges we face and the ways in which academia has been, and continues to be, hostile toward so many marginalized populations. Kindness also involves accountability, requiring us to take responsibility for the impact of our mistakes and to prioritize the pursuit of justice over the pursuit of comfort. Finally, kindness is a discipline that we must practice even when we don’t feel particularly compassionate.

The academy, as we know, is often unkind. It socializes us into distrust, encouraging competition over collaboration, perpetuating exclusion, and promoting antagonism, especially toward our students. Cate shared her own story about how this distrust harmed her experience as a graduate student and early career faculty member, and the ways she learned to do things differently. This involved critically questioning the pedagogical choices she made, with one key question in mind: “Why not be kind?”

A Pedagogy of Kindness

Cate’s “pedagogy of kindness” has three main tenets:

Justice: Cate shared some pretty stunning numbers about the challenges our students are facing. For example, almost half of undergraduates in a recent study experienced housing insecurity while seeking their degree, and a third experienced food insecurity. Many students—especially our disabled, LGBTQIA+, and BIPOC students—are navigating academic environments that were not designed with their needs and identities in mind.

In light of these challenges, justice asks us to question our assumptions about students, to give them the benefit of the doubt, and to get rid of the hoops that stand in their way.

Believing Students: When a student says that they’re facing a challenge that prevents them from engaging with our class, we could either start from a position of suspicion or from a position of belief and support. Cate advocates for cultivating trusting relationships with students: it’s better to be occasionally taken in by student dishonesty than to risk harming students who are genuinely in crisis.

Believing in Students: Believing in students means investing in the idea that all students are capable of success with the proper support and that students really want to learn and grow. In practice, that means two things: rethinking our course materials with trust in mind and collaborating with students in their learning.

When Cate critically reflected on her course materials a few years ago, she discovered that she was designing for students she didn’t trust; that she was projecting an image of unassailable authority and unapproachability; and that her materials were not accessible to a broad range of students. She redesigned her syllabi and assignment sheets in ways that made the course more transparent and welcoming. She also redesigned her assessments to allow students to demonstrate their learning in a variety of ways—not just in writing.

Additionally, her revisions made opportunities for students to contribute to, and even co-create, her course. This means that students have input on the course policies, assignments, and even grading and that they complete authentic assessments that have meaning beyond the classroom. Cate encouraged attendees to find similar ways to be kind to the students in their own courses.

Being Kind to Yourself

Finally, Cate emphasized that students should not be the only recipient of your kindness. You can be kind to yourself in a lot of different ways, but perhaps the most important are by setting boundaries and giving yourself space to rest and grow—not only in your teaching but also in your life outside of work.

We’re grateful to Cate for sharing her time and wisdom with us last week! To learn more about Cate’s work, you can follow her on Twitter and Bluesky or visit https://catherinedenial.org/. Be on the lookout for A Pedagogy of Kindness, forthcoming July 2024!

Recap: Teaching in the Age of AI (What’s Working, What’s Not)

· Sep 21, 2023 ·

by Derek Bruff, visiting associate director

Earlier this week, CETL and AIG hosted a discussion among UM faculty and other instructors about teaching and AI this fall semester. We wanted to know what was working when it came to policies and assignments that responded to generative AI technologies like ChatGPT, Google Bard, Midjourney, DALL-E, and more. We were also interested in hearing what wasn’t working, as well as questions and concerns that the university community had about teaching and AI.

We started the session with a Zoom poll asking participants what kinds of AI policies they had this fall in their courses. There were very few “red lights,” that is, instructors who prohibited generative AI in their courses and assignments. There were far more “yellow lights” who permitted AI use with some limitations. We had some “green lights” in the room, who were all in on AI, and a fair number of “flashing lights” who were still figuring out their AI policies!

Robert Cummings and I had invited a few faculty to serve as lead discussants at the event. Here is some of what they said about their approaches to AI this fall:

Guy Krueger, senior lecture in writing and rhetoric, described himself as a “green light.” He encourages his writing students to use AI text generators like ChatGPT in their writing, perhaps as ways to get started on a piece of writing, ways to get additional ideas and perspectives on a topic, or tools for polishing their writing. Guy said that he’s most interested in the rhetorical choices that his students are making, and that the use of AI, along with some reflection by his students, generated good conversations about those rhetorical choices. He mentioned that students who receive feedback on their writing from an instructor often feel obligated to follow that feedback, but they’re more likely to say “no, thanks” to feedback from a chatbot, leading to perhaps more intentional decisions as writers. (I thought that was an interesting insight!)
Deborah Mower, associate professor of philosophy, said she was a “red light.” She said that with generative AI changing so rapidly, she didn’t feel the time was right to guide students effectively in their use or non-use of these tools. She’s also teaching a graduate level course in her department this fall, and she feels that they need to attend to traditional methods of research and writing in their discipline. Next semester, she’ll be teaching an undergraduate course with semester-long, scaffolded projects on topics in which her students are invested, and she’s planning in that course to have them use some AI tools here and there, perhaps by writing something without AI first and then revising that piece with AI input. (It sounds like she’s planning the kinds of authentic assignments that will minimize students’ use of AI to shortcut their own learning.)
Melody Xiong, instructor of computer and information science, is a “yellow” light in the 100-, 200-, and 400-level courses she’s teaching this fall. She teaches computer programming, and while she doesn’t want students to just copy AI output for their assignments, she is okay with students using AI tools as aids in writing code, much like they would have used other aids before the advent of AI code generators. She and her TAs offer a lot of office hours and her department provides free tutoring, which she hopes reduces the incentive for her students to shortcut the task of learning programming. She also knows that many of her students will face job interviews that have “pop quiz” style coding challenges, so her students know these are skills they need to develop on their own. (External assessments can be a useful forcing function.)
Brian Young, scholarly communication librarian, and also described himself as a “green light” on AI. In his digital media studies courses, generative AI is on the syllabus. One of his goals is to develop his students’ AI literacy, and he does that through assignments that lead students through explorations and critiques of AI. He and his students have talked about the copyright issues with how AI tools are trained, as well as the “cascading biases” that can occur when the biases in the training data (e.g. gender biases in Wikipedia) then show up in the output of AI. One provocative move he made was to have an AI tool write a set of low-stakes reading response questions for his students to answer on Blackboard. When he revealed to his students that he didn’t write those questions himself, that launched a healthy conversation about AI and intellectual labor. (That’s a beautiful way to create a time for telling!)

Following the lead discussants, we opened the conversation to other participants, focusing on what’s working, what’s not, and what questions participants had. What follows are some of my takeaways from that larger conversation.

One faculty participant told the story of a colleague in real estate who is using generative AI to help write real estate listing. This colleague reports saving eight hours a week this way, freeing up time for more direct work with clients. This is the kind of AI use we’re starting to see in a variety of professions, and it has implications for the concepts and skills we teach our students. We might also find that generative AI can save us hours a week in our jobs with some clever prompting!

Several faculty mentioned that students are aware of generative AI technologies like ChatGPT and that many are interested in learning to use them appropriately, often with an eye on that job market when they graduate. Faculty also indicated that many students haven’t really used generative AI technologies to any great extent, so they have a lot to learn about these tools. One counterpoint: Deborah Mower, the “red light,” said that her graduate students have been content not to use AI in their course with her.

Course policies about AI use vary widely across the campus, which makes for a challenging learning landscape for students. I gather that some departments have leanings one way or another (toward red or green lights), but most course policies are determined by individual instructors. This is a point to emphasize to students, that different courses have different policies, because students might assume there’s a blanket policy when there is not.

This inconsistency in policy has led some students to have a fair amount of anxiety about being accused of cheating with AI. As AIG’s Academic Innovation Fellow Marc Watkins keeps reminding us, these generative AI tools are showing up everywhere, including Google Docs and soon Microsoft Word.

Other students have pushed back on “green light” course policies, arguing that they already have solid processes for writing and inserting AI tools into those processes is disruptive. I suspect that’s coming from more advanced students, but it’s an interesting response. And one that I can relate to… I didn’t use any AI to write this blog post, for instance.

A few participants mentioned the challenge of AI use in discussion forum posts. “Responses seemed odd,” one instructor wrote. They mentioned a post that clearly featured the student’s own ideas, but not in the student’s voice. Other instructors described posts that seemed entirely generated by AI without any editing by the student. From previous conversations with faculty, I know that asynchronous online courses, which tend to lean heavily on discussion forums, are particularly challenging to teach in the current environment.

That last point about discussion posts led to many questions from instructors: Where is the line between what’s acceptable and what’s not in terms of academic integrity? How is it possible to determine what’s human-produced and what’s AI-produced? How do you motivate or support students in editing what they get from an AI tool in useful ways? How can you help student develop better discernment for quality writing?

One participant took our conversation in a different direction, noting the ecological impact of the computing power required by AI tools, as well as the ethical issues with the training data gathered from the internet by the developers of AI tools. These are significant issues, and I’m thankful they were brought up during our conversation. To learn about these issues and perhaps explore them with your students, “The Elements of AI Ethics” by communication theorist Per Axbom looks like a good place to start.

Thanks to all who participated in our Zoom conversation earlier this week. We still have a lot of unanswered questions, but I think the conversation provided some potential answers and helped shape those questions usefully. If you teach at UM and would like to talk with someone from CETL about the use of AI in your courses, please reach out. We’re also organizing a student panel on AI and learning on October 10th. You can learn more about this event and register for it here. And if you’d like to sign up for Auburn University’s “Teaching with AI” course, you can request a slot here.

Update: I emailed Guy Krueger, one of our lead discussants, and asked him to expand on his point about students who have trouble starting a piece of writing. His response was instructive, and I received his permission to share it here.

I mentioned that I used to tell students that they don’t need to start with the introduction when writing, that I often start with body paragraphs and they can do the same to get going. And I might still mention that depending on the student; however, since we have been using AI, I have had several students prompt the AI to write an introduction or a few sentences just to give them something to look at beyond the blank screen. Sometimes they keep all or part of what the AI gives them; sometimes they don’t like it and start to re-work it, in effect beginning to write their own introductions.

I try to use a process that ensures students have plenty of material to begin drafting when we get to that stage, but every class seems to have a student or two who say they have real writer’s block. AI has definitely been a valuable tool in breaking through that. Plus, some students who don’t normally have problems getting started still like having some options and even seeing something they don’t like to help point them in a certain direction.

Recap: What Instructors Need to Know When Working with Neurodivergent Students

· Sep 13, 2023 ·

by Liz Norell, associate director of instructional support

In our August 8 blog, we shared a preview of our September 8 workshop on supporting neurodivergent students, including the following definitions of key terms:

Neurodivergent: a person with a brain that processes information in a way different from most individuals.
Neurotypical: a person with a brain that processes information in a way typical of most individuals.
Neurodiverse: a group of people with diverse ways of processing information, including those considered typical.

Because any learning space (or any group gathering, for that matter) includes people with diverse ways of knowing, processing information, and learning, all of these spaces will be neurodiverse. Meeting the needs of the neurodivergent, though, requires some awareness and intentionality.

Neurodivergent describes those who have some condition that impacts how their brains work; this might be a learning disability, attention deficit or anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette’s syndrome, bipolar disorder, and more.

In our workshop, we talked about the two most common neurodivergent conditions that show up in college classrooms: autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

But first, a few notes about language. Some disability advocates prefer to use what’s called person-first language (e.g., a person with ADHD, a person with autism), whereas others prefer identity-first language (e.g., an autistic person, an ADHD person). Recent research suggests that in the United States, autistic adults largely prefer identity-first language (“I am autistic”) over person-first language (“I have autism”), whereas friends, family members, and professionals often expressed a preference for person-first language.

Within disability advocacy networks, the terms Asperger’s syndrome and high-/low-functioning are no longer used. We also use bipolar disorder to describe the condition, rather than the outdated manic-depressive terminology.

Autism

Many of us have a stereotype in our minds about what autism looks like. It’s usually a young boy who is somewhat withdrawn, doesn’t make eye contact, makes repetitive movements, and is hyper-focused on a few specific interests. There is some truth to that stereotype, but it’s far from a complete picture of how this neurodivergence manifests in all autistic people.

Things you might notice among students and colleagues who are autistic:

Repetitive movements, like rocking, tapping, or picking at things
Unusual eye contact (too little or too much)
Overly eager desire to share information
Anxiety during transitions or unexpected events
“The lights are too loud”
Needing something explained multiple times
Meltdowns (including crying) for no apparent reason
Fixation on minor details
Seemingly distracted gaze out a window or at something on the wall

Autism is formally known as “autism spectrum disorder,” or ASD, because there is a wide range of symptoms that people with autism experience, both in type and severity. People with autism can be very successful in educational and professional contexts, particularly if those settings are supportive of neurodivergent people. There are many often-overlooked benefits to having an autistic brain, such as the ability to hyperfocus, exhibit unusual attention to detail, and creativity. The film Autism Goes to College and its companion podcast, which shares stories of neurodivergent college students, are terrific resources for those in higher ed.

ADHD

We also have a stereotype about what ADHD looks like. It’s usually (once again) a young boy who cannot sit still, talks quickly, and interrupts often. While this may be true, ADHD looks different across those who have this kind of neurodivergent brain. You might notice:

Cannot seem to talk fast enough to get ideas out
Bursts of speech
Paralyzing reaction to negative feedback
“A racecar brain with bicycle breaks” (a phrase coined by Dr. Edward Hallowell)
Crave novelty, excitement, and challenge
Work better when around someone else (“body doubling”)
Appear to be “lazy” (but this is a mischaracterization)
Difficulty sitting still–often fidgeting or needing to move
Easily distracted by something interesting

One of my favorite writers about ADHD, a British woman who writes as “Authentically Emily” online, says that ADHD brains have an “interest-based nervous system,” as opposed to a neurotypical’s “importance-based nervous system.” Emily says that ADHD brains need at least one of the following four components to focus their attention on a specific task:

Novelty: The task is new and exciting in some way.
Interest: The person is deeply interested in the task or topic.
Challenge: A sense of competition or inherent difficulty motivates attention.
Urgency: The task needs to be done right now.

Lacking any of these four components, and a task might be impossible for a person with ADHD to focus their attention long enough to complete it.

This is why Karen Costa, who is working on a book for educators about ADHD, urges instructors to provide structure and deadlines for their students: “Many ADHDers need more structure, not less. We need more deadlines, not less.” (Listen to Karen Costa on the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast to learn more.)

Tangible steps to support neurodivergent students

Although neurodivergence shows up differently for each person, there are many things you can do as an instructor to help give your neurodivergent students equitable access to learning and success. Here are a few ideas:

Openly welcome students of all abilities and neurotypes. Something as simple as a statement that says: “If you are disabled, I welcome a conversation to discuss your learning needs. I want to make sure you succeed in our course.” Don’t assume every neurodivergent student has a diagnosis or formal accommodations; the testing process to obtain a diagnosis is lengthy and costly, and the process of requesting formal accommodations is also time-consuming. Look for ways to design your course so students need as few accommodations as possible, and every student will benefit. (There are some good language examples here.)
Manage the sensory input in your spaces. Look for ways to dampen the sensory overload many neurodivergent students struggle to manage. For example, can you dim the lights? Use indirect or diffuse lighting? If you have a whole-class discussion, discourage cross-talk (multiple people talking at once) to limit the auditory noise. Allow students to rearrange the furniture to meet their needs, such as physically separating their chair/desk to a corner or sitting on the floor if they like. Explicitly welcome things like doodling, knitting/crocheting, coloring, using fidget toys, or occasionally moving around the room.
Communicate clearly and regularly. Share your expectations and directions multiple times and explicitly. Don’t assume your students can pick up on subtle cues or social norms. Limit your use of sarcasm or inside jokes—and if you use them, be over-the-top in signaling that you’re doing so. Define any subjective or unclear terminology in concrete terms (e.g., professional, collaboration, effectiveness, etc.). Provide written complements to any verbal directions and provide other ways to access important material outside of class.
Ensure social interactions are intentional and clear. Normalize stimming behaviors in and out of class—by which I mean make it explicitly allowable, even encouraged. Clearly define the purpose and expected roles in any interpersonal interactions (such as think-pair-share or groupwork activities in class). Whenever possible, offer an option to work alone. Provide students with alternative ways (other than verbally) to communicate or interact with one another and with you.
Create (flexible) structures. Hide or remove any unnecessary or unused features in Blackboard. Whenever a specific skill is needed (such as time management or completing a multi-stage project/assignment), provide how-to directions (or link to them). Scaffold assignments to create regular and meaningful deadlines. Assume good intentions and allow your students to make mistakes without debilitating penalties. (For more advice on this point, listen to this interview with instructional designer Cathryn Friel.)

If you want to learn even more, you can download the presentation deck or to reach out to Liz in CETL.

Student Disability Services can also provide meaningful support for faculty who have neurodivergent students in their classes—as most of us do.

CETL Welcomes New Staff

· Sep 1, 2023 ·

The Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning is pleased to announce the addition of three new team members as we begin the fall semester.

Hanna Lee, Operations Coordinator, joins CETL and the Academic Innovations Group most recently from a position as Youth Services Coordinator at First Regional Library in Hernando, MS. Having earned a Master’s of Library and Information Science from Rutgers University, Hanna has worked in public libraries in Mississippi and New Jersey, in addition to public schools, international schools, and higher education institutions from Baltimore, MD, to Maputo, Mozambique.

Hanna will provide administrative support for CETL and AIG. Hanna notes that she is “excited to learn more about CETL’s programs, services, and all of the students and faculty that we serve—and finding ways to make our internal processes more effective and seamless.”

Liz Norell, Associate Director of Instructional Support, joins CETL most recently from a position as Associate Professor of Political Science at Chattanooga State Community College in Chattanooga, TN. She has been teaching courses in political science, journalism, and research and writing at various institutions across the South since 2000. She is an Associate Editor of the journal To Improve the Academy and a Contributing Editor at College Teaching, as well as the conference co-chair for the education section of the American Political Science Association. She is currently at work on a book entitled The Present Professor for the popular Teaching and Learning in Higher Education series edited by James Lang and Michelle Miller.

Liz will advance scholarship of teaching and learning initiatives at UM and direct CETL assessment efforts. She is most excited about the opportunity to work with those who are invested in the transformational possibilities of higher education. “As a first-generation college student from a small town in northern Arkansas,” Liz notes, “I’ve experienced how higher education can radically impact (in a positive way) the trajectory of a person’s life and the horizon of possibilities before them. I’m committed to using this role to advance critical conversations about equity, accessibility, and empowerment in higher education.” She adds that she has “boundless enthusiasm for conversations about teaching!”

Amitesh Singh, Graduate Consultant, is a PhD student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UM, where he explores the evolving dynamics of binary black hole systems, helping us understand their formation channels and how they transform spacetime around them. He is a seasoned teaching assistant in his department and strives to advance active learning in physics education, especially in UM’s SCALE-UP classrooms.

Amitesh will support graduate student teaching development efforts at CETL, including the Fundamentals of Teaching community and the Graduate Reading Group. He is looking forward to “being more involved with the teaching & learning community, learning from the best people, and helping other graduate students in the classroom.”