Focus on the grades and learning process

After attending a writing boot camp, I decided that I need to use university resources more while I still can. I set a goal of one university event per week and started going to various workshops and meetings that are of interest to me. Last Thursday I went to  the "Get Students to Focus on Learning Instead of Grades: Metacognition is the Key!" workshop, which was offered by the UNM Support for Effective Teaching and conducted by Dr. Saundra Yancy McGuire, who is Assistant Vice Chancellor for Learning, Teaching and Retention and Professor of Chemistry at Louisiana State University. I saw the workshop flier in the hall and its title caught my attention. I thought about how much I've been enjoying auditing classes versus taking classes for grades. I audited one class (ANTH-530: Semiotics of Ethno History) last semester and am currently in the process of auditing another one (LING-529: Discourse Analysis). I've learned a lot in both of classes and enjoyed them much more than the majority of the courses I took as part of the official coursework. Although these two classes are not much different from the others I took, there is something liberating in being able not to participate in online discussions, not to do small assignments if I chose so, not to stress about submitting a final paper, and not to be assigned a course grade. I never had problems with grades and had a 4.0 (out of 4.0) GPA throughout my entire undergraduate and graduate career and didn't expect that not being engaged with the minutiae of the course requirements would make any difference for me. I remember my surprise when one of the professors told us in class how much she enjoyed auditing classes when she was in her Ph.D. program and how many of them she took. At that time, her confession sounded rather odd to me, and I didn't expect to follow in her footsteps. Initially I decided to audit a class last semester because I was looking for an outside committee member (someone from a different university department), and the professor who taught the course seemed like a possible fit. By the mid of the semester, I knew not only that I found my missing committee member, but also that I would look for other possible courses to audit in the next semester and probably in the following semester as well.

When instructors design their courses, we are often advised to start with desired learning outcomes and develop all our assignments and assessments so that they bring students closer to achieving those objectives, which is called backward course design. In a way, we (instructors) presuppose that, through completing weekly tasks (i.e., reading, posting on the discussion board, participating in class discussions, doing exercise assignments, or taking tests), students would come closer to mastering whatever we expect them to learn in the course, and the final project (e.g., a term paper, cumulative final exam, etc.) often serves as a crown opportunity for students to learn, and for instructors to assess their learning. Undoubtedly, there is some sound logic behind that approach. A few (if any at all) would argue against the notion that students need to do course readings and practice applying that material. Although (almost) any practice can be beneficial, my concern, as a student, is with the cost-outcome ratio, as well as with the opportunity costs. Some exercises and assignments take more time than others, and from some I learn more than from the others. As a student, I prefer to effectively invest my time and to focus more on the stuff that benefits me most. As an instructor, my concern is that students don't always know what benefits them most and that something that seems pointless to them at the moment may be of great value in a month, year, or so. Moreover, different students have different strengths and weaknesses, different background and different interests. Reading mid-semester student evaluations of my teaching, I usually discover that something that one student finds most effective in the course seems to be least effective for another; people prefer different methods of informational delivery, different formats of assessments, etc. Thus, for me as an instructor, it's always a challenge, how to balance that diversity of needs and preferences. As a student, on the other hand, I'm mostly concerned with my own learning and evaluate any given course based on what I take out of it and how it serves the needs of my professional development, which, by the way,  may be rather different from the learning objectives of the course. Then, I have to balance my responsibilities as a student with my personal interests. When I audit a class, my responsibilities are limited to readings, attendance, and participation in class discussions. Since I am interested in the course content, I gladly perform all of the above tasks as essential to my growth as a scholar. In addition, I do some homework assignments, those that correspond to my needs, but I don't have to spend time on the activities that I find less useful. As a result, auditing courses is a much more enjoyable and efficient way of learning for me, than taking classes for grades. I understand that, as a student, but, as an instructor, I don't know how to use this information to make my classes  more effective and enjoyable for students. Secretly I hoped that the workshop would indirectly address some of those issues, but predictably I was wrong.

"Get Students to Focus on Learning Instead of Grades: Metacognition is the Key!" was a lively talk. Dr. Saundra Yancy McGuire is a good engaging speaker. Her presentation described the model that they developed at Louisiana State University to help students to feel less as victims or patients, upon whom actions are performed, and more in control of their own learning process and its outcomes. McGuire recommended not to explicitly discuss their model with students until they receive grades for the first test/quiz of the semester, which she suggests to have by the end of the second week so that to set up student expectations and start helping them in developing effective learning strategies. In her view, any discussion of these strategies at the very beginning of the term is doomed to fail because, prior to getting their test results, students won't pay attention, believing that their strategies are already effective. The model includes several learning strategies: (1) a more focused reading that requires students to come up with a sentence-long summary of each paragraph written in their own words, (2) reviewing at home what has been learned in class on that day, (3) solving practice problems without consulting textbook examples, (4) conducting mock teaching sessions as a means of test preparation, etc.  McGuire argued that, when given those tools, students are more likely to accept their responsibility for their learning, feel more in control of the learning outcomes, and focus more on actual learning than on grades. After the workshop, walking from the University Advisement & Enrichment Center, some faculty members expressed their skepticism that such a model would be sufficient to shift students' focus from grades to learning, and reluctantly I have to agree. What strategies do you use in your classes?

Trying to become more productive (Part II)

In my quest for increased productivity, I decided to participate in a writing boot camp, offered by the the UNM Graduate Resource Center to provide students with a free from distraction writing environment and to help them jump start their writing schedule. The boot camp has two different formats: a short weekend one and a week-long one. The boot camp begins at 8:30 a.m. with a group meeting that includes a writing warmup exercise and a discussion of effective writing strategies. Then, everyone breaks into smaller groups, where they go over personal writing goals for the day and address whatever problems that need to be addressed. After that, the actual writing begins and continues until 4:00 p.m., with a lunch break at noon. The day ends with a brief joint meeting and small group discussions of how the writing went and what needs to be done the next day. Before signing up for the boot camp, I talked to several people who attended it in the past. They all said that the format is very effective, that they accomplished a lot there, and that they definitely plan to participate again in the future. Boot-campers with whom I worked last week had very similar responses. The vast majority of them were returning "patrons," and, when asked how many boot camps they have attended, many replied 10+. So, indeed this format works for many dissertation writers.

Did it work well for me? To be honest, I don't know. On the one hand, I spent more time on actual writing than I would normally do at home, and, as a result, more was accomplished. On the other hand, I felt exhausted after the boot camp and needed a few days to recover before I could get back to my writing. I attended a week-long boot camp, and it was interesting to observe how the average time spent on writing had gradually decreased from Monday to Friday. At the beginning of the week, people came in earlier and stayed for the whole boot camp period, but soon they started arriving later and leaving earlier. The sole focus on writing was fading away as well; at the beginning, everyone was intensely working on their projects, but, as days passed by, more and more often I saw people doing online shopping, browsing, facebooking, and other unrelated to dissertation tasks. I guess the format was too intense and not just for me. Will I participate again? Yes, I will probably give it another try, but I will definitely make some adjustments from the very beginning. For one, I will take my pomodoro timer with me and will stick to my usual writing routine of working for 25 minutes with short breaks between the periods. I will also try to vary the types of writing to work on during the boot camp, including spontaneous writing, editing, note taking, etc.

After reading Peter Elbow's Writing without Teachers, I started doing regular spontaneous writing sessions, and they seem to be working nicely for me. I begin each day with two pomodoros of this type of writing and work on anything else later in the day. Usually I decide on the topic of my spontaneous writing ahead of time and in the morning simply seat in front of my computer and type whatever comes to mind. I expected that such writing would produce a lot of garbage, but surprisingly I have been able to use almost everything I produced so far. Spontaneous writing has become my way of thinking about the topic, making connections, and trying to articulate possible interpretations. I don't try to be exact or 100% accurate on references to other people's work or ideas; I simply write them down the way I remember, and, if I'm unable to recall something, I include a note and check that later. My goal is to produce no less than 500 words of spontaneous writing per day, but I usually produce more. When I'm done with doing spontaneous writing on a given topic, which usually involves several days of work, I devote some time in the middle of the day to editing that part. I combine all the installments of spontaneous writing together, use my source notes to verify the accuracy of ambiguous parts and to add specific examples or quotations, restructure the piece, and work on its language, grammar, and spelling. This work arrangement helps me steadily accumulate some writing, gives me some sense of achievement, and makes my process of editing easier. In the past, I had a tendency to write in tight paragraphs and to polish sentences as I go. As a result, I often became attached to my writing, and it was very difficult to incorporate new ideas in already written paragraphs or change their structure. What are your most effective writing and editing practices?

Trying to become more productive

Writing a dissertation is a huge task, and, to accomplish it successfully, I need to get some organization system in place. In the past, right after defending my Master's thesis, I tried to reflect on the challenges of working on a lengthy research project, and, as a part of that process, read a number of books on academic writing. One of my favorites at the time was Robert Boice's Professors as Writers: A Self-Help Guide to Productive Writing. The book discusses psychological causes of typical writing problems, such as being stuck or unable to start writing, and outlines ways to make writing a regular and productive habit, which include establishing momentum via uncensored generative writing, developing a sense of organization that will help in subsequent revisions, cycling through these two steps, and ensuring continuous progress through prioritizing writing, imposing self-control, and soliciting feedback. During my first reading of the book, I learned two important lessons that helped me to grow as a writer. The first one was the idea of cycling through the stages of uncensored writing and revision, and the second, Boice's advice to write in short intervals of 20-30 minutes, avoiding binge writing.

However, as I have recently discovered when working on my dissertation, I need additional tools to achieve continuous productivity and to deal with occasional blocks. I reread Boice's book, hoping to find more useful ideas that didn't register with me during the first reading. One of them was "automatic note taking," which works best for me when combined with the Cornell note taking method. I still stick to my usual reading routine with underlining what I find important and jotting notes on the margins. Then, as Boice suggests, I devote one page of notes to each literature source. Since the notes are so short, they don't require much time, and I made a rule not to move to another source before the notes for the previous one are done. The notes include only those aspects of the source that I can use in the chapter I'm working on. If I plan to use the same source for a different chapter or another project, then I return to it later and make a new set of notes. In the left (narrower) column of a notepad for the Cornell style notes, I put keywords that refer to the subsections of the chapter or some specific points to which the source is related; in the right (wider) column, some specifics on the connections of the source to my project; and in the bottom section, a summary of the implications that the source has for my work.
  
Another tool that has helped me in improving my continuous productivity came from the Pomodoro technique. The idea behind that technique is somewhat similar to Boice's suggestion to write in short intervals of 20-30 minutes, but I found that the Pomodoro technique is easier for me to implement, probably, because it doesn't focuses exclusively on writing, but covers various types of tasks, such as reading, note taking, correspondence, etc. Each pomodoro is 25 minutes of uninterrupted work; then, there is a short 2-5 minute break before the next pomodoro, and a longer one ~15-30 minutes after the 4-th one. I use both a mechanical Pomodoro, which is basically a regular kitchen timer, and Android Pomodoro app; each of them works best for different types of activities.

When the Pomodoro rings, I am "not allowed" to keep working for another minute or two to finish what I've been doing and have to use the time of the break to "disconnect" from my work and to do something good for my health (e.g., some stretches). All completed pomodoros need to be recorded, and the records need to be analyzed to estimate how much time each type of tasks requires. Using the Pomodoro Techniques for reading and note taking allows me (1) to better spread my energy over time and, as a result, accomplish more by taking frequent breaks and (2) to get a sense of accomplishing something meaningful, which is often missing when I'm amidst of extensive reading and note taking.

The Pomodoro technique also gave me a good idea on how to plan my daily activities and ensure ongoing progress. The Pomodoro technique book suggests keeping two lists: "To Do Today" and "Activity Inventory." I use the latter in two different forms: (1) a list of ideas and possible revisions for the chapter and (2) a list of all my weekly activities, which I create at the end of each week and then divide into seven parts for each day of the week. As recommended in the Pomodoro book, I keep adding unplanned and urgent activities to my weekly list and then reassign them to specific days. At the end of the day, I cross out completed tasks and make notes on the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the strategies I used in accomplishing them, to be able to better plan for similar tasks in the future. Although at this point I don't make any estimates of how many pomodoros each task would require, I plan to advance to that in the future. Currently, I only identify the tasks that I need to do, decide on how many pomodoros I have in a given day, and do my best to accomplish what I've planned. If something is left unfinished (or even unstarted), I make notes in my daily to-do list and assign the task to another day. This approach keeps me focused on what needs to be done and allows me to find additional time for work by squeezing a pomodoro in between already preplanned activities.

What strategies and productivity tools do you use to ensure smooth and continuous progress in your work? What did and did not work for you?

Sharpening my focus (Part II)

I ended my last post with two questions, which, in my view, are currently understudied and to which I'd like to contribute. Those questions are

1. How do multiple cultural identities and role identities intersect and interact?
2. What (if anything) can be learned about that interplay of identities from individuals' accounts of relational history and self-reports of behavior?

Later it occurred to me that interviews, which I plan to have with women about the cultural expectations and standards attached to the roles of mother, wife, daughter, and sister and about their own ways of performing those roles, can be approached as identity verification discourses. That approach justifies the use of individual interviews and adequately positions my project within the body of the existing literature, but also obscures its connection to the listed above questions.

Reading McCall and Simmons's (1966) Identities and Interactions helped me to clarify those connections. McCall and Simmons insist that each role-identity of each individual has two aspects: the conventional and the idiosyncratic. They distinguish between what they call "social roles," which are the set of expectations associated with occupancy of a given social position, and "interactive roles," which are not specified by the culture but are "improvised to deal in some variable fashion with the broad demands of one's social position and one's character" (p. 67). According to McCall and Simmons, these "interactive roles" are rather idealized and imaginative views of individuals as they like to think of themselves being and acting as occupants of certain positions. The reactions of other people, some of whom are specific known persons, are an integral part of these imaginative performances. As a result, a given role-identity continuously changes as persons and institutional contexts (e.g., a particular company office) come in and out of one's life. Many of individuals' best performances take place in fantasy and imagination, but they are not simple musings; they are also rehearsals and plausible ways of action. Similar to Burke and Stets (whom I discussed in my previous post), McCall and Simmons stress the importance of identity verification, but they use a different word (namely, "legitimation") to describe that process. They argue that "as a creature of ideals, man's main concern is to maintain a tentative hold on these idealized conceptions of himself, to legitimate his role-identities" (p. 71), which is done through role-performances that solicit role-support from the audience.

How all this helps me. First, since my main concern is not so much with the factual accuracy of interviewees' self-reports, but with learning about their "interactive roles," which can be accessed better through individual interviews, than through participant observation or any other method. I tried to touch upon some of the issues surrounding that point in my second question: What (if anything) can be learned about that interplay of identities from individuals' accounts of relational history and from individuals' self-reports of behavior? Then, what needs further clarification is the connection between "interactive roles" and the "interplay of identities." What precisely do I mean by the latter? As McCall and Simmons explain, role-identities of an individual are not completely distinct from each other, "but are woven into a complex pattern of identities" (p. 76), and "they can be separated only analytically" (p.130). I argue that this "complex pattern of identities" is not limited solely to role-identities, but also includes personal identities, which come into play as a result of the idiosyncratic aspect identities of role-identities, and social identities, which come into play as a result of the conventional aspect of role-identities.

Since, according to Tajfel and Turner (1979), the size of a group doesn't affect functioning of social identities, belonging to a family or to a nation can be equally viewed as social identities, which shape other identities of an individual. For, as discussed in my previous post, any social identity both depicts and prescribes one's attributes as a member of that group, and, even more importantly, when a group identity gets activated, perceptions and conduct of an individual become in-group stereotypical. “Belonging to a family” is also part of "relational history" mentioned in my second question, which, in turn, is connected to McCall and Simmons's claim that one's "interactive roles" change as people come in and out of his/her life. Moreover, McCall and Simmons talk about the life history of an individual as “a reflexive sequence of interactions in which any given interaction is influenced by the sum of past interactions and in turn influence the sum of future interactions" (p. 203). The notion of life history, which is larger than “relational history,” reminded me of Hormuth’s (1990) approach to the self as a part of the ecological system that consists of people, things, and environments which “provide, mediate, and perpetuate social experience” (p. 2). I thought about all the interconnections involved in identity processes and decided to replace the phrase “relational history” with “interactional history.”

After all this reading and pondering, I gradually came to drop my first question and revise the second one. Now I have one question that describes “intellectual goals” of my dissertation project. According to Maxwell (2005), “intellectual goals” are different from personal or practical, and they focus on understanding something and/or answering some question that hasn’t been adequately addressed by previous research. My new question still needs additional tinkering, but here it is in its current form:

·         What can be learned about the interplay of multiple identities of an individual from her self-reports of behavior and accounts of interactional history?

What are some of your intellectual goals? How did you work to clarify them

References:

• Burke, P. J., & Stets, J. E. (2009). Identity theory. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
• Hormuth, S. E. (1990). The ecology of the self: Relocation and self-concept change. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
• Maxwell, J. A. (2005). Qualitative research design: An interactive approach (2^nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• McCall, G. J., & Simmons, J. L. (1966). Identities and interactions. New York, NY: Free Press.
•  Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33-47). Monterey, CA: Brooks-Cole.