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?
No comments:
Post a Comment