Keystone Concepts in Teaching: A Higher Education Podcast from the Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning

S1 E3: Fundamentals of Teaching for All Students

• Stearns Center • Season 1 • Episode 3

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We welcome Dr. Crystal Anderson for a conversation about what teaching looks like today, particularly coming off several years of pandemic teaching.  We also explore how we engage students across different modalities, whether face-to-face, hybrid, online, or others.

Stearns Center Teaching Online:  https://stearnscenter.gmu.edu/knowledge-center/online-teaching/

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Rachel:

Hello and welcome to the Keystone Concepts in Higher Education podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Yoho. In this episode, we're going to be discussing active learning and engaged teaching and what these mean for educators as we support all students. So today, I'm joined by Dr. Crystal Anderson, the Associate Director of Engaged Learning at the Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning at George Mason University. Crystal uses her expertise to design and assess educational programs and curricula, develop sustainable faculty development programs, and manage program and university level initiatives using evidence based practices. As a veteran educator with over 20 years of teaching experience, she employs high impact practices that utilize digital tools to foster inquiry based learning and develop practical skills that cultivate the potential of all students. She's affiliate faculty in African and African American studies at George Mason. As a scholar with an international reputation, she generates cutting edge traditional research as well as public scholarship in the fields of transnational American studies, black internationalism, and global ages. Her book, Soul in Seoul: African American Popular Music and K-pop in 2020, was recently published in Korean. Crystal received her MA in English from the University of Virginia and her PhD in American Studies from the College of William and Mary. So thank you so much for joining us today, Crystal.

Crystal:

Thanks, Rachel. I'm so glad to be here.

Rachel:

So to get us started in our conversation today, I want to talk a little bit about, you know, the pandemic. The pandemic changed a lot about teaching, and students today really seem to expect different learning environments and engage a little bit differently than before. So can you start our conversation off with telling us a little bit about what some of the elements of effective teaching can look like today?

Crystal:

Absolutely. You know, one of the first things I want to say is that these are not brand new things. These were things that we were doing before the pandemic. But one of the things that the pandemic unveiled is that we needed to deploy these strategies in different kinds of ways. We know that the pandemic was unprecedented in higher education and also other areas of education as well. Students, no matter where they were in their educational journey, had a two year interruption in which they were placed in emergency remote learning. That had an impact on the way that they viewed their education and is continuing to have an impact today. So some of the elements of effective teaching that we know particularly have an impact in a quote unquote post pandemic world, the first has to do with engagement. During the pandemic, students, even though they tend to spend a lot of time online, we were asking students to spend their time online in an educational setting. And so they began to be comfortable with using various modes of technology for education. They became comfortable with different modes of information sharing and transmission. They also became really comfortable with being able to access not just their instructors, but also the content for classes in an online kind of way. So one of the great shifts that the pandemic gave us was being able to continue to leverage the benefits of different learning environments.

Rachel:

Yeah, that's such a great point, and thank you for sharing that. I mean, obviously, such a difficult time within society, within education, in so many different areas, but we see this as maybe a little bit of a potential for learning now. So can you tell us a little bit more about the shift from these lecture based classes to these instructional practices today? For instance, I really like how you mentioned the shift from online to an online educational setting.

Crystal:

Absolutely. So we know that lecture is like the bedrock of the kinds of education we probably experienced, and it was the kind of education that a lot of students were experiencing pre pandemic. And I feel like it's important to state that no one's trying to kill the lecture off. There are definitely ways that we can deploy it more strategically now that we're in a post pandemic environment. Lectures are really great for giving students information because they need information. It's really concise. They know what to expect from it. But one of the things that we can do in terms of our lectures, and one of the things that we learned as a result of the pandemic, is that attention spans are getting reduced, and so we want to interject our lectures with opportunities for students to reflect, for students to maybe to apply some of the information we just gave them in a lecture. Or even just an opportunity for them to ask questions. And these are things that people can do fairly easily. It's a low bar to just be able to pause every, you know, 10 to 12 minutes during a lecture to give that space to students.

Rachel:

Yeah, it seems like a really interesting and really engaging method to having lecture be a little bit less,"Tell me everything I need to know and I'll sit here and absorb it," to a little bit more of a,"We're going to talk, we're going to discuss the material, but we're also going to interact a little bit." And so I can see really how this is fitting together in an in person, or maybe even on Zoom, or some sort of synchronous activity. But the in person lecture, we can see that. We can have maybe some interactions and polls and those kinds of things. But how do we, or maybe how should we, consider different types of modalities in our teaching? Maybe if we're not just in person or just all in the same place at the same time.

Crystal:

Yes, so the post pandemic environment has given us the opportunity to discern that there are different learning environments. Pre pandemic, we were largely all teaching in the classroom, and that's how we would conduct our classes. But now, post pandemic, we can now leverage the benefits of different learning environments. So for instance, if you are teaching in an in person classroom, you can leverage the benefits of your LMS to house your course materials, assignments, discussion boards. I know at our institution, you can also kind of use some of the special tools that we have. We have a couple of apps in our LMS, like Harmonize and VoiceThread, that really gets students more engaged in learning from each other, so that peer to peer student engagement, and so even though your primary mode of conducting your classes face to face, you can definitely use the benefits of your LMS to complement what you do in the classroom.

Rachel:

Yeah, that's a great point. So we can see how we can bring in the online space as a resource for our in person classes. But what about if we're looking at teaching a hybrid course or a fully asynchronous online course? Do you have any thoughts on the engagement piece across those types of modalities?

Crystal:

I do. I think that it's a really great mindset to have, that student engagement is key to any student in an educational experience. And so even if we're teaching synchronous Zoom based classes or asynchronous online classes, we still have to be cognizant of the fact that we need to have students engage. And probably the most challenging of those is the asynchronous online class. Even though you may not be there in person or virtually to engage with your students, you can create opportunities for them to engage with you, for them to engage with each other, and for them to really engage with the material that you're sharing in class.

Rachel:

Yeah, that's a great point, especially with the online asynchronous. I know a lot of people tend to view that as very passive, no matter what. That it's just going to be passive learning, I'm going to record some videos, put it up there. And for me, I've taught a lot of online asynchronous courses, and they tend to be very engaging if you try to make them. And so one of the ways would be something like discussion boards, where students get to interact with each other, where they maybe are expected or graded in some sort of discussion board posts and replies. Are there other things that you might be recommending maybe for a new faculty member or someone who hasn't taught in that sort of modality?

Crystal:

Sure, you know, some of those things like discussion boards, if you've been doing them for a while, you can kind of slap that together pretty easily. But if you're new to teaching, that might be daunting. So one of the things that I like to use is the good old shared document, something like Microsoft Word, or if you're not using the Microsoft Suite, you can use something like Google Docs. And I find this to be really effective. One, because students are fairly familiar with being able to work in this kind of collaborative way, even if it's asynchronous. These tools allow students to all see what they're working on. It gives students the opportunity to ask questions or make changes and then be in dialogue with each other. We know that students tend to learn a lot from each other, even though we think they learn the most from us. So giving them a really low barrier tool to be able to get that kind of asynchronous collaboration going is really great even for new faculty.

Rachel:

Yeah, that's a great activity that can get into that space of peer to peer learning, even if they're not in those same physical spaces. I think that's great. And so overall, it seems like a lot of what we're doing here in this conversation is talking a little bit about how we're, we're really packaging content. So we, we might be thinking about the packaging in terms of the modality, like we've just been talking about, but how do we think about the, maybe the packaging in terms of like the before, the during, and the after class? Even if we have a standard sort of lecture room where we're all meeting.

Crystal:

Right. So one of the things again that we learned from the pandemic is that intentionality on our part is really key for enhancing student learning. So we tend to think of teaching as happening in the classroom, but a lot of what makes what happens in the classroom successful is your intentional planning outside of the classroom and once again using those different and learning environments, whether that's in the LMS asynchronously, whether it's using some kind of synchronous instruction, or whether you're in person in a classroom using those and deploying those in ways that help your instruction. So, for example, you can have your lecture in class, but you can utilize the LMS to get students kind of primed for the kind of brief discussion you might want to have as you pause for your 10, every 10 to 12 minutes, have them have some discussion questions and set up the expectation that you will be using those questions to guide discussion when you're in the face to face classroom. The other thing that I think is important is this may not work the first time you do it. The other thing that you want to do is to repeat this, have a schedule or a expectation that students know, okay, if we're going to have lecture in class, there are going to be some discussion questions in the LMS that I want to take a look at. And slowly but surely, students will fall into that routine.

Rachel:

So here we're really talking about basically creating a pattern in our teaching, having a predictability, but predictability to make it engaging and for students to be able to follow along a little bit, right?

Crystal:

Yes, absolutely. And it's important to note that students crave that kind of context and structure in a classroom and they benefit from it. This is one of the ways in which it enhances their learning. So the more structure we can provide to students, the greater chance we have of having that learning that we want to take place actually take place.

Rachel:

Yeah, that's a great point. And so when we're talking about this, you know, with the packaging and the structure and the patterns, one of the things that you mentioned was setting up the expectation. So setting up the expectation around what would be happening, where things would be, but also how do we, or how would you recommend maybe to a new instructor or someone considering this type of packaging or modality approach for the first time, how would you recommend that they orient the students to where things are, what's going on? What would this look like maybe in practice at the beginning of the semester?

Crystal:

Sure, I often tell new faculty, especially, that first day of class sets the expectation for the rest of the semester. And whereas sometimes we are used to the first day being syllabus day, and you definitely want to cover some high points of the syllabus, I like to use that first day to show students where these learning environments are and how to access them. So I will either take students into the LMS space and show them how our course is organized in the LMS space, or, once again, you can utilize that asynchronous space and record a video that gives them a tour of where information is in the space. That gives you more time in the face to face to be able to model how discussion might look in your class. I know some people are like,"What? Having discussion on the first day?" Yes, you can have discussion on the first day, because when you do it on the first day, students are more likely to start to understand,"Oh, this is how this is going to go. Okay." And they're much more likely to be on board with it.

Rachel:

Absolutely. We can even have activities on the first day. The more engagement, I think, the better. I mean, I've done a number of engaging activities with my students on the first day to show that this is not going to be one of those courses where I'm just going to talk at them and we're really going to engage with the material. We're really going to do, do the things while we learn about the content. And so let's, let's shift over a little bit. You know, we've talked about our modalities, we've talked a little bit about packaging, but one of the things that we might hear about is considering the alignment in our teaching. So can you tell us, Crystal, more about what does this mean?

Crystal:

Sure, so alignment is simply us being intentional, but being intentional in a certain kind of way when it comes to course design. I'm going to tell you, I taught for quite some time before I encountered the idea of alignment, and it completely changed my life and the way that I approach teaching because it was just so simple and elegant in the way that it was presented to me. Alignment means that we want to take our student learning outcomes, those things we want students to know or be able to do by the end of the course, and make sure that they are connected or aligned to the activities that we have for students. This can be homework. This can be where students learn and practice the things that they are learning in the course. And then we want those to be connected or aligned to those opportunities where we evaluate student performance. Usually these are higher stakes things like exams, they can be research papers, they can be group projects at the end of a course. So that we're making sure we're giving students an opportunity to practice before we're evaluating them in a way that results in a grade.

Rachel:

That's a great point, and it sounds a lot like backwards design. And so we, we might hear that in different spaces of basically working backwards from those learning outcomes and through, just like what you were just talking about, Crystal, with the activities and the readings and lectures and, and seeing how all of those align. And so when we're talking about this, the alignment in our teaching, how do we do that around managing, for instance, student expectations. You know, students are very often grade focused. And so looking at formative assignments, for example, might be seen as like a waste of time. So how are we, managing some of the expectations around that type of procedural building towards the learning outcomes?

Crystal:

You know, Rachel, when we were coming through school, a lot of this was hidden. We were just told,"Do this assignment, get this grade." But we have found that the more transparent we are in why we're asking students to do a particular thing, the more receptive students are to that. So instead of viewing those formative assignments as busy work, when we explain to them that this is the opportunity for them to make mistakes without being penalized for them, this is the opportunity for them to express their curiosity and kind of go outside the box, when we tell them the reasons why these things exist in our courses and how they relate to other things in our courses, we increase the opportunity for them to be more motivated to be able to do those things.

Rachel:

Absolutely. And so really here what we're looking at is a bit of alignment and showing that alignment to our students, being a little bit more transparent about what we're doing and why we're doing it and how it maybe helps their career preparation or maybe helps them to just successfully complete the course if the course is not maybe specifically aligned with their career trajectory at the moment. And so, you were talking earlier about how alignment was really transformational for you. I really agree. I think it is for a lot of instructors. And it seems to represent a shift from We're covering content to We're teaching to help students meet learning outcomes, and the content supports that. And we see a lot of that shift, or a lot of that focus, from, I'm going to cover 14 chapters of this textbook, or something like that, an approach like that, into, I'm going to help students do these things, and be these things, and meet these outcomes, by the end of the semester, or over the course of the semester. And so when we're thinking about that shift, or maybe making our first steps in that sort of shift, how do you recommend instructors go about looking at the course alignment logistically? Like, where would I start?

Crystal:

Right, so one of the things that I like to do with faculty is to give them permission. It is okay if you do not cover all 14 chapters of the book. I think that they need to hear that because they never hear it anywhere else. Because the fact of the matter is we know that after a certain point, students stop learning. They reach that cognitive load, and then no more learning takes place. So if we know that happens, then why would we want to waste our time adding more content when it's not getting us anything in terms of a return? So one of the things that I like to give faculty is the permission to take a step back and kind of ease up off of that, I have to cover all the things. I think also logistically, and this is something we should be able to do as content experts, take a look at our content and decide what's the most important. If we know students aren't going to get everything, we should make sure they get the most important things. And then once we narrow that down, we can start talking about how we can structure our courses so that we deploy that most important content in ways that also allow us to have students actually engage with that content.

Rachel:

That's a great point. And so when we're thinking about what they engage with, I think one of the places where we see a lot of concern with perhaps not covering all 14 chapters or something like that are in the fields that have some sort of secondary accreditation or often maybe in the STEM fields where students are preparing for medical school, graduate school, different types of entrance exams. And so a lot of times there, or for instance, with those fields with secondary accreditation, how might we go about thinking about the learning outcomes versus the content? Are we looking at really cutting content? Are we looking at how we help the students meet the learning goals that our accreditors or the secondary accreditation body, the professional societies provide? Or what are your thoughts on that sort of balance?

Crystal:

I really like that question, and I think that a really great way to look at that is once again to draw on the expertise that we have as instructors. We are ostensibly working in the very field or in the fields that are related to where these students want to take themselves after they leave our classrooms. And so when we say,"Hey, I don't know all the things either, but here's how I functionally use this knowledge in my day to day," or"This is how someone in the field uses this knowledge," they don't know all the things either, which is why it's more important for you to understand what the skills are and how to get that knowledge and less important about how much stuff you can actually retain in your head.

Rachel:

Exactly. In so many fields, we're looking at less of a memorization, but knowing what we know and what we don't know, and then where to find that information that we don't know. And so here in this in this episode, we've covered some really great content. We've talked a little bit about alignment. We've talked a little bit about the shift, particularly coming from the pandemic in modalities and how we package course content or how we look at even lecture. And so as we're thinking about all of these different, really useful things that you've shared, Crystal, and as we wrap up for today, can you just tell us very briefly, how does this conversation represent a keystone concept in teaching to you?

Crystal:

I think the keystone concept it represents is engagement. We've talked about that shift from content to student engagement. This looks really different in different fields. It's really ripe for being innovative and on the part of faculty. Students are really going to benefit from being involved in their own learning, whether that's in communication or discourse with you as the instructor, or the way that they can, as I like to call it, get their hands into the content. This is really something that we know is beneficial to students. And this knowledge, again, is not new, but it definitely has a greater impact in a post pandemic world.

Rachel:

That's great. Thank you so much for joining us today, Crystal, I look forward to continuing our conversation in the future.

Crystal:

Thank you so much, and I really enjoyed talking about these topics with you.

Rachel:

Be sure to catch our next episode where we dig a little bit more into some aspects of our design. We'll talk a little bit about course design overall and using feedback effectively.