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

S1 E4: Using Design Elements and Feedback in Your Course

• Stearns Center • Season 1 • Episode 4

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Dr. Crystal Anderson returns to discuss the practical aspects of course design, transparency, and productively using feedback in our course.  This relates to our overall intentionality about how we approach teaching to support all students’ learning.  We also talk about how to approach teaching if you are handed a pre-made syllabus. 

For more information about student evaluations: 

  • El-Alayli, A., Hansen-Brown, A. A., & Ceynar, M. (2018). Dancing backwards in high heels: Female professors experience more work demands and special favor requests, particularly from academically entitled students. Sex roles, 79, 136-150. 
  • Boring, A., & Ottoboni, K. (2016). Student evaluations of teaching (mostly) do not measure teaching effectiveness. ScienceOpen research. 
  • Kreitzer, R. J., & Sweet-Cushman, J. (2021). Evaluating student evaluations of teaching: A review of measurement and equity bias in SETs and recommendations for ethical reform. Journal of Academic Ethics, 1-12. 

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Rachel:

Hello, and welcome to the Keystone Concepts in Higher Education podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Yoho. I'm joined again today by Dr. Crystal Anderson from the Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning at George Mason University. As we get started today, Crystal, I'd like to talk a little bit about course design in teaching. This seems like a little bit of a buzzword right now. So to get us started, can you tell us what course design looks like?

Crystal:

So course design really isn't a new thing, even though we're all about course design these days. I think at the heart of course design is the idea of intentionality. You know, we have this vision of what a professor looks like in a classroom and we have been fed images of really charismatic speakers engaging their students. But in the real world, a lot of what's successful in a classroom is planned beforehand. So, all course design is, is the ability to be intentional about the decisions you make, about what activities happens in a classroom, how the overall structure of a class goes, what students are doing and why they're doing it, how you're going to evaluate that, and how that ultimately should contribute to what students know they're able to do at the end of a course.

Rachel:

That's such a great point. And we've seen this a lot lately. Over the last maybe 10 years, I'd say there's been some social media things about, what professors look like as well as other fields and disciplines, of course. I think there was a book recently, with images of what a professor looks like, kind of challenging those stereotypes. And so when you're talking about intentionality, what does that look like in practice? If I'm going in a day to day and I'm not just going to be the most charismatic person talking to my students on a stage, what does that look like on, say, my Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule?

Crystal:

Right. So before you get to Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you want to know how that particular Monday, Wednesday, Friday factors into the rest of your Monday, Wednesday, Fridays, right? So you want students to be able to trace how this current class connects to the previous class and then how it's going to feed into the next class. So that's kind of the macro view of it. From the micro view of it, you want to go into each of your class sessions knowing what you're going to do and what kind of learning goal you're going to achieve. And so you've already had students do readings, but you want to connect those readings that theoretically they've done before class to some type of activity in class. Maybe they are implementing a theory. Maybe they are working problems based on a formula you just taught them. You want to give them the opportunity to practice. And it's really great to have them practice while you're there so that you can answer those questions that will come up as they're doing that. And then you want to give them something to do outside of that class that connects them to the next class, say, your Wednesday class. So this is what we mean by intentionality. We really are breaking down that process of teaching into these really discrete bits and making sure that they all have a purpose.

Rachel:

So it can also make us feel a little bit better. We don't have to always be the greatest speaker. We don't have to be the greatest performer, if you will. And so when we're talking about this, I feel like we're seeing a few elements here. You know, one, we're seeing the active learning piece. We're seeing a little bit of not just talking at the students again, as we were kind of talking about in our last episode, not just talking at them, but we're engaging them through different types of activities in the class and planning those ahead, not thinking about it on the fly of"what could I do here?" And so we're also seeing a little bit of that element of transparent design or like we were talking about backwards design. And so what I think I'm hearing from this conversation is really two levels of that backwards design. We have the course as a whole, how do all these pieces fit in, but even with an individual course session, the way it's connecting, with the, class before and the class after, but even within that, how those pieces are fitting together. Is that correct?

Crystal:

That is correct.

Rachel:

And so as we're thinking about this, for instance, if you're a busy adjunct faculty member, and particularly if you're handed a syllabus to teach and you're given a syllabus that exists already and say,"Go teach this class this semester," what does course design in that context look like in practice?

Crystal:

That is a really great question because we know that's a really common occurrence, particularly for our adjunct faculty. I like to look at course design as kind of organization. I like watching organization videos on YouTube. And one of the things that you always see is you're not bringing in anything new necessarily. You're organizing what you already have. So that's what happens when you're given a syllabus. And instead of kind of looking at that as being constrained, I look at it as having an opportunity to do some shaping to the course in a way that fits the way that I'm going to teach it. So one of the ways that we can reorganize is just to look at the existing student learning outcomes, the existing activities for the course, learning activities for the course, and then the existing assessments for the course, and make sure that those are connected or aligned with one another.

Rachel:

That's such a great point and I think we see this a lot, especially if we have a faculty member who's new at an institution. You know, I know I've been handed a syllabus and looked at it like,"Okay, I have some work to do here," but sometimes we can't change some of the learning goals. For instance, we can't change some of the activities. Maybe if it's a program that has, again, like we were talking about in our last episode, that secondary accreditation. And so I really like how you're talking about the opportunity to basically work within the bounds that we have. And so if I wanted to, for instance, invest maybe 15 to 30 minutes per week, what would you recommend that I prioritize in this type of situation?

Crystal:

Well, since you're given so much in this situation, I would spend those 15 to 30 minutes prioritizing, how can I inject more engagement into what I've already been given. If I am working with established content, I could just straight lecture that, but could I take a piece of my lecture and show a 5 or 10 minute video and then have students do a quick Think Pair Share. It gets me to the same place, but the difference is having students respond to some kind of multimedia gets them more engaged in the material. So focusing on ways that you can incorporate engagement into the material you've already been given.

Rachel:

That's a great point. So we're looking at the engagement piece, so it's almost like bringing your own personalization to the content, right? So we're looking at, we have an existing syllabus, maybe we even have some old slides that might almost feel like we're playing a party game if we're trying to present off of those, but really looking at how do we bring ourselves to that engagement. And so does this in practice, Crystal, would this look like different types of activities, different ways that we can say,"Okay, I really like when students do like Think Pair Share where they might have an opportunity to consider a question, then discuss it with a partner. And then maybe we have some group discussion," or does this look like something else?

Crystal:

You know, it can look like a variety of things, you know, Think Pair Share is our go to, but I like your example of when you're given material, especially if you have slides that may not be the most up to date, you can get students to help update those slides. In the previous episode, we talked about leveraging modalities and so you could take something as simple as a shared document, upload your PowerPoint into Microsoft Online or into Google Slides, and assign various slides to students and say,"Hey, based on the reading that we've done, take a look at your slide and see, is this information still valid? What do you now know that you could add to this to make this more comprehensive or up to date?" And it gives students an opportunity to participate in their own learning, and it's a very little initial input of time and effort from you.

Rachel:

And it's also a great higher order thinking for students. I mean, we're really getting there at not only how do we take in the information, but students really thinking critically through what they're putting out. What are the high points? What do they know that they need to know about the information and how do you convey that clearly? I really like that activity. So let's shift over a little bit. We've talked a lot about course design. We've talked about transparency. We've talked about how we step into different types of classes and situations. But we really wanted to also talk about using feedback in our course. And so one of the things that we see and we hear a lot about with feedback are student evaluations of teaching. And student evaluations of teaching can be deeply biased and really terribly problematic. And so when we say feedback, and when we're thinking about feedback in our course, what does or what can this mean in practice, Crystal?

Crystal:

Since you brought up student evaluations, we're talking about a couple of things. We're talking about the way in which students are experiencing your class, and then they take that opportunity to share their perceptions of that experience in your class. But we also tend to use feedback to talk about the ways in which we give feedback to students on the activities and assignments that they do as part of the learning process. So I'm going to take the first, and then I'm going to go to the second. One of the things that I really remember, as a full time faculty member, not liking about student evaluations is that it made me feel like I had absolutely no control over that. And we know how deeply problematic they are. So one of the great things that made me feel better about myself, but also gave me more insight than the student evaluation ever did, was to do an informal assessment or evaluation somewhere during the class. A lot of people like to do them at midterm. I like to do it like two or three weeks in because that gives you time to really see what's working and then gives you time to fix it during the course of your class. So there's uh, something called uh, KQS. You can put it on the slide, you can use a handout, and it's when you ask students to tell you something you should keep doing, something you should quit doing, and something you should start doing. And I do it for myself, but then I also give an opportunity for students to ask themselves those same questions: what they should keep doing, what they should quit doing, and what they should start doing. And then I tell them,"I'm going to take these, I'm going to go through, I'm going to find some patterns, and then we're going to have a conversation. There are going to be some things that I can't change about this course because they're in here for student learning and we know that they work. But there are some things that I might be able to tweak, or you're going to tell me some things that I hadn't even thought about." And it's really interesting when students do it for themselves, because students will actually be honest,"Yeah, I should probably start reading for this class."

Rachel:

I really like that. I like the KQS. I've seen this in some literature and I've done this myself with like a stop, start, continue framework. Pretty much exactly the same thing, but I think it's a great opportunity to engage the students. I like how you also mentioned it doesn't have to be at the halfway point. It could be, but looking at it at different points in the course could be useful. And so when we're talking about that, it seems like it's a great opportunity to engage the students a little bit differently in their learning. So not only their, like you were mentioning, Crystal, their self awareness of their own role, their own participation in the course and their learning, but also it seems like a great opportunity to really be a little bit more transparent, like we were talking about before, about why are we doing these things, especially when there's things that the students bring up that perhaps we can't change about the course. And so do you see this as an element of transparency as well, or ways to engage the students?

Crystal:

Yes, I do. You know, students have absolutely no idea what we're doing as instructors in a course. So pulling back that curtain and, you know, it may take a little time, but they've really never seen it. So once you tell them,"Okay, we're doing this and this is the outcome, we're trying to get to. And so this is why we have to do this," students are completely unaware of these kinds of things. So it really is opening them up to a new world. And if you happen to have students in your class who are also going into teaching or training professions that really kind of blows their mind, because again, all you see is the finished product. You don't see any of this thinking that goes into producing a learning experience,

Rachel:

That's such a great point. I mean, a lot of, for instance, K 12 or a lot of even higher education is really kept behind that curtain or behind maybe a solid door of"What are we doing? Why are we doing this?" And I think more transparency can be useful not only in the classroom aspect of,"Okay, how does this help our learning in the context of this course?" but for a lot of areas,"How does this help prepare you to be a professional in your area?" This is practical stuff in a lot of ways for career preparation, but we don't see that conveyed as often. And so showing the value, not necessarily just to convince our students of the value, but really showing the relevance I think is something that's useful and a useful piece of that transparency here. And so when we're talking about this, we're talking a little bit about feedback for our students, feedback for us as the instructor, not only the summative or the end course evaluations, the student evaluations of teaching, but these are formative things for us as an instructor. But let's also talk a little bit about the formative feedback for our students. How does this really connect with aligning our course design overall?

Crystal:

Right, again, that's really the crux. That's where the learning happens. But it's also kind of the place where the time suck happens for us as instructors. And so we talk about feedback, and when I do workshops, I kind of make a distinction between feedback and grading because we tend to use them interchangeably. But I think feedback is important, apart from assessing a student's performance on a particular, assignment or activity that you've given them to do, and to get students to understand the difference between feedback and assessment or grading is really important. So let's take a look at feedback. We not only want to give students feedback, we want to teach them what to do with it once we give it to them. We just think,"Hey, they know. I tell them you can fix this by doing X, Y, and Z." And students are like,"I don't know what to do with this." So one of the things that I do in my courses is I have a little activity because you know all of my stuff is aligned. I have a little activity where part of what they're doing is telling me, in the kind of second iteration of the assignment,"Well, I gave you some feedback on the first iteration. Can you tell me how you're incorporating it in the second iteration, or if you're incorporating it at all? I mean, you don't have to, but let me know what your reasoning is behind that." So now students understand what those comments are there for when we spend so much time putting them and giving students that kind of guidance on an assignment, and so they then learn how to use feedback, and then they also become a little desensitized to the critical element that they may face when they receive feedback once they leave us, whether they're going on into higher education or if they're going out into the workforce.

Rachel:

That's really compelling, Crystal. We see how the feedback, the things that we spend our time as a faculty member to write all the feedback can be really useful. And I think that's a great way that we're seeing there, not only for feedback that we might be providing but even with peer feedback. How might you be incorporating that? Or why wasn't it useful? Because again, not every bit of feedback students will ever receive, particularly from colleagues, whether that's in a course or in the workplace or in any other context or setting, is going to be useful or actionable. I mean, I'm sure we've all gotten that kind of feedback on something where you're like,"Okay, well, what do I do with that?" But I think this is a great opportunity for students to really see the value there. And also, quite frankly, I think it's a great way, especially when they're reflecting on what they did with instructor feedback, to know that there was, in fact, instructor feedback there that they can be looking for. So I think this is a great way to really look at how we build and how we scaffold a bit. Again, that transparency of building from one maybe initial draft to a later draft and the development there and thinking critically about how they're incorporating, or not, any feedback that they have received. And so we've talked about a lot of different things here. We've talked about some check ins with students. We've talked about whether that's at the mid course point or earlier on. We've talked about the ways that we give feedback, the ways that we receive feedback as an instructor. And so for a faculty member who is perhaps new to this idea, maybe newer to teaching or not newer to teaching, where would you recommend that they start in thinking about these types of multiple aspects of feedback.

Crystal:

Right. That's a really great question. And also, I'm also mindful of the realities that there are only 24 hours in a day. And our instructors have other obligations and responsibilities. So I want to be mindful when I say things or give, you know, particular kinds of suggestions about giving feedback, that we also want to be mindful of the realities. I am a big fan of a rubric, and I know there's some anti rubric people out there, but I think I can convince them that at least using rubrics in some aspects of their course are really great for students, but they're also great for you. Now, we tend to be really familiar with the really big analytic: we've got criteria on one side, we've got levels of performance running across the top. That takes a lot of time to do. So that's not the rubric I'm suggesting here. If you only have a bit of time, what I'm suggesting is the checklist rubric which only gives you two options: yes, no, is it there, is it not there? And I really like using these rubrics early in assignments when I'm just looking to see evidence that students are getting the information that I've given them. Again, I think it's important to us as educational developers to give instructors permission to do things. And so here's the gift of permission. You don't have to grade all the things all the time. And so if you only have a few minutes, I would consider looking at some of the ways that you give feedback and see if you can transform that into a simple checklist. I think that it's the type of feedback that's really clear to students. And it also is not the time suck like an analytic rubric is, and it takes very little time to do. I also think rubrics are a really great check on us as instructors. Because we may, think that we're asking students to do something and we've given them the foundation for that, when in fact we really haven't. And so, I like a rubric because it's a great check on me. You know, when you're grading 30 assignments, if you're not using a rubric, the way you grade number one may not be the same way you grade number 25. So I like rubrics because they keep me in check, and they also are really transparent about the things that I'm looking for, for students.

Rachel:

That's such a great point, Crystal, and we see a few really compelling things there. The first one is when we're talking about inclusive teaching or supporting all students, this isn't meant to be at the expense of the faculty member. The faculty member or the instructor is an important part of that space, and to be inclusive, we need to include all of that, and really one of those key considerations and one of the things that we really want to focus on here in this podcast is how we include the instructor, how this is not done at the expense of the instructor. And so one of those really is looking at our own time management, how do we increase our efficiency while still doing the things and providing the learning experiences and opportunities? And so I think rubrics here are really great. And just like you were mentioning, it's a great way to prevent drift in grading. That's something I've noticed. I might go back if I'm grading, you know, 40, 50 assignments, go back and check number 10 and number 20 and number 30 and make sure I'm still on track. And the rubrics are a great way to do that. Whether they are like the sort of checkbox rubric that you're mentioning here, or even if we have other types of just major categories. These are great ways to increase our own efficiency. We're looking at how we are communicating to the students as well. And so when they have those rubrics in advance, how might we go about perhaps discussing a rubrics with students or our own approaches to grading or assessment with a rubric? When they see these in advance, they might be like,"Okay, I only have to do these things," but how do we frame that learning experience for them?

Crystal:

Right. So, you know, one of the best things we can always do for students is to model the very thing we're asking them to do. So I'll take the rubric, and I'm a little extra because I'll actually also do my own assignment. And so I'll take the assignment, and I'll take the rubric and I'll just go through it:"Here's an example of this criteria in the rubric. These are the types of things that I'm looking for. And you really need to have the rubric right beside you when you're doing this assignment." You could also give them a practice run, have them use the rubric and use it as a way of generating feedback, especially in a peer feedback situation before they have to do it, quote unquote, for real.

Rachel:

I especially like the peer activity because it gets them talking about not only about the activity, but about what another student is seeing or not seeing in the work. And I think that's a great way to engage again a little bit higher order thinking, a little bit more assessment, a little bit then opportunity for them to reflect on their own writing their own work later on as a result of that peer feedback. But also we see a little bit more transparency in our teaching, where not only are we aligning things, but I think this is a great way, even at the assignment or the activity level, to be transparent about what it is that we're looking for in an activity, what it is that we are wanting the students to not only get out of this, but demonstrate from that work. And so do you see that as, or how do you see that, as a way, as a tool for the instructor, but also a tool for the students, perhaps?

Crystal:

Yes, because here's the other thing we're teaching students, we're teaching them the ability to do this for themselves. It becomes a transferable skill that they take from our course to the next course, and then out into their lives in the real world to be able to take a set of criteria, because you'll be given this on a job, and translate that into your own workflow for your own personal project, that's a skill. And so if we frame this in the classroom in that way, it's not just about Dr. Anderson's assignment that I have to do. It becomes a skill that I can then use in other places.

Rachel:

And again, we're looking at how we show the students this, we're helping them build almost like project management skills. We're helping them build some of these other things that they'll be using. I mean, even higher ed's the real world, right? But also, you know, different types of workplaces or graduate school or professional school, whatever this might be, these are skills that they're building as well, so I think that's great. So as we wrap up for today, Crystal, can you tell us a little bit about how this conversation represents a keystone concept in teaching? We've talked about feedback from a few different angles. We've talked a little bit about overall course design and expanded a little bit on alignment. And so how does this conversation to you represent a keystone concept in teaching?

Crystal:

I think in this case, the keystone concept is intentionality. I tell people often, if I knew that this is what really teaching was about, I don't know if I would have signed up for this, because it's far more, again, we didn't have this transparency. It just seemed to, be a cool thing to do. But there really is this intentionality and making sure that we're not doing things from our perspective as an instructor just because we like this particular assignment, but is this particular assignment actually functioning in a way that enhances student learning? And that's for all aspects of our teaching. The creation of assignments, the scaffolding them in terms of how they unfold over a course, and even further into things like curriculum development, how individual courses factor into program outcomes.

Rachel:

Yeah, I agree with you. It seems like a lot of teaching, maybe in the past few decades, was really on that charisma, that stage presence and performing a great lecture. But now we're really looking at how are we designing? What are we doing? And it can be a little bit overwhelming. And that's why, you know, here, especially, we're looking at how do we break that into manageable pieces? How do we include the instructor in this, you know, things that aren't at the expense of the instructor, but work within those workflows as well? So I think that intentionality across all of these different areas is so valuable. So thank you so much, Dr. Anderson, for joining us. Thank you so much for your time in these two episodes. I appreciate it.

Crystal:

This has been really great. I love talking about these things because as you've said, teaching can seem overwhelming, but once you know that there are these small things that you can do that have a really great impact, it really does increase, I think, your love of teaching.

Rachel:

Absolutely. And so as we, as we wrap up for today, again, thank you for joining us, and please make sure to join us in our next episode as we continue our conversation about inclusive teaching that supports all students, but also the instructor, in this space. So thank you so much.