Ask Professor Pedagogy is a twice monthly advice column written by Center for Teaching staff. One aspect of our mission is to cultivate dialogue about teaching and learning, so we welcome questions and concerns that arise in the classroom; particularly those from Vanderbilt faculty, students, and staff. If you have a question that you’d like Professor P to address, please send it to us.

Dear Professor Pedagogy,

Over the course of my teaching experience, I have noticed that my students come to class awake, energetic, and enthusiastic.  Having just rushed across campus from their dorms chatting about the news of the day, they are invigorated.  At the beginning of class, students have a lot of attention for the content and are interested in chatting with one another.  However, by the end of class, they are drowsy and lackadaisical; having just sat through ninety minutes of lecture and short question-answer periods, their energy and attention is zapped, and their interest in interacting with one another is surpassed by an intense desire to nap.

Next semester, I want to change that predictable rhythm of class.  I have the good fortune expecting to have a small class size and a classroom with movable chairs and tables.  I am very interested in making the learning environment feel more energized, collaborative, and open to a wide variety of experiences, whether they be through technology, peer-interaction, or emergent forms of engagement I have not yet considered.  Do you have any suggestions regarding learning spaces that might transcend the traditional “school house” model of sitting at desks, facing a teacher at the chalkboard?  I would appreciate ways of embracing and sustaining the intellectual and physical energy with which my students come to class.

Sincerely,

Learning Spaces

Dear Learning Spaces,

Thank you for your question.  Your interest in creating engaging learning spaces is a particularly timely one, especially because many classrooms are “going virtual” or instructors are designing completely new learning environments to meet the changing expectations of their students.  However, I think your question gets at an even bigger idea of situating the classroom within the lives of students, rather than expecting students to situate their lives within the oftentimes inauthentic context of the classroom (Nespor, 1997).  You want to make your instruction as invigorating and relevant as the world beyond the four walls of the classroom.

First, I suggest articulating to yourself the desired outcomes you have in mind when thinking about designing an engaging and effective learning space.  Here are a few possible objectives you might be thinking about:

• Community: I want to support more peer-to-peer learning and interaction through engaging discussions.  I want to create a strong community of learning where students feel accountable for learning and synthesizing the content in creative ways.
• Movement: I want my students to be at ease moving around the classroom, but have good reason to do so.
• Modalities: I want to incorporate many different modalities of teaching and learning; I want to engage all of my students’ senses (e.g., hearing, seeing, feeling, talking).
• Relevancy: I want my own pedagogical practices and environments to seem relevant and similar to other (informal) learning environments (e.g., playing video games, messaging on Facebook) in which my students flourish.  I want to leverage new media and technology to communicate disciplinary content to my students.

After you have identified your teaching and learning objectives, think about how making modifications to the classroom space can support achieving these objectives.  Below, are some ideas to get you started in making your classroom a vibrant and engaging place for teaching and learning.

• Community: Get rid of the traditional classroom formation of desks in rows.  Move desks into groups of four to five seats so that groups will naturally form at the beginning of each class time.  This will naturally facilitate conversations between your students and change the dynamic of you being the “transmitter of knowledge.”  If the same people always sit together, make a new seating chart and have it projected at the beginning of class.  That way, as students come in, they will locate their new seat and take it without losing any instructional time.  Even though you now have your students facing each other, it’s important to remember that everyone needs to be able to easily see and otherwise access any visual or material resources you’ve located around the room.  In other words, avoid having people’s backs to the screen if you’re projecting a presentation, or making tight spaces that require students to squeeze in and out of if they need to move for some reason.
• Movement: Design instructional activities that require your students to leave their seats.  This will keep your students’ minds and bodies engaged and alert.  Put images related to the content that you are teaching that day around the room, and have them do a “museum walk.”  As they circulate around the room, they can make notes about the images they see, and then discuss these observations after a set amount of time.  If there are locations or artifacts around campus that somehow relate to the content you are teaching, give your students twenty minutes or so to go find those artifacts, then return to class and have a set of related questions to discuss.
• Modalities:  Let’s face it, a lecture delivered via Powerpoint doesn’t usually do much to entice the senses.  Some instructors are much better at incorporating evocative audio and video clips and images.  But these presentations still rely only on hearing and seeing, and ignore the many other modalities of communication.  Worse yet, most instructors feel compelled to read bullet points directly from a slide while students disengage from extreme boredom.   But think about – did you not learn the most from either talking, writing about, or experiencing a topic yourself?  Think about ways to stop talking.  Make your students do the talking, the writing, the experiencing.  Design a learning space that has your students making and presenting original work or research.  Make it convenient for students to plug in their own laptops to project work they are doing for the entire class.  Allow room for creativity in graded assignments so that music, art, or even food, are incorporated and assessed.  Create a space that supports peer assessment and feedback.
• Relevancy: By now you’ve recognized that your students learn in all kinds of settings and activities.  For example, they are watching YouTube, they are writing blogs, they “Tweet,” they listen to music, and they “fly around” to any location on the planet using Google Earth.  (It’s always a good idea to take the time to ask your students what they like to do outside of class.  Doing so will strengthen your relationship with your students, and make your instruction appropriately relevant).  To make your instruction relevant to their lives means leveraging new media and technology (e.g., Flickr, Google Maps, wikis).  This could entail designing a learning space outside the classroom that exists online, but actually increases interactivity between your students.  Creating a classroom space online, in addition to the one you have carefully designed inside, can serve many purposes:  your students have yet another venue to share thoughts and interact, different modalities of communicating are opened, and you have more ways of assessing what your students know.

I hope these suggestions work for you, and of course, tailor these to your own content area.  I also suggest referencing these handy resources to keep you thinking about effectively designed learning spaces.

http://facilitiesplanning.cofc.edu/learningspacestaskforce/lstf%20lit%20documents/oblinger.pdf

http://www.thethirdteacher.com/

Nespor, J. (1997). Tangled Up in School: Politics, Space, Bodies, and Signs in the Education Process. Mawah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Thanks,

Professor P.

Many of us have memories of foreign language classes with seemingly never-ending repetitions of semi-useful phrases. I remember learning German for years, only to be surprised by my lack of fluency when I traveled to Austria. The repetition of banal phrases in my German classes didn’t prepare me for the on-the-spot communication required in everyday interactions with native speakers. I became fluent only after spontaneous practice. Thankfully, language classes can use technology to help students practice in much more useful ways than in my day.

As a part of the Celebration of Teaching event hosted by the Center for Teaching, Todd Hughes and Steven Wentz presented exciting advances in foreign language education on a panel titled “Innovative Uses of Web 2.0 Technologies in Foreign Language Teaching.” The two panelists from the Center for Second Language Studies introduced audience members to two forms of technology they used in the classroom: Google Earth and wikis. They use these tools to facilitate learning in the classroom, and even better, their use of this technology is bolstered by theory.

Hughes and Wentz use a framework of social pedagogies from Randy Bass and Heidi Elmendorf to justify the uses of technology in the classroom (for more information, read their white paper ). The framework includes a series of questions about the intended uses of technology in the classroom:

• What are the articulated learning outcomes?
• What do they look like?
• Are students informed of the outcomes?
• Are the outcomes tangible?
• If students create an artifact, who is the intended audience?
• What media do students use to create the artifact?

These questions emphasized the point that technology should not be incorporated in classroom activities just because it’s something different or new. Further, Hughes and Wentz discussed linking relationships between learning processes, adaptive processes, learning environments, and intellectual communities. They encouraged us to examine how these relationships connect to larger contexts for knowledge and action. The overarching goal of their framework is to transfer knowledge to a larger community. Hughes and Wentz argued that this is what foreign language education should do. So how does knowledge transfer look in their examples of Google Earth and wikis?

Wentz presented audience members with multiple ways to improve foreign language education with Google Earth (GE) that aligned with the framework of social pedagogies. First, he discussed the advantages of GE compared to conventional paper maps. Wentz discussed the constant updates to GE and the multiple layers that can be added with a mouse click. With GE, students in foreign language courses could discuss the current weather in cities or zoom in further to give directions to a classmate. Students can also view photos, videos, and virtual paths with spoken directions that others have uploaded. Additionally, the utilities are interdisciplinary, extending to the social sciences, humanities, and more. The interactive applications of GE not only increase the amount of spontaneous conversation compared to traditional methods of repetition, but also the information can be shared with other teachers and learners who wish to use GE in their classrooms. When done well, foreign language instruction with GE aligns with the social pedagogies framework.

Hughes discussed wikis, a different technology that foreign-language educators can use for any level of language ability. He introduced wikis as a student-created collaborative writing tool with the purpose of sharing information with classmates. Hughes presented two case studies of wikis in basic and more advanced courses. Students at basic levels of fluency used the wiki to improve reading and writing skills, as well as to prepare for roundtable discussions of four social themes (e.g., religion in France). More advanced students used their wiki to investigate sophisticated literary themes (e.g., art across novels about different time periods). Instructors could make the wikis as public or private as they wished. The links to the framework of social pedagogies became clear when Hughes (and audience members) discussed the strong degree to which students excel when their wiki project is available to one another as opposed to traditional, private term papers.

Google Earth and wikis offer exciting advances in foreign language (and interdisciplinary) education. The technology can align with a framework of social pedagogies, and its use isn’t merely to make the classroom more futuristic or “neat.” If my teachers had used (or even had access to) these technologies, it’s likely that my German skills would have been much better. Instead of embarrassing lags while I struggled to think spontaneously, I could have practiced this skill in the classroom. Hopefully, the next generation of language learners will benefit from these constantly advancing and interactive technologies.

When I attend an academic conference, I’m particularly active on Twitter, live-tweeting the conference by sharing observations, reflections, questions, and resources. A conference backchannel can provide a space for discussion and networking, share highlights from the conference with those not physically present, and serve as an archive for the event.

With the latter purpose in mind, I would like to share a collection of tweets from last week’s Celebration of Teaching. I had some help live-tweeting last Friday’s event from two graduate students affiliated with the Center for Teaching: SoTL Scholar Sarah Collier (@sarahpcollier) and Teaching Certificate graduate Bridgett Green (@bagreen1). Below you’ll find our tweets from several of the sessions and panels that ran throughout the day.

During the Celebration of Teaching on May 3, Jennifer Fay (Film Studies and English), James Fraser (HOD), and Larisa Grawe DeSantis (Earth and Environmental Sciences) discussed intriguing strategies to incorporate the essential topic of sustainability into the classroom in the contexts of cinematography, urban policy, and earth sciences. Joe Bandy, Assistant Director of the CFT, chaired the session titled “Teaching about Social and Environmental Problems: Lessons from the Cumberland Project” and opened with an introduction to the Cumberland Project, a discussion-based workshop for sustainability educators at Vanderbilt. (For more information, visit this web page.)  The panel was one of many innovative sessions that publicized unique and effective teaching strategies at Vanderbilt.

The first panelist, Jennifer Fay, examined sustainability through the lens of cinematography. She showed movie clips to illuminate the multiple contradictions of the perfectly controlled environments of the cinema with the harsh environments of the real world. Fay illustrated this point with a fascinating discussion about the movie Singing in the Rain. During a drought in Los Angeles, this film wasted thousands of gallons of drinkable water to provide the illusion of a man who was so exuberant that he could sing in a hostile downpour. Additionally, Fay suggested that filmmakers could limit unsustainable practices by filming in local settings as opposed to traveling great distances and wasting fossil fuels. For example, the film Inconvenient Truth, which was intended to raise awareness about global warming, had a massive carbon footprint. Finally, Fay used additional films to relate sustainability to social class. Other panelists reiterated this relationship.

Next, James Fraser discussed sustainability in the context of urban policy and community development. He said that he intentionally discussed everyday but actionable sustainability problems in his classes to avoid overwhelming the students with massive environmental disasters like oil spills. For example, he asked students about their experiences mowing lawns and related the discussion to ecological problems from unnecessary fossil fuel use and fertilizer runoff. Like Fay, Fraser linked sustainability to social class. To make sustainability issues tangible, he described taking students to Chestnut Hill, one of the poorest areas of Nashville. Through conversations with residents, Fraser and his students discovered that issues of sustainability were central to the lives of Chestnut Hill community members. Residents reported excessive heating and cooling bills for their often old and poorly insulated homes. Fraser teamed up with the mayor’s office to provide energy audits and repairs to residents’ homes. Although he and his students successfully addressed sustainability issues in a practical way, Fraser argued that such efforts were “Band-Aids” for the larger social and political problems that led to unsustainable communities. To address the larger forces that led to inequalities, he brought in social and political literature to the classroom.

Finally, Larisa Grawe DeSantis shared her experiences of not only teaching sustainability as it relates to the environment, but also of sustainable education in the classroom. Her work helped students form research questions, carry out analyses, and publish results in peer-reviewed journals. Grawe DeSantis and her students analyzed evidence from past climate fluctuations to better understand possible outcomes of climate change today. She discussed best practices in the classroom after four semesters of climate change investigations with her students. After varying the amount of faculty and student involvement in forming research questions and carrying out analyses, Grawe DeSantis recommended strong involvement from faculty as facilitators, active student contributions in forming the research questions, and solid buy-in from the department to share results with a wide audience.

The panel provided useful advice about incorporating sustainability into the classroom. Presenters convinced us that their strategies led to strong student engagement with the complex concept of sustainability. Further, the panelists encouraged discourse with larger audiences and critically examined who benefited from sustainability efforts. Overall, the session was successful in providing audience members with theoretically sound and practical strategies to incorporate sustainability into the classroom.

For more information about the Cumberland Project, visit this page.

Christin Essin
Assistant Professor of Theatre History

“First, I would like to thank Joe Bandy for asking me to say a few words; but more importantly, I need to thank him for first suggesting that I apply for the Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows program.  Last year, my first here in Nashville, I attended a few of the teaching observations that Joe organizes around campus.  These occasions first connected me to the impressive web of resources that the university provides its junior faculty as we launch our Vanderbilt careers.  I imagine this web a kind of safety net that gives us the courage to fly high, to swing through the air, to balance on various tightropes, or, dare to dream, to launch ourselves from cannons.  (I don’t mean literary canons here, but actual, metaphorical cannons.)

You can blame this circus metaphor on my field of study; I am a scholar of performance, and I teach theatre history and dramatic literature.  My JFTF colleague Jason Valentine, on the other hand, is a mechanical engineer; he would have likely chosen a different metaphor, something from his study of nanophotonics (that’s a real thing) or mega-tronics (that’s not a real thing, but its a little inside joke between us which I hope to one day understand).

But Jason and I, along with Jonathan, Alison, and Erin, were in the same teaching seminar, making time in our hectic semesters to think through broad pedagogical concepts and their application to our classrooms. Were it not for the JFTF program, Jason and I would almost certainly have never met, much less interacted as collaborative professionals.  And that would have been a shame because I gained a lot from contemplating his challenges teaching mechanical engineering and finding key connections to my own teaching objectives.  The JFTF is as energizing and edifying as it is useful to the always already unstable world of untenured faculty members, particularly as an open space for contemplation—for listening, learning, applying, and experimenting.  I might not have always understood the application of Jason’s discoveries, but as I listened to his process I rethought my own investments in assessment strategies and student outcomes, in my own classroom as a laboratory for embodied learning.

In the theatre, we talk a lot about ensembles and ensemble building.  Our work on the stage is inherently collaborative, and we rely on each other to change and evolve, to raise the quality of a performance beyond what we could achieve by ourselves.  William Shakespeare’s elegant verse would not have soared to such heights had he not crafted it for a company of professional actors with whom he had spent endless hours on London’s South Bank.  Joe, Derek, Nancy, Cynthia, and everyone at the Center for Teaching are not only a wonderfully effective and creative ensemble, but they also open spaces for ensemble building among the junior faculty through this program.  The JFTF gives us the reason and motivation to set aside time to think together… not just to think about, but to think with one another about our teaching goals at Vanderbilt.  The JFTF provides us with a model classroom to advance our own classroom experiences, to help us more effectively think with our students.

My passion for the theatre builds from this same desire to think with others, to experience a live event among an ensemble of spectators who enliven the artistry of performers through their collective response.  After the applause, we leave the theatre as individuals, and now that we’ve completed our fellows program, we return to our separate classrooms, but richer for the experience of having thought together.  On behalf of this year’s fellows, I would like to thank the Center for Teaching for this experience and Vanderbilt for providing such an excellent and instrumental resource to support our professional development.”

Christin Essin is an Assistant Professor of Theatre History with a doctoral degree from the University of Texas at Austin; she previously received her M.A from Northwestern University and B.A from Wake Forest University.  She joined the department’s faculty in 2011, and her recent book, Stage Designers in Early Twentieth Century America: Artists, Activists, Cultural Critics, examines the cultural roles played by theatre designers during the modern development of their profession. She also has published articles on theatre design history in Theatre Topics and Theatre History Studies.  She teaches THTR 100, Fundamentals of Theatre; THTR 201 and 202W, Development of Theatre and Drama I and II; THTR 204, American Theatre and Drama; and THTR 206W, Contemporary Drama and Performance Criticism.

______________________________________________________________________________

Applications for 2013-14 are now being accepted until May 15th.
Visit the Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows web page for program
details and online application.

e

Exemplary teaching was the theme and mantra of the “Innovative and Effective Teaching by Junior Faculty: Cases from the Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows” session at the May 3^rd Celebration of Teaching at Vanderbilt. Interested junior faculty members in the audience were introduced to the Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows (JFTF) Program by four of its impressive and knowledgeable past participants. The teaching research and innovations of these four faculty members were impressive, but their credit to the fellowship speaks volumes to the work of Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching.

The first to present was Haoxiang Luo, an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering. He spoke of the challenges associated with an engineering curriculum, specifically the balance between lecturing and problem solving and ways to engage students in the material. His challenge to himself during his time in the JFTF Program was to implement a new, more experience-based program by lecturing less and doing more demonstrations, classroom interactions, and projects. His reinvention of the typical engineering class illustrated the importance of teaching research in STEM fields; his students responded very well to his new techniques. Through the support of the JFTF Program, Haoxiang was able to learn new methods and discuss his work with other junior faculty members, developing a successful case of the application of new teaching methods to his classroom.

The next JFTF to present was Shaul Kelner, an Associate Professor of Sociology and Director Jewish Studies. His experience was unique due to the dual nature of his work in two departments. As someone who enjoys experimentation in the classroom, the teaching research was not his primary goal from the JFTF Program, but the organizational aspects were irreplaceable. His passion for teaching and experimentation came through in his stories of lessons from his classes, including a project which involved writing a haiku about kosher laws to make students think about whether rules such as those involved in writing a haiku and those required to keep kosher are onerous or make for an engaging and interesting challenge. Shaul’s discussion also included a comparison of the typical class over the course of the semester to a television show, citing the use of an arc in curriculum design to think about the end goals of the course from the beginning.

This sentiment of backwards curriculum planning was also addressed by Kimberly Bess, an Assistant Professor of Human and Organizational Development, who spoke about her personal journey through the JFTF and in particular about her introduction to backwards curriculum mapping. Kimberly discussed the ways the JFTF Program had helped her improve, noting the importance of continually learning and adapting her teaching methods. She specifically cited dinners with senior faculty and classroom observation sessions as being especially meaningful parts of the Program, connecting her to valuable resources in the university she might not have been a part of otherwise. The major takeaway from her conversation was that change in one’s teaching style is incremental, a process of experimentation and discovery, a process the JFTF Program helped her with over the course of her participation.

The final presentation delivered by Jonathan Rattner, an Assistant Professor of Film Studies, addressed his massive undertaking of designing and implementing eleven new courses in the Film Studies department. His growth in the JFTF Program came largely in inviting other people to take part in his courses: Vanderbilt students in the class as an assessment group and members outside of the Vanderbilt community to critique the students’ work and provide them with an alternative perspective. For Jonathan, the JFTF Program served as a basis to perform these classroom experiments and enlist the advice of other junior faculty in the process. As in his classes, the working environment provided by the Program was key to his success in the Film Studies department.

In a short question and answer session, several young faculty in the crowd were able to ask questions about the JFTF Program, and many expressed interest in applying in the future. Both the panelists and the audience members expressed the same sentiment: the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching really has something wonderful in the JFTF Program. It is a great way for junior faculty to connect with other Vanderbilt community members and enhance their own teaching practices.

For more information about the Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows Program, visit this page on the CFT website.

Last Friday, the Center for Teaching and the Graduate School honored the achievements of the Vanderbilt teaching community at our annual Celebration of Teaching, held this year at the Commons Center. We expanded the event for 2013 to include a variety of panels and presentations throughout the day featuring successes, innovations, and research in teaching and learning. We’ll recap several of those sessions here on the blog in the next week or two. Today, I’d like to share a few highlights from our lunch session, which featured a panel of three deans.

Carolyn Dever, Dean of the College of Arts & Science, spoke first, and pointed to a few features she sees in the teaching landscape in A&S. She noted that changing technologies are providing new options for teaching and learning in and out of the classroom, arguing that we need to uses these technologies in ways that enhance, not distract from, the teaching that we do. Dean Dever also shared a trend she has seen lately in course evaluation data: For some courses, students rate the instructor very highly while rating the course somewhat lower. Dean Dever hypothesized that this may indicate that we instructors need to rethink some of our courses to meet the expectations of the very capable students Vanderbilt now attracts. Finally, Dean Dever emphasized the importance of preparing our doctoral students for their future faculty teaching roles.

Bonnie Miller, Senior Associate Dean for Health Sciences Education, also mentioned changing technologies as an opportunity to enhance teaching effectiveness.  When students have quick access to information on their smart phones and tablets, how should our learning goals for those students change? Dean Miller emphasized the need to help our students become lifelong learners, particularly in the rapidly changing field of medicine. She also pointed to some of the non-classroom contexts relevant to medical education, from teaching in the clinic (while simultaneously caring for patients) to helping future doctors learn how to support patient care outside the hospital. These aspects of medical education have motivated much of the curriculum change at the School of Medicine that Dean Miller has helped lead.

Camilla Benbow, Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education and Human Development, offered her perspective on teaching and learning at Peabody. Dean Benbow echoed Dean Dever’s call to prepare graduate students for future faculty teaching roles, noting that our faculty must do this alongside the excellent preparation they provide doctoral students in research. Dean Benbow also praised our undergraduates for their intellectual curiosity and argued that meeting the academic needs of these students requires faculty to “go deeper” with their teaching. Meeting those needs occurs outside of the classroom, too. The dean noted that advising is a form of teaching and, as such, is a part of our educational mission that deserves more attention.

Thanks to Deans Dever, Miller, and Benbow for sharing their perspectives on teaching at Vanderbilt and for expressing their support for the teaching mission of the university. You can read a bit more about the panel on MyVU.

Ask Professor Pedagogy is a twice monthly advice column written by Center for Teaching staff. One aspect of our mission is to cultivate dialogue about teaching and learning, so we welcome questions and concerns that arise in the classroom; particularly those from Vanderbilt faculty, students, and staff. If you have a question that you’d like Professor P to address, please send it to us.

Dear Professor P.,

My students had to write a couple of papers this semester.  I just graded the last round of papers and they were very disappointing – at the end of the semester, even.  Some of them lacked a clear thesis, others were poorly organized and many were poorly argued.  What can I do next semester so that my future students’ papers aren’t like these?

Journalisticly Jumbled

Dear Jumbled,

This seems to be a common problem for professors.   The good news is that there are some simple ways to address the problem.  Oftentimes, students, especially first years, have not written college style papers before and do not know the general structure and expectations.  The issue is likely not that they can’t do the work, but that they have never been shown how.  There are several things to consider here:

• Clear Writing Prompt: Be sure you give clear directions on what your expectations are for the paper.  What type of argument do you want? Is it a compare-contrast, a lit review, a close-reading, a research paper?  All of these are different paper types and your students may not know what each of them entails especially if the student comes from a different discipline.  Provide clear, concise instructions on what type of analysis or argumentation you expect.  Remember, part of the goal of assigning papers is to give the students the opportunity to analyze material in the manner done in your field and it is necessary to teach them how to produce written work that reflects that analysis.
• Be Clear about Sources: Do you want them to use outside sources, i.e., do research? If so, be sure to tell them what sources are viable in your type of paper.  For example, I have come across countless students who do not know the difference between Google and JSTOR.  Tell them why particular sources are better than others and how to evaluate them.  Or, do you want them to use only in-class material and their own analysis of that material? The reference librarians at the library are also eager to help students (and are underutilized).
• Teaching the Writing Process:  You might consider having the students turn in drafts, especially for longer term papers.  This would allow you to head off any issues before the final draft.  You could have students give peer feedback as well.  Studies have shown that if their peers are their audience, students cannot assume that the reader will “fill in the gaps” in their argument and they therefore strive for greater clarity.  Having portions due at different times (thesis, outline, first draft, revision, etc.) helps the students learn the normal process of writing an academic paper, requires revision (a commonly neglected, but often essential, step), and will undoubtedly improve the quality of the work they turned in.
• Use a Rubric:  Sometimes students write well as it relates to grammar, spelling, and vocabulary, and use these skills to mask shallow interpretations, argumentation or research.  Others may have atrocious grammar but great ideas.   You need to determine what qualities are most important to you and made them clear to your students.   I’ve also heard students complain that they “lost points” because they didn’t proofread.   Make it clear to them how grammar can affect clarity and what percentage of the grade will reflect that.  Using a rubric will help you convey what types of things you’re looking for to you students while also giving you a template to aid in your grading process.   You can find several sample rubrics hereor you could ask your colleagues to see their rubrics.
• Give Feedback:  Be sure to give feedback to your students about their work.  I suggest not marking every single error.  This monopolizes your time, will likely make you lose focus on the paper’s content, and demoralizes your students.  Find the most pressing errors and address them.  You might mark them with the same type of mark and then address the point in a few sentences at the end of the paper.  Also remember that when you give feedback to note what they have done well so to encourage them to continue that behavior.  While this seems like a lot of work on your part, it will pay off in the long run.

Many students have never been taught the basic structure of most academic papers.  While research papers vary by disciple, most share central concerns.  However, the simplified five-paragraph essay they learned to write in high school, often neglects vital parts of a college-level academic paper.  Here are few tips you can share with them to get them started:

• Introduction: Your introduction must accomplish two things: introduce your topic and make clear your stance.  As you write your thesis statement, think about what argument you intend to make with the evidence you have.  Your introduction will define the scope of your paper and point your reader toward your overall point.
• Topic Sentences:  Each paragraph in the body of your paper should have a clear topic sentence.  The topic sentence will clearly and succinctly relate the point of its paragraph to the thesis statement.  The other sentences in the paragraph will give evidence to support the topic sentence.
• Organization: Outlining your paper will help you see the flow and organization of your argument.  Think about how your main points relate to one another so that your paper does not feel disjointed.   Remember that you do not want to lose your reader.  Use clear transitions and a logical progression of thought so that your overall argument makes sense.
• Conclusion:  In your conclusion be sure to remind the reader of your stance/thesis and your primary arguments.  Some people use the conclusion as the opportunity to address opposing arguments; most conclusions are largely summary.  You could use the conclusion to urge some sort of response or to point to larger issues, but do not introduce new material.  The primary function of the conclusion is to remind the reader of your argument and how you substantiated it.
• Argument:  As you write, evaluate your own argument.  Do not merely ignore arguments or research that contradicts or weakens your own argument.   Address these opposing views, but show why/how they are either insufficient, neglect certain aspects of the problem that your argument address, or how your argument negates them.  As you do this, avoid caricature or falsifying their argument; treat them fairly or you will weaken your own argument.
• Research:  If you are writing a research paper, make sure you know what qualifies as a viable source for that field.  Most academic research papers do not accept sources like Wikipedia or Google.  If you are uncertain what sources you can use, talk to your professor and/or a research librarian.  Be sure youincorporate your sources into your augment and do not merely let them “speak for themselves.”
• Voice & Tone:  Verify with your professor what type of language he or she expects.  While some professors allow for more informal language, many do not.  In general, academic papers use formal language (i.e., no slang).  However, avoid the common mistake of using overly complex sentences and “fancy” vocabulary.  If you do not know what a word means, do not use it.  Your sentences should be clear and concise; they should not be wordy or convoluted.
• Editing/Revision:  Finally, be sure you leave enough time in your schedule to revise your paper.  One’s argument often changes as one writes and/or one’s ideas become more focused.  Be sure you go back and rewrite your introduction to reflect any changes you have made along the way.  You should also reread your paper to make sure your ideas flow together well and rearrange as necessary.  A reverse outline is particularly helpful (outline your paper as it now appears to determine whether or not it needs to be rearranged).
• Another Set of Eyes:  Whether it be having a friend read through your paper or going to the Writing Studio, it is important to have someone else read through you paper to verify its coherence and cohesion.  The Writing Studio offers free one-hour appointments and is open every day except Saturday with locations on main campus (Calhoun Hall) and the Commons.  You can sign up online. They offer constructive feedback on your organization and argumentation and are helpful at any stage of the writing process, from brainstorming to revision).

Finally, have fun! Writing papers can help you think through your own ideas and see how they connect to the things other people have said.  To alleviate some of the stress of the process, be sure to allow yourself enough time to write.  While we all have pulled an all-nighter, this is rarely conducive to quality work and typically increases the stress of writing.

The Vanderbilt Writing Studio offers appointments for students and provides several useful handouts online. Additionally, the Center for Teaching is able to consult with you an aspect of grading or teaching writing – just call us to schedule an appointment.

You can do it!

Professor P

I’m very pleased to share that news that the inaugural issue of Teaching & Learning Inquiry (TLI) is now available. This new journal “publishes insightful research, theory, commentary, and other scholarly works that document or facilitate investigations of teaching and learning in higher education.” TLI is the official journal of the International Society of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL), and is co-edited by our own Nancy Chick, CFT assistant director and affiliated faculty in English.

Nancy is the author of many scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) articles and book chapters and the co-editor of two books on signature pedagogies, experience she has leveraged in her work on TLI. Nancy’s work with the international SoTL community enhances all that she does here at the CFT, most notably the SoTL Scholars program for graduate students she launched this past academic year.

I’m very proud to have Nancy on staff here at the CFT and to help support the scholarly efforts of an organization as well-respected as ISSOTL. Congratulations to Nancy–and to her editorial managers, Katie Headrick Taylor and Erica Hayden, also here at the CFT–on the publication of TLI‘s first issue!

See below for the official press release. The journal is available online through Indiana University Press. Follow these links for additional information on Nancy Chick, ISSOTL, and the CFT’s SoTL Scholars program.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Publication of inaugural issue of Teaching & Learning Inquiry

The inaugural issue of Teaching & Learning Inquiry, the official publication of the International Society of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL), is now available online and in print. The journal is edited by Nancy Chick (Assistant Director of the Center for Teaching and Senior Lecturer in the English Department at Vanderbilt University) and Gary Poole (Associate Director of the School of Population Health and Senior Scholar in the Centre for Health Education Scholarship at the University of British Columbia) and published by Indiana University Press.

This issue includes invited articles and member submissions responding to the editors’ call to “explore SoTL’s traditions or its cutting edges, its highest moments or the challenges that remain, its efforts to go public or its impacts in campus classrooms or hallways, its relevant constituencies or its unexplored audiences.”  Editors Chick and Poole structured the issue in two sections:  one that explores the benefits of SoTL to specific audiences and contexts, and one that focuses on ways of promoting the growth of SoTL. Authors include Carolin Kreber, Barbara Cambridge, Jan Parker, Daniel Bernstein, Joëlle Fanghanel, Keith Trigwell, Joy Mighty, Peter Felton and more.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/teachlearninqu.1.issue-1

Published twice a year (March and September), TLI includes insightful research, theory, commentary, and other scholarly works that document or facilitate investigations of teaching and learning in higher education. TLI values quality and variety in its vision of the scholarship of teaching and learning.  Its pages will showcase the breadth of the interdisciplinary field of SoTL in its explicit methodological pluralism, its call for traditional and new genres, and its international authorship from across career stages.

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is scholarly inquiry into student learning that advances the practice of teaching by making research findings public and is a growing movement in post-secondary education. ISSOTL has cultivated a strong international and interdisciplinary community, formerly through the quality of its annual conferences and now including Teaching & Learning Inquiry. A subscription to TLI is a benefit of membership in ISSOTL.

Sample a free article at this url: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/teachlearninqu.1.1.121.

For more information about the journal, visit this page: http://www.jstor.org/page/journal/teachlearninqu/about.html.  To subscribe, click “Subscribe or Renew” below the cover image at http://www.jstor.org/action/showNews?journalCode=teachlearninqu.  Questions regarding submissions may be directed to TLI@vanderbilt.edu.

Journal Information—Teaching & Learning Inquiry: The ISSOTL Journal

Editors: Nancy Chick and Gary Poole

Frequency: Semi-annual (March and September)

To order: call 1-800-842-6796 or visit http://jstor.org/r/iupress

For more information: Linda Bannister, Marketing Manager, llbannis@indiana.edu, 812-855-9449

Ask Professor Pedagogy is a twice monthly advice column written by Center for Teaching staff. One aspect of our mission is to cultivate dialogue about teaching and learning, so we welcome questions and concerns that arise in the classroom; particularly those from Vanderbilt faculty, students, and staff. If you have a question that you’d like Professor P to address, please send it to us.

Dear Professor P.,

This is my first year teaching history at Vanderbilt, and I feel I have learned a lot about the students already.  Generally, they are excellent: intelligent, focused, and motivated.  However, I have noticed another common theme: many of them are perfectionists who do not react well to the struggle of learning a difficult topic.  I appreciate that my students are driven, but I have seen their perfectionism manifest itself in negative ways.  They are terrified of failure, and in some cases, they are paralyzed by their desire to do everything just right.  I try to be encouraging, but wonder if there’s more than I can do for these students.  What do you think?

Overwhelmed by overachievers

Dear Overwhelmed,

This is indeed a common issue at Vanderbilt.  And as you note, this kind of perfectionism can be debilitating.  Such students who are afraid to mess up are frequently afraid to even try when things get tough.  This is problematic because the vast majority of students who become experts of a given topic need to struggle through those topics over many years to attain that expertise. That messy part, the struggle of getting to know a topic well, can be especially challenging for these kinds of perfectionists.

In his book, “What the Best College Students Do,” Dr. Ken Bain dedicates a chapter to the importance of embracing failure.  “People who become highly creative and productive learn to acknowledge their failures, even to embrace them, and to explore and learn from them,” Bain explains (p. 100). Bain even cites some famous examples of people who failed in significant ways.  Neil deGrasse Tyson, for example, flunked out of graduate school at the University of Texas before becoming a world-renowned astronomer.

So what can you do as the instructor?  I believe that you can go beyond simply encouraging and assuring your students that struggling is part of the process of learning.  You can cultivate a healthy attitude toward failure and promote an environment that allows for risk-taking in every element of your class.  Here are some ideas:

Discussion: There is much you can do to promote a healthy atmosphere for discussion, a space where students feel comfortable taking risks.

Set clear expectations for class discussions. Express the importance of getting involved in class discussions, whether you’re an expert on a topic or a novice.  In fact, that disparity can be valuable in giving the class a variety of perspectives.

Promote an environment of trust and mutual respect by fostering a sense of personal connection through activities that allow students to become acquainted.  Pair or group activities are especially valuable for this.

Bolster student confidence by using names, being affirmative with students, and balancing student voices by protecting them from interruption by classmates (or the instructor!)

Be mindful of your own authority.  Many students may look to you as an authority figure that has all the answers.  Be sure to underscore the degree to which you too struggle through many of the difficult questions of your discipline.  Furthermore, let students grapple with those complicated questions in class discussions rather than swooping in at every turn to tell them the “right answer.”

Reading: When we assign readings, we often make assumptions that not only will students read them, but they will understand them.  However, a lot of the texts that we require are challenging for students at any level.  What can you do to encourage students to work through those difficult readings and not simply shut down when things become difficult?

Ask that students prepare a “difficulty paper,” after reading.  As explained by Mariolina Rizzi Salvatori and Patricia Donahue in their work, The Elements (and Pleasures) of Difficulty, a difficulty paper is a paper in which students “identify and begin to hypothesize the reasons for any possible difficulty” that students might experience as they do the assigned reading.  These papers can guide your class discussions and how you teach particular texts.  Difficulty papers also encourage students to be reflective about their reading process and push them to understand the degree to which struggling through a reading isn’t a problem, it’s expected!

Encourage students to create an inventory of difficult questions or concepts that arise as they read.  You might even do a “muddiest point(s)” exercise in which students write down a particularly challenging question or questions on an index card, bring that card to class, and review its contents with classmates or the instructor.  Whether you ask students to produce an inventory or a muddiest point card, these products can help direct class discussion and can give you a quick sense of the kinds of reading topics with which your students are having the most difficulty.

Writing: Writing is an area in which perfectionists are particularly prone to struggle.  In high school, our students may be able to get by with writing one final draft of a short essay.  In college, good writing seldom looks that way and in graduate school, it almost never does.  For most writers, writing is a messy process in which we draft, re-draft, and re-draft again before producing a polished piece of writing.  What can we do to encourage good writing habits?

Make the writing process more transparent. Too often college writing happens in isolation.  The instructor assigns an essay topic and then does not interact with the writing process again until students come to class to hand in their papers.  However, what happens in-between is in many ways most critical.  In the above model, presumably students go off somewhere and write their essay, often waiting until the last minute to do so.  But most instructors don’t know how students get from point A to point B, and that’s an area in which instructors in fields like English and History can be especially valuable.

What’s the alternative?  Ask students to come to class prepared to discuss their writing. Ask them to bring in their thesis statement and share it with some classmates. Set aside a day (or two or three!) for students to bring in a rough draft.  You may be thinking, “But I don’t have time to give all that feedback!”  While your feedback is valuable, these kinds of formative writing assignments lend themselves well to peer assessment.  Have your students discuss their progress with one another, then the next class period choose another partner to receive feedback from a variety of sources.  Ask some students to share out about their progress.  Ultimately, make transparent a process that too often happens behind closed doors.  Underscore the degree to which good writing is produced by writing a lot over a long period of time and gradually honing that product!

As you can see, there are ways to help perfectionist students to see that the messy part of learning – grappling with complicated issues in class discussion, struggling through difficult readings, and writing through challenging topics – is a rewarding process.  It’s a process that need not be scary, but is in fact a major part of becoming an expert in History, English, Math, or well, anything!

Good luck!
Professor P.