Justina Oliveira – Writing Across the Curriculum

May 11, 2015May 11, 2015

Context: One Key to Deeper Learning

Friday May 1st at the Graduate Center’s Annual Purposeful Pedagogy Conference, the keynote address was given by Dr. Anna Stetsenko, a Professor in the Human Development and Urban Education Ph.D. Programs at the Graduate Center. I also was lucky enough to have taken a Ph.D. level course with Dr. Stetsenko about three years ago. Both from her keynote address and throughout the semester she was my Professor, she spoke of the importance of context in learning. She has opened mine as well as many other doctoral level students’ eyes to the relevance of providing our own undergraduate students with an understanding of how context shapes the theories and paradigms of thought that emerge at a given time in history and in a given field. Because of Dr. Stetsenko, I too have developed an eagerness to take a holistic lens to teaching. Her combined focus on the inclusion of context within pedagogy and encouraging active learning on the part of students provide us with wonderful lessons toward improving our teaching, regardless of whether we are relatively new instructors or have been teaching for many years. Below are three specific ways in which I now focus on context within my own classrooms and were inspired by Dr. Stetsenko.
Historical Context
The historical context of what was happening when a particular theory, area of research, or paradigm of thought emerged helps explain how and why it emerged in the first place. History including politics, power dynamics, wars, and other influences shape how knowledge is created and in fact affects what knowledge is given precedence at a given time. One such example of how I impart this to my students in my Social Psychology courses is to require them to read various older primary scholarly research articles (as well as current ones) throughout the semester and have them research what was going on at that time in history in regards to politics within the author’s country and the paradigms of thought in psychology. As one example, my students read Milgrim’s (1963) original article about obedience and how the impact of Nazi soldiers’ obedience to Hitler served as a trigger for Milgrim’s interest in studying the ‘dark side’ of leadership and obedience. The students learn to place all research in context through this type of exercise and to notice how the time period in which a researcher lives impacts what is deemed as valuable to study at that point in history as well as what was published during that decade. Additionally, in teams, my students present a topic that is interesting to them and related to the course, yet beyond the content that I provide them. This gives them the opportunity to search for historical context and teach it to classmates to further their learning.
Cultural Context
I consider demonstrating the value of cross-cultural perspectives to my students as one of my foremost goals in teaching. At this time, it is essential to acknowledge culture’s impact on a given field as a whole and within a given theory (e.g., Does a given theory apply cross-culturally? Why or why not?), as well as how culture relates to our students’ own perspectives. To do so, I first take the time to teach at least two general class periods early in the semester about how culture shapes one’s beliefs, values, and opinions in order to open my students’ eyes on the impact of culture, interspersed with small group work where teams of students generate examples of how they have seen the impact of culture in their own lives. I have found that when having students link their real world experiences to the research in this area through the use of journal-entry writing assignments or by focused discussions with others, they are quickly quite interested in the topic of culture. To implement this, I require them to define a related theory and then explain examples which were not discussed in class within a brief write-up (1-2 pages) and I assign scholarly research articles which include culture as a theme to provide a basis for class discussions. In addition, my students often complete short thesis statement papers where they cite sources beyond the assigned ones of the course in order to build support for their own original hypotheses. This can work well in other fields beyond my field of Psychology quite well also. Culture impacts what knowledge is valued and how information is considered important. I urge all instructors to attempt to establish the importance of culture as a contextual variable for how the leaders, theories, and ideas in your own field were shaped.
Scenario-based Examples
Lastly, I use scenarios in all my classes as a way to establish a concrete sense of context to the information students are learning in each class period. Examples that are vivid such as creative yet realistic scenarios allow for students to comprehend the course content in a manner that is relevant beyond their textbooks. If used as a scenario that students must explain in writing or if requesting them to write an example of something discussed in class, this pushes students to be able to use terminology in the course within their writing which also reinforces a deeper level of learning than simple term and definition lists could do.

February 16, 2015February 15, 2015

Student note-taking workshop: Recap

Last week on February 10^th two of our WAC fellows, Jake Cohen and Louis Lipani offered a free CityTech-wide student workshop regarding effective note taking strategies which can be found HERE. They introduced the Cornell Method to students and thoroughly explained the reasoning why this method is so useful to many people. Often students are not taught how to take notes, though this is a learned skill that is clearly pertinent to their success within the educational context. We view note taking as one of the many necessary skills college students need initial guidance on and which they can eventually master throughout their undergraduate careers. Therefore, feel free to provide the information offered here based on Jake and Louis’ efforts to your students. Better yet, take a little time within your own classrooms to discuss the importance of note taking and the empirically-based strategies mentioned in this blog. Doing this will likely allow students to realize they are not alone in being concerned about note taking or that they have not been taught this information in the past. We hope that offering this information to them will give them an understanding of how to best utilize note taking towards better comprehension and ultimately better grades in their courses. For us instructors, note taking is one more way to implement informal writing into our classrooms, which is a strategy towards increasing the amount of low-pressure writing students are doing in order to have them better learn and internalize the material.

Note taking “best practices”:

Write it down: Empirical evidence based on neuroscience research suggests handwriting notes allows for better retention of information and a higher-level of understanding for the content (Jacobs 2008; James & Englehardt 2012; Mueller & Oppenheimer 2014).

Differentiate important from non-important information
Summarize and paraphrase (students should do so in their own words)
Use symbols, abbreviations, lines, etc. in order to show importance and speed up the writing process for notes (whatever key or style works best for an individual student)

Question/Context: Questioning and putting information into context is a way to ensure deeper critical thinking. Students that feel comfortable acknowledging their questions on course content and who attempt to put the information into context will likely understand the material at a higher level later.

Write down questions but also your own thoughts about the material that are supplementary from the instructor’s lecture
In order to have better recall course information later, indicate your feelings, opinions, or simply what is occurring around you during a specific portion of the class

Reflect/Summary: Reflection is a way to ensure you remind yourself about the content a second or third time and summarizing ensures you can grasp the most important parts of the class and piece them together.

Fit content into your previous knowledge related to it
Attempt to identify the themes of the lecture (overarching important aspects)
Reflect and attempt to summarize the class content after the class but before going to sleep that night

Technological advances to support students in handwriting notes or annotating readings:

Styluses and smart pens now allow for handwriting on our beloved digital devices to help bridge the gap between students’ tablet/laptop usage and the beneficial effects of handwriting (see Stern 2015 for more information on this technology which is the last link in this blog below)
The GoodReader App is an inexpensive ($5) way to organize PDFs and take notes on them, make annotations, and write comments

Helpful links to additional relevant sources

Cornell method of note-taking:

http://lsc.cornell.edu/LSC_Resources/cornellsystem.pdf

http ://www.wyzant.com/resources/lessons/study-skills/cornell-notes

https://shp.utmb.edu/asa/Forms/cornell%20note%20taking%20system.pdf

Relevant studies:

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/take-notes-by-hand-for-better-long-term-comprehension.html

http ://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211949312000038 #

http://absentprof.missouristate.edu/assets/WritingCenter/Wichita_and_Cornell.pdf

http://www.wsj.com/articles/handwriting-isnt-deadsmart-pens-and-styluses-are-saving-it-1423594704

December 1, 2014November 29, 2014

Scenario-Based Homework Questions: Instructor Creativity Results in Student Creativity and Deeper Learning

Recently, Claire Hoogendoorn wrote about problem-focused activities in the classroom. The focus of this post is closely related to her insightful ideas. Scenario-based questions are homework or exam items that are based on real-life situations as opposed to abstract questions that pinpoint specific course content (e.g., terms, equations) without requiring students to link the content to its application. In my classrooms, they are effective due to the following reasons:

They’re more fun and interesting for the students to do.
Students’ answers to them are more fun and interesting for us as instructors to read.
Scenario-based questions are harder to plagiarize because they are creative in that they require more than a simple definition to answer them.
These items or questions require students to APPLY the concepts from your course instead of being satisfied with route memorization.
This question type leads to more critical thinking and active learning for students.

Below are a few scenario-based questions from my own courses that involve the above elements.

From Social Psychology:

Daniel is watching a television advertisement about a new brand of vitamins. He decides to buy them the next time he goes to the store because there’s a doctor and a professional athlete endorsing them in the advertisement so he figures it must be a great product. Which of the aspects of persuasion as discussed in class does his decision depend on? Defend your decision with a 3-5 sentence explanation.

From Statistics:

Scenario: An organization is interested in whether an employee’s job type (administrative assistant, salesperson, or research and development) impacts his or her perceptions of the organization’s culture.

Which is the dependent variable?
Which is the quasi-independent variable?
What is the alternative hypothesis in words?
What is the null hypothesis in words?

Run the appropriate statistical analysis in SPSS and highlight the relevant values on the output that should be used to answer the organization’s question.

Explain the findings in a manner that a senior leader could understand who does not have expertise in statistics (Hint: Explain the results without statistical language or notation).

Now describe these results to a scientific audience that does have expertise in statistics (i.e., in APA style).

Try your own scenario-based questions in a few homework assignments to examine if your students seem to grasp the content better when they know they will be asked to apply the information they learn in novel ways. After they are used to the structure of such questions, you can begin to ask them to come up with similar question types themselves and answer these as an additional homework question at the end of an assignment. This will give them the opportunity to produce creative applications of your course content that are inspired by the world they experience around them.

September 22, 2014September 19, 2014

Effective Assignment Design – Workshop Recap

This past Tuesday September 16^th, the WAC program presented a faculty workshop for effective assignment design led by myself and Roy Rogers. We had a wonderful turnout and some lively discussion about innovative assignment design approaches. Among the most helpful according to research in WAC pedagogy (see Bean, 2011 for a thorough description) are informal writing assignments, scaffolding, and typed assignment handouts. Please see our slides from this workshop HERE and our handout HERE.

Informal writing assignments are small, low-stakes (minimal points or ungraded) writing assignments that are often less structured than traditional formal assignments. Informal writing assignments are useful because they

provide a less anxiety-provoking route for discussing course content than formal assignments that are graded
allow students to grapple with difficult course-related concepts or topics
encourage creative idea generation and critical thinking
provide the ability for the instructor to check-in early with students to ensure they are on track
offer students an avenue to express confusion or questions related to the course content
ensure all students (even those that may be shy) participate and regularly engage with course material

Scaffolding is perhaps the MOST useful strategy for creating effective assignments. This refers to implementing multiple small, informal (or semi-formal) writing assignments that build up to a more formal high-stakes (graded and larger in nature) project in a course. They are beneficial because they

provide “levels” to your large assignments in that they allow for students to comprehend the information and practice the skills needed to do well before the big project/paper/lab report
allow students to build towards difficult larger assignments
offer instructors the ability to steadily assess student progress
support course learning objectives and make the goals and process transparent to students

Typed assignment handouts are most beneficial when they are provided to students both in class and on Blackboard or Openlab, are discussed briefly in class so students can raise questions if needed, and when they provide the expectations of the instructor regarding the assignment (even for informal assignments) in a clear manner. Typed assignment handouts are practical for both students and instructors because they

help students understand what they “need to do”
assist tutors in the Learning Center in providing appropriate assistance to students
provide a reference for instructors in later semesters, as it is easier to edit unclear wording, etc. for later courses when the assignment handout is readily available

Bean, J. C. (2011). Engaging ideas: The professor’s guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom. 2^nd ed. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

April 6, 2014

Avoiding Plagiarism–Guiding Our Students

As instructors, helping our students learn to avoid plagiarism while using sources to guide their work is an important role for us to play. We all have negative gut reactions to a student’s paper that seems to include evidence of plagiarized material or have a lack of appropriate citations, but approaching this topic proactively may be much easier on our students, not to mention on our tempers after reading a towering stack of papers with inappropriate uses of others’ scholarly work.

This semester, I have begun to focus on providing students with thorough guidance of how to effectively use sources in their writing, thereby helping them to avoid or at least minimizing unintentional plagiarism in their writing assignments. Giving students the benefit of the doubt in the beginning of a semester and taking on the tone of understanding in terms of how difficult it can be to learn how to properly use sources, as opposed to being the “police” of plagiarism in the classroom can be an effective avenue to take.

This inherently involves allotting some class time to discuss the issue. Doing so, makes your students aware that you place importance on this topic and that you are willing to assist them in this learning process. Providing students with a plagiarism quiz that gives examples of scenarios in which they decide whether a given situation entails plagiarism and then having a class discussion about what constitutes plagiarism allows for students to be honest about the areas they deem confusing regarding paraphrasing, citing, etc. Recently, two of our writing fellows, Syelle Graves and Heather Zuber in collaboration with Bronwen Densmore and Anne Leonard from the library, gave a workshop to faculty about avoiding plagiarism and using library resources. Their slides and handouts, including the aforementioned plagiarism quiz can be found HERE.

Additional ways to minimize plagiarism in your students’ writing (from my own experience as well as the workshop mentioned above):

Provide high-quality models of writing with correct citations and paraphrasing
In class, show students how to find scholarly sources through City Tech’s library databases (step-by-step demonstration including giving them a list of the best databases for your field)
As the instructor, model correct citations throughout the semester (in your syllabus, handouts, slides)
Provide handouts to students with links to other sources regarding paraphrasing and correct citation format for your field (links are included in the handouts for the aforementioned past workshop)
Require students to create annotated bibliographies for which they cite their sources and summarize the main findings along with the importance of that source for a later larger research project or paper in your course
Give a typed assignment handout that states the citation format (e.g., APA, MLA) they need to use for that assignment and the number of sources they need

February 17, 2014February 17, 2014

Using WAC Techniques to Introduce Discipline-Specific Writing

Through recent discussions with other WAC fellows and CUNY faculty, it has becoming increasing clear that as instructors, we often forget to take a step back and make sure our students have an understanding of what is expected of them for writing in the discipline of which our class is a part (whatever discipline that may be). Early to mid-way into a semester (earlier the better), as simple as it may seem, it is immensely useful to gauge student writing in order to ensure they do in fact understand what is meant by a thesis, for example in whatever field we are in (and what course they are taking). This is just one writing-related term that truly can mean varying things in different fields or at minimum may look different depending upon the discipline.

Take the students’ perspective for a minute. Imagine going from an Introduction to Psychology class, to an English class, followed by a course in Mathematics all in the same day. Each of these disciplines requires different formats and structures in regards to writing. You can see how easy it would be to as a student, assume that writing in the manner that earned you an ‘A’ on an English assignment may surprisingly earn you a ‘B’ or less on a Psychology research proposal (or vice versa) if you were never giving explicit instructions for what qualifies as a ‘good’ paper for a particular type of class. Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) techniques offer some great tools towards improving our students’ writing, even for assisting them on the way of learning the specific writing style we expect in our own courses.

In order to see where our students are in the writing process for our discipline, as instructors we can initially do one of several specific things:

1) Provide a discipline-specific piece of writing in class, give students time to read it, and then discuss as a class how this writing may be different than that of other types of courses students have taken.

2) Assign several discipline-specific professional readings (one at the beginning and several others throughout) and provide a template that asks directed questions about the texts, hereby pointing out the important structural aspects of the writing piece.

3) Give time during class for small groups of students to pick out seemingly important parts of a provided reading, have them define separate sections, and finally openly explaining to students (during class time if at all possible) how your field defines and structures a thesis, evidence, supporting arguments, etc.

4) Give a take-away handout that clearly and succinctly lists the requirements you have for the content and structure of writing assignments in your course (for which you take a few minutes to explain in person if the class is not online).

Two more helpful tips from evidence-based WAC practices:

Of course students mostly learn from doing and redoing or writing and rewriting! Therefore, multiple drafts of the same assignment are always essential to the writing process regardless of discipline.
Scaffolding (creating smaller assignments that build up to a larger more complete final paper, lab report, project, or proposal) is incredibly helpful for students to understand complex ideas or information that is new to them (this has been extremely beneficial for my students’ research proposals as many of them never write in this manner before entering my class). This allows them to master important specific aspects of a bigger assignment before the final result which is often worth many more points.

November 2, 2013

Journal-entry Assignments: Connecting Course Content to Real Experiences

Journal-entry assignments are a valuable tool for incorporating semi-structured writing into a course. Less formal than traditional writing assignments which often include a thesis statement, citations, or full-length papers (5 or more pages), journal entries allow the building of connections between course content and real life experiences within one or two pages of writing. Often they are most effective when requiring students to first define the term, theory, or issue and then asking them to describe how either how they or someone they know had a real experience related to a given course topic.

This technique pushes students to be agents of learning as opposed to passive learners. If they can start to link the jargon/terms of a given field with real examples or experiences, the importance of what they are learning is made clear to them beyond the purposes of the classroom. Furthermore, this can lead to lively discussions if the instructor is willing to spend a few minutes of class time engaging students by talking through each others’ examples.

Remember that journal-entry assignments may be new for many students, so it is always beneficial to clarify what you expect as the instructor in terms of formatting, length, and audience, as this is certainly a different manner of writing than their usual lab reports or research papers. Yet if used multiple times throughout the semester, journal-entries can continuously improve students’ abilities to link course content to how it relates in their own lives and can also be used in building to longer, more formal assignments (i.e., scaffolding) later in the semester.

Author: Justina Oliveira