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On this podcast Gene Roche, Director of Academic Information Systems and faculty member in the School of Education, talks with Henry Broaddus, Dean of Admissions, about the students at William and Mary. Henry shares his perspective about “overachieving” W&M students, the school’s relationship to UVA, changing student demographics and how the use of a video prompt as part of the W&M application might impact how students learn.

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Running Time: 30:48

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On this episode of the Teach(nology) podcast, Mike Blum and Pablo Yáñez talk to Francie Cate-Arries, Professor of Hispanic Studies. Francie discusses how she uses field work and technology to help her students explore the historical memory of the Spanish Civil War in Madrid.

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Bruce Campbell, Associate Professor of German, talks about how he uses his tablet PC to grade and manage student assignments digitally.  Not only does the tablet save him time, but it also saves paper when integrated with Black Board.

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[Editor’s note: what follows is a version of remarks given at the Swem Media Center by Anne Marie Stock, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies. Her remarks were part of a panel consisting of several faculty members who used video assignments in their teaching. To hear a more detailed and eloquent discussion of these topics by Dr. Stock, we have provided the unedited audio of her remarks. Dr. Stock has also offered to share her syllabus for this course, which is available for downloading below.]

When Ann Marie Stock first thought to assign media projects, she was returning to the classroom after being on leave to finish her book about Cuban filmmakers. While preparing for the upcoming semester, she looked for something that would bridge a number of her interests. Could she connect her research interests (Cuban cinema and new media) and her interest in undergraduate research in a way that allowed her to maintain the intellectual excitement that research leave provided? After meeting with several of her colleagues, she had a conversation with Troy Davis, Director of the Swem Media Center, which led her to develop video production assignments.

With the help of Troy, Ann Marie constructed a course that took the form of a workshop. By encouraging students to leverage their unique skills and interests in service of a common goal (a video project), the workshop format enabled an interdisciplinary environment to thrive. According to Ann Marie, teaching a class as a workshop challenged a boundary more profound than those of the disciplines. “For me, the biggest boundary that was pushed was the boundary between teaching and learning and the boundary between educator, in front of the classroom, and students, as recipients. I was not the bearer of all knowledge.”

Embracing a complicated understanding of their roles as teachers, Ann Marie and Troy developed exercises that encouraged students to hone, and share, their own expertise. Students brought in video clips of all forms, ranging from feature films to home movies, and they analyzed some aspect of that video that interested them. So, for example, a music student might talk about the score of a particular scene or a young historian might discuss the historical context for a particular film. “It was a way early on for everyone to feel empowered and to realize that no one had to know everything, but together we would make this happen.”

The collaborative atmosphere created by these early exercises helped strengthen the group work necessary to produce video projects. Once students identified themselves as having distinct skills and how those skills fit in with their classmates, they created projects that drew from different disciplines. Some could use their translating skills to created English-language subtitles documentaries of Cuban filmmakers while others used their ability to construct narratives to create their own documentaries using interviews conducted by Ann Marie Stock and Troy with Cuban filmmakers.

While the workshop format worked well for in this course, Ann Marie Stock warns of the risks inherent in such a collaborative environment. “I think as educators, we’re not trained to have things unscripted. We’re trained to walk into these classrooms and feel pretty much like we can envision what’s going to happen for the rest of hour or two hours.” Of course, the technology involved also can, at least at first, seem like a risk. “It can be a little daunting as professors to say ‘I don’t know how to help you with that’…or to ask another student…I think we have to be willing relinquish some control. I think that’s a great thing—I think it’s liberating, and I have to say this semester I have two much more traditionally sketched out courses and it’s kind of a struggle for me to go back to that mode. This experience, to a great extent, required that I reinvent myself as an education and that I take new directions in my scholarship. That’s an outcome that I had not expected….I am finding myself venturing into…co-making a documentary. It’s pretty heady, it’s pretty exciting to continue to learn, and I think most of us are in this profession for that very reason. It’s not to get something down and do it over, and over, and over again. It’s to keep pushing those boundaries, to keep exploring, seeing what’s out there, seeing what we can manage.”

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Most of my students hate group work. Group projects require more time to schedule meetings, chase down procrastinating classmates, deal with free riders and spend time critiquing, editing and repairing other people’s work. Group grading is tricky, and workloads never balance out fairly. It’s a lot easier to brew up a pot of coffee, fire up the word processor and crank out the assignment than it is to navigate the complicated world of group process.

Requiring significant group projects almost always insures snarky comments at evaluation time; we’ve all gotten gems like “Those group activities in class are a waste of time. I’m paying tuition for you to teach me, not to trade ideas with students who don’t know any more than I do”(Cite: 1) Even if the students grumble a bit, though, collaborative work is central to most of my courses because the big professional and civic problems of the future require folks who are very skilled in collaboration. Like any skill, the ability to contribute to a collaborative group requires practice, feedback and the opportunity to learn from mistakes. The development of those skills can become the central outcome or purpose of the course.

When creating a collaborative assignment, I try to keep several concepts in mind, all of which are designed with skills that students already possess and then help them expand those skills in a slightly different direction.

1. Connect with students cognitively and emotionally
2. Balance the individual with the group
3. Focus on both product and process

1.) Connecting Emotionally and Cognitively

One of the major challenges with cooperative work is helping students invest emotionally in a project. We need to find ways to engage them in the process at a level that generally goes beyond the investment that they make just to complete and assignment and get a grade. Otherwise, students often don’t have the energy or motivation to do the things necessary to collaborate successfully, such as confronting a teammate who’s not contributing or totally rewriting a poor first draft to which another author is clearly attached.

Faculty members can help to elevate student engagement in a number of ways. It’s often helpful to help students make explicit links between the skills they’ll learn in a class assignment and their long-term professional goals. Many students have very little sense of how much collaborative work goes into getting an article into a peer-reviewed journal—or how much time their professors spend reviewing and commenting on their colleague’s articles. Providing examples from your own professional life about the importance of collaboration can help fill in some of those gaps.

Another strategy to for building engagement is to link assignments to authentic problems that have an impact beyond the course and classroom. Students will often take their writing more seriously if they know that someone other than their professor and their classmates are going to read it. Blogs, wikis and other web resources allow students to publish their and encourage interaction through comments. If students are writing in a public medium, faculty members can expand the collaboration even further by encouraging colleagues within the discipline to read and comment on student work.

2.) Balancing the individual with the group

Collaboration isn’t opposed to individual work. Collaborative activities only succeed if the members of the group can read, write and think critically and are willing to use those skills to create a group product. As students are learning to contribute to a collaborative project, it’s often helpful to identify explicit roles—such as copy editor, fact checker, project manager—to help appreciate the complexity of having multiple perspectives on the writing process. Having students rotate through the roles often dramatically improves the quality of the overall product.

The mix of individual and group work makes collaborative assignments notoriously hard to grade, since it’s often impossible to separate and quantify the contribution of any individual. Sometimes the most significant contributions are subtle shifts in direction or nuanced enhancements to an argument that are difficult to identify, even with the comprehensive revision tools built into the collaboration software. I’ll often use a two part grading system to address this difficulty—assigning a group grade for the overall product and then asking students to write a reflective essay evaluating and documenting their personal contribution to the effort.

3.) Focusing on product and process

From the very beginning of the class, I try to make it clear that group assignments don’t detract from the content of the course; they are the content of the course. The face-to-face classes that form the core of the residential college experience offer powerful opportunities for students to adopt new frameworks and to expand their repertoires of skills in group learning. It’s often easier to engage students in discussion of the process and to provide detailed feedback in face-to-face settings than through written comments.

In addition to class time, providing the groups with some structured opportunity to identify ground rules and determine how they’ll deal with problems can provide big payoffs in the future. If the project is a big one, it may make sense for groups to develop a team charter that specifies procedures for dealing predictable issues like slipped deadlines, sloppy work, missed meetings or lack of engagement in the revising process. For smaller projects, it can be useful to the instructor to anticipate some of those problems and incorporate remedies for those common group problems in the grading scheme.

From my perspective, assignments are the most important component of a course since they define what kind of experiences students will have, and learning grows out of experience. The most important question in course design—and often the most difficult to answer—is what do I want students to do differently as a result of being a part of this class. It’s worth a snarky comment or two, if an assignment can help students learn to set goals, share leadership, engage in constructive controversy, and produce a document that transcends what any individual would have produced alone.

Citations

1. Feldman, Sermons for Grumpy Campers. http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/Columns/Sermons.pdf

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In signing up for the University Teaching Project this year, my objective was to work on creating modules for my course on community colleges in which technology figured a prominent part. I wanted to narrate my lecture PowerPoints to allow students access prior to class, thus freeing up class time for active learning instead. In addition, I wanted to work with using technology to support collaborative learning. In our teaching project team, our conversations in the fall revolved around the use of blogs, wikis, and discussion boards. Wikis intrigued me as a learning tool because I had never used one before and thought my course in the project would allow me the opportunity to learn more.

I had two new courses to prepare for spring 2010 and volunteered to try wikis in these classes as an experiment. The students would be the guinea pigs for this initial foray and we could evaluate the process together. This approach underscores the role of collaborative learning in that I was a co-learner of the process too. My students are all adult learners, ranging in age from 23 to 60. As such, adult learners typically want to tie in new learning with their previous experiences and are self-directed learners with high levels of intrinsic motivation. The groups had various backgrounds and comfort with technology. My experience taught me that assuming that younger students will like and use technology more than seasoned learners is a mistake.

To test the range of options for using wikis, I structured the use of the collaborative technology differently for my two classes. For one class, I used the wikis available on Blackboard and put together an assignment that required active learning on applying the theory we were learning to practice. The focus was on an internal audience because only our class had access to the site. An option does exist within Blackboard, however, to export the wiki at the conclusion of the course and put it on a personal website, thus making for a longer shelf life. For my second class, I opted to use the wiki space supported by the university (www.wmwikis.net). The class would create a wiki that would be made public at the conclusion of the class and serve as a resource for community college professionals. The site was private during the construction phase. The intended audience dictated the “home” for the class wiki. A side benefit of using two formats for the wikis is that I can enact Boyer’s Scholarship of Teaching (1990) and write on my experiences in teaching using these sites and analyze the impact on student learning.

My work with wikis this semester also supported my own research and collaboration. I write on faculty development and often have worked with collaborative research teams. One of my colleagues and I are currently working on an article about the development and sustainability of faculty collaborations. I set up a wiki site for our writing. Each of us can go to the site separately to update the paper or leave notes to one another; we always have a history of what we have changed. To supplement this form of collaborative writing, we often do Skype calls and pull up the article to read and edit together. This option cuts through the space/time continuum and uses technology to enhance collaboration. Without looking at a document comparison, I cannot even tell what I have written versus what my colleague has written. I suspect there is not a single sentence in the entire document that is uniquely attributable to one of us or the other. Modeling this type of collaborative writing for students is critical. My own experience with the tools and collaboration on the wiki site help inform my understanding of the student classroom experience.

In reflecting on my experiences this semester, several critical lessons learned were evident. A summary of these lessons include:

• Some things work—some don’t. You need to create the space for failure and safety for you and the students to experiment
• An initial in-class workshop on basic techniques helps, as does occasional time for the group members to meet
• Conceptualizing the project as a learning process helps foster creativity—which was sometimes hard for learners used to having precise guidelines or frameworks
• The purpose of the wiki drives the wiki home (Blackboard vs. wikispaces)
• Wikis provide a good place to foster collaborative writing—using a wiki as a gimmick to “paste” technology on an assignment does not work
• The faculty member needs to showcase and model how the writing and contributions to the wiki site push the collaboration forward
• Some students are techies and others are not—the evaluation process at the end needs to account for all contributions, not just the person who could post it to the site

When someone asked about my experience, I readily responded “I’d do this again!” From a teaching perspective, I like the idea of the wiki being there for future classes to build upon and elaborate. From a researcher’s point of view, I love the ease of working with writing collaborators across the country. The wiki format helps to centralize the writing versus exchanges of Word documents using track changes. The true test for me on the benefits of the wiki was that technology was integral to the learning process and not merely a tool for presenting. The opportunity for the students to collaborate and extend their in-class learning outside the classroom provided a worthwhile outcome. In the end, the true measure of the effectiveness of the wiki technology is how it is used to improve learning. By all accounts, this experience was a success. My students and I found new ways to employ technology, we discovered a space for true collaborative learning to occur, and we moved learning beyond the walls of Jones Hall. I am looking forward to trying wikis again and would encourage you to test the waters too by using this form of technology!

Boyer, E. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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Dr. Warrennetta Mann (Photo by Pablo Yáñez)

One of the key things that faculty members can do to help students grow and develop is to watch for “teachable moments.” Robert Havighurst defines the teachable moment this way: “When the body is ripe, and society requires, and the self is ready to achieve a certain task, the teachable moment has come.”^1 In the context of this helping distressed students, this means helping students identify moments where they could benefit from additional help. By preparing for these moments in advance, faculty can help students through tough emotional times.

Dr. Warrenetta Mann, Director of the W&M Counseling Center, recently talked to faculty members and graduate students about “teachable moments” and distressed students. The following FAQ is compiled from her presentation and it has been approved by the W&M Counseling Center.

Questions

I am comfortable in my role as “educator” but not that comfortable acting as a “counselor.” Is it okay to be “just” a faculty member and not a counselor?
Absolutely. You only need to observe and if a student seems troubled, refer them to the Counseling Center. Mental Heath counseling has greatly expanded in recent years, and, if done with empathy, referring a student to the counseling center can be a step to helping students get help while still maintaining the role of faculty member.

Assuming I am comfortable helping a student, what exactly does “helping” entail?
There are several specific actions faculty can take to help students. These are of great help to the student and not likely to not make you uncomfortable.

• Be willing to help students make connections to support services
• Reassure the student that your relationship will stay intact
• Provide helpers with all the information they need to start
  working with the student
• Set limits for your involvement with reasonable flexibility
• Let the student know specifically what you are seeing or hearing
  that makes you concerned
• Express your intention to continue to support them, but also that
  you see the need to involve others
• Stay in your role as professor

How can I recognize when students are having emotional difficulties?
For many students, the teachable moments come when they face low grades or the consequences of missed classes or deadlines. The seemingly mundane details that appear in your syllabus such as absence, late, incomplete and make-up policies, and the details of your grading system, all help you create “teachable moments”. For example, if you allow, say, three absences in your course, and a student misses four classes, this gives you an opportunity to contact them to make sure everything is all right. This gives students openings to bring up problems that they might otherwise be reluctant to initiate. These types of policies on a syllabus, if made explicit, can help you act quickly while student is receptive to helping solve the problem, as can lists of resources such as information on Academic Advising, office hours, and other resources.

Please refer to the Counseling Center’s guide for Faculty Wishing to Help Students for more information [link] about recognizing distressed students.

If I meet with a student about his or her problems, should I say I will keep the conversation confidential?
Be careful not to say that a conversation is completely confidential. If a student expresses that he or she might do harm to themselves or others, you should not keep this to yourself and immediately seek the help of others.

When referring students to seek the aid of a counselor, are there any places I can suggest that are off-campus?
Last year, the W&M Counseling Center saw 13% of the student body and most of these students found it helpful.^2 However, this is a small campus and not all students may want to seek help at the Counseling Center. If a student feels more comfortable going off-campus, there are a number of Williamsburg-based services that are available.

• Colonial Mental Health Center (mental health counseling, 220-3200)
• Bacon Street (mental health counseling, 253-0111)
• Avalon (sexual assault counseling, 258-5051)
  The Counseling Center also keeps a list of community providers who enjoy working with our students and have provided good service. You or the student may contact us for this list.
  Please note, if a student is suicidal, you must contact one of
  these campus offices so the student can get immediate attention
• Dean of Students Office (221-2510)
• Counseling Center (221-3620)
• Student Health Center (221-4386)
• Campus Police (221-4386)

If I suspect that a student needs help, but I am not entirely sure, where can I turn as a faculty member?
The Counseling Center (221-3620) does phone consultations with faculty who need advice. Alternatively, you can contact the the Dean of Students (221-2510).

For more information about, you can visit the W&M Counseling Center’s on the web
[link:http://www.wm.edu/offices/counselingcenter/services/friendsfacultyandfamily/index.php]

Notes:
1. Teachable Moment Quote: Robert Havighurst, Human Development and Education, 1953, p. 5. (http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3403200281.html)

2. 85% of students seen rated its services as good or excellent. 58% of students seen reported it played a role in their staying in school and 77% indicated that the services they received helped improve their academic work.

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