From the Archives to the Classroom

Con Diaz, CTL McDougal Teaching Fellow

 

            When I visit archives, I often find myself asking one question over and over again: What can I do with this document? I am a historian of technology with a special interest in the law, so this question is often the first step in thinking about how people, institutions, technologies, and legal systems have interacted with one another. In a broader sense, this question is a prompt to find new ways of thinking about historical phenomena, evidence to question my own hypotheses, or analytical structures to streamline my questions and answers.

This question is also central to how I teach my students the basics of historical work. For example, for one class meeting my students read a court decision from the 1970s, a critique by a legal scholar written in the same year, and a recent historical account of the decision itself. My goal for the class was to study legal scholarship and court decisions as historical documents. Our class began with a discussion of the content and structure of the decision and the critique. We then moved on to study the historical contexts for these documents and the scholarly intervention that the historian’s account was making. We ended by thinking about how we could use the students’ observations to illustrate or enrich the historian’s argument. 

            These students mined historical scholarship to find the language and structures they needed both to articulate their own observations, and to assess the scholarly significance of their claims. This lesson is central to two of my goals as an instructor:  I want to teach my students how to question narratives and arguments using historical documents, and I want them to mine the historiography for lessons on how to focus and articulate their own questions. In short, I hope to teach them that finding an answer to that simple question—what can I do with this document?—can lead them to a thrilling intellectual pursuit.

            The value of this question as a teaching tool transcends the historical classrooms into which I have brought it. In a gender studies or science and technology studies class, it would enable students to think about the relationships between theory and evidence. In disciplines such as English or literature, it will prompt them to think about what they can do with texts beyond summarizing plots and highlighting metaphors. In the end, thinking deeply and often about that question will teach them a valuable lesson: new ways of thinking are some of the most valuable things they can take with them from a humanities class.

 

 

 

 

Teaching Behind Bars: From the What to the Why

Stuart Paul Duncan

 

Back in 2007, my academic teaching journey began as a teaching assistant for a diverse array of music-related undergraduate courses at Cornell University, aiding in classes on African Music and the Diaspora, introducing students to technical and composition tools in Digital Music, and guiding students through introductory music theory classes. In 2012, my teaching journey continued at Yale, this time as a part-time acting instructor, with increased responsibilities in shaping music theory-specific classes and evaluating student development over a sequence of multiple theory courses. However, my most transformative experience as a teacher occurred between the two Ivies, when I created and led my own course for incarcerated adult male students at a maximum-security prison in upstate New York in 2010.

At first, I was apprehensive to enter this walled community: an endless series of locked gates connected narrow winding corridors, overlapping one another via endless staircases and generating claustrophobia. And things didn't get any better upon reaching my music appreciation classroom: no computers, no Internet, no cell phones, no projector, and perhaps most importantly, no piano. Four bare walls, a couple of blackboards, and a few rows of chairs in a lecture-style setup were the sum total of this community's physical learning environment. While this environment alone presented something of a transformative experience in reconfiguring my approach to teaching (especially as an alumnus of the technology-enabled classrooms at Cornell), the transformation I experienced was due to the students themselves.

One commonly held misconception of prison life is that incarcerated people have nothing to do all day, and thus prisoners take classes as a way of passing the time, of alleviating their boredom. But, at least for the incarcerated men where I taught, each person worked gruellingly long days by making license plates for the state. In order to take classes, these students had to be in good behavioral standing, and only then could they take part in classes by giving up their lunch breaks. Education was not a given; it had to be earned. My initial concerns prior to the first class were that I might find it hard to motivate these students; however, my fears were unfounded, as these students were voracious learners. While every student had a different educational background — from no secondary education to college degrees — all of them wanted to learn. The biggest difference between my prior experience teaching at Cornell and the prison was that, in addition to wanting to learn, these students wanted to know why they should. It wasn't enough simply to highlight a long-term goal such as "this course will develop a critical ear in listening to music and aid in translating these observations into a written form"; I had to consider why such a goal was worthwhile and how this benefited the student.

This need to ask "why" is a trait that is often associated with adult learning. Across the vast span of scholarly literature on teaching in academia, research generally divides students in two clear groups: traditional college-age students and adult learners. Cari Kenner and Jason Weinerman's 2011 paper, "Adult Learning Theory: Applications to Non-Traditional College Students," is one of many recent papers that refer to M. S. Knowles's 1984 distinction between college-age and adult learners, where the latter:

[...] are self directed, take responsibility for their own actions, and resist having information arbitrarily imposed on them. They have an extensive depth of experience, which serves as a critical component in the foundation of their self-identity. They are ready to learn. As most adult learners return to college voluntarily, they are likely to actively engage in the learning process. They are task motivated. Adult students returning to college attend for a specific goal and the primary component of their motivational drive tends to be internal.³

The need to know why comes from a need to know the value of whatever is being presented, be it an overarching goal, an idea or concept, or even a learning activity: adult learners resist information that has no clear function. And, as they are actively engaged in the learning process, they take on a greater ownership of the information presented. 

As a fellow at the Yale Center for Teaching and Learning and a part-time acting instructor in the Department of Music, pedagogical concepts of backwards design, active learning, and goal-oriented teaching have all played a central role in my approach to teaching. But, the experience of teaching a community of incarcerated adult learners who required me to answer the whys as well as the whats fundamentally changed my approach to education. Asking why encourages us to burst the hermetically sealed bubble that encapsulates a narrowly defined, content-driven approach and embrace a goal-oriented approach that is sensitized not only to wider educational goals appropriate for college-level education, but also to reconceive of our course goals as part of a longer, life-oriented trajectory.

References:
1. See http://cpep.cornell.edu/ for more information on Cornell Universities Prison Education Program
2. See http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/09/the-50-craziest-prisons-and-jails-in-the-world/auburn-correctional-facility
3. Kenner, Cari and Jason Weinerman, "Adult Learning Theory: Applications to Non-Traditional College Students," Journal of College Reading & Learning (College Reading & Learning Association) Spring 2011, Vol. 41(2):88-89

Are Good Teachers Born or Made?

My name is Jemilat Salami-Oyenuga and this is my first year serving as a McDougal Teaching Fellow for the Yale Center for Teaching and Learning. I’m a 3^rd year PhD student in the Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology Department at Yale and currently serve as a teaching assistant for an undergraduate course in Cell Biology.

This blog post was inspired by a conversation I had with a close friend of mine (also a graduate student but at a different institution). She is in the process of deciding whether or not serve as a Teaching Assistant for a lab course and expressed a deep concern about not being a “good enough” teacher to make a good TA. She echoed sentiments that I had heard from other colleagues who have struggled with confidence in the classroom because they just “didn’t have the flair for teaching.” 

 

My curiosity grew and I began looking into whether or not effective teachers are born or made. To my delight, this turns out to be a very popular conversation among educators over the years. From my readings, I find myself leaning towards the argument that effective teachers are MADE/RAISED/GROOMED. I have included some of my readings below for your reference.

Good teachers are made, not born, says Longwood professor

Great Teachers: Born or Made?
Natural Born Teachers
Teaching the Teachers
Excellence in Teaching

I must say that I came across a number of valid arguments for the contribution of an innate gift to an individual’s teaching abilities. However, with the proper tools and training, the lack of some innate ability should not be an obstacle that prevents an individual from achieving teaching success. Even the most naturally talented teacher would fail to be effective in the classroom without implementing practical elements such as preparation, organization, knowledge/love of content, clarity, stimulating student interest and being respectful. Furthermore, this article highlights nine characteristics of great teachers and it is reassuring to see that 8 out of the 9 highlighted characteristics are skills that an individual can learn and put into practice. This concept ties in very nicely with what we do at the CTL; we provide students and postdocs with tools that allow them to become effective teachers irrespective of natural gifts/predispositions.

 

 

Moving on to my dear friend’s dilemma, I wanted to provide a starting point for her and other individuals struggling with the fear of not being effective teachers, to begin to tackle this challenge. I have compiled a (very) short list of resources below that provide helpful information/tools to help one navigate the apprehension that could come with teaching, especially for the first time.

Public Speaking for Teachers I: Lecturing Without Fear

Chapter 1: Teaching the First Class
Tips for First-time Teachers

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this discussion. Are good teachers born or made? Please also feel free to suggest other resources you have found helpful along your journey as a developing teacher.

The Rat Race: An Exploration of Learning versus Performance

My name is Rob Wickham, and I’m a fifth-year graduate student in the Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program and a first-year teaching fellow in the Center for Teaching and Learning here at Yale. My teaching experience includes formerly being a lab instructor at the University of Minnesota for a zoology course for two years, a Teaching Fellow at Yale in psychology and an adjunct professor at Albertus Magnus College.  

A big part of my research focuses on the neural mechanisms of learning, which in part, requires me to assess on a day-to-day basis whether or not the subjects in my experiments learn.  This got me thinking: "How do I know my students are learning?" or better yet…"What are my students learning?" Let's do a quick experiment to demonstrate why these questions matter.  

Figure 1: The rat can solve this problem in multiple, often unexpected, ways.

The experiment

Let's put a rat in a simple two tunnel maze (Figure 1). Each tunnel has a marking on the floor: triangle or star. The goal is to get the rat to learn that the path marked with the triangle leads to the cheese. Over multiple maze runs, he eventually starts going down the triangle path more and more often.  Mission accomplished...right? 

Let’s revisit our goal. Our goal was for the rat to learn that the triangle path leads to the cheese.  The rat performed the maze perfectly--he got the cheese, didn't he? But how do we know he completed the maze by using the symbols on the path? Maybe he guessed. Maybe he learned to choose "left", not "triangle". Maybe he smelled the cheese. Or maybe he did learn that the triangle path led to the cheese.  This is a classic example of the "learning versus performance" (LVP) problem.

The LVP problem, in its essence, is the task of determining "what" is learned by examining the performance, or behavior, of an organism.  Even for the simple maze, we cannot tell "what" the animal learned by simply examining its behavior.  We have to do a few tricks in order to tease this information out:
·         We have to counterbalance (i.e. switch the location of ) which path has the triangle on it.
·         We have to make the paths long enough so the animal can't smell the cheese (or mask the cheese smell with another smell).
·         We have to make sure the animal is not just going down the path that is "not the star". One way to do this would be to add a third symbol (e.g. square), in place of the star. The animal should then learn to avoid this path.
If we do all these things and the rat is still able to get the cheese, then we can probably assume that the rat learned that the triangle path leads to the cheese, and thus, his choosing of the triangle path reflects this learning.

The validity of an assessment
In the classroom, the LVP problem is analogous to assessment validity. Assessment validity is the ability of an educational assessment to predict the degree of learning in a student.  Assessments usually come in two flavors: formative and summative. Formative assessment is generally more informal, such as calling on a student to answer a question, and is used by the instructor to gauge student progress.  Summative assessment is generally more formal and is typically used to generate a grade (e.g. exams, presentations, papers). 

Whether formative or summative, a valid assessment permits good scores (performance) when the student has learned the material and poor scores when the student has not (Figure 2).  An invalid assessment can produce two distinct populations of students: overperformers and underperformers. An overperformer performs better than they should given how much they have learned, whereas an underperformer performs less than their potential given how much they have learned. I know producing an overperformer may sound like a good thing, but like the case of our rat friend, you do not know what your students are taking away from the class. Having a student ace a test, despite learning nothing, isn't much better than having a student fail a test, despite knowing everything.

Figure 2: Valid assessments occur when the degree of learning matches the degree of performance. Invalid assessments can occur either if a student performs below what is expected given the amount of learning achieved (underperformer) or if the student exceeds what is expected given the amount of learning achieved (overperformer).


The valid assessment has a particular relationship between learning and performance. Let's imagine we had perfect information about what our students learned and had the perfect assessment tool (Figure 3; blue dotted line).  Optimally, the relationship would be some variation of a line.  Thus, if a student learns X information they will have Y performance: no less, no greater. If the assessment is invalid, however, deviations from this line will occur. Overperformers will achieve higher scores (Figure 3; green dotted line) and underperformers will achieve lower scores (Figure 3; red dotted line), relative to what they should receive based on the degree of learning. 

Figure 3: Theoretical depiction of the relationship between learning and performance. Blue dotted line: maximum possible performance given the amount of learning achieved. Red dotted line: A student who underperforms.  For underperforming students higher degrees of learning don't produce comparable increases in performance, indicative of a failure to translate and express their knowledge. Green dotted line: A student who overperforms. For overperforming students, lower levels of learning produce higher than achievable performance, suggesting student is using strategies and skills other than the assessments tests.

 

Figure 4: Short-list of potential reasons for underperformance and overpeformance.

Underperformers and overperformers

A valid assessment minimizes the chances of creating underperformers and overperformers. One way to approach the creation of a valid assessment is to understand what makes an individual underperform and overperform. The reasons why a student may underperform are many and varied (Figure 4). Remember--they know the material, but they just simply cannot translate this knowledge into performance. Overperformers, on the other hand, are somehow achieving levels of performance that cannot be explained by their knowledge of the material. One caveat is that overperformers may be integrating information from outside the classroom to achieve these levels of performance. While not necessarily a bad thing, having students use skills outside of the ones taught in the classroom can be a detriment if they need the class skills for a future course or future learning.   

Making a valid assessment

Remember the goal of an assessment is to determine "what" is learned. Learning, unfortunately, cannot be directly measured, and we must use a person's performance to infer learning. Thus, assessment by its nature is a noisy process. That is OK, we are not seeking perfection.  However, there are some simple heuristics to get as close as possible! These tips will be placed in the context of minimizing creating underperformers and overperformers (Figure 4).

(1)  Generate specific learning objectives: The more specific your learning objectives, the more control you have over your students' learning. For example, the learning objective: "learn to integrate mathematical functions" is far too vague. There are numerous ways you can integrate mathematical functions and get the correct answer on an assessment. An alternative version, "learn to integrate functions by u-substitution," is far more precise. Now, the only way to get the correct answer is by using the approach outlined by your learning objective. Then, for the assessment, you can ask students to use this specific approach to answer a problem.  This approach minimizes the likelihood of generating overperformers.

The other benefit of generating specific learning objectives is that it is easier to match assessments to the objective.  Therefore, there will be less of a chance for an assessment that is incompatible (Figure 4: underpeformers) with the content.  For example, if you want students to "organize all the presidents of the United States in order of entering office,” you may want to have an assessment that does exactly that, such as providing a list of presidents and having students organize them. A less compatible assessment would be to have students list the presidents by recalling them (no list available) and then organize the presidents. This type of assessment would be incompatible with the learning objective, since the objective was to "organize" and not "list and organize."  Thus, specific and clear learning objectives can also aid underperformers as well. 

(2) Have students show their work: Permit students the opportunity to show what process they are using in their head.  Most people think of "show your work" for quantitative type problems. For the example above, having students show each step of performing u-substitution (demonstrating learning of the process) is fairly easy to ask. However, this approach can also be used for more qualitative subjects and assessments. For example, in writing composition courses, permit the student to comment on the margins (such as in Microsoft Word) to explain their writing process. Furthermore, the instructor can assign questions about the student's writing process . This also minimizes the likelihood of generating overperformers. Moreover, since showing work permits students to operate outside the bounds of an assignment, there are more opportunities for expressing their ideas. This will also help prevent underperformance.

(3) Use a variety of assessment tools: This approach is highly tailored to help potential underperformers translate their knowledge. In order to perform, a student must access the information they have learned.  Even if they can access the information, they must then translate this information into some observable form. Some students can more easily translate their ideas in writing versus speaking, or vice versa.  Moreover, some students can translate ideas more efficiently if asked a very specific question versus a general, open-ended one, or vice versa. Permitting more translation options for students will minimize underperformance.

(4) Match formative and summative assessments where appropriate:  Asking a student to do something on an exam that they have never done before will generate underperformers. This is not to say you shouldn't ask them to solve a novel problem; rather, the skill or approach required to answer the problem should not be novel. One way to prevent this is by matching the form of assessment in class and during the exam. For example, if you have students do a matching assignment to align the base pairs of DNA in class, also have them do it for a different sequence on an exam. The problem is different, but they are applying the skills and knowledge you want them to learn, and hence, creating a valid assessment.

Let's hear from you!

These heuristics are ones that I have come up with in my experiences as an instructor. Hopefully, they will be valuable to you, but I write them knowing that there are alternative approaches and strategies for creating valid assessments. Please comment below with any other suggestions/heuristics, comments, praise, or disagreements.  I would love to hear your thoughts!