This morning, we conducted the first QEP Writing.Realized. workshop for the 2011-2012 cohort. We had so much for them to do and learn: QEP philosphy, creating a syllabus, and creating an online presence.
I was sure they would feel overwhelmed. But, as far as I could tell, everyone was sooo excited! I saw that "Wow! This is great!" expression on a couple of faces. Moments like these make teaching worthwhile. Seeing that really made my day. Sometimes we get bogged down in bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo and forget why we're really here.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
Life-long Learners
One of my joys in life is learning new things. I try to learn at least one new thing every day. This is one of the reasons I love working with the QEP. There is always something new to learn, whether it is just a learning theory or some new software.
My wish for this year's graduating cohort is that they continue their passion for learning. Things are always changing, and if you don't keep up, you get too stale, complacent, and irrelevant. Remember to keep a fresh perspective when it comes to learning. I believe that in order to be a great teacher, you also need to be a great student. When your students see your passion for learning, it inspires them to be better learners. So, I challenge everyone to keep abreast of new innovations in your field. Keep in contact with the QEP team. Even though your required year is over, we are still available to assist and guide you in the right direction.
My wish for this year's graduating cohort is that they continue their passion for learning. Things are always changing, and if you don't keep up, you get too stale, complacent, and irrelevant. Remember to keep a fresh perspective when it comes to learning. I believe that in order to be a great teacher, you also need to be a great student. When your students see your passion for learning, it inspires them to be better learners. So, I challenge everyone to keep abreast of new innovations in your field. Keep in contact with the QEP team. Even though your required year is over, we are still available to assist and guide you in the right direction.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Using CLAQWA
We started using the CLAQWA writing assessment tool last semester to measure the growth of QEP students writing abilities between the beginning of the semester and the end of the semester. We are now exploring different things we can do with this service besides program assessment.
One of the things that sets CLAQWA apart, is its 16 trait rubric. We have seen and evaluated dozens of writing rubrics over the past year, and this one seems to be the best, as rubrics go. There are enough traits to cover just about any part of an essay imaginable, yet you can customize it to just one or two traits, depending on the class assignment.
The QEP team hopes to be able to utilize this rubric to help professors and students know exactly what areas to focus on in a given assignment. For example, Professor Plum tells his class to write an essay about a poisonous plant, and he will be looking for them to demonstrate they can fulfill Traits 10 and 11 (Quality of Details and Quantity of Details.) Then, the students can come into the Writing Lab and ask the Writing Specialist for help in those areas.
I think concentrating on a few traits at the time will help build the confidence of the poor writer. Not only will he not feel overwhelmed, we can work on the most important traits and go from there.
One of the things that sets CLAQWA apart, is its 16 trait rubric. We have seen and evaluated dozens of writing rubrics over the past year, and this one seems to be the best, as rubrics go. There are enough traits to cover just about any part of an essay imaginable, yet you can customize it to just one or two traits, depending on the class assignment.
The QEP team hopes to be able to utilize this rubric to help professors and students know exactly what areas to focus on in a given assignment. For example, Professor Plum tells his class to write an essay about a poisonous plant, and he will be looking for them to demonstrate they can fulfill Traits 10 and 11 (Quality of Details and Quantity of Details.) Then, the students can come into the Writing Lab and ask the Writing Specialist for help in those areas.
I think concentrating on a few traits at the time will help build the confidence of the poor writer. Not only will he not feel overwhelmed, we can work on the most important traits and go from there.
Friday, January 21, 2011
The AHA moment!
Tom Clancy, one of our QEP coordinators, is teaching a Literary Forms class this semester. He graciously let us use him as our guinea pig, allowing us to re-vamp his syllabus into a Flipped classroom. This is a relatively new concept to us, but it shows great promise. It is a natural step to support our connectivist teaching philosophy as well as using JiTTs in order to allow students to gain more out of the classroom experience.
We have been pushing writing to learn in the classrooms by utilizing wikis and blogs. However, one of the major roadblocks that I have heard from the teachers is the fact that students don’t actively participate. I have been trying to think of ways to help them encourage student participation. A statement by Keith Hamon, our other coordinator set off the lightbulb in my brain. We have been going about this problem from the wrong end!!
Apparently, in a flipped classroom, you don’t just have the boring text readings done before class, leaving time for class discussion and other interactive activities, you also flip the grading scale!! For example, class participation usually only counts 5 to 10% in a class. If you keep giving JiTT assignments, and assign blog postings and only give this small amount of weight to it, of course the average student isn’t going to take it seriously. What if they were (gasp!) sufficiently motivated to learn? What if class participation was the meat and potatoes of the course, earning 70 - 80% of your grade? That would motivate!
Testing is just a tool to see how well a student can memorize facts. By the time a student takes a test, the lesson has long been over, and it’s often to late to go back over the missed objectives. Is it not more important to see the students progress during class? Monitor their postings to see if they “get it” or not??
I know this sounds radical and revolutionary to most people. In all honesty, as a former high school teacher, I ask myself the same questions the college professors ask about the practicality of it all. At the end of the day, I think it’s doable. It’s just going to take some time to re-train our brains as well as the students’.
We have been pushing writing to learn in the classrooms by utilizing wikis and blogs. However, one of the major roadblocks that I have heard from the teachers is the fact that students don’t actively participate. I have been trying to think of ways to help them encourage student participation. A statement by Keith Hamon, our other coordinator set off the lightbulb in my brain. We have been going about this problem from the wrong end!!
Apparently, in a flipped classroom, you don’t just have the boring text readings done before class, leaving time for class discussion and other interactive activities, you also flip the grading scale!! For example, class participation usually only counts 5 to 10% in a class. If you keep giving JiTT assignments, and assign blog postings and only give this small amount of weight to it, of course the average student isn’t going to take it seriously. What if they were (gasp!) sufficiently motivated to learn? What if class participation was the meat and potatoes of the course, earning 70 - 80% of your grade? That would motivate!
Testing is just a tool to see how well a student can memorize facts. By the time a student takes a test, the lesson has long been over, and it’s often to late to go back over the missed objectives. Is it not more important to see the students progress during class? Monitor their postings to see if they “get it” or not??
I know this sounds radical and revolutionary to most people. In all honesty, as a former high school teacher, I ask myself the same questions the college professors ask about the practicality of it all. At the end of the day, I think it’s doable. It’s just going to take some time to re-train our brains as well as the students’.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Creating a Critical Thinking Rubric
This past week in our QEP workshop, we started winding up our discussion on critical thinking. One of our final tasks on this subject is to identify ways to evaluate the level of critical thinking in our students. We have decided to create a Critical Thinking Rubric.
When you look up “Critical Thinking Rubric” on Google, you get thousands of examples. It seems like we may be re-inventing the wheel here. So, you may wonder why are we wanting to create our own. However, I believe one reason may be that there is no “one size fits all.” We can take inspiration from the examples out there and craft a rubric that fits our faculty needs. There also seems to be a hidden lesson in all this - we are learning to think critically about evaluating critical thinking. May the force be with us on our quest! :-)
When you look up “Critical Thinking Rubric” on Google, you get thousands of examples. It seems like we may be re-inventing the wheel here. So, you may wonder why are we wanting to create our own. However, I believe one reason may be that there is no “one size fits all.” We can take inspiration from the examples out there and craft a rubric that fits our faculty needs. There also seems to be a hidden lesson in all this - we are learning to think critically about evaluating critical thinking. May the force be with us on our quest! :-)
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Are Students Thinking Critically or Playing the Game?
This week in our QEP workshops, we were further challenged in our quest for defining critical thinking. The professors were given a JITT (Just in Time Teaching) exercise in which they had to prioritize the different components that make up the definition of “critical thinking” as reached by the group in the Delphi Report. It was interesting to note the different priorities that were given by each professor based upon his/her discipline. So, the question is - should the definition of critical thinking be different for every field or can we all agree on one generic definition in the classrooms??
We were also shown a Doonesbury cartoon in which a college professor is lecturing to his class about Thomas Jefferson and the Bill of Rights. The students are copiously taking notes, but are not engaging with the professor and analyzing what he is saying. The professor goes off on a tear of nonsense, just trying to get their attention, but they keep writing everything down. Finally, the professor collapses on his podium and exclaims, “Teaching is Dead!”
One thought brought out from the group is the fact that students are accustomed to the method of taking notes and taking the professor’s word as “law.” Most of us were brought up the same way. You learn what the teacher expects from you in the classroom and in your graded projects, and you deliver. You learn quickly in school what is needed to make the “A.” I call this “playing the game.” What can we do to encourage both??
The professors were given the task of creating a JITT exercise about Thomas Jefferson and the Bill of Rights that would have helped the class become active participants in the lecture, and really exercise their critical thinking skills.
Some examples that really make you think outside the box:
If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, what would he think about the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy?
If you were part of a group writing the Bill of Rights today, what would you add or remove from the original? Why?
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=10rW7XWCVneT4KraDtEL9K9mWqpurlL7AUCXqyILeA-w
We were also shown a Doonesbury cartoon in which a college professor is lecturing to his class about Thomas Jefferson and the Bill of Rights. The students are copiously taking notes, but are not engaging with the professor and analyzing what he is saying. The professor goes off on a tear of nonsense, just trying to get their attention, but they keep writing everything down. Finally, the professor collapses on his podium and exclaims, “Teaching is Dead!”
One thought brought out from the group is the fact that students are accustomed to the method of taking notes and taking the professor’s word as “law.” Most of us were brought up the same way. You learn what the teacher expects from you in the classroom and in your graded projects, and you deliver. You learn quickly in school what is needed to make the “A.” I call this “playing the game.” What can we do to encourage both??
The professors were given the task of creating a JITT exercise about Thomas Jefferson and the Bill of Rights that would have helped the class become active participants in the lecture, and really exercise their critical thinking skills.
Some examples that really make you think outside the box:
If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, what would he think about the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy?
If you were part of a group writing the Bill of Rights today, what would you add or remove from the original? Why?
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=10rW7XWCVneT4KraDtEL9K9mWqpurlL7AUCXqyILeA-w
Friday, September 17, 2010
Defining "Critical Thinking"
One of the five literacies that our QEP team is addressing is the need to encourage critical thinking skills in our students. In our workshop this week, we were given the task of defining the term "critical thinking." You would think that would be easy to do. However, everyone in the room had a different definition. This started a great conversation and debate among us. It was interesting to see how the definition tended to be biased towards the professor's field of expertise.I believe that the main commonality among us though was that critical thinking involves some set of logic.
I know there are many different aspects of critical thinking. However, in a nutshell, I would define critical thinking as any endeavor that includes relying upon your knowledge and past experiences to determine a logical solution or to predict the outcome of a given situation. This criteria can be met regardless of if you are performing a scientific experiment or determining the actions of characters in a story that you are writing.
At our next workshop we are supposed to TRY to create a definition that everyone can agree upon. I look forward to that debate! :-)
I know there are many different aspects of critical thinking. However, in a nutshell, I would define critical thinking as any endeavor that includes relying upon your knowledge and past experiences to determine a logical solution or to predict the outcome of a given situation. This criteria can be met regardless of if you are performing a scientific experiment or determining the actions of characters in a story that you are writing.
At our next workshop we are supposed to TRY to create a definition that everyone can agree upon. I look forward to that debate! :-)
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