Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing selected portions of my Teaching Statement here as part of a development series, as I refine my philosophies for the submission of my second-year review this fall. I welcome feedback! Feel free to comment on the post (note, all comments require my approval before appearing publicly on the site), or contact me directly if you have more substantial edits.
*Please note, these are selected portions of my Statement which have been edited to remove sensitive information. These are early drafts, and may not reflect my final version. Tenure materials that I generate are mine to share, but my department chair, committee, and union representative were consulted prior to posting these. Each tenure-granting institution is unique, and departments weigh criteria differently, thus Statements can’t really be directly compared between faculty.*
Improving the accessibility of course materials
While course content might seem like a more pertinent place to begin this Statement, the intellectual content of a course is predicated on the ability of students to access and connect with those materials. The pandemic and social turmoil of 2020 has made this a year like no other for our students, and in conversations with them, I have gathered that it has created new challenges for them and exacerbated existing ones. The primary obstacle for students to attend live lectures and provide effort on assignments is the general increased workload related to online classes, the necessity of employment, and the inflexibility of employers who schedule student employees in a way that precludes them from attending live lectures. Further, students are under an overwhelming amount of stress, and this has exacerbated learning disorders and created its own obstacles to engaging with course material. To that end, I have made a number of improvements in my course presentation to make materials more approachable and inclusive to learning style and student life outside of the classroom, which have been adopted in 2020 but will persist.
All the course materials for these classes are made available in Brightspace at the beginning of the semester, so students may download readings and lectures when they have access to internet services. This also allows them to a priori assess the coursework and gauge the expectations on their time, to better plan their effort over the semester in relation to other engagements. Assignments may be submitted early, and are accepted late with grade penalties applying in some cases. In 2020-2021, grade penalties are waved to facilitate student scheduling during the pandemic. For presentations, students may schedule time blocks well in advance, or may opt to record their presentation and submit videos. Live lectures are recorded and videos are made available to students immediately after class, and previous to the pandemic I gave students the option to attend via remote video conferencing when they were home sick but did not want to miss class.
The availability of coursework in advance and the flexibility of format allows for students to engage with the work at their own pace and in a way that feels more comfortable to them. In particular, the use of online discussion forums in Brightspace has given a voice to even the quietest of students and allowed for more diverse perspectives to contribute to the topic.
The use of online teaching platforms also allows for more accessibility in the materials for students with additional challenges. For example, after conferring with a student about understanding course materials, I added audio instructions to assignments (a recording of me reading the directions), which allows students with language dysmorphia or visual impairment to more easily understand what is being asked of them.
The use of online teaching software helps me curate assignments to more accurately test student learning and not just how clearly I asked the quiz questions. For example, it is much easier to track student performance over time and per assignment, and assess which portions of the assignment should be revised to improve their clarity.
Finally, one barrier to student engagement in coursework appears to be a lack of student confidence stemming from an underestimation of their own agency in asking for help, accommodation, or more visibility in the class. Students appear resigned to accept a zero instead of asking for deadline extensions, or for asking for more effort from their instructor. Students appear to internalize poor performance as a personal failure, rather than a discrepancy between how the information is communicated and how it is received. To that end, I solicit feedback using anonymous polls, and in lectures or assignments which do not generate student engagement I ask students how they would have rephrased the questions I pose to them.
Something which I have not yet tried, but intend to implement in the future, is a self-reflection assignment at the beginning of the semester for each class. The goal is for students to feel welcome, to feel that they have agency in their education in this class, and to feel that they can let go of control in order to try something new. First, students will be asked to watch a reading of the children’s story, If You Give A Mouse a Cookie (https://youtu.be/QCDPkGjMBro), about a mouse that keeps asking for things. Next, students will watch a TEDTalk, “Asking for Help is a Strength, Not A Weakness” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akiQuyhXR8o&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=TED). Then, students will watch the TEDTalk “The Art of Letting Go… Of The Floor” (https://www.ted.com/talks/siawn_ou_the_art_of_letting_go_of_the_floor/details). Finally, students will reflect and write down their goals for the class; 1 thing they want (the cookie), 1 thing they need (the help), and 1 thing they want to let go of (their floor).