Tag: developing curricula

Working full time on your break from work: University Sabbaticals

sueishaqlabLeave a comment

My sabbatical – a semester-long release from my teaching, undergraduate advising, and departmental administration duties – wrapped up at the end of December. Despite only having to ostensibly perform half my job, I worked full-time my entire sabbatical just to keep on top of my current workload because university ‘responsibility creep’ is too pervasive. However, being on sabbatical allowed me just enough free time during the work week to reflect in a way that I have not been able to afford in a long time – something avid readers of my blog might have noticed as my introspective content has been sparse and the length of my posts has diminished over the last few years. Case in point: I started the outline for this blog post in November 2024 with the intention of posting in January 2025todiscussmy sabbatical plans for fall 2025, and I am just now getting around to writing the summary of events at the end of January 2026.

What is a sabbatical and who takes over my responsibilities?

A sabbatical is broadly used to describe a long break from one’s job responsibilities, but it is structured very differently based on career and institution. While it can mean an extended vacation bestowed on long-term employees after years of service, university sabbatical provides a temporary release from some responsibilities to allow faculty to improve other parts of their role/responsibilities. For example, many faculty use their sabbatical to visit another lab to launch a collaborative project or learn a new technique, others use it to learn new topics to expand their teaching repertoire. Institutions may set requirements for research or teaching objectives, but at UMaine the faculty propose their own goals in a written application. Faculty are eligible to apply for one or two semesters off every six years of service, and proposals are reviewed by the Department Chair, Dean’s Office, and Provost’s office before some are approved.

For example, UMaine’s guidelines and application for sabbaticals is here. You’ll note that only a certain number of sabbaticals may be approved for each campus in the UMaine system each year, regardless of how many people are eligible. Thus, the application materials (your proposal) are import because, from the UMaine guidelines, “The selection of those who will receive these sabbaticals shall be based on a program proposal which includes a statement of intent and on benefits of the proposed sabbatical to the individual, the campus and the profession.”

Asking for one semester off (4 months) versus two (the 9-month academic year) creates different challenges for one’s department, as my duties don’t vanish when I’m not there. Sabbatical proposals require faculty to describe how our existing responsibilities will be met. My undergraduate advisees needed to be reassigned to my colleagues in the Animal and Veterinary Science program (some of whom had to resolve enrollment and academic admin barriers for 50 undergraduates), I needed to find adjuncts with highly-specialized academic backgrounds to teach my two fall courses (totaling 130 students), and critical decisions still needed to be made to help the program and department survive the university-wide restructuring and budget cuts that stemmed from the year of chaos in federal funding for research and education.

Luckily, my department had room in the budget to hire two adjuncts, because when faculty take one semester of sabbatical off, we still draw 100% of our salary (half of mine is for research, half is for teaching/advising, and we are required to provide departmental administration and university service for free). Thus, I needed to have my sabbatical plan approved in advance by my departmental chair to ensure we had money to hire temporary replacements. If I had taken a year off, my salary would have been reduced by 50% for that year, and the remainer would have been used to pay for a temporary employee to teach/advice 12 credit hours over 9 months.

Of course, some responsibilities cannot be re-assigned or paused, so I was still obligated to perform some teaching, advising, and admin duties even though I was ostensibly freed from those. I reflect on that towards the end of my post, after I talk about my goals.

Sabbatical Goal 1: Flipping AVS 254 Intro to Animal Microbiomes

My primary goal was to transform my existing lecture-based course, AVS 254 Intro to Animal Microbiomes, into a flipped-classroom format in which all lectures are recorded ahead of time for students to watch at their convenience, and the scheduled class time is spent on active learning and completing assignments. I completed this objective, but it took me 7 months instead of 3 because of the extensive burden of generating curriculum (literature review, summarizing info, finding or creating images and diagrams, making content visually accessible, writing presenter notes for all slides, finding journal articles which were easy to read for homework, designing walk-through assignments which teach research skills). Flipping the classroom can benefit the students, by providing more opportunities to connect learning material with skills and problem-solving. I also needed much more time than expected to complete my objectives because of the teaching and advising which couldn’t pause during my sabbatical.

Flipping the classroom made better use of my time and expertise by allowing problem-solving assignments. While it takes extensive expertise to complete the literature reviews and summaries for my lectures (which are each on a different topic), reciting the content of my lectures each year is not a good use of my time. Instead, recording my lectures allows me to use classroom time to provide my expertise to students on assessing and using information on microbes to solve problems. In previous years, I flipped several lectures and use class time for active learning, which was very successful. For my sabbatical, I revised all the course assignments from at-home writing to in-person research-based activities: how to use databases to analyze microbiome data and compare DNA sequences, compare existing data on microbiomes and interventions, choose one technology versus another, design hypothetical experiments or interventions, and generate action plans for hypothetical collaborations. The flipped classroom creates asynchronous learning of course material, which is also part of a long-term revision to the modalities of my course that I’ve been working towards for several years. Last year, and starting again next year, I will offer my course with an in-person version (the flipped classroom), and as an asynchronous version.

Recording content allowed me to improve depth of material. To condense the material from three lectures per week into two per week (or one/holiday week), I restructured my 35 lectures into 28. This involved moving content rather than cutting it, and allowed me to condense similar material into one lecture instead of dispersing it to work within the time limit of in-person courses. By recording lectures, I was able to double the amount of content provided and go into more depth without increasing total lecture time, because the recordings proceed faster than live lectures.  For example, in a lecture on how diet affects microbial communities in monogastric animals, I was able to add comparative anatomy, physiology, microbiology as well as integrate more biophysics of digestion, and collectively this allowed me to tie science from multiple disciplines into a cohesive narrative about how host species and diet both affect gut microbes.

Recording content allowed me to make materials more accessible. First, no matter how I structure my content, some students feel like there is too much material while others feel there is not enough. To provide a “Goldilocks Zone”, the recordings can be played at low or high speed to keep pace with their learning style. Second, no matter how many students indicate they want in-person courses, only about 1/3 are able to show up the entire semester, and that falls to 1/10 every time (according to students) a science “weeder course” has an exam as students are given little-to-no flexibility on deadlines for those courses and are forced to de-prioritize (and risk failing) another course. I’ve spoken to students who have said they chose to skip assignments or accept a worse grade in my course instead of falling behind in chemistry because they knew I would let them turn in assignments weeks or even months late while they receive little flexibility for life events which prevent them from attending class/lab or completing assignments on time. To combat this, all my recorded lecture content is available at the beginning of the semester for students who need to complete this course at custom intervals instead of weekly.  The asynchronous version accommodates students who have too many courses, work, long commutes, medical constraints, family care duties, or other obligations which preclude them attending and engaging with the course. This, too, presented a challenge as I needed to create protocols or walkthroughs which can be accomplished within the classroom as well as online, and make them expandable to create extra objectives for students completing assignments in a group to maintain equitable workloads with online students completing assignments solo.  

 Recording the lectures required an overhaul of all materials to make them higher quality, self-explanatory, and to make them more inclusive to learning assistance technology. In addition to generating more content, all slides needed to be recorded which required presenter notes/ a script to improve the quality of the recording and reduce the use of filler words. To improve content for non-visual learners (visual disability or those who listen to the audio recording at work without looking at the slides, this also required a significant time investment to describe each graph, diagram, or other visual element in my presenter notes/audio recording. By adding presenter notes on slides, I could also create annotated PDFs versions of lectures that are easier for students to use with screen-readers, and easier to download for students with low-quality internet, and allows students to have a written script for the video version as the subtitle-generating AI in Kaltura sometimes struggles to accurately transcribe scientific terms or certain words because of the way I speak.

Students were enthusiastic about the updates to the course content and format, based on course evaluations from Fall 2025 when an adjunct taught my course but I was making course revisions in advance of releasing course material each week. Student comments included:

  • “I loved that this course was offered online. As a dual–enrolled student, this made it possible for me to take the course. I also really appreciated the flexibility of deadlines. I feel that it was very reasonable to simply ask for more writing if the assignment was late. Thank you!”
  • “I appreciate how the lecture slides are in video and pdf format. This allowed me to watch the lecture and then follow up on parts I may have missed with the pdf.”
  • “I found the assignment that we did each week on the focused topic the most valuable in the course. I always found myself going way overboard on the assignments because I enjoyed learning about the topics/questions that I was investigating. I also liked how the assignments gave us some freedom as it allowed us to choose whatever animal species to research and not too constricting which made it more fun and engaging.”

Sabbatical Goal 2: Updating course materials for data analysis

The second goal for my sabbatical was to update the course materials for my data-analysis based AVS 454/554 DNA Sequencing Data Analysis Lab. Unfortunately, I did not even get to begin this objective because of the extensive effort to revise AVS 254 and my persistent workload was too high. However, I did receive useful feedback from the adjunct instructor who taught my course while I was on sabbatical. This data analysis lab uses coding in several programs to analyze DNA sequencing data and generate draft manuscripts. Updating the materials would benefit me by making this course cutting-edge and streamlined, as these programs, and the theory behind the data analysis workflow, evolve on an annual basis in the rapidly changing field of microbial ecology. The feedback I received indicated that graduate students needed more remedial content, especially a basic understanding of statistics and a more thorough explanation of how to apply those statistics to their experiments and microbial community analysis.  As such, when I can update this course, I will expand my existing 4 lectures on statistics to 6.

Sabbatical Goal 3: Catching up on research

My third sabbatical goal was to catch up on my tasks for completed and in-progress research, as well as to add new components to my work, which I successfully completed. My research on how broccoli sprouts in the diet can induce gut microbes to reduce inflammation has been adding new facets over the past year which require more of my attention, including metagenomics, whole genome sequencing, transcriptomics, protein identification and enzyme isolation, and probiotic development.

My sabbatical allowed me the time to write/revise seven scientific manuscripts for peer review, provide three presentations of my work to research and student audiences, to help one of my graduate students write their PhD dissertation in preparation for their defense, to help one of my students prepare for and take their comprehensive, to provide graduate committee support for two students to defend and another to take their comprehensive exam, and to plan/perform an intensive probiotic trial in mice. In addition, I spent the fall revising three large-scale, multi-year, multi-institution funding proposals to USDA NIFA and NIH.

I was also able to complete more research administration and leadership opportunities, such as fostering research case studies through my role on the Microbiome Stewardship research group, leadership duties for the Microbes and Social Equity working group, an international research society, and participating in research-curation initiatives such as the creation of a Microbe Specialist group for the IUCN.

My teaching was reallocated during my sabbatical, but course revision was more intensive than previous years

I teach 2 courses each semester, three of which are required for AVS undergraduates, and one of which teaches a specialized data analysis to graduate students which need it to perform their research. Luckily, I was able to find local expertise for my two fall classes, which are highly specialized topics and difficult to find replacements for in Maine. My data analysis course was taught by a faculty member in the bioinformatics master’s program at UMaine, who has significant experience teaching coding for data sciences. My animal microbiomes course run by one of my PhD students, Ashley, who was a grader for the course last year and had gained familiarity with the content and delivery of the course. To help her manage the 97-undergrad course, it was held in an asynchronous format, in which all lectures were pre-recorded by me and students could access content and complete assignments at their convenience each week.

However, this year’s course was a challenge for both of us: I was actively revising the lectures, reading list, and assignments during the semester in an effort to keep pace with the overhaul objectives of my sabbatical. I had intended to revise at least half the source over the summer, when I was without summer salary and ostensibly should not have been working, but I had so many service (unpaid), research, and advising activities, as well as the course revision, that I worked full-time all summer. I was able to revise most of the first third of the course over the summer, which bought me time in September and October when I was still working full – or more than full—time despite being on sabbatical: the amount of service, advising, and research once again overwhelmed my schedule. In addition, I had to spend September and October revising two large-scale, multi-year, multi-institution funding proposals because of the deliberate delays to the USDA NIFA and NIH research funding mechanisms in 2025 delayed reviews on previously submitted proposals, and for the USDA funding, pushed proposal submission deadlines from the summer to the fall. Thus, by November I was rushing to revise course content to stay ahead of the syllabus.

Despite being off contract (unpaid) all summer, and despite being on sabbatical and freed from teaching and advising and admin all fall, I put in 40 hours a week on course revisions, evaluating graduate student performance in comprehensive exams and defenses, writing recommendation letters for undergraduates and graduates, oh, and teaching and assisting with departmental administration. That’s right, I taught 4 students during my sabbatical going through their Capstone courses out of sync to help them graduate. And, because of the university strategic revising evaluation (we got marked down for having too high of a student: faculty ratio even though the university has not given us permission to hire more faculty despite our increasing enrollment in the last 5 years) and subsequent requests to slash departmental budgets (without reducing our workload or number of students), I attended hours of administrative meetings and helped write a plan for our program in response to the SRE.

My advising was reallocated during my sabbatical, except for all the unpaid advising university faculty typically do

The sabbatical provided temporary relief to my heavy workload and a chance to catch up a little, but by no means did it resolve the burden of increased responsibilities, as enrollment or student needs increase but the number of faculty per student does not. In fact, being on sabbatical allowed me to work at a sustainable 40 hours per week instead of the 50+ hours per week I am pressured to work every semester through the number of student, colleague, and university requests for my help. Yet, during my sabbatical, I still had advising and teaching that could not be re-allocated, and departmental activities still needed effort, such as making decisions about spring courses or providing timely information to the university due to the strategic revisioning plan.  I bring this up as a way to demonstrate how valuable sabbaticals are and re-enforce the support for sabbaticals at the college level. I urge the university to find creative ways to allow faculty to extend their sabbaticals to one full academic year without having to take the full-year-sabbatical reduction in pay.

The changes to federal education and research funding, as well as the overall economy, changed academic timelines for many students. In 2025, I advised three graduate students, and was on the thesis committee for two more, who needed to graduate sooner than expected due to federal delays in graduate research fellowships which left them without salary. Similarly, my previous advisees needed letters of recommendation to apply for veterinary or medical programs, or jobs. I wrote 13 letters (totaling 13 hours) this summer (when I am off contract) and fall.  This fall, I had 4 students who needed to take the AVS Capstone courses to graduate on time, so I was still performing some teaching tasks (paid through add comp). This has become a regular occurrence as, based on student feedback, the reduction in faculty at UMaine has reduced available courses and made enrollment much more difficult – essentially, I am asked by students to teach my courses out of their designated semester because they need help to graduate early because they cannot afford another semester. Students need more flexibility in their course availability and they need help year-round, and providing summer salary or sabbaticals offers faculty a way to accommodate students while still accomplishing our other tasks.

My sabbatical was an incredible opportunity

For anyone who is considering a sabbatical, I absolutely recommend it. You don’t need to make grand plans, or do something completely novel, or even resolve your entire pile of unfinished business for your sabbatical to be successful. View it as a “stay-cation”, and a way to check the 1000 tiny items off your to-do list that couldn’t be accomplished because of the perpetually hectic pace of academia. If you think you are too busy to take a sabbatical, then you really need to. It may seem like I wasted my sabbatical on work or old, unfinished business, but it allowed me to free myself from lingering obligations, make improvements to teaching or advising to make my job run more smoothly, and importantly, it helped me gain back some time to think and write which are critical aspects of my job that continuously get de-prioritized by urgent requests for my time (meetings, emails, and having to drop everything and work on requests for information from the college). And, I had more time to paint in 2025 than I have had in years. I will have to wait 6 years to be eligible for my next sabbatical, but I’m already looking forward to it!

How does an academic department decide on their courses?

sueishaqlabLeave a comment

Now that I am an assistant professor, I perform scientific research, teach formal classes to undergraduate and graduate students, and I advise undergraduate students, as well as a smattering of other administrative or organizing-based activities. While I have performed nearly all of these in past job positions, the advising is a completely new aspect which has provided valuable insight into my other activities. The University of Maine serves a large number of undergraduate students, and many degree programs are specifically designed as preparation for specific career fields. Undergraduate students in my department now ask for my advice on which courses to take to best finish their degree, and this has led to some interesting discussions on why certain classes are required or not, and why certain classes are offered or not. I realized that the mechanics of course development are not well known to students, or even to academics who haven’t participated in it, and I thought I would share what I’ve learned.

Deciding on content

At the university level, courses are created and designed to offer a certain level of core material made up of basic concepts to introduce students to different fields of information; courses like introduction to biology, or general writing techniques. These may be referred to as ‘general education‘ courses and are designed for student audiences from many different programs at once. GenEd courses are taken in the first or second year of study in order to fill in any gaps from the very different high school educations students have, as well as teach the basics of information-finding and collaboration skills that they will need in other classes. GenEds are usually required before students take high-level courses in specific areas of study. Often, GenEds or introductory courses cater to hundreds of students per year, and there are several instructors to cover all the course sections, as well as teaching assistants, who provide instruction. There are additional core University requirements that each department can decide how to handle, such as the UMaine Capstone Experience requirement for students, which requires students to create a senior project related to their major. Within each academic department or unit (for example, Animal and Veterinary Sciences), there are core course requirements specific to that field of student that all students enrolled in that program need to take (for example, these requirements for Bachelor’s of Animal Science with a pre-veterinary concentration).

One factor in the decision about course content is simply which skills or knowledge students will need in order to enter the workforce related to their field of study. For example, undergraduate students who are intending to go on to a veterinary degree are often enrolled in pre-vet programs designed to prepare students for that further degree and to meet those application qualifications. As such, they will need to learn everything from anatomy to physics. Any content which is required to make the degree meaningful will also be required for students to pass in order to graduate, and means that it must be taught often enough that students have an opportunity to take it. Thus, core or required classes might be held at least annually, and sometimes multiple times a year. If the usual instructor is unable to teach it for a period of time, or there is turnover in the department, a temporary or adjunct instructor can be brought in on a short-term contract to ensure that course can be offered regularly.

Another factor is the area of expertise of the faculty instructors, who are research and/or teaching faculty with long-term contracts, such that those classes will be offered for at least as long as that person is employed. Because areas of expertise change over time, and because faculty come and go, this often drives the evolution of an academic department’s curriculum focus over decades. For example, I have a 50% research and 50% teaching appointment over a 9-month contract, which equates to 12 credits worth of teaching or formal mentoring in my department over the academic year. While I do teach some courses which were already set by the department, I had enough room in that 50% appointment to propose and teach two classes of my own design, one of which has now become a required course for animal science undergraduates specifically because my area of expertise has grown in importance and popularity in the past few decades. Departments will hire new faculty or instructors specifically because of their area of expertise and which direction they want the overall academic program to go in.

A more minor consideration on course content relates to university budget models, and whether academic departments get additional faculty or instructor salary for teaching students from outside their department – essentially a question of where tuition revenue is spent. Departmental course content is tailored to the intended student audience.  If a course is popular across the university but does not have applicability or appeal to the students within that faculty or instructor’s department, it can be difficult to justify spending time on it because most instructors or faculty are contracted to specific departments or academic unit budgets. However, a course with broad appeal could be taught outside of our contracted time, such as during winter or summer sessions, or potentially during the academic year as “overload teaching” which is above the number of credits outlined in our contact. This usually pays on top of the 9 or 12 month salaried contracts of instructors, but is restricted by the lack of free time that most faculty face.

Theory or approach to teaching

After settling on what should be taught, how, then, does a department decide how a class should be taught or constructed? How broad or specific should the information be, and how will the assignments or course requirements assess what students have learned? How will skills be taught? Broadly, this is called pedagogy: the method and practice of teaching, and is something which many faculty find themselves responsible for knowing even if we have not gotten an opportunity to develop our pedagogy in previous jobs. Prior to being an assistant professor at UMaine, I taught several different courses, including ones with pre-set materials that I re-hashed and presented in my own way, and ones with materials that I collected and decided entirely how to present (taught as electives). It wasn’t until that I was a long-term member of an academic department that I was able to participate in setting the direction of departmental courses, and to consider what we teach and how.  As part of my application to my current position, and my tenure packet (application to get a forever contract for my job), I am required to explain my teaching philosophy and how I put those ideas into practice in the classroom. I have previously shared some of those working documents.

As an example: it’s important to learn about how microbes affect animal health. Do I need to spend all my time lecturing to provide that info, or is there another format of information sharing I can use? I certainly need to lecture some, to introduce new topics or walk students through reading complicated graphs. But, it’s important that I also teach students how to find this information and assess it on their own, because they will be doing that for the rest of their life after they leave the classroom. Thus, I need to design my class materials and timeline to provide information and empower students to develop those same skills that I learned to get where I am: reading graphs, considering multiple and conflicting study results, forming questions and how to go about finding the answer. I might start a class with some lecture, followed by an assignment where students have to identity a question they have about microbiomes, then write down the expertise or people needed to find the answer from multiple perspectives, and finally outline what they thought that team could get done in one year.

Getting courses approved

There are many steps in the course approval process and, naturally, plenty of paperwork. In addition to a draft syllabus, a course proposal form is required which provides the logistical details (how many credits, lab or lecture, in person or online, and more), and describes the goals and scope of the content (introductory or experienced level), intended audience (students in which departments and which year of study), and how it will provide necessary skills or info to them. Importantly, the proposal form must describe how the new course will complement current courses that are offered at the University. Being able to show that there is a demand for this specific course, or that it is needed for professional development of the students, will support the course proposal during the approval process. This last part requires the person proposing the course to communicate with instructors of similar classes who might have students that will want to take this class. Are there aspects that you could include in your new course to make this more relevant to them, or to connect this new class to existing classes?

avs-254-new-course-proposal-2019Download

Once the proposal form is complete, it gets sent to the unit or departmental faculty committee for discussion, and may be returned for revisions. This committee might be made up of senior faculty in the department, or all the faculty if it is a small department. Not only can other faculty help improve the courses, but the time you spend teaching a course is time you can’t spend teaching other things that the department needs. So, your colleagues need assess whether this course is a good use of time and effort.

If the course is approved by the department, the proposal goes to the college curriculum committee which is made up of faculty from multiple different but related departments (for example, one from each department in the College of Natural Sciences, Forestry, and Agriculture). Often, faculty sitting on this committee are Undergraduate Coordinators in their own department, and have a lot of input into the scope of what undergraduates study.  After that committee, the proposal then goes on to the university curriculum committee to make sure it complies with university-wide standards and formatting. There are different forms and committees for undergraduate or graduate courses, and if you create a cross-listed course which can be taken by senior undergraduates and graduates, you’ll need to submit both forms and talk to both committee sets.

If a course is approved by the university, it will be assigned a number and will start appearing on the course catalogue. If the course is going to be required for students, though, it will usually be offered as an elective for the first year or even two before it is required for incoming students (current students can take it as an elective). Courses may also fulfil multiple requirements at once. For example, my AVS 254 Intro to Animal Microbiomes is required core subject material for AVS students, but also fills a university general education requirement to take a course that includes population and environment-scale information. In learning about the microbial communities, students also learn about microbial transmission between individuals, lifestyle choices and impact on host microbes, and interaction with the environment and affect on host microbes.

Matching faculty expectations to student experiences

An important consideration for course design is matching faculty expectations with student experiences. For example, the course materials which faculty see describe the course, but those faculty do not attend the course and experience how that information is shared. Thus, faculty may think that students are receiving information or skills, but the way that it is presented is not approachable or pertinent for students and they are unable to reuse what was presented in the course. Even faculty did audit a whole undergraduate course, we don’t have the same perspective that students do in that we might already be familiar with the material and we would not be able to identify where a lecture left out general information that would be critical for someone who is new to this. The student perspective is also driven by their need to do well in the course, not only by receiving a high grade but also by absorbing as much information which can help them in other classes or in their future career. Thus, aspects of the course which students think are interesting or important are not necessarily the same aspects that faculty identify as important.

Aligning the faculty and the student perspectives requires regular assessment of the course to make sure it is providing the necessary training and information to students. Often this assessment takes the form of faculty input and opinions, or changing needs of post-graduation industry career needs. It also relies on end of the semester evaluations of student performance (grades), and student feedback and evaluation of the courses. Student feedback can be unreliable when feedback on the course is preoccupied with comments which come from a place of personal bias or outright hostility. And, most course evaluations don’t provide enough granularity in the questions to thoroughly assess student perspectives on different aspects of the course, forcing students to give overall ratings. However, student feedback can be valuable when combined with other sources of information or asks more detailed questions.

To that end, Samantha Coombs, an AVS senior undergraduate researcher and I are designing surveys to gather student and faculty mentor perspectives for the UMaine AVS program Capstone Experiences courses, AVS 401 and 402. These courses are required for undergraduates to take to earn their bachelor’s degree, and require students to propose, conduct, and present results on research – often for the first time in their time at UMaine. If this wasn’t stressful enough, students typically work on projects which are part of faculty’s research portfolio,  and both students and faculty can be impacted by mismatches in expectations versus the reality of those collaborations. While we won’t be fully sharing the results of those surveys, we will be sharing summaries, and how the responses impacted future course materials in AVS 401 – the course in which students are first launched into research.

Improving the Curriculum for Future AVS 401 Undergraduates

Authors: Samantha Coombs and Dr. Sue Ishaq

Affiliations: School of Food and Agriculture at University of Maine, Orono

Keywords: Capstone, AVS 401, Undergraduates, Faculty, Stress, Mentor, Curriculum

Abstract

AVS undergraduates are not prepared to complete the requirements of AVS 401, before taking the course. In the AVS degree program, it is expected that undergraduates will gain knowledge, experience, and ideas to create a research project of their own. In many cases, AVS undergraduates are completing their capstones with never having performed a research project on their own. This is stress-inducing due to undergraduates having to learn both how to complete a research project, and how to write and complete a proposal. Undergraduates are given the choice to join a research project guided by a faculty mentor, but this leads to striving to meet expectations. Others struggle due to not knowing what project or path to go down. Each student needs a different situation that best fits their needs; this project will assist in trying to create a one-size-fits-all curriculum. The question I want to figure out is, can we adjust the curriculum in AVS 401 to meet the requirements of all AVS undergraduates for them to succeed in their capstone research? I hypothesize that we can create a curriculum that meets the requirements of undergraduates by surveying both faculty and undergraduates on their different expectations and experiences. Methods of research that will be conducted are, surveying AVS and other degree professors, surveying undergraduates who have taken AVS 401, reading syllabi, and reading scientific articles. The impact that this research will have is to create a class that is a one-size-fits-all for AVS 401 undergraduates. The curriculum will be adjusted due to the responses from both parties. The results will be a class that teaches undergraduates what they need to know to improve: the quality, efficiency, and reduce the stress of capstone projects.

A clock with wings flying in the air, with another one in the background out of focus. The background is a blurry tan.

Reflecting on “suggested deadlines” for assignments

sueishaqlabLeave a comment

Over the Fall 2020 semester, I changed my assignment deadline policy, creating “suggested deadlines” instead of enforced ones. I altered the language to “suggested deadline” in my syllabus semester timeline (in which I provide due dates for all assignments), I left submission portals open in the online teaching software, and I did not manually penalize grades for lateness. I made the change out of practicality for the fall semester, and I was personally pleased by the results; however, I wanted to hear from students. After being able to formally obtain student feedback during course evaluations, I wanted to reflect on that change and how I will implement it in future courses.

Previously, when grading policies were up to me, I accepted late assignments with a possible -10% grade penalty reduction per day, although I would waive it for a variety of circumstances. It was easy to enforce using online teaching software which timestamped submissions. This policy seemed to motivate some students, but in retrospect, it made students feel like they had to share their reasons for lateness and justify why they needed an extension. Not only did this late assignment policy increase the number of emails I received and time spent replying that yes, I would still accept it, but it also meant that students were sharing more personal information with me. I suspect that students who did not ask for deadline extensions probably had a reason but didn’t want to share than information in asking for an extension, and really, it is none of my business what else is going on in their life.

However, I made the decision to allow any assignments to be turned in after the due date without a penalty, in part because the pandemic shifted the amount and type of work most students were doing. Many of them reported an increased workload, having to attend remote classes in their car, trouble with internet access with so many other users on their network, and of course, power and internet outages are common in Maine when trees topple utility lines. If I had enforced assignment deadlines, then a third to a half of my students were in danger of failing the course because of lack of work, but not because of poor quality of work. This was unreasonable to me, especially in my undergraduate research course where I would be effectively be penalizing students for delays caused by their research mentors or haled research on campus.

So, I made the decision to trust my students to manage their own motivations and time management. After all, they are legal adults, they are not first years, and they have chosen to continue their education despite the financial burden and other constraints. More than that, almost all of my graded assignments with significant weight in the class are essay based, which means I can get a feel for the students’ writing voice and it is really easy to identify plagiarism by the change in tone or maturity of the writing. If being able to turn in an assignment late meant students’ could copy each other’s assignments, I should be able to catch it even without the online plagiarism checking software.

I was concerned that I would receive all the assignments on the very last day, and was dreading the avalanche of grading that would unleash on me. Instead, assignments trickled in on a regular basis, several hours to several months late depending on the students’ circumstances, some of which were later disclosed to me. Instead of getting sloppy, thrown-together assignments, I think the quality of writing and the depth of student critical thinking were improved. Students later reported being able to spend more time on the assignment when they had control over when that time could be spent. And, despite having the most students in the most difficult semester to get through, I discovered no instances of plagiarism.

I think I will make the move to suggested deadlines semi-permanent (some deadlines will be enforced based on if it is time-sensitive). The online teaching software I use can be set to assign a 0 to missing assignments, to email me when submissions are received, and to add conditions to submission portals, such as having first submitted another assignment or having received feedback on a previous assignment (like a previous draft of a paper). I can schedule automatic email reminders about assignments, email only students who are missing assignments, and students can check their grades and assignment lists online at any time. Not only does this dramatically reduce the time I spend chasing after assignments, but it gives students more agency in being able to participate in the class on their own time.

Certainly not every class can be structured this way or allow for flexible deadlines. But, I think a lot of them could be, and I think in most cases it would improve student engagement and learning outcomes. Below, you can find the comments on my two fall course evaluations, and you can check out my previous posts on curricula development or my teaching statements.

For much of the fall semester, assignment deadlines were open ended. Do you think keeping open ended deadlines (as in, you turn in things when they are ready but [not] on a specific date) next year would make this class better? Do you think you would be able to keep up with assignments without deadlines? Or do you think the deadlines help keep you on track?

My question from the course evaluations for this fall

Comments

  • I think the soft deadlines kept me in check, however it’s nice to know that if things unexpectedly get crazy for me that I won’t be penalized for taking extra time to make sure that I submit quality work.
  • I very much appreciated the flexibility in deadlines for this class as many other classes ramp up at the end of the semester. I felt as though I could control my workload with the assignments set up like this, and would recommend keeping the deadlines as suggestions to where you should be up to date in the course, but the actual submission deadline remains later in the semester.
  • You could do once a month check ins or something to verify nobody is completely slacking off. Maybe have three major deadlines to force people to keep up – one at the end of October, end of November and then the final submission?
  • The deadlines really helped keep me on track. Dr. Sue Ishaq was more than lenient with due dates and the work load, so I do not think anyone would have an excuse to not do well in this course (although this was really helpful with the troubling times humanity is facing). I think being more strict would be more fair to her as a professor and would help students not take advantage of being able to put things off and not learn the material.
  • I think the open ended deadlines was really helpful. It allowed me to put the time in when I could rather than rushing to get it done and turned in for the due date.
  • I appreciated having the due dates so I could try to get stuff in at a reasonable time but also that the deadlines were flexible so if something came up I wouldn’t turn in something I wasn’t happy with. I had a different class with no deadlines and it was horrible, I need the structure to be there but to also have the leniency for when things aren’t going well.
  • In this new quarantined world, the open deadlines were essential to academic success. While I didn’t struggle in this class necessarily, I did struggle in chemistry, pre calculus and lab with out the aid of study groups, math labs, and lab partners. Having open dead lines in this course not only affected my academic success in this course, but it also snow balled in a positive way and helped my GPA overall.
  • I think open ended deadlines with a suggested deadline would be the most helpful, because it will reduce the stress of deadlines, and allow for leeway in the case of multiple courses having work do on the same day, but it also gives a time frame around when the work should be done
  • The lack of deadlines required self–discipline but also removed the daunting aspect of the due date, which I often find myself deterred by and ultimately more likely to put off the work. I felt that the assignments were more inviting this way.
  • I think that this semester it was very beneficial to have the open ended deadlines. For me personally, I prefer to have deadlines to keep me on track, but I appreciate the flexibility of the open–ended deadlines.
  • I think having the open ended, suggestive deadlines made for a much easier semester. It took off a lot of stress to know that I could have an extra day if needed. Sometimes we get peaks in the semester where we’re slammed with work and knowing that if I needed an extra day or two to complete an assignment was really reassuring.
  • Thank you for being understanding on deadlines as this semester has been crazy, although the soft deadlines kept me on track without penalizing me for taking extra time if needed.
  • I think ended open deadlines do help due to things become crazier as the whole covid thing continues
  • I feel that open ended deadlines next year would make this class better because due to recent events in the world it is sometimes difficult communicating with project mentors. By having open ended deadlines, I know when it is supposed to be due, but if I am missing some information from someone on the project I do not worry as much about getting in trouble for handing it in late.
  • yes this is hard to juggle long term projects with weekly class deadlines. So open ended is the best for this class.
  • I believe the structure of fall semester deadlines was great.
  • I feel like open ended deadlines are very helpful because you would be able create better quality work with your research. I feel like I would be about to keep up with work without deadlines or just create the deadline for the end of the semester and put reminders.
  • I think a more strict set of deadlines could’ve been helpful as far as tracking progress. Exceptions could still be made for those struggling on a topic, or who are unable to start for some reason out of their control.
  • This semester, while everyone has been adjusting to the new way of pandemic life, the open ended deadlines were extremely helpful and stress relieving.
  • yes I think there should be soft deadlines, there is a date that it should be done but we didn’t have to have it done by then
  • Having a general guideline about when things should be turned in has been helpful, but keeping the deadlines open ended has relieved a lot of stress and has enabled me to produce better work because I was not rushed.
  • The deadlines kept me on track and having no deadlines would have me just turn everything in at the end which is bad.
  • I liked the deadlines. I would have kept all the work till the last minute if we didn’t. However, the open ended deadlines meant that even if you were behind, you wouldn’t be penalized which really helped.
  • I think open ended deadlines are a great idea because it allowed me to not feel pressured to submit something that I did not feel was ready. Without that stress, I was able to submit all of my assignments on time with the open ended deadline and not during the later one, which was helpful!

Featured Image Credit

Perspective on developing curricula

sueishaqlabLeave a comment

At the University of Maine, I am currently developing two new courses based on similar material I’ve taught previously at the University of Oregon and Montana State University. I’ve written about several of those classes, including a retrospective after teaching ‘Introduction to Mammalian Microbiomes’ to humanities students. Here, with the spring semester commencing this week, I thought I would share my approaches to developing coursework. While a class doesn’t stand on organizational physique alone, it can go a long way to facilitating your communication with your students, their understanding of course expectations, and their ability to assimilate the information you are disseminating.

  • What better way to learn about host microbiota than an anatomically-correct dissected cat costume?

Organization of materials

The nature of my teaching means means that I don’t assign readings from a textbook, I curate reading lists for my students from current scientific literature, which changes a little each year. Because of this, and the need for file management, I have a few tricks. First, I have a folder (on my computer and the online teaching tool) specific to readings for that class. I curate the file name with first author, year, and few words from the title so I can keep track of what it is (ex. Zhulin_2015_databases_review). I duplicate that file name in my syllabus, so I can copy and paste instead of writing it out again.

I format my syllabus as a table, and add each reading to the day on which it is assigned. If I move lectures around, I move the whole table row, so I can migrate assignments and readings along with lecture titles. Lastly, because the readings are specific to lecture and date assigned, I mimic that order in my file names by numbering them all instead of leaving them in alphabetic order (ex. 10_Zhulin_2015_databases_review), to facilitate knowing when and which is assigned.

And I don’t just number them by order, I number them by lecture so students or I can just match the lecture number across the lecture files, assigned readings, etc.

Written assignments (when logistically possible)

A stack of papers facedown on a table.

There’s no easy way to grade written assignments from students, but I prefer it to exam-style assessments. Particularly in teaching microbial ecology and sequencing data analysis, there’s not a lot of strict memorization like there is in anatomy. The material lends itself more to critical thinking and debating theory, to presenting a scientific argument, to problem solving, or to composing mock scientific manuscripts. In allowing students the word count to work through their thoughts, they are able to find the words to express their opinion on, say, the Hygiene Hypothesis when only weeks before they didn’t know that some microbes can turn the immune system on or off.

Written assignments allow me to give them feedback, including grammatical corrections, suggestion on sentence structure, pointing out leaps of logic where they left readers behind, and of course, on the strength of the scientific argument. This is particularly helpful when learning to write technical science.

Red pen.
Photo credit: Merriam-Webster

In giving students the agency to choose a topic to write about from the curricula tasting menu I’ve provided in my lectures, I receive back more information than just what I provided, which keeps things interesting for me. And, in giving them assignments which practice their writing voice, I witness their progression towards mature scientific writing.

Stacking assignments for improved retention

It takes time to become familiar with new information. That’s why school subjects are taught multiple times, or in specific orders, as you progress through education. I have 13 – 15 weeks in a semester (or 10 in a quarter!) to on-board students and teach them a skill. For most of the students I have taught, my class is their first introduction, or their first formal introduction, to the subject.

Especially for my host-associated microbial courses, there are hundreds of years-and-counting worth of history which led us to our current understanding of the microbes that inhabit us. Without that history, an explanation of the available technology, and a discussion of how that technology shaped the view we had, I can’t do justice to the majority of the coursework where I explain how we discovered the relationship between salivation and the microbial community geography in your mouth. The first section of my ‘host-associated’ course includes this background information, and a discussion of current technology, which is reiterated when later discussing literature and how technological shortcomings can hamper our understanding of a microbial community.

To give students more time to practice the material, I give related readings, have a guided discussion at the end of lectures, and stack assignments. Students start with a non-technical summary of a paper; 1-ish paragraph where they have to introduce the paper and why it was done, the methods used, and a major result or two. Trying to explain a complex experiment in simple terms is a great way for students to gain familiarity. When it comes time to write a two-page essay for a take-home exam, I allow the students to build off those summaries, if they choose.

An inclusive syllabus

A syllabus is a document which encompasses the important information for the class, including meeting times and rooms, grading policy, lecture and assignment schedule, required reading materials, and more. It can be used to recruit students to sign up for the class, and once in attendance, it’s the first impression students have. It’s where they refer for questions about the course, what’s expected of them, and where to find instructions on assignments. I write my syllabi in a way that makes sense to me, the instructor, and I welcome feedback from students when my instructions are confusing. But, I also welcome feedback from different student populations in order to make the language and presentation of the document more approachable. Sometimes you just need something to break the ice. Like a paper turkey hat.

Sue wearing a paper hat shaped like a turkey.
Wearing the turkey hat that my mentee and I made.

I haven’t actually worn a turkey hat to teach a class, that’s too informal. I dress up like an anatomically-annotated dissected cat, because I’m a professional. Or, I ran regular class discussions that occasionally got heated and were monopolized by a fraction of the class. The next year, I took a stronger moderator stance and would impose more restrictions (“Ok the next comment HAS to use the word “microbes”). I don’t like calling on students, so the next time I have discussions I think I’m going to give them all D20 dice and have them roll for initiative on the order of presenting comments. I also added this to my syllabi:

Class participation: Students are expected to participate in discussions in class.  I strive to create inclusive discussions, but if students still find it challenging to participate please notify me and I will alter the discussion format as needed.

AVS 590 Syllabus spring 2020

Most universities also require text or links to their campus policies, driven by federal, state, or university law. These include a statement about accommodations for disabilities, although many faculty are happy to make accommodations without the student receiving prior approval. I started allowing students to occasionally attend lectures by video conferencing, if they notified me ahead of time. It allowed students who were ill or traveling to keep pace with the material, and I have even remotely conference-videoed in to a student’s laptop to present when I was home sick but didn’t want to cancel class.

New this year, I’ve included text about students missing classes for parenting or caregiving responsibilities, something I don’t currently participate in, so it was not something I thought to include information on until someone else (Jenn Perry) gave me their perspective. Now I have this:

Pregnancy, lactation, and parenting: I am happy to make accommodations for students based on pregnancy, lactation, and parental needs, as well as work with the Office of Equal Opportunities. Maine state and UMaine policy allows students to breastfeed in any space, including in class. If a lactation space is required, please contact E.O. for arrangements.

AVS 590 Syllabus spring 2020

Similarly, a tweet by Dave Baltrus about including inclusive statements such as information for food insecure students led me to add this:

Food insecure? Need clothes? Check out the Black Bear Exchange’s Food Pantry: https://umaine.edu/volunteer/black-bear-exchange/ or Old Town Crossroads Ministry.

AVS 590 Syllabus spring 2020

And finally, I added text about mandatory reporting. As a public university employee, I am obligated to notify the University of Maine Title IX office about criminal actions towards or by anyone on campus. If a student reveals information to me, I have to pass it on to the Title IX office which will then discretely reach out to the student with resources. The office advocates for anyone on campus, but they are particular important in situations involving students who are low on the power scale and cannot advocate for themselves. While my door is always open to students looking for help, I felt it was important for them to know that I might not be able to keep the meeting confidential.

Inclusiveness in the classroom is important to me, because if students don’t feel welcome, comfortable, and free from hunger, they can’t learn. Despite what opponents think, this doesn’t involve “coddling” or “being too soft”. It means being realistic in my expectations about how people learn and what else they are dealing with that might be inhibiting that. It means that I learn to be more proficient at communication and personnel management, which are vital skills for academics. And it means that we all elevate our skills together.

Silhouettes of four people jumping in a dark cave.