The Price of Racism

Posted on May 16, 2022 by admin

The shooting of innocent people in Buffalo is a tragedy that challenges one’s ability to understand how so much hate can fester in people. 

But for me, this tragedy is personal. The alleged perpetrator was from my hometown of Binghamton, and the alleged suspect attended the high school from which I graduated. I find it extremely difficult to reconcile that a citizen of that community could perpetrate such a travesty.

Some time ago, I returned to this school as a commencement speaker and knew it to be a community of good people challenged by the economic woes of limited economic growth. I am shaken by the revelation that he had earlier plans to shoot up a subsequent commencement at the same school. I am outraged that, despite being found out and required to undergo a mental wellness evaluation, he was still deemed legally fit to acquire an assault rifle with only the inconvenience that he had to travel to nearby Pennsylvania to buy the ammunition.

That such a catastrophe could emerge from the community of my youth has shaken me deeply. I have been in touch with the Superintendent of the Susquehanna Valley (S.V.) School District and offered my condolences and support for the students and teachers. Having lived there, I know the community to be politically conservative (my parents were two of only a handful of Town of Binghamton voters who voted for J.F.K in 1960), but the reality that racist elements exist in the community with such an intensity of hatred and evil is a stain on the soul of the whole community including my own.

It is not lost that I profited intellectually from the same educational community that the perpetrator was exposed. Based on a recent visit, the school was and continues to provide an inclusive and supportive learning environment. It is this understanding that leaves me dumbfounded.

As a past member of the community of the perpetrator, I am overcome with grief for the victims and their families and friends. The pain of loss suffered in Buffalo it is unthinkable and must be unbearable for the families of the victims. Now is the time to listen to and support the victims and their families in Buffalo. As a present member of the community of educators I also mourn the loss of dignity that this heinous act has created for the teachers, students, and parents of students in the Susquehanna Valley School District.  May all be motivated in time to work to root out the racism that has caused it and to challenge the social channels that profit from the spread of hatred and ignorance.

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Taking the Virtual Temperature of Class

Posted on April 12, 2020 by Perry Samson

One strategy I’ve been using is to include a mechanism for students to share how they’re doing physically and emotionally. I started this long before the coronavirus by asking an image-based question using the engagement software I use in class (Echo360) that asks students “Where on this wellness chart would you put yourself today?”. 

Answers are totally voluntary and students can, if they wish, add a note to their dot if they want to share details. Students can’t see whose dot is whose but, as their instructor, I can and it gives me a way to reach out if I note a persistent “poor” response. Communication is key in any relationship and this allows some acknowledgement of the emotional and physical strains my students are feeling.

The emotional and physical wellness are quantified daily as the location (0.0-1.0) of the students’ dots on the x and y axes, respectively. Averaging daily measures of wellness there appears to be a relationship between emotional and physical self-assessments and exam grades as sown below.

More analyses are underway, but this does suggest that if we ignore student’s wellness state we are likely missing a key factor in their ability to academic success.

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5 Easy Steps for Switching Your Face-to-Face Course to Online

Posted on March 3, 2020 by Perry Samson

It is not unreasonable to imagine a day coming when colleges and universities will be faced with the decision of whether to allow classes and large gatherings of students to continue. Perhaps it will be as a result of the current coronavirus crisis or some future contagious pathogen. Dormitories could be under quarantine, classroom and other gatherings will be banned, students might even be asked to go home. I hope that day doesn’t come but it begs the question of what could we do if it does? Is it possible we can continue our mission using technologies to deliver courses synchronously or asynchronously and, if so, how will that change our course designs?

For instructors who teach face-to-face courses I’ve compiled some rules to consider should you ever need (or simply want) to switch to an online delivery model. These are lessons learned having offered a blended synchronous course for multiple years at the University of Michigan.

STEP 1: Acknowledge That There Have Always Been Students Who Couldn’t Get to Class

How did you deal with them? Ignore it? Tell them to get notes from a friend? Shame on you…

At a minimum be sure your class is recorded. I know it’s painful sometimes to see yourself faltering at the front of the room but empathize with your students. They get ill, they get drunk, they have to travel, let them review later. If you don’t allow recording because someone might steal your intellectual property, get over yourself. It’s hard enough to get students to reflect on your work and you worry others at your institution might steal your slides? Please.

STEP 2: This Could be a Good Time to Flip Out!

You have a couple of options for teaching online. You could record your session and have the students participate asynchronously or continue teaching at the prescribed days and times (to avoid conflict) synchronously (but record the session, see Point #1). However, it may be wiser to do both. That is, record a session but embed formative assessment questions into the video, then use occasional synchronous sessions to display their answers and provide feedback. The “flipped” classroom may be less popular with students as they have to do more work than sitting passively in class but has been shown (Bishop and Verleger, 2013) to be a more effective teaching method. Now’s a good time to try it.

STEP 3: Teaching Remote Students Requires Use of “Deliberate Engagement” Methods

Students participating in coursework remotely aren’t as engaged as students participating in person. There, I’ve said it. In this day of MOOCs and blended courses it’s not PC to throw shade on online learning but think back to the last time you participated in a webinar. You THOUGHT you could multitask and deal with e-mail while the session was streaming. Right? The reality is the immersive environment of a classroom may be boring but, even with the Internet, it doesn’t hold a stick to the distractions of a remote location. I swear the refrigerator knows how to signal me that I hadn’t eaten all the pickles yet.

I’ve done research in my blended, synchronous course where students freely decide whether to come to class or watch from away. All students get points for participating in my formative assessment activities. Even with this incentive, the percent of questions answered by remote students is significantly lower than for students who come to the classroom. The system I use (Echo360) also tracks how many of my slides they view during class and, again, the remote students view far fewer slides than the student physically in class. Remote students tend to score 5-7 points less on course exams.

So if we must move to online teaching the walk-away message is we must find ways to make the online environment more immersive. I think the model of offering periodic formative assessment is key. I further would encourage you to link the students’ participation to a part of their grade. If our questions are valuable to their learning then we should reward participation. Beyond that think about ways to DEMAND participation. Use chat or other messaging methods and require their participation in class discussion.

STEP 4: Don’t Teach Like I Bowl

I doubt any of you have seen me bowl but it’s not pretty (or effective). Basically I wing the ball down the alley in the general direction of the pins and then pray. For a long time that was how I taught. Give the best lecture I could and pray that the students learned the concepts I was teaching. But like any good relationship, the key to success is good communication with an emphasis on good listening.

I’ve been spoiled by the system I use because it delivers a wealth of information about student behaviors. Did they log in during class time? How many activities did they participate in, How many “gradable” activities did they get right? How many slides that I projected did they view (they have to manually switch from slide to slide). With these data I can track student behaviors and have, over the years, been able to create statistical models about how behaviors are related to their exam scores.

The walk-away here is if you’re using a system that can track correctness then watch the results. Students who do well on the formative assessment tend to do well on exams. Those who do not, do not. “Listening” to students’ responses to assessments is a pretty strong first step in identifying students in trouble earlier in the semester.

STEP 5: Listen for the Ones Who Aren’t Speaking

Some of my research has focused on the students who don’t speak up in class. In fact, in surveys of students I’ve found a dramatic difference in comfort with participating in verbal class discussion between women and men and 1st generation and other students. Many in class are uncomfortable speaking out. In an online environment maybe that will go away but it behooves us to track student questions and find methods that make the class discussions a less intimidating place.

The addition of an anonymous backchannel for students to pose questions digitally has led to a dramatic increase in student participation in class inquiry and those students who professed discomfort with participating in verbal inquiry were found to participate digitally at a level equal to or higher than others in the class. You are intimidating, give all students a less intimidating way to join the conversation.

References

Bishop, Jacob Lowell, and Matthew A. Verleger. “The flipped classroom: A survey of the research.” ASEE national conference proceedings, Atlanta, GA. Vol. 30. No. 9. 2013.

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How the Polar Vortex Prepared Me to Teach with the Coronavirus

Posted on February 23, 2020 by Perry Samson

I suspect it’s inevitable that at some point a student on my campus will be diagnosed with a highly communicable illness, be it the current coronavirus outbreak or another, perhaps even nastier, future disease. Given our responsibility to protect students and staff my expectation is that students with the disease would be individually quarantined and treated medically. But if the disease was discovered in, say, a dormitory or was prevalent in a community I can also imagine more drastic steps including a limitation on campus transportation and gatherings and possibly even the shuttering of classrooms. One can’t help but wonder how such a situation would affect the academic mission of the institution. If the threat prevailed for a long time would semesters be lost? How would that affect students’ ability to progress through their education? If classes are significantly disrupted will students get a refund on their tuition? There are potentially massive disruptions to the students, staff, and institution embodied in the realities of an epidemic of contagious disease.

Ice forming on Grand Traverse Bay, Michigan under polar vortex conditions. Credit: Perry Samson

My experience with the polar vortex may offer an insight into how a school might cope with such a scenario. On January 31, 2019, the Midwest United States was experienced a period of extremely cold temperatures and winds that drove the wind chill to temperatures near -30°F. In response my institution and many other academic institutions in the Midwest cancelled classes for two or more days (James, 2019; Slagter, 2019).

But I teach is an introductory STEM course entitled Extreme Weather. It seemed wrong to allow such a teachable moment to pass so I was determined to conduct class despite the classrooms being off limits. The challenge was amplified by the fact that I was traveling in Washington, D.C. and with the classroom shuttered the guest lecturer I had planned for the day I was away was not going to be able to help.

Fortunately, the class I teach is enabled by a technology that allows me to broadcast class synchronously so students who are ill or travelling (or lazy) can, nonetheless, interactively participate in class exercises and discussion during class time. The system (Echo360) includes a physical box in the classroom that takes the projected image and audio and both records it for future reflection and, optionally, broadcasts it to create a blended synchronous learning environment. Students can see what’s being projected, answer questions I may pose, ask questions that I or my teaching assistant will answer during or after class and indicate when they’re confused (I call that the “WTF” button) so I can see how many are confused as class is going on.

An extra feature of this system is called a “Universal Capture” option with which I, as instructor, can link to the box in the room from wherever I am and either record a video to shar with the class asynchronously or I can synchronously broadcast class to all students. Being on the road I did the latter and conducted a timely discussion about the “polar vortex” that was the root cause of the bitterly cold weather.

At the end of the semester, I conducted a survey with one of the questions being “Would you recommend live streaming be available in all your courses?” Of the respondents (N=196), 55% said “Yes, all courses” and another 32% said “Yes, but only all large courses.” Hence 87% indicated they would like this option expanded to at least all large courses at my institution.

Now I’m guessing that my instructional colleagues are going to recoil at the concept that their classes should be broadcast. They will argue, correctly, that the percent of students who opt to come to class will be significantly decreased with this option. In my course over the multiple semesters I’ve used this system the number so students who physically come to class has decreased to about 33% of the total by the end of the semester. But my attitude is that if a student can do well on my exams and homework without physically coming to class, why should I care? True, with fewer students the in-class discussions can be less fruitful and when I tell a joke the chances of getting a chuckle are diminished (though the odds were poor to start with). On the other hand, with the availability of the streaming option class “attendance” (measured by the number of questions student answer during class) averages over 85% every day.

Average grades on hourly exams over the four semesters as a function of percent of class days physically attending class presented by incoming grade point average. The line labeled “UNK” are for those students whose incoming GPA is unknown, usually first semester freshmen. (N=768)

There is a downside to the remote delivery of class. Having extracted data from the Echo360 system about student behaviors (participation, number of questions asked, number of slides viewed, number of notes taken) the students who participate physically in the classroom more than 75% of days average 7% higher on exam grades than those who participate physically less than 50% of days (Samson, 2020). The data on behaviors also shows that students watch remotely take fewer notes, view fewer slides and participate in fewer classroom activities than those who attend physically more often. Also, students whose incoming grade point is less than 2.5 are far more likely to participate remotely than those with high incoming grade points. The data from the system though allows me to show the class evidence for why they might want to opt to come to class as it illustrates that even if they have not had academic success in the past the more they come to class the higher is their probability of getting a good score on exams.

What my experience with the polar vortex has taught me is that school can go on, regardless of what the world throws at us. Technology can allow us to continue with classes, including live interactive instruction. What is also teaches is that if we need to go to that model it behooves us to monitor how this mode of delivery will impact all students and that technologies to support remote synchronous learning must address strategies to encourage attentiveness and participation in the absence of physical attendance.

REFERENCES
Samson, P. J. (2020). Student Behaviors in a Synchronous Blended Course, Journal of Geoscience Education, in Press.

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Banning Laptops in Class is the Wrong Answer

Posted on December 31, 2016 by admin

Recent articles by Valerie Strauss (@valeriestrauss) in the Washington Post and Dan Rockwell (@Leadershipfreak) in the New Yorker pander to the insecurities of college instructors and ignore research showing that web applications designed to invite participation can lead to improved engagement in class.  I’ve been a professor at a research university for over 35 years and can say with some confidence that students have always had the ability to lose focus in class.  Students, when bored, will daydream, read the newspaper, stare out the window or find any number of other ways to disengage. The laptop just adds another option.

We have three choices when confronted with the challenge of students being distracted by laptop use. We can ban their use, ignore their use or use tools on the laptop that deliberately engage the students in the learning goals of the course. I argue the first two are ridiculous responses.

Philosophically one must ask why are we concerned about students being distracted. As the students must still pass whatever learning assessments we offer isn’t it on them to learn time management skills sufficient to be successful? They need to learn these skills sooner or later so why not in college? Is the issue that we’re worried about their learning or is it that their distraction is a reflection of how unengaging is our teaching?

With the support of the National Science Foundation I have been studying this issue for a few years. My interest is whether tools can be designed to promote participation in class, and especially large classes, where such opportunities have been rare. I use a web-based tool that allows students to take notes, answer questions, ask questions and indicate when they’re confused.

What my group found first was the ability for all to ask questions dramatically increased student participation alone as now even students who are reluctant to ask questions verbally (often female students and students for whom English is not their first language) are asking questions at a rate at or above the rate for male students and the fraction of students asking questions has increased to over 50% of students.

Second, we found that students reported feeling far more engaged in the material because they had more opportunities to participate. If you give students more opportunities to participate our results show they do. Technology facilitates the creations of multiple ways to engage students during class.

Third, the analytics of what students are doing in class can be related to they learning outcomes. Our research shows that mining the patterns of participation provide predictive tools for student understanding that can be used to focus feedback far earlier in the semester. Contrary to the arguments presented here we have a great deal of data showing that the laptops can increase engagement.

I don’t doubt that technology invites distractions (that’s precisely why I take a laptop to faculty meetings). The reality is that the onset of these devices is not going to stop and the dream that we can ban Internet-enabled devices from the classroom is foolish. The more important question is how can we use these devices to create more engaging learning environments.

 

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Large Courses Create an Uneven Playing Field

Posted on September 17, 2016 by admin

Opening day!  First class of the year! For many of us this is a time to redesign our lectures with an eye to improving how we present our material.  But lost in our efforts to develop the clearest explanations and illustrations is the reality that a large percent of the students in our classes are going to be reluctant to interact with us regardless how gifted the presentation.

Last year on opening day I asked my students in a survey:

“When I have questions in a large lecture, I am comfortable asking them verbally during class.”

Figure 1. Answers to question “When I have questions in class, I am comfortable asking them verbally” presented on first day of class.

Figure 1. Answers to question “When I have questions in class, I am comfortable asking them verbally” presented on first day of class.

and discovered (Figure 1) that only about 40% of the male students and fewer 25% of female students  answered either “Somewhat Agree”or “Strongly Agree.” This is striking for two reasons.  First, it implies that a minority of students will feel comfortable stopping class to ask a question. Second, it implies that teaching my course as a traditional lecture course creates an uneven playing field with female students less likely to participate equally in student inquiry.

In class I use Echo360’s Active Learning Platform that allows students to pose questions digitally during class on any mobile device. Student pose questions during class and either my teaching assistant answers these questions during class in a side channel or I answer them after class. Students see all the questions and answers but do not see who asked the question (but I do see who asked each question). Last semester in that same class this resulted in two remarkable changes.

Figure 2. Number of questions posed per capita as a function of gender.

Figure 2. Number of questions posed per capita as a function of gender.

  1. First we had 413 questions submitted over the semester. Now I’ve been teaching for over 36 years and in previous years when I asked verbally “Any questions?” I would rarely hear a sound. This is sobering as it implies I was probably confusing for the previous 35 years and didn’t appreciate how much.
  2. Second, and arguably more important, the number of questions posed per capita by female students was almost twice the rate as male students (Figure 2).

Victory! The playing field has been leveled.  Now all students can more comfortably participate in class when they have questions.

I imagine some will want to argue that students need to learn to speak up verbally in class. But many students arriving at college don’t feel confident about their abilities yet and are fearful of looking dumb in a large class. Some are first-generation students coming from smaller schools and are intimidated by the new environment. I argue that having the ability to pose questions gives all students the opportunity to see that their questions are no less ‘dumb’ as anyone else’s.

So, as you worry about the design of your course take a moment to consider how you can make it comfortable for ALL students to participate. A means to allow anonymous inquiry is a step in that direction.  It should not replace verbal discussion but, I argue, is a healthy alternative for those less comfortable which I suspect includes a number of populations like those for whom English is not their first language as well as the gender differences I’m seeing in my science class.

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