In Progress

By Diane Janes, Coordinator, Learning and Faculty Development, CELT

As a new faculty member here at TRU (I arrived in late August) and in CELT (Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching) along with making the move between provinces in the middle of a pandemic, I have been thinking about how we ‘survived’ the past 18 months and what might our plans would/could be, to take what we have learned (pre and during the pandemic) and put it back into the classroom we left (post pandemic), in what feels like, so long ago.  This got me focused on an idea that is being used globally called pandemic pedagogy.

So, what is pandemic pedagogy? If you have never heard of it, you would not be alone.  For those of us with online and blended teaching and learning experiences, pre-pandemic, it would be some of the technology enhanced tools, activities, and engagement strategies that we employed both inside and outside of our physical classrooms. TRU’s faculty via the CELT blog (https://celt.trubox.ca/) was instrumental in offering multiple perspectives on this idea early in the pandemic shift.

This idea was first introduced to us in March 2020 when a global pandemic was declared and every one of us more traditional Face2Face educators found ourselves in what was then being called ‘remote teaching and learning’.  I personally called it a ‘duct tape and bandages’ approach to teaching and learning.  We had to ‘pivot’ in days, to remote teaching – remote from our classrooms, remote from our students and colleagues, and remote from our campus.

It was as strange to our learners as it was to us.  Suddenly learning management systems (LMS) such as Moodle (used here at TRU) became vital (beyond how some of us had been using this tool), we learned to navigate zoom and MS teams and started to rethink our pedagogy, by the fall, to become more asynchronous and less synchronous in our teaching (where this made sense); we started to look to see how we could blend the two and engage our learners from wherever they were and wherever we were!

While the pandemic did catch us off guard, and as a serious health care crisis globally, it did send us all home for 18 or more months; but did our pedagogy really change? Or did we simply see the value of the pedagogy we used and then look for a way to ‘translate’ it to our new learning environment?  My intent here is not to define pandemic pedagogy (lots of the current literature does that already) but to look to see how what we learned about teaching and learning at this time can be kept and nurtured as we move forward into post pandemic times.

For me, this translation is one of the keys to the whole question of what IS a pandemic pedagogy or any form of crisis pedagogy.

For many of us, I am not sure the pandemic changed the way we taught – the underlying pedagogy – but it did challenge all of us, even those of us experienced in the online and blended world, to ‘rethink’ how effective we could be in our classrooms (physical and virtual) and to look to translate content/ideas/ engagement where necessary and to rework content/ideas/engagement where necessary; and to find in technology (potentially) solutions to educational gaps or questions from our physical classrooms, that have been befuddling us for years!

It helped us think outside of the classroom ‘box’ we knew and had us looking for ways to create the classroom we needed, to help our learners move though the year in a way that was meaningful, useful, and enduring.  We needed to build not only our own techno-resiliency but foster and grow it within our learners.

And we did it…and we will continue to do it…until the pandemic is declared over. But what then?

The OTHER key to the pandemic pedagogy question, is how you keep what YOU learned about teaching and learning, the changes to your own classroom questions, present and accounted for in your physical (and virtual classrooms), beyond the pandemic.  The technology (mini lectures, simulations, video, podcasts, and beyond) can now be remediation tools; maybe the discussion boards can keep the classroom discussions beyond the boundaries of the physical classroom; possibly the next solution to a classroom gap or question can be found in some of the tools you learned to incorporate into your teaching in the past 18 months.

And perhaps even more critically, how do you keep what your learners have learned about their own resiliency over the past 18 months, part of your continued mentoring and guidance for them?

These questions are not easily answered, but many of us have been writing about what some of these solutions might be.  Things we should put into place for the next pandemic, or climate change impact or unknown that might reconstruct our classrooms as we know them today.  This prepares not only us for future change, but also creates that mindset in our learners who will be the change in the future.

 

Here are a few resources curated to start the conversation:

Ahmed, V., & Opoku, A. (2021). Technology supported learning and pedagogy in times of crisis: the case of COVID-19 pandemic. Education and Information Technologies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-021-10706-w

Bautista, J. (2021). Pandemic pedagogy: Teaching continuity in times of global disruption. Guest Editor, Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia, 29. https://kyotoreview.org/pandemic-pedagogy/teaching-continuity-in-times-of-global-disruption/

CELT Blog. (2020-2021). Pandemic Pedagogy Tips 1-4. https://celt.trubox.ca/

Cutrara, S. (2020). In conversation with Dr. Sarah Glassford (Pandemic Pedagogy convo 18).  Imagining a new ‘we”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS0sOKRVsbs

Janes, D. P., & Carter, L.M. (2020). Empowering Techno-resiliency and practical learning among teachers: Leveraging a community of practice model using Microsoft Teams. In Ferdig, R.E., Baumgartner, E., Hartshorne, R., Kaplan-Rakowski, R. & Mouza, C. (Eds). Teaching, technology, and teacher education during the COVID-19 pandemic: Stories from the field. Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE); p. 265-273. https://www.learntechlib.org/p/216903/

Rippé, C.B., Weisfeld-Spolter, S., Yurova, Y., & Kemp, A. (2021). Pandemic pedagogy for the new normal: Fostering perceived control during COVID-19. Journal of Marketing Education, 43(2), 260-276. doi:10.1177/0273475320987287

Schley, S. & Marchetti, C.E. (2021). Pandemic transformation of teaching and learning: Designing pedagogy using the contents of Instructors’ “Pedagogical Pantry,” rather than “Established Recipes.” Journal of Transformational Learning (Special Issue: Disrupted Learning Amid the Pandemic), 8(1). https://jotl.uco.edu/index.php/jotl/article/view/427

Schwartzman, R. (2020). Performing pandemic pedagogy. Communication Education, 69(4), 502-517, DOI: 10.1080/03634523.2020.1804602

By Lindsey McKay, Assistant Teaching Professor, Sociology

Debates are well-known as live events full of strong arguments, heated controversy, nerves, and lively theatrics. They are a great way to achieve the critical thinking and investigation institutional learning outcome. In the 2020 pivot to an online mode of delivery, the successful team debates I held in my second year Medical Sociology course looked doomed. The standard individual essay would have to replace the interaction and critical thinking learned through debates. Before I jettisoned this effective learning activity, I reached out to TRU’s instructional designers. That is when everything changed.

When I met Instructional Designer Marie Bartlett, I recall her metaphorically rubbing her hands together, saying, “hmmm, I love figuring out these learning puzzles.” Several joint sessions later, after investing what felt like weeks improving my Moodle skills, out came a multi-stage, concurrent, asynchronous debate activity-assessment in Moodle!

What does it look like?

The online debate activity-assessment has four stages.

Step 1: Students form groups with 6-7 members; each group addresses a unique debate topic expressed as a proposition statement.

Step 2: Students research their debate topic. This is a graded assessment. (I use annotated bibliographies.)

Step 3: The debate! All debates start and end over the same two-day period in a discussion forum. It is asynchronous with a deadline for the first post and at least five back-and-forth posts responding to group members. All students must cite evidence (with permalinks to TRU library articles) and write a ‘pro’ and ‘con’ argument in a long first post in response to their proposition statement.

Step 4: Final graded product (final position and reflection on what they learned)

The following pictograph, created by Marie for the Makerspace event we hosted in May, illustrates the steps, and adds the Moodle resources and tools:

How did it go?

Students liked this learning activity-assessment. Many remarked in their reflections that they had to stretch their way of thinking to write a ‘pro’ or ‘con’ argument, counter to their real position. Reading the research and responding to others’ points was appreciated. Anonymous feedback included the following comments.

• “I liked how I was able to engage and interact with my peers. This was a very useful tool for honing in on our research skills. It is also great for critical thinking and challenging ourselves to view a problem from two different angles.”
• “The debate is a great idea. I loved it but I think that it was a bit confusing too to understand how it was going to be made. Having to post in both sides (pro and cons) was hard and interesting but confusing to be able to think in both arguments.”
• “I liked how we were able to have time to thoughtfully and respectfully respond to our peers with scholarly evidence without any pressure. I also liked being able to read back what others argued back with, being able to access their sources later to continue my own learning on the topic.”
• “It really challenged me to consider all points relevant and ensure sufficient evidence to support me and to include alternative approaches.”

What I learned

In F20, I learned that it was challenging for many students to do teamwork online. I resolved this by switching to individual grading; replacing the word “team” with “group.”

In W21, I learned not to go too far in minimizing reliance on one another aspect of the activity. The two-day event is very exciting as students, organized into six different groups, start to post and engage with one-another. The flurry of posts create an exciting momentum. This worked really well for five groups but one group flopped. De-emphasizing group interaction was to blame. Next time, I will impose stricter posting requirements and ensure students know their group is counting on them.

What is neat about working online is the role the software plays in shaping the design of a learning activity. One Moodle feature key to the debates was using a discussion forum type called “QandA.” I posted a ‘question,’ in this case inviting responses to the proposition statements, and the students ‘answered’ by posting their first long arguments. Only after posting can students see other students’ posts. This means no one can lean on or be influenced by the work of other students.

From Online to Blended

Now facing the return to campus, how do I pivot back? My plan is to retain the online portion and add an in-class final round of debate. Groups will debate sequentially instead of concurrently. By blending online with face-to-face modes, I will not lose the greatest strength of the online debate: citing evidence! It is far more difficult for students to clearly articulate and share scholarship supporting their arguments with the speed and time constraints of a live debate.

Each mode supports different skills sets for learners. In addition to citing scholarship, online is a slower pace that allows for deep thinking and develops writing skills. In-person requires learners to be even more prepared, think on their feet and develops oral skills. A blending should be the best of both worlds.

Interested in creating or comparing how you do debates in your course? I’d love to hear from you. Please contact me at lmckay@tru.ca. You can also download a debate OER Marie and I made from the CRICKET.trubox site, and, by request, import what I created directly into your Moodle shell.

By Christina Cederlof

In outrigger canoeing, when your boat flips, it is called a huli. Hulis happen suddenly. There you were, giving it your all, paddling towards the finish line, and bam, all of a sudden you are in the water. The water feels shockingly cold; waves toss you about, and it is disorienting. Immediately, you must take stock of your team. Is there anyone trapped under the boat? Injured? With everyone accounted for, the paddles and bailing buckets need to be assembled as soon as possible, or you will literally be going down the river without a paddle(s).

The March 2020 pivot was a lot like a huli. And, because there was additional uncertainty—initially we were told practicums would continue—my students and I were in the water, treading for two weeks until it became clear the practicums could not continue as businesses were shutting down due to the pandemic. I was told to find a way to get us to the finish line of that academic year, and so I did. I assembled a rudimentary craft, and our binding material was the strong community we had built over the year. This kept us meeting regularly in the Big Blue Button, and our final class was a celebration during which everyone told each other what we appreciated the most about each other. The experience reinforced for me the importance and strength that comes from building community.

The summer of 2020 was, well, an exercise in boat building. Clearly, I needed to build a different boat. With my comfortable F2F boat not able to do the job, I started to build a new boat using a model about which I had limited knowledge. I did have incredible boat building guides, though, by the names of Carolyn Ives, Matthew Stranach, and Brenna Clarke Gray. I attended a lot of building seminars to get ideas and to start building my new boat. With a boat built enough to float, we started the year.

My first task was to teach my students how to get into the boat. This involved phone calls, individual video conferencing sessions, and sometimes a referral to IT Services to download the software they needed (Office 365). Once in the boat, very quickly the students (and I) needed to learn how to paddle this new boat. For the students’ fall practicum, this also involved getting parents or, in some cases, grandparents, to help coach their paddler to develop transferable skills while in their Covid-safe bubble. In the end, the students (and I) became comfortable with our new boat (Big Blue Button, Moodle, online Office 365, as well as some online courses in Customer Service); I want to acknowledge fully the continued support I received from my boat building guides (Carolyn, Matthew, and Brenna) throughout the year, a much-needed safety boat that motored alongside us. The past 16 months were very much a time of building the boat as we paddled, and had it not been for my support team and the dedication of the students and their parents, we would not have made it to the finish line.

Now, as I look to July and August 2021, I am faced with the need to build another new boat. I am not convinced that this boat will be anything like the boat I had before the pandemic, even with the return to campus. For one, I have changed as a paddler.  And there were successes resulting from paddling the boat of 2020-21. Some of those involved the students needing to be more independent and, at times, digging in to learn a new stroke or enlisting others to also learn that stroke with them. I also appreciated that the craft held all our learning in it and thus it was easy to refer students back to a stroke development they needed more practice on. It was all in digital form, so we saved a lot in photocopying (cost and paper waste) and so helpful for all to say, “it is still in Moodle.”

What will the 2021-2022 boat look like? I cannot see it being anything but a hybrid of the two boats I now have some knowledge of how to build and paddle (F2F and online). We are preparing ourselves for a return to normal, but normal has changed. This summer I will build my boat again (and I will take a much-needed rest). The boat (Moodle shell) will look a lot like the boat of 2020-21, but hopefully I will be able to demonstrate the strokes and cheer my students on in person.

I am proud of the work that was accomplished in 2020-21, and while I knew I was a capable F2F boat builder and coach, I learnt that I could be a competent online boat builder and motivator as well. While this past year has been described as the one like non-other and the one that tested our resilience, this coming year will test our trust in is the danger really gone (?), and we will need to be brave.

By Matthew Stranach

I would like to thank the CELT team for the opportunity to contribute to this blog, as well as for all the work they’ve put in to support our community over the past year and a half. While we are not out of the woods yet, the landscape in front of us does appear to be changing— particularly as we prepare to return to campus for the fall semester. I appreciate the opportunity to reflect on my experiences in this blog!

At one point early in my undergraduate years, I was looking at a potential career in journalism. I volunteered as a reporter with the local public access television station, and hosted a music show on the university radio station! While life and my career had a different path in store, I thought it might be interesting to frame this post in such a way as to answer the “five w’s + 1 h”; namely: who, what, when, where, why, and how. This will also keep me on track— I sometimes have a tendency to go on rambles, as readers of Mondays and Fridays might attest!

Who—  My biggest takeaway here is to be kinder to everyone. Without being twee about it, our lives have all been profoundly disrupted by this pandemic. Truly, you never know what somebody else has gone through or is going through. I am hoping we carry this sense of— looking out for each other— into whatever is next, particularly as we move back into a face-to-face situation.

What— I think the biggest “what” that I can think of would be “flexibility” and “innovation”. In my tech coordinator role, I’ve been inspired by the determination of colleagues on my team and across the university under all circumstances to make it work— even if the “it” was sometimes hazy! Again, I am hoping these habits of mind can follow us back to the physical campus. In many ways, I think we are going to need it!

When— This is tied closely to my next answer, but for me “when” speaks strongly to synchronous and asynchronous modalities. I’ve seen lots of amazing experimentation with virtual formats which try to make optimal use of time— and I hope that active asynchronous learning activities will still have a place after we have returned to campus.

Where— I think maybe above all else, our sense of physical locality as it pertains to teaching and learning has been thrown into flux since the pandemic began. I am as excited as anyone else at the prospect of physically interacting with colleagues and students again— but I hope that the physical classroom may be seen more purposefully as a tool in the teacher’s tool kit, rather than an a priori variable.

Why— I feel like we’ve all had occasion to question our purpose as educators over the past year. And I believe this is a good thing! I am looking forward to re-engaging with the physical campus with a renewed sense of purpose.

How— A huge question! And the answer will be highly personal to the individual teacher and students! The LTI team remains ready and available— and augmented with new faculty members!— to assist as you make decisions which are best for you and for you students. I am happy to engage with individuals further on this: please send me an email! CELT is also available to help; you can contact the team here!

Again, many thanks to the entire CELT team! I have personally benefitted tremendously from your programming and from the harder-to-quantify but incredibly important kindness and patience and creativity of everyone on your team! Kukwstsétselp!

By Catharine Dishke Hondzel

One Book, One Community is a collaborative community-wide reading project between the Thompson Nicola Regional Library (TNRL) and TRU. This is the first time that TRU and the TNRL have initiated a collaborative community project, and it’s an exciting time to be using reading as a means to gather people together once again. After nearly 18 months of social distancing and disruption, I appreciate that we have an opportunity to find a new experience that moves us toward place of shared learning.

I’m fortunate to have a bit of experience with a common reading program, as I’m sure others in the community and in the university have through book clubs and shared reading groups. Since the fall of 2018 CELT has been running a small faculty book club (A Bowl a Book and a Bun) where we discussed a teaching-focussed work. Last year when we moved our book club online the book club grew to over 30 faculty members who joined us in shared discussion of Flower Darby and James Lang’s book Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes. We discussed big ideas, struggles with the pivot to online learning, and together we grounded our work in care for students and thoughtful course design. This online book club was not only very fun, it also brought people together at a time when we were all craving connection.

You may also be familiar with other big ‘one book’ programs at universities or in communities. In my previous role before coming to TRU, I had the great fortune of being able to support the Huron1Read program where every incoming student received a copy of that year’s chosen book. Within that program, faculty built selected readings into their classes, students, faculty and staff hosted discussion groups, and the whole community attended author events and faculty talks. One of my most potent memories of being a part of that initiative was as a host for Thomas King when he came to Huron to meet with Indigenous students to answer questions about his book the Truth about Stories.  Hearing him talk about writing the book and answering questions from students about becoming a writer and author stands out in my memory a point of connection on such a personal work, and it added another deeper, more personal layer to his writing.

This year the book we have chosen for the One Book One Community initiative is Michelle Good’s Five Little Indians. Winner of many prizes, the book explores themes related to residential school survival, intergenerational trauma, community, the meaning of place, parenting, grief, and healing. It will capture readers in myriad ways. We think everyone will be able to relate to some of the complex experiences the main characters face while learning about the long-lasting impacts of the residential school system.

CELT is excited to be supporting TRU library and TNRL on this project, and we encourage faculty, students and staff to get involved. You can start or join a reading group, bring the book into your course, or attend an author event in the spring. More details are available on the OBOC webpage which will be updated regularly.

By Mark Paetkau

Wow, what a year!  While “a positive test is a bad thing” punctuated 2020, I am mining for the silver lining…so here are a few nuggets.

Email greetings. I feel since the pandemic greetings of “I hope you are well!” or other such positive wishes are the norm.

Departmental Interaction/Support. Our department has had more email discussions about both important (pedagogy) and not-so-important (who will inherit a Captain Canada suit of a retiring faculty). These started with our department Chair just sending out a query “How is everyone today?” and concerns, support, as well as comic relief just grew from there.

Lecture Shake up. I adopted a flipped classroom approach: content consisted of short (15 min) video or reading and lectures dedicated to applying the content. The short video/reading was to spare me the hours of attempting to make LONG detailed videos, but more importantly to spare the students the task of watching me drone on. Lectures used clicker questions and problem-based learning. For the problem- based learning, I selected a student (or students) to work on the white board. One innovation was embracing “I don’t know” (idk). If a student did not know how to start a problem, a simple idk moved the class onto the next student. If a question resulted in three consecutive idks, then I reviewed the content.

Online white boards. Over the last few years I have been incorporating smart board technology, and this year I worked to leverage the shared white boards in Big Blue button and elsewhere. Imagine six students working on the white board at once (don’t try this on a smart board!): collaboration and engagement!  I also feel the online “anonymous” environment helped reduce barriers to engagement.

Online exams. I employed a quick-draw online exam for a portion of my exams. Twenty low-stakes Bloom’s level 1 questions provided a snapshot of student’s foundational knowledge. The best part: the exams graded themselves!

Online assignments. Electronic assignments have cleared my desk!

These are the positives I hope will survive—I hope you have a few of your own.

As we look forward to being back in the classroom in the fall, we think about the pleasure of being back face-to-face with students. No more technical glitches!

You can stand up, move around, and gesture!

 

 

And really see your students again!

But before you recycle all your videos and online exercises, recognize that you have done some pretty great stuff over the last year. COVID gave us lemons and you made lemonade! And some of that lemonade might be great served up as part of your face-to-face class too!

In a recent CELT workshop, Terryl Atkins reflected on viewing student artwork in online portfolios instead of in a classroom gallery set-up.

The community is amazing. The students are really focusing on the work…they are engaged…it’s amazing, I’m hanging on to that! The thing that is helpful is that all of that stuff is up there for them to look at in the interim…they can go back and they can look at somebody else’s stuff and they can say, “Oh, she said X about this” and then it pushes everybody. – Terryl Atkins

“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next” (Arundhati, 2020). Outside of the technical challenges that the pandemic presented us, it challenged us to find new ways to reach and to engage with students and help them to build community. It also may have impacted how you used the contact time you have with students (using it for discussion, collaboration, and activity rather than one-way information provision). In this way, you may have adopted a flipped-classroom pedagogy where students use readings or videos to learn basic information and then come to class ready to engage in activity, discussion, or case-studies. In a 2018 study of faculty transitioning from online teaching back to the traditional classroom, faculty reported that they took on more of a facilitator role, integrated more technology into their classroom, and incorporated more asynchronous teaching practices such as discussion forums, blogs, and wikis (Andrews-Graham, 2018). Deciding how you can leverage what you have built over the past year when you move from remote teaching back to the classroom will not only allow you to use some of your hard work, but also improve your face-to-face teaching practices and your student’s learning.

Over the next several months, CELT will be offering various workshops aimed at helping you transition back to the classroom in the fall while leveraging the pedagogy, teaching practices, and techniques you have discovered over the past year.

References:

Andrews-Graham, D. (2018). The effect of online teaching on faculty after returning to the traditional classroom. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 21(4). https://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/winter214/andrewsgraham214.html

Arundhati, R. (2020, April 3). The pandemic is a portal. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca

By Julieth Baracaldo

My name is Julieth Baracaldo. I am a second-year international student from Colombia. Currently, I am enrolled in the Post Baccalaureate Diploma in accounting in TRU, and I am part of the Intercultural Ambassadors team.

In light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and all the uncertainty, switching from the traditional face to face classes to virtual delivery was not a choice for us, so we had to do it and adapt to it. For me it has been a big challenge: in order to deal with online education, I had to set an schedule and be more disciplined, which involves lots of dedication and self study!  Some teachers provide valuable resources, such as video recordings, live Q&A sessions, and Moodle work; in my experience, a combination of all those tools was effective for me. However, we had to manage those resources, improve our time management skills, and get used to dealing with technology. In my case, I just keep a positive attitude toward the whole situation we are living through in the educational environment. As we already have a lot of stress from all things happening from the last year 2020, changing the mindset is a big challenge for sure.

During the pandemic, lots of international students went back home and continued their studies through a virtual delivery format. Apart from all the stress caused by the COVID outbreak, some of them still struggle with online learning: they use different methodologies when it comes to completing assignments, quizzes, etc. Some of them are very good at adapting to technology, while others have to learn how to use tech resources; some students don’t have access to a strong internet connection in their own homes in order to get through the online courses’ requirements, and thus they fail to catch up with their virtual sessions or miss some deadlines. According to them, being engaged is difficult sometimes because the lack of interaction and time difference between their home countries and Canada.

As the COVID crisis is growing, instructors realize this a great concern to most people and is clearly interfering with their studies–they understand about technical issues and other problems.  In response, they have been quite helpful by delaying due dates, re-arranging a time for quizzes, etc. We all know that online learning has been a big challenge for instructors as well, as they have had to adjust to and rely on technology. Overall, they try to be more flexible and available to the needs of students and understand their concerns; in that regard, they should always be open to having individual video appointments or engaging with students in many ways. Every professor has a different teaching style, but they can try to adapt to the general needs of all students. This is a learning process for everyone, but it depends on each one of us to embrace the change with positivity!!

By Ben Lovely

“You want us to do what?!”

I’m sure in March 2020, Trades and Technology was not the only school having emergency meetings regarding a mandatory shift to remote delivery. With much collective effort, TRU made the pivot to digital in record time. Below I’d like to discuss some lessons I’ve learned regarding assessment in an online world. These suggestions have worked well in Trades, but are certainly not limited to Trades courses.

The traditional go to assessment for Trades—multiple choice—has turned out to be rather ineffective in an online environment. In an effort to maintain academic integrity, faculty have attempted short timelines, creating multiple versions of tests, and using exam proctoring software. These have had the effect of causing extreme stress for students, large workload for faculty, and additional costs. In the end, it is still very possible for resourceful students to cheat multiple choice exams.

I propose the following: multiple choice, alternate response, and short answer questions should be limited to low stakes formative assessment. Due to our certification exams being multiple choice, students definitely need practice with this style of exam. I am merely suggesting that we reduce their weighting in favor of better assessment methods.

High stakes summative assessments, such as unit and level exams, should be as authentic as possible. Projects, scenarios, simulators, labs, and case studies are best. If assessing math skills, I like to assign the right answer as 50% of the mark, and the other 50% towards showing all work and the process of solving the problem. For conceptual understanding, a detailed directed paraphrasing assignment can work well. In short, I try to assess students’ learning by asking them to show me how they use that knowledge.

Benefits to this approach include potentially easier grading, difficulty in plagiarizing, and less concern over exam integrity as the assignment is assumed to be open book. Without a doubt, it is more work to create authentic assessments and their associated rubrics for grading. However, once completed, you will have an assessment that can be given many times over which will more accurately reflect student learning.

By Cael Field

A large part of classes I have taught in this lovely pandemic era has been asynchronous delivery. When I initially started back in September, my thinking was to use audio-only, or podcast, format. Podcasts allowed for flexibility in how (mp3 files are very flexible) and where (could be running or cooking) students accessed the content. After about four weeks, I asked students in one course (about 80 or so) did they prefer I keep going with podcasts only format, switch to video format (say Kaltura), or did it really matter? As one may expect, it came to around 33% for audio, 33% for video, and 33% for whom it didn’t really matter! I thought it would be lovely to do both video and audio, but I also thought it would mean a dramatic increase to workload in getting both formats out. After testing an approach, I found in the end that it didn’t really add that much more overall.

The approach was running two programs at once: one for screen capture and one for audio capture. I used Kaltura Capture for video, as I found the My Media access point in Moodle very useful. I then used an open software called Audacity for the audio recording. Audacity is quite easy to use quickly, even though it does have a lot of other features. When I want to record, I start the Kaltura and the Audacity recordings at the same time. I am lucky to have two monitors, so one monitor looks like this:
The top program is Audacity, while the bottom is Kaltura. I start and stop at the same time, which means both video and audio files contain the exact same content.

A question I have been asked using this setup is “what if you have to edit?,” which is a great question. Ultimately, my response is . . . I don’t really edit that much anymore. I try to approach recordings as if I were delivering them in front of a live class. If I made an error then, I couldn’t really turn back time and re-do it. If I fumble my words or mispronounce something in a recording, students are pretty good at letting me know, and I make a correction (such as sending out an announcement). I definitely relate to the desire to want to edit, but I found for the time I had to put in (even if it was only one format), I wasn’t really seeing a great return. Letting go a bit allowed me to spend time elsewhere, such as creating more options for students.

I am sure there are other approaches out there to accomplish what I am trying to do, but I have found this process to work well.