When it comes to embedding a video on your Canvas page, you’ve got choices. However, you may not realize that when the video embed displays as a thumbnail image, it means you’ve got an added accessibility concern. In this Byte-sized episode, you’ll learn the trick to handle that.
While online classes provide students with more flexibility and new ways to collaborate, success in the online environment is directly related to how present and engaged the instructor is in the virtual classroom. In other words, making content available to learners is not the same as teaching. Human connections and human relationships are the fertilizer, if you will, that allows our students to learn, blossom and grow. Supporting our diverse students in this way helps create a more equitable learning environment.
RESOURCES
Here's an example of the "Getting to Know You" survey I mentioned.
Check out the Humanizing tab on Michelle Pacansky-Brock’s website for some great resources!
Many students in my courses are surprised to encounter the encouraging statements I include with test instructions. These are statements such as:
As an African American woman educator, who grew up in Southern California, and now teaches introductory linguistics at a community college in the region, I find myself guided by my own previous experiences as a student. My own uninspiring encounters with multiple-choice tests have led me to seek alternative ways of engaging students. I see myself in my students and actively believe in their talents, as you do with those you guide and teach. Throughout this article, I share actual questions and comments I have received and solicited from anonymous students during 2021-2022. These student comments illustrate tests as an affective experience in learning, with the potential to support broader, inclusive course design.
Student #1: “Hi Professor Thomas, I have a question for the test. Do we need to study a specific topic? I just wanted to make sure.”
For many of our students, an upcoming test carries a threatening sense of anxiety and doom. These feelings can build upon previous experiences of limited testing success. Students may worry that test items will implicate a range of topics beyond those they have specifically rehearsed. Or they might anticipate not having enough time during the test to adequately demonstrate their learning.
Student #2: “Hello Professor Thomas, these past few weeks I have been suffering from personal problems. I know I can’t continue missing work because it’ll just add on to my stress. I’m emailing to let you know I am a few assignments behind but am going to make them up. I also appreciate the flexibility of your class and late work policy as it’s given me time to take care of my mental health. Thank you.”
Add to this, that in the U.S. and around the world, students are experiencing increased testing and learning anxiety and mental health concerns. As many as 30% of college students in nursing report anxiety with test-taking. Throughout California, 43% of middle and high school students surveyed in 2021 reported a panic or anxiety attack, and feelings of being “stressed.” Community college students are particularly impacted by the pandemic and related social and economic conditions.
Test anxiety is defined by psychometric specialists as a noncognitive, negative emotion state that “can impair performance by preventing students from applying stored knowledge in a test-taking situation, thereby underestimating the student’s knowledge as measured on an exam” (Cho & Serrano, 2020, p. 192).
With this definition in mind, it is possible that the very experience of testing itself hampers our ability as educators to meaningfully assess student knowledge. Arguably, negative student testing experiences also prevent us from gaining accurate feedback as to how well our students are learning. In this way, test anxiety is as much a problem for students as it is for educators.
As major California universities permanently suspend their reliance on standardized admissions testing, this only underscores the flaws in evaluating human potential largely through traditional, multiple-choice assessments. And yet, much popular advice about “overcoming test anxiety” and becoming a successful test-taker frames the issue as entirely the student’s responsibility. College students are often admonished about their study habits, coping skills, and fears of failure. They are also advised to share their study strategies with one another, and take up regimes of self-care (e.g., eating and sleeping well, meditation, exercise). In reality, these individualized strategies can only help so much, if test design itself is a source of difficulty, bias, and enduring inequity.
So, how can we transform classroom testing—away from a punitive and soul-crushing experience, and into a positive opportunity for growth and learning, particularly in online teaching? Is it possible to maintain academic rigor while shifting our assessment approaches?
Student #3: “Hi Professor Thomas, my learning disabilities primarily affect my working memory, task initiation, and processing speed. The accommodations that help me the most are extended time on exams and extensions on deadlines if I need them…”
Each semester, I receive multiple requests for extended time by students and their advocates in the campus center for students with disabilities. These accommodations, and the laws and policies that guarantee them, acknowledge that timed testing presents particular challenges to students with disabilities. At the same time, there is ample evidence that students without identified or self-reported disabilities also benefit from additional time.
Furthermore, a growing number of research studies illustrate that:
With this in mind, I have gradually experimented with test design in my own teaching, something which I encourage other educators to try, as well. Over the course of several semesters, as I saw incremental and transformational success in my students—both on-ground and online (as we shifted to meet pandemic conditions)—I became even more motivated to develop an alternative approach. Now, as a result of these changes, I actually have students in my courses disclosing to me that they look forward to our next test!
Student #4: “I actually really enjoyed our first test together! I completely feel like the test formatting allowed me to convey what I learned about the subject matter.”
Student #5: “I feel the testing format supports my learning and helps me discuss class concepts with classmates.”
Part of my paradigm shift on testing was due to my participation in a CVC/@ONE course, which greatly expanded my appreciation of culturally responsive teaching and learning. Among the many resources I learned of, I continually return to the framework presented by acclaimed educator Geneva Gay (2000) in Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice. In her view, transformative pedagogy should cultivate an environment that centers interpersonal interactivity and “legitimiz[es] personal experiences as significant sources of knowledge” (p. 198). Gay also advocates for:
More recently, Andratesha Fritzgerald (2020) builds upon these principles in her book, Antiracism and Universal Design for Learning: Building Expressways to Success. Fritzgerald explains antiracist UDL as beginning with the premise “that all students are capable of learning and really want to learn,” and that it is “our instructional design that prevents them from doing so” (p. 48). This approach insists upon “providing multiple means of engagement, multiple means of representation, and multiple means of action and expression” (p. 49).
Incremental feedback from my students has encouraged me to consider tests, not as opportunities to indicate what they don’t know, but as occasions for exploration and collaborative learning that amplify what they do know. This pedagogical orientation requires us to let go of punitive surveillance models of assessment, and open ourselves up to viewing the test as a holistic experience that we educators can also learn from.
In my on-ground teaching, students complete open-book (use of notes and textbook allowed) tests and quizzes in community—in groups of 2-3 students—and write up their own responses individually.
In the online version of my course, open-ended questions that guide students in applying key concepts to the exploration of data-sets become discussion prompts for individual video/audio replies of up to two minutes each. By creating an untimed test that is available for more than one day, I am building a flexible accommodation into the test design that will benefit all students, independent of whether they have a disability(ies), test anxiety, and/or are experiencing other challenging circumstances.
Before experimenting with this, I had never before encountered video/audio discussions as tests. Therefore, in synthesizing this pedagogy, I am guided by my prior experience as a student, and feedback from my current and past students.
For these reasons, I design all of my tests as weeklong, open-book, asynchronous discussions using the video/audio functions of Flipgrid, an asynchronous video discussion tool provided to educators for free by Microsoft. Flipgrid works on a computer or a phone with the mobile app. I use Canvas to incorporate Flipgrid discussions within the course. To do this, I create discussions on the Flipgrid website, and then add these to my Canvas assignment, using the Canvas setting type of “external tool.” It is important to note that you (or your Canvas administrator) must use the LTI to integrate Flipgrid into Canvas as an external app before setting up an external tool assignment. (Learn more about what the Canvas LTI is and how it works.) This workflow allows for students’ video or audio-only posts to Flipgrid to be viewable to me within the Canvas Speedgrader function, which aids in ease of instructor access, feedback, and grading (though this can also be achieved using the in-situ video/audio discussion functions of an LMS). It also ensures that students’ privacy is protected by eliminating the need for them to create their own Flipgrid accounts.
Settings on Flipgrid can be tailored to further protect privacy: (1) discussions only visible to course members, with (2) students unable to download each other’s videos. This test design is suitable for a range of class sizes, and accommodates students who do not feel comfortable on video, or who prefer visual-gestural modalities, subtitles, automated captioning, and may use signed languages (such as American Sign Language). I also encourage students to bring their creativity, and some have responded by splicing relevant images and music into their exam responses. On the topic of bilingualism, one student even featured a consenting friend from his workplace, who volunteered to translate each of the student’s main insights into Spanish. This bilingual test response showcased the student’s strong engagement with our course content and curiosity to learn beyond the prompt! It also provided a learning opportunity for other students in the class.
Here’s a sample test prompt:
Please post your video comments by Thursday, and reply to at least two of your peers by Saturday. In a brief video or audio-only comment (up to 2 minutes), share:
Students report enjoying this interactive, untimed format of video test discussions, because it allows them to rehearse, erase, and re-record their responses, as well as learn from and share with other students. In this sense, the ability to receive peer responses provides students with more immediate feedback than a testing format reliant on the instructor as the sole or main respondent. What I gather from student feedback and performance, is that an interactive and open-ended format helps to make the positive, affective experience of the test just as memorable and confidence-building as the content being assessed.
Student #6: “The testing format was an entirely new experience for me. I had never had to give video responses for a test before, however by the end of it, I had enjoyed the experience. I feel like it tested me on understanding what I was talking about.”
Student #7: “My experience with the test format was interesting because usually when it comes to tests I think of multiple-choice questions. But having to talk on video about what I learned and what I found interesting was a new experience because I can explain it in my own words. When my classmates watch my video about this, maybe it could answer their questions if they had any, or I gave them a better understanding of that one topic. So, this gave me a chance to review and understand the material better.”
Student #8: “There is something to be said about contributing to the communal understanding and learning of the class—we are in this together and all perspectives are welcome & encouraged! Framing the test as a group effort also helps it seem less like a foreboding obstacle and more like an opportunity to grow.”
How can we best serve all students through online teaching? I advocate for attention to our assessment strategies. Shifting from timed, individual response formats to untimed, asynchronous discussions within a community configuration, brings an appreciative perspective (as opposed to deficit outlook) to assessment (e.g., Hammond, 2015). This shift results in a supportive environment that lowers text anxiety, builds interactivity, and encourages students to learn from one another. It is a win-win for students and educators, and I encourage you to experiment with this format to optimize its scalable benefits for the student populations you serve!
I also encourage pivoting to adopt emerging technologies, such as video messaging platforms, that students widely understand and enjoy using in their everyday lives. This links back to Geneva Gay’s insight about the utility of bringing novel approaches into teaching. For example, in many ways, the functions of Flipgrid resemble aspects of the ultra-popular social media platform TikTok, and this makes its use fun and intuitive for many students. These interactive features also assist with humanizing online courses.
When the time comes for our next test, I will be encouraging my students to have fun with it, and I hope you will, too!
Join me for a free online workshop hosted by CVC/@ONE on April 27, 2022 from 2:00-3:15pm!
Selected References
Arribathi, A. H., et al. (2021). An analysis of student learning anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic: A study in higher education. The Journal of Continuing Higher Education, 69(3), 192-205. https://doi.org/10.1080/07377363.2020.1847971
Cho, K. W., & Serrano, D. M. (2020). Noncognitive predictors of academic achievement among nontraditional and traditional ethnically diverse college students. The Journal of Continuing Higher Education, 68(3), 190-206. https://doi.org/10.1080/07377363.2020.1776557
Fritzgerald, A. (2020). Antiracism and universal design for learning: Building expressways to success. Wakefield, MA: CAST Professional Publishing.
Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. New York: Teachers College Press.
Hammond, Z. (2015). Culturally responsive teaching and the brain: Promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin (SAGE).
Kurbanoğlu, N. İ., & Nefes, F. K. (2015). Effect of context-based questions on secondary school students’ test anxiety and science attitude. Journal of Baltic Science Education, 14(2), 216-226. https://www.proquest.com/openview/dcaf8d623109555b920adfece43fdf5f/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=4477238
Pattanpichet, F. (2011). The effects of using collaborative learning to enhance students English speaking achievement. Journal of College Teaching & Learning (TLC), 8(11), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.19030/tlc.v8i11.6502
Pssst! Want a simple way to find, import and share resources in Canvas? We gotcha covered. The Canvas Commons is a digital library full of educational content where you can share learning resources with other educators as well as import learning resources into your own Canvas courses.
Whether you love it or hate it, or alternate between the two, teaching synchronously on Zoom might not be going away any time soon. Trust me, I know the struggle. The blank, silent squares. The awkward, enduring dead air. Our jokes dropping like radon balloons. The cricket-infested breakout rooms.
Yet, I also know that many of us have experienced amazing moments with our students on Zoom. We have seen excitement and deep engagement, risk taking, mistakes and growth, and the persistence and success of plate-spinning students who might not have been able to make the pieces fit without this option.
Online synchronous teaching also offers us a lot of exciting tools we can use to facilitate dynamic, relevant learning experiences. The world is changing for our students, as should the way in which we help them to thrive within it. There’s an opportunity to reestablish and emphasize the relevance of our disciplines within this context, but we must adapt.
I know most of us can still get down with some chalk or a squeaky pen on a white board and a classroom full of students, but it’s probably time we start folding into our practices some of the ubiquitous tech tools shaping the way people communicate, work, and live in 2022. Maybe our current crisis offers us the opportunity to learn ways to shake the habitual and situate the skill sets we hope to impart within the contours of the emerging information landscape and its digital toolbox?
Although there isn’t a standard recipe, we can all find unique ways to slip some of the following ingredients into the instructional designs we cook up with our students.
Join me on March 9, 2022 at 1:00 PT for a free online workshop, Simple Teaching Strategies for Fun, Community-rich Zoom Classes. Register for free now. See you there!
In the 2020 Pixar film, Soul, Joe is a mentor in a purgatory-like realm mentoring a fellow soul named 22. Joe’s quest is to help 22 find her “spark” and decide to return of life on earth. Joe believes that everyone must have a “spark” - a passion, a destination, a purpose. It isn't until 22 lives in Joe’s body, however, that she finds her spark and desire to live on earth; and it isn't until Joe lives as a mentee (student) that he finds a legitimate appreciation for living life with purpose. Through mentoring 22, Joe eventually discovers that a “spark” is not about finding one’s passion or single purpose in life. Rather, the “spark” is being fully aware of moments that uplift and spark the soul.
Joe was supposed to be the mentor, yet he ended up seeing the gaps in the meaning of passion, sharing in a collaborative experience, shifting his perspective on the purpose of life, and reshaping his life. Like Joe, faculty are mentors who can engage with intentional, equitable practices to discover the “spark” in learning. Both 22’s and Joe’s life experiences still mattered. They were foundational to finding their spark. This is a great metaphor for how teachers and students must collaborate in order to reach their full potential - our spark.
We are two community college faculty dedicated to achieving equity. In this article, we share our perspectives, inspirations, and research about equitable grading strategies. Our intention is to spark your curiosity to learn more and to encourage you to critically question your own practices to remove systemic barriers and ensure all students have what they need to achieve their goals – that is how we achieve equity
The process of schooling is at odds with the way humans learn. Dr. Christopher Emdin writes in his book Ratchetdemic: Reimaginig Academic Success, schooling “…places young folks in metaphorical cages and inhabits them from being free, [and] is a contemporary form of historical phenomena like slavery… They feel contemporary forms of the same stress, fear and anger their ancestors felt, and schools serve as spaces that condition them to accept those feelings and normalize them” (136). As faculty, we have the opportunity to (re) kindle the spark of learning by intentionally and critically investigating our grading practices.
bell hooks states in Teaching To Transgress: The Education As The Practice Of Freedom, “The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy, … [and calls] for a renewal and rejuvenation in our teaching practice. Urging all of us to open our minds and hearts so that we can go beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable so that we can think and rethink, so that we can create new visions…” (12). As equity-minded educators, we believe it is time to re-examine our practice and recognize our ability to heal by shedding oppressive practices and inspiring the spark in learning.
Historically, grades were a means to efficiently demarcate students to different groups based on their perceived intelligence. By and large, as a system, we have been using the same A, B, C, D, F grading system that was instituted in the US in the Ivy League system in 1898. However, with the influx of immigrants, the move to compulsory education (Rickenbacker & Rothbard, 1974), the passing of the GI Bill in 1944 (Witt, 1993), and the ever-changing student demographic, the Eurocentric foundations of our education system are now (and have been for decades) misaligned with the students we serve. As such, grades are a foundational system that must be reexamined, as they serve as extrinsic rewards for performance, work as a means to favor outcomes over learning, foster competition among students, promote cheating or gaming the system, rely on subjective mathematical calculations, favor privileged students, and perpetuate systemic inequities. This then begs the question, what do grades really measure? In part, grades measure the instructor’s perception of student performance, the benchmarks of which are also defined by that same instructor. More problematically, however, grades really measure a student’s ability to succeed within the confines of our Eurocentric educational system that favors adherence to arbitrarily defined rules and guidelines. Grades measure parents’ educational background, socioeconomic status, memorization skills, and expedited content acquisition, rather than what we really hope to measure as educators: competencies, skills, outcomes, critical thinking, learning, and growth.
Not only do grades inaccurately measure student growth, faculty have largely used the traditional grading system without questioning its foundations because they were successful in navigating grades as students. As a result, in their classrooms, they replicate the systems that afforded them the successes they had as students. Now, however, there have been many prominent scholars who have challenged conventional grading and have asked us to critically examine grades on a fundamental level. Those who have shed traditional grades in their classes have reported a sense of liberation, and students have disclosed a sense of agency and validation. Without grades, faculty are forced to reexamine their own priorities in the classroom and more creatively measure student growth.
So, how do we move away from a system which has been indoctrinated in us since the move to compulsory education and which we have all experienced both as students and as instructors? There are multiple systematic approaches to modifying our grading practices. Faculty have moved to various alternative systems, including contract grading (Brown [formerly Kuhn], 2020), specifications grading (Nilson, 2014), labor-based grading (Inoue, 2019), and ungrading (Blum, 2020; Stommel, 2018; Gibbs, 2019). Although these systems have their own nuances, they all prioritize the learning process and growth. When adopting an equitized system, the instructor must also adopt the mindset that learning takes time, and to punish a student with a low or failing grade early in the semester is contradictory to the premise of education (Blum, 2020). Instead of focusing on high-stakes exams that require rote memorization, for example, faculty have shifted to open-ended discussions, project-based learning, peer review, self-assessment, revision, conferencing, and portfolios, among other activities. Instead of calculating grades based on weights and percentages, students have control over the grade they hope to achieve, and depending on the system, will complete and pass a certain number of assignments (with contract and specifications grading) or will self-assess the extent to which they grew in the course and make a case for the grade they believe they have earned (with ungrading).
In my (Bri Brown) recent doctoral dissertation, I examined the impact of contract grading on equity gaps among underrepresented student populations in light of AB-705 and the Student-Centered Funding Formula. Equity gaps were measured by course retention, success, and grade; concurrent and subsequent term GPA’s; term-to-term persistence, and academic probation. The first research question examined whether contract grading correlated with, and predicted, equity markers for underrepresented student populations (e.g., racial minorities, females, foster youth, veterans, first generation students, Pell recipients, and returning students). The second research question examined how students experienced contract grading. The quantitative analysis included institutional disaggregated data for 1687 students enrolled in the participating merit- and contract-graded courses. I also conducted five student focus groups to explore their experiences in contract-graded classes. Quantitatively, contract-graded Latinx, Black, and Middle Eastern students were retained and successful in their English class at comparable rates to White students. Contract-graded Black and Middle Eastern students were also predicted to earn comparable course grades, concurrent GPA’s, and subsequent term one and two GPA’s as White students. Qualitatively, students expressed appreciation for clear expectations and feedback; felt validated because they didn’t fear failure; felt more confident and safe in the classroom environment; experienced a heightened sense of motivation, engagement, and classroom community; and expressed a shift in motivation from external (i.e. grades) to internal (i.e. writing improvement). These findings confirm the results of several other studies, and as a result, it is logical to conclude that no-points grading is an effort worth pursuing. Not only does it validate students, but it also promotes equity and contributes to the decolonization of the classroom, outcomes which support the California Community College Chancellor’s OfficeVision for Success, as well as local institutional missions and values.
When faculty let go of the impulse to situate themselves as sole-power keepers and leverage students’ narratives, the teaching and learning dynamic shifts from transactional to transitional with intentionality at the center. Therefore, through equitable grading, students find their spark in learning and we find our spark in teaching. And we are transformed.