How Much Do You Really Know About Student Self Assessment?

Self-assessment is an undersung hero in the online instructor’s toolbox. It can not only help students develop skills in critical analysis, research by Sharma, et al. (2016) found it can increase their interest and motivation level, leading to enhanced learning and better academic performance. How ‘bout them apples?! Watch on to learn more.

Additional Resources

“A Scholarly Review of Research on Student Self-Assessment,” H. Andrade, 2019
“The Importance of Student Self Assessment,” E. Beard, 2021
“Self-assessment Is About More Than Self: the enabling role of feedback literacy,” Yan & Carless, 2021
“Developing Student Feedback Literacy,” K. Mosley (if you’re like me and don’t like long research articles)

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.

Helen's How To's Playlist

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!

Test Anxiety: A Problem for Students, or Educators, or Both?

Many students in my courses are surprised to encounter the encouraging statements I include with test instructions. These are statements such as:

• Take a deep breath, and do your best. You're gonna do great!
• You belong here. I believe in you. You've got this!
• Enjoy this test! Your creativity is welcome!

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?

Pivoting to Test Design that Centers Student Success

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: 

1. Contextualized questions that explicitly connect with students’ everyday lives contribute to student success and confidence in testing;
2. Collaborative and cooperative learning lower anxiety, and allow numerous low-stakes opportunities for risk-taking and confidence-building. 

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:

1. Cooperative learning, as opposed to competitive and punitive grading schemes;
2. Choice and authenticity in learning through opportunities to choose and determine which response pathway for an assignment helps them best demonstrate their knowledge;
3. Incorporating a variety of formats, perspectives, and “novelty in teaching”;
4. Multiple opportunities for students to critically reflect on their beliefs and actions (p. 196).  

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). 

Testing as Pedagogy: From Timed Test to Untimed "Video Test Discussions"

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: 

1. Your name
   • Have fun connecting with us!
2. Something we have studied together this semester that has expanded your appreciation of how language(s) works.
3. Mention at least one key term or key concept from Units 1-4 in your post.
   • For example: intersectionality, sign language linguistics, prescriptivism, international phonetic alphabet (IPA), and more!
4. Provide a definition of your key term or key concept.
5. Most important: Explain in detail how it applies to your personal life.
   • For example: Consider how the study of articulatory phonetics helps you understand the challenges young children you know (nieces, nephew, sons, daughters, etc.) face when learning to speak.
6. Respond to at least 2 of your peers.

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.”

Conclusion: Let's Enjoy This Testing Experience!

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! 

Want to Learn With Me?

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? 

7 Ingredients for Fun, Engaging Zoom Sessions

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.

1. Start with thought and expression: get students engaged in a conversation, showcasing and affirming their interests and experiences before scaffolding in skill sets. I’ve learned from students that in my discipline, spending the first three weeks of the semester drilling MLA or sentence and paragraph structure before students are engaged in any meaningful conversations invariably leads to disenchantment with the class. Writing becomes a test, a hoop to jump through rather than a vital asset in their lives. Students have a lot to say and a desire for a forum. This is an asset that we should consistently leverage from day one. Give them a reason to want to further develop the skill or understanding each session hopes to impart, then drop just-in-time instruction in as needed. Long story short: contextualize the learning and try to have fun with it.

2. Give them something to play with; make the experience durable: I love collaborating at meetings and conferences with colleagues and newly-met friends, writing interesting thoughts on whiteboards or gigantic sticky notes. It’s a great exercise for collaborative brainstorming and often sparks deeply-textured conversations–though, without fail, in my personal experience, this is cut short by time constraints and the facilitators’ itinerary. Yet, even though I have captured many of these scribbled notes with the camera on my mobile device, I literally never ever look back on these images or these ideas. They are buried in the ephemera of an ever-expanding cloud of data smog. The desire for something more durable is one of the potential benefits of synchronously learning together online (though this can and probably should be accomplished when learning in person, as well).
   
   When we invite students to contribute to shared online documents, they become co-creators of resources shared by the entire class. Designing activities that ask students to collaboratively make or do something creative allows them to process the concepts or practice the skills together with a sense of accountability to one another and the course. They can learn from their colleagues’ examples. Offering opportunities for personalization and creativity allows them to infuse these creations with their brilliance. Designing activities which ask them to connect those concepts and skills to interests, thoughts, experiences, and expertise that they already have makes this learning even stickier. 
   
   What’s more, students unable to attend a session can “make up” a missed class and share in the experience when we point them to these cataloged activities. These could be Perusall assignments, collaborative creative work created and shared with Google Slides, Padlet discussions, Google Jamboards, etc. Whatever the case, frame this collection of low stakes collaborative processing work as documentation of the oral history of your class. Emphasize the continuity and community of thought, growth, and imaginary it represents. Encourage them to use this resource as they work on more formal individual assignments. Here’s an example of an interactive Google Slide deck I created for students to collaborate around a few years back. 

3. Many paths; don’t be too rigid with how students can participate or earn points: students are going to get confused. Not everyone is working from the same space or has access to the same tools or expertise. Sometimes their browser settings block links you share or the tools you are asking them to engage with. Cortisol can quickly rise and learning will stop, especially if we show frustration. 
   
   Just talk it through with the student. Tell them not to stress out and offer suggestions for getting around these challenges. Offer them alternatives to the precise instructions you have given. Encourage and applaud resilience and “finding a way” in the face of roadblocks and let them know that this is essentially the key to success in college: taking a breath, asking for help when you can, and figuring it out. 
   
   For example, in the sample set of activities shared above, some students have had trouble writing on the shared slides. Here’s a few ways they could meaningfully participate that I might suggest: be the editor and fact checker; use the chat and ask your partners to copy/paste your contributions on the slide for you; find images for the collages and share the links; work with your team so that you contribute your voice to the shared project; keep talking.
   
   Beyond that, constantly remind your students of the many paths toward participation in the larger class discussions, outside of breakout groups. Some students flat out don’t want to talk in class. We should honor this introspection while finding ways to help these students share. I was in my second year of graduate school before I felt comfortable speaking in class without being forced to–being vulnerable and sharing stuff like that from our own journeys and growth can help too. Remind students to use the chat as a backchannel space to share and ask questions, but also engage with it yourself. Whether it's a comment, a question, an emoji, or an image, let students share what they want. Mention them by name and react positively to this engagement. It will catch on. Ask them a follow up question and use your judgment. Give them time, but if they aren’t feeling it, just move on casually. No big deal. 

4. Again . . . give them time! Honor the pause! It can be awkward, but when we are learning new things, we need time to think and process. Obviously, students are no different. Exercise your resilience to sit in the silence. I personally need to continue to work on this. 

5. Don’t coerce or surveille; entice and encourage: students need to feel seen and honored, not policed. Giving them a chance to share their strengths before asking them to develop skills they need to improve with is a great way to do this. In terms of learning on Zoom, remind them that leadership and collaboration aren’t mutually exclusive concepts and that developing these arts in a virtual context is probably going to be increasingly valuable in the years to come. Contextualize Zoom collaboration. Remind them that a college classroom should be a safe place where we support one another as we practice and take risks to grow in confidence. Remind them that the “real world” might not be as low stakes and everybody won’t always be on the same side, so it’s probably a good idea to build that confidence and those skills now. This is just one way to help students recognize that the intrinsic value of fully engaging far outweighs a collection of participation points and their impact on their final grade.

6. Improve your digital literacy; practice with these  tech tools: it’s really important to move smoothly from activity to activity. Mistakes will be made and we should use these as an opportunity to show ourselves grace and recover, but too many flubs can disjoint the class. Learning how to navigate effectively between different windows, documents, and Zoom tools is essential. This takes practice! I strongly suggest standardizing your practice and using dual monitors.

7. Design human experiences with a flow; be strategic: one thing that really helps me with both points 5 and 6 is writing detailed itineraries that help me think through what I hope to accomplish with students, as well as providing a handy list of links I can quickly grab to drop into the chat for students to follow. Use down time effectively. Announcing that you are about to go into breakout rooms, then spending the next ninety seconds stressfully setting them up is not a good use of time. Same goes with sharing screens or links.
   
   Rather, plan ahead by carefully considering the flow of your session. For example, set up breakout groups while students are journaling and take attendance or make on-the-fly adjustments to activities while they’re in breakout groups. You are designing and facilitating a set of experiences, so consider transitions from the students’ perspective. Rhetorical awareness is essential. What are you going for? What do you want students to get out of the session? What are the best designs to accomplish this? Finally, things won’t always go as planned. If your awesome designs that you worked very hard on aren’t landing, give yourself and your students a break. It happens! Don’t force it. Afterwards, reflect and adjust.
   
   In the end, the best piece of advice I can give is that we should adjust our attitudes. If we aren’t excited by these modalities or if we criticize learning online this way, our students will follow suit. Our energy interacts with students in a feedback loop. They tend to mirror our vibe and we theirs. If we are excited, there’s a better chance they will be too . . . which then intensifies our own excitement and so on. The same is true if we are frustrated and annoyed. Whether it’s this or the lens by which we see our students, either as a collection of deficits or a collection of assets, the mindsets and energy we bring to our classrooms–virtual or not–can be prophetic in a self-fulfilling kind of way. 
   
   Setting the tone starts with us having faith in our students’ capacity and recognizing that teaching through Zoom isn’t just a shoddy stand-in for “real teaching”; it is vibrant and increasingly vital. It’s a space where our students can thrive and where we have a chance to innovate in creative ways. 

Learn with me!

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.

Seeing Inequities

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. 

Sharing and Shifting Power: Alternatives to Traditional Grading

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.

Reshaping our power - sparks of inspiration: 

Participate

• Register to the CVC/@ONE  Webinar Get the ‘F’ Outta Here: Challenging the Oppressive Status Quo by Equitizing Our Grading Practices
• Participate in additional workshops from the CVC/@ONE Equitable Online Teaching series
• Enroll in the new @ONE Course: Equitable Grading Strategies–coming this spring 2022!

Online Resources

• Recording of Susan D. Blum’s Ungrading for Learning & Equity, hosted by CVC/@ONE 
• International book club for Susan Blum’s book UnGrading 
• Jesse Stommel’s “How to Ungrade” website
• Teachers Going Gradeless
• Bri Brown’s Dissertation "Get The ‘F’ Outta Here: Exploring Contract Grading as a Decolonizing and Equity-Minded Assessment Practice in Composition Classrooms" 
• Asao Inoue’s Blog & Resource Database: http://asaobinoue.blogspot.com/
• Inoue, Asao. (2019). Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity and Inclusion in the Compassionate Writing Classroom. The WAC Clearinghouse.
• Blum, S. D. (2020). Ungrudging: Why rating students undermines learning (and what to do instead). West Virginia University Press.

Connect with Scholars and Colleagues on this topic:

Facebook

• Teachers Going Gradeless

Twitter

• #ungrading
• People to follow:
  • Susan Blum
  • Laura Gibbs
  • Jesse Stommel
  • David Buck

Accessibility checker tools for our CA Community College system:

PopeTech available free to all CA community colleges

UDOIT - open source (free) OR cloud-based (premium)

Ally (Blackboard) - fully funded for CCCs through June 30, 2021
If your CA community college would like to set up an Ally account, please contact support@cvc.edu.

Images are a delightful way to increase engagement and reinforce written content in an online course. But if not used correctly, images can be problematic. From the way you embed to the size you choose, I’ll show you how to be an image master!

What are flexible courses and why prepare faculty to teach them?

If you work in higher education, then chances are good that you’re aware of the growing trend toward creating and teaching flexible courses. Some of you may be asking, “what’s a flexible course?” When our campuses closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, we all moved our courses online. Now that we’re tentatively returning to campuses, many faculty and students are teaching and learning across multiple course delivery methods at the same time. These multimodal courses, or “flexible courses,” come in many flavors involving different combinations of in-person learners; real-time, remote learners; and asynchronous, online learners.

Reasons for creating and teaching flexible courses vary. Some campuses are looking to flexible courses to help keep the student density low. Others want to offer students with a choice of how to participate in classes. Still others want to make sure they can maintain instructional continuity if campuses have to close again. Regardless of their reasons, teaching flexible courses requires hard work by the instructor and as much support as staff can provide. It’s challenging to do two or three things at once, and to do them all equally well. If campuses ask teachers to teach flexible courses, then it’s important that they help them get ready.

Creating the Flexible Course Experience Institute

Along those lines, throughout spring 2021 collaborative leaders from the California State University Chancellor’s Office had gotten numerous requests for help preparing faculty to teach flexible courses. Very few Cal State campuses had the resources to create a whole new set of training materials. To respond to those requests, the Chancellor’s Office team commissioned the Flexible Course Experience Institute, a four-part workshop series followed by open labs for answering questions and building community. The institute would serve staff across the system who needed to train faculty at their local campus, as well as faculty who wanted to get a head start on preparing for the fall.

Through a survey, faculty and campus staff across the Cal State system reported what challenges faculty face in teaching flexible courses. They identified a range of challenges like creating equivalent learning experiences for students participating at different times and places, managing multiple technology platforms, engaging students in different environments, and managing workloads. To address those challenges and others, the institute provides practical strategies for making courses more flexible for students.

The table below shows the institute’s basic outline. Aligned with the backward design model, the workshop series explored increasing flexibility in 1) our course outcomes and structure, 2) how we assess achievement of those outcomes, 3) how we engage students, and 4) how students review course materials. In each of those four workshops, we used micro-lessons to investigate how we can increase flexibility, how we can support students, and how we can manage different environments. See the final section below for more details about the course, its modules and micro-lessons.

To model effective teaching practices, the institute follows the Transparency in Learning and Teaching framework—that is, it provides the purpose (why), the task (what) and criteria and resources for success (how) for each topic. Following Universal Design for Learning principles, the institute also provides materials in multiple formats, including live and recorded videos that are captioned and have text transcripts, slide decks with lecture scripts in the notes fields, and text-based content pages in Canvas. Staff members can use the course as an “institute-in-a-box” that’s ready to go, use the slides and scripts to conduct their own training, or scrap it for parts to supplement professional development that they’ve built themselves.

Facilitating and participating in the institute

The institute itself was, and is, a flexible learning experience. We conducted live sessions via Zoom and recorded them for people to learn on their own time. We facilitated activities that could be completed as a group in real-time or by individuals later on. Like our students, the participants wanted flexibility—faculty were on summer break or teaching summer classes, staff had their day jobs that sometimes prevented them from attending live sessions. We used the Canvas forums and a Slack channel to communicate in between sessions.

It was important that everyone walk away with concrete strategies they could use right away. Faculty worried about simultaneously trying to pay attention to students in the room and students on Zoom were happy to hear about strategies that asked their own students to help, such as “chat jockeys” or “remote buddies.” Faculty grappling with how to plan a multimodal class meeting appreciated reviewing “Run of Show” examples that outline classes of differing lengths, and then creating their own outline using the run of show template. Staff who work with faculty liked the startup and shutdown checklist of tasks that instructors should consider when they enter a classroom.  As we discussed each topic, we left time for participants to share what they were doing or planning to do to make courses more flexible.

Some campuses took advantage of the ability to download the entire institute course from the Canvas Commons. Campuses that use Moodle, D2L, Blackboard or some other LMS could download the Institute as an IMS Global Common Cartridge. Some installed the course in their local learning management system and used it like a “textbook” for their local training sessions to get faculty ready for the fall. Overall the feedback has been extremely positive. The next step will be to meet early in the fall to share what has worked and what people still need help doing.

Brief showcase of the Canvas course

Now that we’ve launched it as an open course, you and your colleagues can go through the Flexible Course Experience Institute on your own. You’ll start on the home page, which has links to each module, as well as a QuickLinks menu to jump to any micro-lesson, lecture or activity. For most activities the link goes to a Google doc that you can download as a local file (e.g., Microsoft Word or Excel) or that you can create a copy in your own Google drive folders.

Here are a few other relevant details about the institute:

• Each workshop is contained within a Canvas module.
• Each workshop begins with an overview and a “Check in With Yourself” survey that you can use to identify strength areas (strategies you already use) and growth areas (strategies you want to explore).
• Each workshop contains three micro-lessons that follow the same format—a 10-15 minute lecture followed by a 15-minute activity designed to help you make some part of your course experience more flexible.
• During each workshop, we stopped and restarted the Zoom recording at the end of each micro-lesson, so you and other asynchronous participants can jump directly to the 30-minute chunk you want to see. No one needs to scroll through a 90-minute Zoom recording, right?
• Each workshop ends with a Take Action activity where participants identify at least one strategy they want to use to make their course more flexible.
• Each workshop includes a Keep Learning page with links to additional resources for further exploration.

I hope that you’ll take the opportunity to explore flexible courses and share your own strategies and questions in the comments below.

This article was originally published on the California Acceleration Project (CAP) blog.

One of the most significant factors correlated with student persistence, success, and learning in online courses is the relationship between the instructor and students (CCCCO Distance Education Report). An instructor’s empathy, care, and compassion distinguish the quality of those relationships.

This four-part blog series focuses on humanizing online teaching and learning. Michelle Pacansky-Brock defines humanizing as “a student-centered mindset that involves recognizing and supporting the non-cognitive components of learning. In a humanized course, faculty intentionally cultivate an inclusive learning environment that fosters psychological safety and trust and forms connections that grow into relationships and a community.” My first article was about humanizing your online course with Flipgrid. The second article was titled “Beyond Discussion Forums: Asynchronous Student-Student Interaction Online”, and the third was ”Beyond Lectures: Synchronous Student-to-Student Interaction”. The other side of the humanizing coin is a warm instructor presence that imparts empathy and awareness. In a recent article, “Humanizing Online Teaching to Equitize Higher Education,” Michelle Pacansky-Brock, Michael Smedshammer, and Kim Vincent-Layton highlight, “Instructor-student relationships lie at the heart of humanizing, serving as the connective tissue between students, engagement, and rigor.”

Humanizing And Equity

For minoritized students, having an authentically caring instructor-student relationship is foundational to their learning and success. Dr. Luke Wood, in his 2018 Online Teaching Conference keynote entitled “Reaching Underserved Students through Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning in the Online Environment,” emphasizes the equity-minded practices of being “relational” by forming relationships with your students and being “intrusive” by reaching out when they need our support. Zaretta Hammond, author of the book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, encourages us to be a “warm demander” by explicitly focusing on building rapport and trust while still holding high expectations of our students. In Fabiola Torres’s “Practicing Radical Love: Breaking Down Instructor-Student Hierarchies” presentation for the @ONE Humanizing Challenge, she illuminates students’ needs for “care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust.” Meeting these needs is even more essential for underserved, marginalized students.

A Warm Welcome Package

Your opportunities to greet students at the “door” and make a positive first impression are in your welcome email before the course begins, in your welcome video, and in your syllabus. Your warm, caring, and inviting language and tone are vital here, along with your facial expressions and emotion conveyed in your welcome video. Flower Darby, author of Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes, illustrates at her 2019 Online Teaching Conference keynote “Answering the Call: New Motivation for Online Teaching Excellence” that students feel from the start, “I don’t care how much you know until I know how much you care.” Establishing trust from the beginning is paramount.

Welcome Video

Short videos are a powerful way to make personal connections with your students. Imperfect is perfect, and there’s no need to go beyond the first take. Students just need to see and hear from you. In a two to five-minute humanized welcome video, you should introduce yourself personally, share your enthusiasm for teaching the course, and explain how to be successful in it. It’s a salient technique for initiating a personal connection with your students and making them feel welcome in the course. Below are two examples of my welcome videos where I instill a culture of care and personal warmth.

The @ONE Humanizing Challenge offers four options for creating videos depending on your comfort level and preference, including the Clips app, Zoom, Adobe Spark Video, and Screencast-O-Matic. After recording and captioning your welcome video, I invite you to share it with the CAP community and comment with feedback on each other’s videos.

For more wonderful video production ideas, I recommend Karen Costa’s recently-published book, 99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos: A Guide for Online Teachers and Flipped Classes. If you’re feeling anxious about creating videos, view this two-minute “Maritez’s Video Production Journey” video. 

Syllabus and Course Policies

While your contact information and quick response times are fundamental to your syllabus, even more so is the language itself. In the Center for Urban Education’s webinar “How to Express Care with a Focus on Racial Equity,” Dr. Frank Harris III delineates that the language of the syllabus sets the tone and establishes the relationship between the instructor and students. I encourage you to reevaluate your syllabus and course policies through an equity lens. Do you communicate with a warm, welcoming tone? Does your late work policy give grace to students? Deliver student-centered messages of “I’m here to support you” and “I care about you and your success.” Instead of using rigid and punitive language, aim for caring and compassionate language. For instance:

Student Surveys and Canvas “Notes”

We can easily identify early on which students may need more of our attention and support by administering a quick student survey during the first week. Surveys can be created using Canvas Quizzes, Google Forms, or other survey tools. I ask my students questions to gauge their feelings about the class and anticipate their needs, for example, “How are you feeling about this online course?” and “What is one thing that can get in the way of your success in this course, and how can I support you?” See Michelle Pacansky-Brock’s sample student information survey for more excellent questions.

When I review their first-week survey results, I implement the Canvas “Notes” column in the Gradebook to enter details about individual students. Before sending them a message, I check my Notes so I can communicate care into the conversation. For instance, if I note that a student is working a full-time job, has a toddler, and had surgery, I might ask how work is going, how their child is doing, or how their recovery is coming along in my message. I also note the pronunciation of student names and their nicknames for when I have a synchronous meeting with them and when sending them messages.

In addition to administering a student information survey at the start, solicit your students’ anonymous feedback on surveys during and at the end of the semester to improve their experience of the class. You might consider asking them what they enjoy about your class, what suggested changes they would like to see in your course, and then immediately apply their feedback as your course continues.

Maintaining Your Presence

Weekly Video Announcements

Instructor presence can be applied weekly through quick video announcements that express your personal warmth. You might consider including: 

• Praise on recently graded work
• A review of the previous week’s content
• A preview of next week’s content
• A celebration of their accomplishments
• The stickiest/muddiest points from last week
• Highlights from the last discussion or assignment

A student wrote on my anonymous post-course survey, “I will miss her awesome greetings through her Monday morning video announcements!” 

Here are two examples of my weekly video announcements:

Feedback/Feedforward 

An online instructor’s human presence is also maintained throughout the semester by giving students rich, timely feedback on their work. Engaging in dialogue with students about their progress is critical to the learning process. In the Center for Urban Education’s webinar “Being Aware of Learning Constraints and Opportunities Posed by Online Teaching,” Sim Barhoum demonstrates the “feedforward” approach that focuses on a future they can change, not a past they can’t, for example: “I like that you did x. In the future, can you try y?” and “Can you explain this in a different way?” To save time and to better express your emotion, you might even consider giving students audio or video feedback while in the Canvas SpeedGrader. 

Individualized Support

Canvas “Message Students Who”

Another effective humanizing and equity-minded strategy of online instructors is having a keen awareness of their students, paying special attention to when students need support. The Public Policy Institute of California study reveals that the most successful online instructors monitor student engagement and seek out students who seem to be disengaged or struggling. The Canvas Gradebook makes it easier for us to send messages to students who we want to check in with using the “Message Students Who” feature. Once a deadline for a major assignment has passed in my course, I use this feature to nudge students who did not submit it. It can also be used to praise students who are excelling or to provide just-in-time remediation, one of the CAP principles. 

Instead of writing to a student, “You’re missing assignments,” I use the language of care and empathy such as, “I’m checking in. Is everything okay?” Most of the time, I discover that things are not okay and work with the student to get them back on the path to success. At the close of a semester, a Latinx student who was working full-time sent me a letter of appreciation expressing, “I was going through a hard situation a couple weeks before the semester ended and I was thinking of dropping the class and giving up on everything, but thanks to you I decided to keep it. If it hadn't been for the text message you sent me that day and the support you kept giving me, I would have dropped the class and I would have lost my financial aid and other benefits. In other words, you were my hero.”

Personalized Synchronous Meetings

Strong instructor-student relationships are better fostered over synchronous sessions when they are in a more personal one-on-one or small-group format. I encourage you to consider holding scheduled conferences or study sessions with students during your office hours where you could review how a student performed on an assessment, give individualized feedback on a draft, or hold a small group review session before an exam. My schedule always fills up with students signing up for an appointment slot. I even award my students extra credit for attending to reverse the psychology and stigma associated with needing help from the teacher. For ease of schedule management, you could use Calendly, a shared Google Doc, or the Canvas Calendar. Below is an example of how I begin a typical writing conference with a student where I prioritize our relationship by first checking on how the student is doing.

Recap

Without a warm, caring instructor's presence, the online classroom can be a lonely place, and many students who feel isolated may end up dropping out. An online instructor’s care has a significant impact on student success and retention, especially for minoritized students. I hope that my ideas have inspired you to think about how you will create a culture of care and implement your warm human presence. To leverage the potential of humanizing and equity-minded pedagogy in the online environment, we must be intentional in our course design and facilitation to be fully present, convey care and personal warmth, establish trust, and build relationships with students. A Black working mother who I interviewed for my Online Student Voices Inquiry Project disclosed, “We can tell which teachers want us to succeed.” Be that teacher.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for thinking about teaching and learning that offers flexibility in the ways students access course material, engage with it, and show what they know. UDL principles benefit all learners by building in responsiveness that can be adjusted for every learner’s strengths and needs.

Suggested Resources

Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST)

UDL in Higher Ed

UDL: A Powerful Framework (Faculty Focus)