Library Director Chris Matz welcomed our group to the Collaborative Classroom in the Library.

We participated in a Socrative poll that helped to determine the topic for our retreat and also suggested topics for future meetings.

Retreat

Top choice for a retreat was: Designing Your Canvas Classroom for Maximum Student Engagement & Success We agreed that we could incorporate lots of different topics into this session, including assessment and GIG strategies. It's possible we may have enough funds remaining to offer a second retreat in spring quarter...we'll see!

RETREAT DATE: Friday, January 29 ~8a-4:30p Dumas Bay Centre

Next Meeting & Topics

NEXT MEETING: Friday, Nov. 20 1:30-3:20p Room 4214

Here are topics suggested (for meetings and retreats) thus far. Please send additional ideas to Judy via Canvas message!

Collaboration/Conference tools
Assessment (building, course alignment, outcomes, methods,
Building Student Engagement/Motivation, Retention
Reading Strategies
IDS (Interdisciplinary studies)
First Year Experience
Active learning as way of inclusive teaching
Flipped Classes (advanced)
Using Canvas Groups effectively
Engaging most of students in group discussion
Textbooks (cost, selection, ancillaries, eTexts, OER options)
Recognizing/helping less prepared students in the context of a class with stronger, more motivated students
Overcoming tendency of students to copycat problems from "similar" ones, and get them to better grasp the structure of the problem.

I will look over the final list in a week or so and decide on a topic for next meeting.

EFFICIENT GRADING STRATEGIES

Discussion Board Student Self-Assessment (Judy)

After the first major discussion in the quarter, students use the discussion rubric to self-assess their participation. See Assignment Here. Students earn full 10 points on this assignment if they objectively and accurately assess their work. If they do not, then they won't earn full credit. I also use the rubric to assess the same discussion (so students know how I'd grade it), but that grade does not count--only the self-assessment. Results: Some students actually thank me! This also makes for more substantial participation in remaining discussions and reduces the number of non-participants.

Compartmentalized Grading of Essay Writing (Tom)

Tom says that when his students are assigned to write essays, he will give feedback on the entire first draft. But, when they submit the final draft, he only grades the middle/main paragraphs to see if they've incorporated his feedback from the first draft. If so, he reads no further. If not, he returns it to student for resubmission.

Grading Essay Exams (Stephanie)

Stephanie uses 10-question essay exams. Students are required to write all 10 essays, but she only selects 2 of the questions to grade. Which two are selected will vary from exam to exam, quarter to quarter. She does not make correct answers available, but will assist a student who asks for feedback on those that were not graded.

Grading Concept Maps (Mimi)

Mimi has her students create concept maps to bring to class and use to answer questions posed to their discussion groups. She grades the first concept map carefully, to be sure the student has the idea. Then, subsequent concept maps are only given a cursory look. Students learn soon enough if their concept map has adequately prepared them for discussions and for the test.

TypeItIn (Kira) Phrase Express (Leoned)

Kira uses TypeItIn to store commonly used text that she writes as feedback on assignments or as replies to emails. She demonstrated how she would give feedback to a student's work in an assignment, using this tool to file various types of feedback, as well as how it inserts the feedback, which can then be customized with a few small edits. She also demonstrated how it can be used to reply to a student's email request asking for an advising appointment. She (as does Sarah Leyden) says it's well worth the $19.95 cost to purchase the program. She particularly likes the drop down menu feature that allows her to classify and easily locate the types of responses she's seeking. Kira has been able to install it on all of her computers. We learned that it's not available for Macs, though. Leoned says he uses a similar free program called Phrase Express, which stores your text by codes that you select (e.g., #sig for his signature). There is not a drop-down menu, as in TypeItIn, so it could be more difficult to keep track of your codes if you have a lot of different text to store (and not able to really organize groups of texts). Others said they simply keep a document with commonly used language, then copy/paste that text where they need it.

Here's Kira's demo video:

TypeItIn

YouCanBook.me (Kira, Leoned)

During Kira's presentation, she used YouCanBook.me as part of her reply to the student asking for an appointment. While this doesn't relate specifically to grading, it has certainly saved faculty time when trying to schedule appointments with students (or others). You know how it goes...student writes asking for an appointment and doesn't provide any schedule, you write back with your office hours, student writes back saying she can't do any of those times (but doesn't provide a schedule), then you write back asking her to provide times when she's available, and so on..... With YouCanBook.me, you simply send the student the link and she books her own appointment (and cancels, if needed). It syncs with your other calendars.

Using Audio or Video in Canvas to Write Feedback (Adria, Mimi, Stephanie)

Adria is starting to use it this quarter and says she tries to keep her comments short, writing longer ones using Crocodoc. Diana says Don Christensen uses it a lot, claiming he can talk faster than he types. Mimi said she used it and then polled her students to see which they preferred. All preferred the audio over written feedback. We all agreed that it's easier to sense the enthusiasm, positivity in our voices than it is to gather that from just written words. Stephanie said she got to experience it as a student, and it was really nice to tell by her professor's voice that she really liked her paper. We agreed it could say common things like "Good Work!" with different inflections to make them more than just average comments. We wondered whether we could do something similar to "TypeItIn" with audio or video. There is an option to upload audio or video files when giving feedback in "Comments" in SpeedGrader, so that could be possible (though less easy to make minor edits.)

Final Comments

Claire said she'd like to create a repository of faculty suggestions to speed grading. I've created a Google Doc that contains this information. I'll send the link out to SeLC (and Claire can share with faculty across campus) so others can add information.

Linda asked about whether it's appropriate to have applications (e.g., at least some components of Google Earth) in one's course that are not usable in mobile devices. Some agreed that it might be appropriate in some technical fields, but the general consensus was this ought to be avoided if other options are available. Someone mentioned we might refer students without "real" computers to the campus computer labs. We also discussed the need to minimize the number of downloaded documents for students for the same reason (instead use the Content Pages in Canvas or link to a Google Doc).

Disclaimer

These notes were taken while participating in the discussion. I apologize in advance for any errors or mis-quotes or if I forgot to include something. I included names so that others can contact you if they want to know more. If you don't want your name in the list, then just remove it and replace with "someone." Since you all are faculty in this classroom, feel free to make corrections or additions to this document! :-) --Judy