Actively Learning to Teach: February 2022

Introduction

This is the first instalment of my reflections on my experience with online teaching during the pandemic of the 2020/21 academic year. This reflection considers the course AUBIO 411 - History & Theory of Biology which I taught in the winter term of 2021. My other reflections for courses taught in 2020/21 may be found at this link here.

AUBIO 411 - History & Theory of Biology is the capstone course for the biology program in the Augustana Faculty of the University of Alberta. I designed this course during my first sabbatical in 1996. I have been teaching it almost every year since it was first offered in 1998. The course has gone through different iterations but has settled on using the history of functional, developmental, and evolutionary biology to help students reflect on the previous years of their biology degree program (Haave, 2012). In addition to the history of biology, this course also asks students to consider the theoretical foundations of biology which requires an introduction to the philosophy of science and biology. Generally, students complete this course in the last year of their 4-yr degree program.

In addition to prompting students to reflect on their biology major, the course is also designed to facilitate students' writing and speaking skills (Haave, 2015a). In addition, I use a form of team-based learning (TBL) as the instructional strategy for the course (Haave, 2014). Typically, TBL involves students being held accountable for their pre-class preparation with a two-stage quiz with subsequent classes involving students applying their learning to solve instructor assigned problems with their teams. With this capstone course, the two-stage quiz is replaced with a learning portfolio that has some attributes of an e-portfolio (Haave, 2016) in the sense that it is an online workspace for students to engage with the course material placing it in the larger context of their other courses and lived experience.

In the middle of the winter term of 2020 I had to change the delivery of this course from face-to-face (F2F) to online delivery due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For winter 2021 AUBIO 411 was designed to be delivered online for the entirety of the term. This blog post reflects on this pandemic experience in light of student feedback in the form of end of term student ratings of instruction (SRI).

Methods and Materials

The Augustana Campus became a faculty of the University of Alberta (U/A) in 2004 while I was on sabbatical. Thus, the first time for which U/A SRI data are available for this course is in the fall term of 2006. SRI data was collected when our campus was a private university college but because the SRI questions were a little different, the data prior to 2006 are not included in this analysis. SRIs were collected on paper during class time up until 2014 after which all SRI data was entered online by students. Another change to note is that the term structure at the Augustana Campus changed in 2017. Prior to 2017 Augustana had a typical semester structure in which students were enrolled in five courses for 13 weeks in a Fall and again in a subsequent Winter term. In 2017 Augustana implemented a new term structure in which both the Fall and Winter terms were subdivided into an initial three-week block followed by an 11-week block. Students typically complete one course during the three-week block and then complete another four courses during the subsequent 11-week block.

The SRI survey consists of 10 standard Likert style questions plus one open response question. The details may be found on the U/A website at this link here. Augustana has added a couple of extra Likert questions (difficulty, workload, and learning experience as noted in the figure titles in the results below) plus four instead of the standard one open response question (i.e., What aspects of the course and/or instructor did you find most valuable? What aspects of the course and/or instructor did you find least valuable? How useful were the course textbook(s) and/or other learning support materials? in addition to the universal question, Please add any other comments that you would like to make about the course and/or instructor.). Numerical data are presented as box and whisker plots which depict the 2nd and 3rd quartiles as grey boxes with the intervening line indicating the median. The whiskers depict the limits of the 1st and 4th quartiles. The X within each box indicates the mean. The class enrolment for each year is indicated by the N with the percentage of each class responding to the SRI survey indicated below the N value. Salient student comments are quoted to flesh out the numerical data.

You may view the syllabus for the Winter 2021 offering of AUBIO 411 at this link here.

Results

I have been relatively successful with the course for the last few years as indicated by the data in the first graph below with students rating me between four and five for the quality of my instruction. One-way analysis of variance indicated differences among the student cohorts. Tukey-Kramer pair-wise comparisons indicated that the Fall 2007 cohort was different from all of the others (α = 0.05).

Student comments:

"I think we all know that you're a professor who expects a lot from their students because you believe in us but at the same time that can be intimidating for people who just want an easy credit. I really enjoyed my time with the class this semester and with Dr. Haave who is such an incredible thinker - I think you are a wise man Dr. Haave!"
"I cannot say enough positive things about Dr. Haave and this class. His willingness to share with students and to engage with their learning in such a dynamic manner makes his courses more engaging, meaningful learning environments..."

Students highly rated the course content but not quite as high as the preceding couple of years. ANOVA did not detect any significant differences among the student cohorts.

Most students wrote that they were very appreciative of what they were learning in the course:

"I found the topics we explored in this course very valuable and fulfilling. I was pleasantly surprised by the content in this course, it was not what I was expecting at all, but it made me see biology from many different perspectives and I now completely understand why this was our capstone course for our biology degree."
"... I walk away having learned content I will remember long after so much of what I've learned in other classes is forgotten. This course was the highlight of my degree."

But the data is not as tight as the previous two years which may be a result of one of the five teams having some inter-personal issues as indicated by this student comment:

"I found all the teamwork to be the least valuable aspect of the course because there was an individual on my team who treated me very poorly. This really interfered with my learning, because I found that I couldn't express myself freely, for I was always being judged."

On the other hand, other students really valued their team experience.

"In the course, I really felt like having the teams (even though we were still online) were really valuable to me. It was comforting to know that I had those four people behind my back, and to have a comfortable place to be vulnerable and express how I felt about the readings or anything in the course was really nice. They definitely were valuable in my learning throughout this course"

The rating of the course as a positive learning experience has been fairly stable since 2015. One-way analysis of variance indicated differences among the student cohorts. Tukey-Kramer pair-wise comparisons indicated that the Fall 2007 cohort was different from the cohorts in Fall 2006, Winter 2016, and Fall 2016 (α = 0.05).

Student comment: "The team meetings in class to discuss questions was great. Allowed for discussion of other ideas, while not being judged by the whole class."

I was gratified to see that my thorough preparation for going online with this course was noticed by students. One-way analysis of variance indicated differences among the student cohorts. Tukey-Kramer pair-wise comparisons indicated that the Fall 2007 cohort was significantly different from F2009, W2015, W2016, F2016 & W2021 (α = 0.05).

Student comment: "The instructor was always prepared and had a clear plan for every day clearly outlined in the syllabus."

Students have consistently highly rated my effective use of in-class time for the past few years. ANOVA did not detect significant differences among the student cohorts.

For the past few years, students have highly rated my ability to speak clearly. Because of the ambiguity of the question (e.g., do students take into account the accent of a particular instructor?) this question was changed this year to effective communication. One-way analysis of variance indicated differences among the student cohorts. Tukey-Kramer pair-wise comparisons (α = 0.05) indicated the following differences among cohorts: F2006 vs W2015, F2007 vs F2009, and F2007 vs W2015.

Since 2008, students have highly rated my feedback for this course. One-way ANOVA indicated differences among the student cohorts but the Tukey-Kramer test could not detect any differences between the different pairs at an α =0.05.

Student comment: "The reflection journal was an amazing opportunity to develop my thoughts while having you personally guide my thinking in an atmosphere where outside connection is not possible with online learning."

For the last few years, students have found my objectives and goals to be clear. ANOVA did not detect significant differences among the student cohorts.

Students have always indicated that they are somewhat motivated to learn about the subject areas but the ratings are not as high relative to other aspects queried by the SRI instrument. ANOVA detected differences among the student cohorts. However, the Tukey-Kramer test did not reveal any significant differences among the pairs of cohorts (α = 0.05).

I know students did think about the course discussions after class because of the emails, LMS forum posts, and student Zoom meetings I read and experienced. One student wrote: "After each class I always had a lot to think about. I am very grateful for this course - it was an excellent way to wrap up my degree!"

I am pleased that students recognize that I do respect them. ANOVA indicated differences among the student cohorts. Tukey-Kramer pairwise comparison again found that the Fall 2007 cohort is different from all other cohorts except for F2008 and W2020 (α = 0.05).

Student comment: "I really appreciate how much he cares about his students, and he's willing to confront issues when they arise."

Students generally highly rate their increase in their knowledge of the subject. ANOVA did not detect any significant differences among the student cohorts.

Student comment: "This course challenged previous views and encouraged me to develop new ways of approaching my degree as well as the world around me."

As indicated in the following two graphs, students have always rated the workload and difficulty of AUBIO 411 higher than their other courses at the 4th-year level. I have been consciously trying to address this and am pleased that in the last few years it appears that students are not rating this course as unduly difficult or heavy. ANOVA detected differences among the student cohorts for the workload. Tukey-Kramer analysis revealed that the Winter 2019 cohort was significantly different from the student cohorts from Fall 2006 to Fall 2009 and also from Winter 2015 (α = 0.05). However, ANOVA did not detect significant differences among the student cohorts for difficulty although there does seem to be a trend with the 3rd and 4th quartiles moving from between 4 and 5 to between 3 and 4 since the Winter 2016 term.

Student comments:

"This course was really valuable to me in a sense that despite its high workload (even though that is expected for a senior level biology course), it really opened my eyes to the importance of taking all perspectives into account."
"I found the course load to be challenging but manageable. It was by no means easy and the material took a lot of time to think through, but I didn't have to sacrifice sleep to get everything done on time, which I really appreciated."
"I think we all know that you're a professor who expects a lot from their students because you believe in us but at the same time that can be intimidating for people who just want an easy credit."

Discussion

Overall, I am pleased with the results of this course in Winter 2021. Students were engaged with lively discussion occurring in the Zoom breakout rooms and also when I gathered students back in the main Zoom virtual classroom. Although students have historically found AUBIO 411 to be a very difficult course and seems to have a reputation as such, many students expressed their surprise that it was not as difficult or time-consuming as they had been led to believe by previous cohorts of students.

Statistical analysis revealed some interesting differences among the student cohorts. The most interesting for me is that students seem to perceive the workload to be less heavy after Fall 2016. Looking over my course syllabi, Fall 2016 is the last year that I had students complete a formal e-portfolio as a website. After this, I started asking students to complete it as a learning portfolio in Word or Google Docs. I wonder if the workload of setting up an e-portfolio as a graphically pleasing website was too much work for students? On the other hand, the e-portfolio was an optional assignment: Students could choose to complete an e-portfolio in exchange for their final exam to have lower weighting toward their final grade. I know I have been continuing to adjust students' workload in this course in response to this item always being rated quite strong relative to their other courses. Something I started doing in Winter 2021 to address student workload is that their learning portfolio was no longer a formal reading summary and response but much more reflective in nature requiring only a couple of paragraphs before and after our class meetings (four paragraphs in all per class meeting). Students responded well to this last year. I write more about this below.

Fall 2007 seems to have been a year that students were more dissatisfied with my teaching and this course than other years. That 2007 cohort rated my instructional ability significantly lower than all of the other cohorts. In addition, the Fall 2007 cohort was also significantly different relative to other cohorts giving a lower rating for the course as a learning experience, my preparation, my clarity of speech, and my respect for students. I am still digging through my notes for that 2007 course offering but so far nothing stands out as being significant to me. Was there something else outside of the course that impacted students' learning in 2007?

One of the skills not explicitly addressed by me in this course but develops naturally as a result of the TBL instructional design is that students do learn to work as a member of a team and develop leadership skills.

"My teammates and I grew very close from having these periodic presentations and it made me a better leader and team player."

However, not all teams will work as well as they could at all times. Sometimes there are intra-team difficulties that need to be addressed by the instructor. I was concerned about the one student comment I highlighted in the results section above in which they reported that they felt judged and intimidated by one of their teammates. I knew this was the case because a student approached me at midterm to discuss the situation with me. After talking it through with them and offering solutions the student decided to deal with it themselves and the matter seemed to be resolved over the next couple of weeks. However, I was alerted during the last week of class that this particular team was again experiencing inter-personal strife. Again, I offered to intervene but the student decided that it was best just to get through the last couple of class meetings.

This is the first time I have had a team that became so dysfunctional using the TBL teaching strategy. Sometimes teams do experience personality clashes but until last year, I had always found a way to diffuse the tension. I think the problem with this particular team developed last year because the course was delivered online. This prevented me from eavesdropping on the discussions within student teams. In the physical classroom, we are able to do a global scan of how student teams are collaborating and are able to intervene if things get heated or if teams reach an impasse. Although I popped into the Zoom breakout rooms at least once a class last year, this did not allow me to catch inter-personal difficulties as I was not able to be like a fly on the wall during intra-team discussions for the entire class; I had to circulate to the other breakout rooms. This is a limitation of using Zoom for intra-team discussions. It could be addressed if Zoom enabled instructors to view different breakout rooms simultaneously. I am not sure how that would be done. It would certainly require instructors to be equipped with more than one monitor.

I have always had students write a response to their assigned reading and graded a random sampling as part of their writing portfolio. However, students commonly became distressed about writing well and ensuring they produced a complete summary of the article they read. This is not what I want. What I am trying to achieve with students' writing is to prompt their thinking. I think that writing is thinking and thus rather than having students think about what they will write I want students to write to enable their thinking (Haave, 2015b). In an attempt to decrease student anxiety, last year I had students instead write in a reading journal or learning portfolio (a growing Word doc they shared with me through Google Drive) in which they wrote a couple of paragraphs responding to the reading before class and then a couple of paragraphs responding to our class discussion after class. This seemed to work very well. I was able to provide weekly feedback to students' pre and post-class reflections. Some students did such a great job that at midterm I gave students the choice of either writing the final exam or having their reflective online learning portfolio graded. A little less than half the class choose the learning portfolio over the final exam. My students and I were very pleased with the result in terms of giving students some control over how they were assessed.

Another innovation for me in this course last year was the marginalized biologist assignment. I asked students to identify a marginalized biologist and then based on their research explain why and how they were marginalized placing their research results in a publically accessible website. All student teams choose to use Google Sites and the results were excellent and feedback from the students were encouraging. "I love the marginalized biologist assignment. It's a great initiative and I'm excited that these websites will be around for more years to come (rather than just having us write a term paper)." I will certainly use this assignment again in the future. It gave students an outlet in which to explore the issues of racism and sexism that became blatantly apparent to them in the aftermath of 2020. I'll be writing about this some more in the future.