- Great. So good morning, everybody. Thank you so much for attending. Really quickly, I'm gonna introduce Cal and myself, and then we're gonna jump right in and get started. Amy is in here as well. Cal Garbin is my mentor. He is in the department of psychology. He's our research methods professor. And just an all around swell kinda guy. He is the reason for this and he sort of roped me into it today. So I'm talking and he's reinforcing. Just a little bit of transparency because Cal's in the other room. I'm gonna stop and say literally Cal, and if he has something to share, he's gonna jump in. So that may be a little weird but just be prepared that that's gonna happen quite a few times here this morning. My name is Dr. Manda Williamson. I'm an associate professor of practice here in the department of psychology. And Cal and I both serve on our College of Arts and Sciences Teaching Academy. I just rotated off as the chair. And we are excited to share with you things that we hope you're already doing, but maybe not framing in the way that we wanna talk to you about today. So what we're trying to do today is we wanna talk about some sound classroom practices that if you think about how you'd like to deliver it, how you'd like to frame it in a conversation with your students, may actually forge a beneficial, emotional connection with them. And so we're gonna get started with that. Amy Ort is also from the psych department. She's a former graduate, she's an all around awesome helper here today. She's running this from behind the scenes and all the PDFs that you're gonna get that show you particular, how tools were developed by her. So if anything breaks, it's her fault. Now we're gonna get started. So to give you just a little bit of background, when I was a... I was also a member of the student success fellows team through the vice chancellor's office. And it was our job to figure out how to help our students leave our classes with a C or higher. That's what we call student success. One of the books that I was asked to read is called "Leadership Edge." And it was pretty revolutionary for me because it gave me permission to do what I thought in a way was kind of coddling. And this was... it was really neat for me to see that when we are in a position of leadership, there are two challenges that we have to overcome. Technical challenges are usually things that we give people to do, that we believe will lead to their success. But if we don't frame it and overcome the adaptive challenge, which is convincing them that they should value the task, and that it demonstrates partnership, and convinces them of the inherent value of the task, we have an adaptive problem that won't get them to engage. And so the way that I picture my courses, especially at the beginning of the semester is kind of the foundation was laid by these two challenges. When I think about my students at the beginning of the semester, I sort of see them kind of often this bit of abyss. And they're looking to the end of the semester with success in their mind. And I'm sort of in the middle of that. And I want my students to know without any questioning whatsoever, that I am actually a bridge leading them to success, partnering with them, and not a wall that's designed to make their lives miserable and make the course challenging so that maybe they could be successful despite me. This was really driven home to me actually in my own home, right before I started teaching motivation a couple of weeks before the fall semester began last year. My husband was tasking my children with doing their Sunday chores. And one of those chores is folding clothes. And they didn't do it. They hadn't started it. And Paul just kept saying, "You gotta fold the clothes." Get the clothes out of the laundry room, fold the clothes, fold the clothes fold the clothes." And finally, he just yelled at them. And said, "Girls, this was what you said you were going to do. You haven't done it yet. Get up and go do it." As the leader, he's totally in his right to say that. And as the followers, they needed to do it. But what I watched that day was my kids kind of, half-assed got up, their shoulders were slumped over. They meandered into the laundry room. They threw the stuff in the basket. They folded it by doing this, wrapping it around their wrists and chucked it in the basket. Task was accomplished, the leadership executed. And there was a massive emotional divide between my husband and our children. And so I said to Paul, "You were a rugby coach. How do you think you'd handle a task like this with your athletes?" And the light went off. And so he went back into the living room and he sat the girls down and he said, "We're part of a team in this house. We don't ask you to do these things because it makes our life easier, and your life more difficult. We ask you to do this because it demonstrates teamwork and it helps mom and dad out an awful lot. And you're a meaningful, valuable, needed person here." Now they fold the clothes. They don't really like it, but they see that they're contributing to something bigger. And what I learned from that example is that when we are in a position of leadership, we can use that power to get tasks executed. But we can also become bridges if we choose to and forge meaningful, deep connections, that teach valuing of tasks, that benefit everybody. And so with that in mind, one of the things I want us all to think about, especially as we're going into the fall, how many of you had to teach online? How many of you did the pivot? Just like if you wouldn't mind just say, aye. How many of you did the pivot in March where you had to go online? - [All] Aye. - Thank you. And so if we did that, we could maybe be lulled into this false sense of security, like, "Oh, we've got this down." 'Cause I've already had to do this, but I want you to remember one really important difference about this fall. These students don't know us. They're also not second semester freshmen, best or worst case scenario. We don't have any connections with these young people yet. And so if we go into an online environment the first week, and we're focusing only on getting the content delivered, because there's a lot to do in a short period of time, without focusing on partnering with our students, we may come across as people who are talking at our subordinates, when we do assignments, rather than doing them with our students and partnering in their success, we could be giving them a to do list. Instead of thinking about all of the tasks that we do along the way, to get these students to be successful on these large formative assignments. We could partner with them by thinking about what we do in the meantime and rebranding what we do by speaking about it differently. And the reason why I think this is so critically important is that study after study, including my own research, when we're trying to predict a model of student success, what explains the greatest amount of variance between students who succeed and students who do not succeed, is their perception that their instructor was interested in their success. You don't actually have to be. I think most of us are. But if we come across intentionally and transparently telling our students, "I am here to foster your success. Despite the fact that I made this class rigorous, that it's gonna challenge you and at times frustrate you, I am here to make sure that you are clear on what we're doing together to foster your success." And so with that, what we hope to accomplish today, is to give all of us a way to think about probably some of the things that we're already doing in class, but slightly differently. So we forge connections with our students. We're gonna look at some proactive strategies that we can do before a lesson. And especially before a large formative assessment is due. We're gonna look at some techniques that we can do, use either before or after particular lessons. And we're gonna look at some retroactive stuff. And so each one of these are teaching techniques that are already used. And what I would really encourage you to do is especially focused on the ones that you're already using. You may not have time to invent all five of these, but the ones that you do have think about how you can rebrand yourselves, to show that these things that you're doing in class are designed to foster partnership and forge deep connections with your students. So the first you see is called JITT. JITT stands for Just-In-Time-Teaching. And this probably isn't a new thing for a lot of you. Again, if you don't mute yourselves, just so I can hear how many of you have ever heard of Just-In-Time-Teaching. - Me. - [Cal] Yeah. - Okay, good. The idea behind this is that we wanna figure out what our students are struggling with before we have that critical lesson interaction with them. It also helps us if we can figure out what they're struggling with or what their misconceptions are about a particular lesson, to toss the stuff that they understand and to grab a hold of those misperceptions misconceptions and create active learning, that's surrounding what they're struggling with and not talk to them about things that they've already learned. And we do this by gauging them outside of class so that we can maximize in class learning. I'm gonna show you also how I've used this to foster relationships with my students. So when we use Just-In-Time-Teaching, it's understood that many times throughout our semester, we're shooting some questions to our students somehow, we're assessing them about material that we hope that they've read before class. We're asking them a question to them about that material to find out what they don't learn. In my class, these types of assignments are due Sunday evening. And so once a week, I get an idea of what next week is gonna look like by seeing where students are making the same mistakes. So what I use is an e-text. If you don't use e-texts, we're gonna show you how to do this directly in canvas, and to be able to save it. So you can do this henceforth and forevermore. But I have to tell you, when I started using an electronic text, I was very resistant to it. I was very salty about it, and I was not that nice to my textbook rep. She kept harping at me to try and electronic text. And I said, "Look, you need to prove to me, or at least empirically demonstrate to me that this is better than my students having a physical connection to their book." And by better, I want to make sure they were actually reading. So how many of us are just so frustrated with the fact that we know our students are not reading before class? You don't have to say, aye. I can see you shaking, or it's like, they're not freaking reading it. And so I said, "Okay, look, if I'm gonna switch to this e-text you need to demonstrate to me empirically that they're doing the reading somehow. So I want my students to read and I'm gonna assess them. I'm gonna make them take quizzes." And I was thinking about this and I was like, "So if I'm a first semester student I'm coming in here, I'm using an electronic texts but I'm not familiar with these weird interfaces. And now you're telling me that right after I read, I have to take a quiz and get a grade on it!" I was thinking, "My students are gonna be afraid and they're gonna feel threatened some of them." And I thought, "Well, wait a minute. I can probably rephrase this and tell my students that this is a partnership that I'm forging with them. Rather than me saying, you need to read them. I'm gonna assess you on it." What I decided to do was sort of turn this on its rear end. And I said to my students, "Yes, what I hope that we're gonna do here, is your going to actually be submitting data to me, every Sunday night, that shows me, even after doing everything that sounds like you're cheating in your textbook. In other words, if you come to a quiz question and you don't know the answer to it, I want you to call a friend. I want you to quit out a quiz. I want you to go back and reread. I want you to do all those things that seem like cheating when you're taking a test and then I want you to answer. And so at the end of every Sunday, even after going through all this, my hope is that by submitting this data to me, you're gonna show me where I can help you Monday, Wednesday, Friday, next week. So we are collecting data together. I'm partnering with you. And what you submit to me is gonna help me figure out how to teach you." And so the way that this works is that at the end of every section in my textbook, there's about three to five quiz questions that they answer. They get a scaled number of points for the number of attempts that it takes them to get it right. And this is fully knowing that I want them to cheat by looking back and becoming better readers. And by working with one another. And then at the end of chapter, there's a larger quiz. So every Sunday evening, I get all of this data about each chapter in my students' textbooks. And the first thing I want to find out is are they buying into this? So they actually doing the readings. And what I found out is that when I looked at chapter one and chapter nine, if you can see here, I had a very high amount of participation, at least with them answering quiz questions and their accuracy was pretty high. And so that by the, about the eighth week, I had 83% of my students fully engaging at a level that was much higher than what I could've gotten out of them by reading a paper text and not answering these questions. So it looks like JITT got something to it, where they're responding to questions at least. The coolest thing about my book is that it tells me if there is a question that students struggle with, I see it in the form of light green, yellow, and red bars. And so this tells me that this question was depicting a concept that they were struggling with. Even further, it tells me what they answered when they got it wrong. So now I can understand, not only that they struggle with classical conditioning, but they also seem to be struggling in this case with identifying particular stimuli. So that told me exactly what I needed to hit really hard with them in class, and all the other stuff that was related to that chapter they didn't struggle with. So I didn't have to spend a whole lot of time on it. And that's the essence of JITT. We figured out one or two things that they're struggling with, and we hammer it together in class. So that they know that I know what they're having a problem with. And they also know that I really care about what they're having a problem with because that's how I'm spending our time together in class. So the really cool thing about this is that students with me co-create our objectives for the week. And to me, that's kind of the essence of a sound relationship. If there's two people involved, they should be co-creating something and creating common objectives and goals together. So that was how JITT works for me and my e-text. But if you don't use an e-text, it's no big deal because we have Amy Ort and her crack team making us PDFs for how you can do this in canvas. And so Cal, if you would like to pop in here and talk about how you use this in canvas, if you all want to start right now, we'll give you even five or 10 minutes to go through this PDF. Go ahead, Cal. - There's just a couple of points I wanna make. One is, no matter how good it is, everything gets boring. And so if you're using the same strategy for bringing information to help prepare you to help them the most over and over and over again, they're going to get bored with it. And they're gonna fuss about it. And the fact that it's helping will become less important than it's the same old thing. So keep in mind that anything that gets you information to shape your time with them is Just-In-Time-Teaching. In a little bit, we're gonna talk about minute papers. Minute papers is the way to do Just-In-Time-Teaching too. And so remember to keep it variable. The other thing is that we can do a really good job, just the way Manda talks about of setting up the idea of the quizzes and the homework and all of that is, you're helping inform me what I need to do to you. And that's cool. They still see it as homework and quizzes and tests. And so I would encourage you to mix in with that form of JITT, the occasional thing where you say, "There's something that we did on Monday that's really, really important. I wanna make sure if you got it, just give me a rating between one and five of whether you got it or not. I'm gonna send out this thing because I wanna get direct feedback on a couple of things that I'm worried about." If you intermix the constant with the intermittent, you're just keeping their belief in your interests alive. So anything can be Just-In-Time-Teaching as long as it's getting you information. Second thing, variability. Wear different hats, do different things, intrude on them in different ways. Remember the whole idea here is we're trying to not only get information, but we're trying to convince them that we're getting this information because we care about them and their performance. And variability seems to be convincing particularly to this age group. Because they all know that you can set stuff up in canvas ahead of time so that on a certain day with a certain thing gets them out they have to feel spontaneity in your behavior. - All right. I stopped sharing my screen. So I can get access to the chat. But if you have a look at the chat scroll up a bit and there is a link to a box note that will take you to the PDF that shows you how to do this one or two question survey that represents Just-In-Time-Teaching. So if you wanna download that right now and save it, you can. Does everybody see it? It's from Manda. It's a one, two, three, four, five. It's about six down from the very beginning. If you wanna download that. Amy, are you here? - Yup, I'm here. - Alright. Actually, right now, we're all gonna just take about five minutes to start messing around with this, just to make sure that you understand the steps involved. If you're interested in doing this really short kind of thing, especially if you're already asking these students these questions, if you do it in canvas, you can save it every semester and just keep pushing this out and building a database of probably common misperceptions that students have and common errors that they're gonna make every week or the lessons that you're teaching. So I'm gonna open mine too. If you have any questions, just go ahead and unmute yourself. And we can talk about this PDF if you'd like or whatever it is that you'd like to talk about. - I just had a question about the anonymous versus non-anonymous. Is there any.. I mean, obviously there's a slight disadvantage in the non anonymous and that you know who they are, so they're less likely to maybe to be honest, I don't know. I feel like the nice part about having it be who they are, is you could use it for a homework grade or something, right? Or just a participation score. - So with canvas, you can actually do both. So if you set it up as a graded survey, but leave it anonymous, all of the answers, you're not gonna know which student they come from, but you will know which students actually submitted it. So you can give them a participation grade just for doing it, but you don't know which students said, which thing. So it's kind of the best of both worlds there. - Okay, awesome. Thank you. - And if you do wanna give them the option of, "Hey, if you want me to reach out to you for individualized stuff, you can put a question in there that's like , what is your name if you want me to reach out to you." So that's another option as well. If you wanna kind of give them the option of whether to tell you who they are or not. - As you make your way through, or if you're looking at the PDF, as you make your way through it, now would be a really good time if you can't conceptualize what the steps are so, give maybe heck about it. - And yeah. And Myra kind of brought up a good point in the chat where if you're doing this constantly, I can really feel the students like they're being overassessed. So maybe you wanna think critically about how often do I need to do this? So maybe it's not every single week, maybe it's at the end of every couple of weeks or when you hit the end of kind of what you envision as a unit of material. Or maybe it's just after those days when you're like, "I know that this is gonna be tough. This is where I need to figure out what's going on with my students and kind of gauge. Everybody seems to be doing fine. Maybe that's not where I need to do this feedback. But once we start getting into that difficult material where I know students are gonna struggle, they struggle here every semester. That's where I'm gonna put my efforts into doing these kinds of things." - [Yoanna] What I wasn't understanding Manda is that you use this two kind of have them read the lessons before the class. - Yes. - [Yoanna] So in that Manda it will not be anonymous because that way you are checking who's real and who's not, don't you. - Yes. Mine was not anonymous in that, if I want... well, I have 400 students. So they would answer in their e-text and their grade in the e-text would record. I don't actually use that score. It's a scaled version that goes into their class participation grade. But when you looked at the bars when I said, when I looked at a question and said, "Ooh, this was a flagged question." That meant that a lot of students were not getting it correct on their first attempt. I don't know who that would be unless I would get into their e-text and actually look at all their answers. I don't do that. I guess I could. - [Yoanna] And that helps you to kind of review or explain that concept. - Yes. So Monday morning, when they see me, I can say to them, "Look, I already know where you're struggling, and this is a really cool thing. I know what you're having a problem with, and I've already figured out how to help you solve it." And I think that really helps to students know that, okay, this person is clearly in charge and she knows what's going on so I can trust her leadership in the classroom. - [Yoanna] Yeah. It is not only a quiz, is more of like a participation thing. - It is. I want them to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that these points are practically no stakes. They're placeholders that tell me that they've done the reading to the best that they can. And there may be one or two concepts that despite reading, despite working with one another and despite quitting out of the quiz and going back and rereading, they still didn't quite get it. And so they know that it's not remotely punitive, but that's why it's critically important that we rebrand these. If we're quizzing our students and we don't want them to mean a whole lot, that's when that conversation of rebranding ourselves has to come into play where we're partnering with them. - [Yoanna] Thank you. - [Manda] You're welcome. - So Katie asked in the chat, the gold question for this, what percentage of the course grade do you set this out so that they see it as important enough to do, but not so important that it's punitive? - And I have data. It has to, according to our data, 12 to 15%. Any less than that, it's not important any more than that, it becomes a threat. - An alternative approach. I never require any of this stuff. Because while I like people doing the things I asked them to do, and I would love to have 100% compliance. The two things I'm really trying to get out of this are one, ongoing convincing of them that I care. And so I think that me sending them out is every bit as important as getting them back. Second of all, again, while it'd be nice to have 100% return rate, what I really need is any three kids in the class to keep me on track. And it doesn't have to be the same three kids every time. Whenever we're teaching, we're watching certain people that are sitting in front of this. We use them as our anchors for whether we're making sense or not. If there's something we should redo, something we should talk about more. That's all we really need on the JITT as well, is a couple of people that are right about the things that I should be doing more with reviewing things like that. So think of it as a sampling problem. And while random samples are magical, it's only a magical process. The goal of any sampling, isn't random it's representative. So as long as I'm communicating my ongoing interest and I'm getting back useful stuff, I'm good. But you can have... there's an argument, and I have data to show, that when you set Manda standards, and you get compliance on this, you're also carrying a little bit more compliance on other things too. So there is sort of a wave effect. But the point is like all the other choices you make in your teaching, you can decide how you wanna create your motivational structure. - So Cal, this is Lisa. You went out, I lost you for just a minute Cal. So could you just repeat. You were saying something like... I mean, it was mid sentence as to what you were just talking about. So I kind of missed the middle of it. But it was definitely talking about that you only needed a few responses to get something that was representative enough for you to make, to use the data. And then you said, I don't know what . - Oh, I was talking about how it's kind of the same thing you do in class. You watch everybody's face, but you've got a few people that you watch closely. - And actually I had a response to that, because the people that I watched closely might be the people sitting in front of me who are the ones who actually are attending and getting it. So I might have the false impression by looking at those particular people. But I mean, I realize that it's true that I'm not talking gibberish cause they wouldn't get it then either. But beyond that, I don't have... Those folks would not necessarily give me a good read for the class as a whole. - Well, I don't think there's such a thing as a good read for the class of a whole. Your class comes to you in strata that are defined by a whole bunch of things. And if I can hit two or three things that half the class agrees I spent my time wisely on, it's magic. Because I've done substantially more than I would have done without this technique. I think of this as an advancing my teaching, not completing it. I don't know how you complete your teaching. And I don't think it's a better sample of who's confused by what. But I do think that I get by telling them over and over and over again, how are we doing? What do we need to do again? I think I can show data that it increases the in-class questions. Doing this changes the number of in-class questions I get during the semester and across semesters. And so this is the first of five things we wanna show you that all intermixed so that you can loudly say, "I give a shit, let's play together and let's focus that play on what we need to do." - Okay stop. We need to move forward. All right, I'm gonna share my screen cause we've got four more things to go through and we've already gone through a half an hour. So that's good. Talk is good, but let me get through this. Alright, so next. We also have... I'm sure a lot of you think about, "Wow, if I could just put some frequently asked questions and by the time I usually think about it, it's like, Oh my gosh, I'm already bogged down in it." But frequently asked questions are just what they sound like. We can use this even at the beginning of the semester, if they have questions about the logistics of our course, we can also use a list of frequently asked questions for particular types of assignments proactively. Because as we teach courses again and again, some of those bigger assignments especially, we tend to notice that there are clusterings of mistakes or just carelessness, where they don't follow through with details. We can use the JITT that we gathered this semester for next semester is list of frequently asked questions for particular assignments. But we also can use it based on our experience. I know sometimes for bigger projects, we sort of toss the full list of directions to our students. And it's right in there. I mean, think about the number of times that you've told your students it's in the syllabus. It's probably also in the directions, but they just don't seem to comprehend it the first time through. And so we can use these frequently asked questions again, also as a way of telling our students, "I'm already familiar with the kinds of mistakes that you make when you get a little overwhelmed or when you get a little bit distracted, let's just keep an eye out for these things." But you put it in a particular list and you get to choose where you do this somewhere in canvas or not. So Cal, you wanna talk about your frequently asked questions stuff. Whoops, I went backwards. - The frequently asked questions, started for the lab exam in the stats class, which everybody hated. And the part that I didn't like was that there were too many points being missed for stupid things. Test taking errors rather than content or process mistakes. And so the whole idea much like the idea of some forms of grading rubric is just to say, "Don't forget about this." And this is just another form of don't forget about. The longterm issue is I'm trying to get them to stop and think about preparing to do an assignment. Don't just jump into it, but stop and think, "Okay, what are the bits and pieces? Where do I check for things?" And noticing again, that we're offering specific help. We want them thinking of us as helpers, as teachers, not just graders. But when they approach an assignment, they think of us as graders. The FAQ is us reaching out and saying, "I'm gonna grade your stuff, but here's some stuff that I don't wanna have to grade cause you get it right." - Okay. So, again, I've just tried to do this. Oh. I'm trying to send the link again and it's not doing it. I'm not really sure what's going on here with my stuff. Everybody publicly and privately participate in chat when... - Tony, got it. - [Manda] Oh, he did. You're seeing the link? - [Cal] Tony says they got it. - Oh good. I just, well that's Amy's link. Is that my link or from Amy? - No, it's from Tony. - It's Amy's link that I think Tony re posted. - No, that's not what I'm trying to send to everybody. And I don't know why it's doing this. Amy, is that the link? - Sorry, I think I posted the wrong link. That was Just-In-Time-Teaching one. - Okay. I just don't know why it's not copying and pasting. The full link. When I have it in PowerPoint. - You may- - [Karen] If you have it in PowerPoint. You need to put it where you just share your desktop if you're trying to do it. Sometimes it won't let you share a link in PowerPoint if you're on PowerPoint. - So I have it in the notes page of PowerPoint and I copy it and I try to paste it in to everyone in the chat. And when I do that and hit return... - [Yoanna] If you open your link in your browser and then copy from there. - Okay. I will do that. Huh! Okay. There are one. I don't know why it's being so temperamental. Thank you, Karen. So if you want to mess around with that a little bit or just download it and save it so that you have it. Do you have any questions about that FAQ part or how you frame it before we move forward? Should I go on, everybody good? - Yeah, what's next. - [Manda] I don't know. Let me share my screen. So I know one of the things that Cal likes to do is when he's building his FAQ or when he's shooting this out to a students again, intentional, be intentional about what it is that you're doing. We're conveying again to our students that we already know where they're likely to lose points if they're not reflective and they're not thinking about what they're about to do. And so you literally type in there, "Hey, I'm pretty sure I know where some of you, even though you understand this whole project, I'm pretty sure I know where some of you are gonna miss points and get really frustrated, make sure that you work your way through this list before you submit." Just again, to tell them that we're present with them before they're even submitting. So next we have what are called minute papers. And papers is in quotations because we're gonna use this in canvas, almost like JITT, but in my mind, in a way that's pretty cool and systematic. When we use minute papers, it's typically done at the end of class. So this is something that we try to do to help our students again, self-reflect about what we've just exposed them to and to think about how they're gonna organize their thoughts with regard to this new material. But when we export this into canvas, we can do this in a number of different ways that we can keep a hold of for ourselves. So then perhaps use it in the future as part of an FAQ section or as part of Just-In-Time-Teaching. So this is us at the end of class. Now also reinforcing to our students. Let's continue to work together. Let's capture some information from you so that we're pretty confident in what objectives we met successfully and in what objectives maybe we need to hit again. And we do this rather than having students write physically on a paper and just pass it into us where we can't really use it again in the future. We can do this with a mixture of multiple choice questions and under each multiple choice question about a particular objective, they can put reflection in an open ended text box. So the way that we can see minute papers is you them something as broad as which one of these did you not understand, or which one of these would you like some more information about A, B, C, and D are each of the objectives. They select one of those objectives. And then they reflect on with a little bit more detail in the text box. And so the cool thing about that is if I'm doing that with two questions or three questions, I have A, B, C, D, and E for each question, when I get my data back to me out of canvas, I can sort their open ended responses to the distractor that they picked. So if they said, "I didn't understand objective B," whatever it was, we can sort in canvas all the open ended responses that go with objective B to find out with as much detail as possible, what we need to revisit with them in the next class. And so the way these minute papers work is it's very similar to JITT, but with sorting text box, opened and a text box answers. So I'm gonna try really hard to get the link to you while Cal, you wanna mop up here? - One of the big differences between the minute paper and the Just-In-Time is when you do it. If you do the minute paper at the end of class, they're still captured. And it increases response rate, it increases the accuracy of what they're confused about. I know that sounds funny. And the idea that they might be confused about what they're confused about might not make sense, but they have a better idea of what they don't understand at the end of the class, then they do hours, days later. It's kind of like, if you go see a really good comedian, you laugh at every joke and you can't remember any of them at the end. Because they've kept you laughing. And so the combination of the minute paper, which is what I think I'm confused about right now and the Just-In-Time paper, which is what they decided later they were confused about, is you get better coverage. And if I'm really worried or a couple of lectures that I tend to do both, because I really worry about those lectures and I want them to give me two shots and what didn't make sense. Because I've got 15 minutes in the next lecture set aside to go over, whatever it is that this cohort struggle with cause it's not always the same. And so you can think of it as increasing the variability in what you do. You can think of it as a second shot at what you wanna talk about next time. Either way, you're getting more information, you're getting it a different way. And one of the things that comes out of it, is you get to see the language that they're using to talk about things. Very often at the end of this, I will say things, "We were talking about correlation. You had a bunch of questions." I do not want you saying significant linear relationship. That stats language. I want you talking in person language. I want you to say older folks tend to perform better. And by capturing their language, I'm able to know what language I wanna adjust. Unbelievably I'm done. - No, I was just looking at the chat. We have a question. Do you do this after every class? I don't. - The only thing I do every class to show up. - Yeah. Again, to just decrease the repetitive part of it and exhausting them, try to be really selective in when you're doing it. Especially those lessons where you do have a concern that may be something that you thought went across, that you had prepared that was gonna go across well, let's just make sure it actually did, or it didn't. It combines pretty nicely with another technique that Cal uses called barely late teaching too, if you want it to do that. So choose based on when you think you're gonna need it. - You could also do barely late Just-In-Time. Where the minute paper tells you something that isn't going well that you didn't think would be a problem and so you decide right then you're gonna do a Just-In-Time, you're gonna patch a little bit and you're gonna do the Just-In-Time and see whether you can fix something now away from class, or you need to spend class time on it. I mean, if you're looking at these things and you're saying, "This is the same thing over and over again." Yes it is. It's you getting the information from a little darlings, so you know what it is to spend time on. I used to call them a little darlings now I like to call them a little disease vectors. But our job is to figure out what to teach. The curriculum and the syllabus are our first best guess. Our PowerPoints and our assignments are our next best guess. This is the third layer of us deciding what we should be teaching. Really I'm done now. - Alright. We're good? I was gonna move on if you have... you wanna talk something on this you absolutely can. - Yeah, just really quick. I was about to type it, but this will be faster. So again, what kind of... you once said give them points for doing just about anything. I think Manda in another setting, yeah. A few points. When we're talking about some of the Just-In-Time things and then maybe these minute papers, is the total percentage of their grade across all of these different kinds of assignments, is that where you get the 12 to 15%? - If I were gonna assign points to all of this, yes. I assign points for when I think everybody has to do it. So that's why they get points for being in their textbook. I want everybody in their textbook. And like Cal said, we're just trying to sample some students here. And the idea is that if they're not willing to bring up their confusion in class and they have a question, we say this all the time, if you have a question, somebody else probably has the same question. If I'm just trying to do a quick capture of the room and get a couple of pieces of information from three or four or five of my students, and I don't need everybody to participate, I wouldn't put points on it. I would do it as part of my closing time. It's the closing reflection in your class. So they can choose to opt out if they want, but the idea is to just get some data so that we know where we're headed next. - I don't give points for anything. And so I will look at them and say, "All right, so we've been doing these processes, and if you're not getting your questions answered, it's cause nobody else is guessing what your questions are. And I give one of my semi patented, get off your ass speeches and say, "Listen, if we're not serving you, I want to. If you're not getting the questions answered that you're having, you might have to ask your question. You might not be able to depend on other people to imagine what you're not getting. And so shoot me that email, respond to the stuff. And what happens is that, there's a change... The rate is about constant, but who's contributing changes with topics? Which if you think about it for a second, makes sense. If we're trying to get people to tell us what didn't make sense yet, that might not be the same for everything that we teach. It might be different people who are struggling with the methods versus the stats versus the writing. And so the idea that we need everybody every time, I think as part of what wears them out. - Okay, thanks. We're good? Oh, my word, what did I do now? Okay, holy cow! I'm gonna share my screen again. We're to move forward to the next one. Again, how we're gonna try to gather information from our students. This is what it sounds like. Honestly, when Cal sends me emails sometimes I'm trying to figure out, do you literally mean what you're saying or is material feedback like, is material a figurative word that I don't understand? But it really is feedback on a particular formative assignment. So when we give our students feedback, it's understood they've submitted something to us, we're grading it and we're trying to steer them in the correct direction. I have classes sometimes of 600 students. And so it can really bog me down when I'm trying to give each student some kind of meaningful feedback. But I think it's important, especially if I'm gonna continue to have my students writing. And so what we try to do in material feedback is come up with a layers of redundancy that's worked into one central document that we can export out pretty quickly to our students. And so when I'm framing this to my students, I can put it directly into the canvas comment box if I want, to each individual student, or I can push this out in an announcement or an email to my students where I immediately frame it with as a class. Again, I noticed some mistakes and misunderstandings now with this big formative assignment for a couple of key items. So as you make your way through the feedback, you're probably gonna see check number one, check number three, or check letter A. And that pertains specifically to you, but the students get all of the feedback that I create for every student. And the idea here is that if they're getting all the feedback for all of the mistakes that were made, if they've guessed and accidentally got something right, they can then look back at the material feedback, the entire sheet and go, "Jeez, I should probably revisit that too." So this is just another layer of us saying to our students, "Hey, here's four particular mistakes, but make sure you read this whole document to be sure that you really do understand what you earned maximum credit for as well." And so this is just a way of more efficiently delivering feedback to our students so that all the students get all of the feedback, even if maybe they got something right. So the way that this typically works, and I'm guessing a lot of you have had to do this, especially if you're grading essays, is we have their one assignment open for an individual student and we type in. "You miss this detail on page 273, go back and reread that and cite it." And then we open up the next student's submission. We go, "Oh shoot, you missed this thing on page 273 as well." And about the third time this happens, it kinda dawns on you like, "Hey, wow, I should probably put this in a word document and then maybe I can use it myself next semester." What I didn't think about doing was actually sharing it with all of my students. Just to help everybody realize it, as the class this, is what we tend to struggle with. If you didn't struggle with it, good job. That's a way to reinforce the students that are doing a great job. Good for you. I'm glad you really tied that one down. And for those of you that are still struggling, have a look at this feedback because it's relevant to you and your success. And so again, we have this PDF that Amy created for us, to teach us how to use material feedback a bit more efficiently. So I'm gonna pull up the link and I'm gonna unshare my screen, so Cal can talk to you for a little bit. - So the headache that I hope to cause for each and every one of you, is that you have to sit down and actively decide and maybe even empirically decide what things you're gonna put into a frequently asked question document and what things you're gonna wait until after they've done the assignment and get them that information as material feedback. What I'm trying to do is put you in a position where you get to decide where your coddling level is? Now I will tell you that I have a really high coddling level on annoying shit. Things like people pull the degrees of freedom out of the wrong part of the table. They report a P value wrong, there's mistakes that I don't want to get in the way of the content I want them to write about so I can grade. And so my FAQs and my grading rubrics are just full of all of this handholding on stuff that is not conceptual to me. I'm willing to get there with reps. I don't need that to be a deeply understood concept. I'm willing to get there at any time by the end of the semester. So I am feeding them all of these details so that they have a place to check and make sure they did all of that, so that what I get to grade and what they get to think about is the heart and core of the assignment. But like I say, the problem I wanna cause you is having to decide what are you gonna feed them ahead of time at an FAQ? And what are you gonna give them afterwards in a material feedback? And don't forget that the third one in this triumphant is what you feed to them in your grading rubric. So what are you gonna try and make reps informative versus what things do you really want to be summative? And one of the things I can tell you is that they spend a lot of time on crap. They spend a lot of time on checking on APA format and the APA format is better than the writing. That means they need to spend time on writing. And so I will rubric out all of the stuff that I don't wanna have to grade, I want them to get all of that stuff right boiler plate. And if they use the same document every time, they're gonna get that right every time, we're good. I'm trying to reduce the amount of time they spend on stuff that isn't what I want to grade them on. - [Manda] Good. - Baby. - [Manda] What? - Baby! - What are you saying? - Rossana has a baby. - [Manda] Oh jeez! - She just woke up. I had a question cause I... for my assignments, I made it a grading rubric that had like a checklist first. So I'm giving like a few points. So do you have your name on it? Do you have your ID? And so I'm giving them points for that. And then I go down into a little bit more needy greedy of are you citing everything? All the information has citations. I don't know if this is because they're freshmen and they're not used to actually reading through stuff. I'm still grading things, but I'm like- - I know, I know. One thing I recommend is put that same stuff in a slightly different format, also in an FAQ. - Okay. - And link the FAQ right after you link because sometimes showing them the same thing twice breaks into consciousness. - Okay. Thank you. - You've done a good job of laying things out, but the annoying thing is they don't read it. I still have two things that it doesn't matter how many times I tell them, 40% of the kids, even the geniuses are gonna get wrong on that stats test. I know it. It's two mistakes that professionals make all the time. And so my attempt to cut that off is in five different places. And I got that 40% down to 25. - Okay. Thank you. - And so reps show it to more than once. don't see people show your commercial once and then stop using it. - Thank you. - Alright. So this last technique that we're gonna share with you today is all Cal. I think it's hilarious, but I also find it to be quite beneficial and he's got its own little name. So I'm gonna share my screen and Cal, if you wanna talk them through this, you go ahead. I'll do... there's only two slides. There's the material. And then there's the PDF. So I think you'll be able to tackle this one pretty easily by just looking at the slide that I'm going to pull up. - So the idea of barely late teaching is that there's two basic kinds of mistakes. You didn't get something explained the way you intended to. You didn't have enough time or you forgot an example, or it turns out the handout sucked or you were wrong about having explained it well. Well, sometimes you get to the end of the lecture and you decided all by yourself without a minute paper, without a Just-In-Time, without looking at a quiz grade, that there's something that could have been done better. And so what I would do when that happened is I would take the PowerPoint. I would add a couple of PowerPoint slides and I would send it to them and say, "I don't like what used to be slide five, I want you to read slides five and six, before you try the homework. Or I would do an audio file and just send it to them. Or just text an email. Anything where you say, "I want another moment," or "I want another shot at explaining something." I was talking about this in a workshop, and like I say, it started out as a joke and somebody said, "Oh, that's a really good idea. What do you call it?" Call it! I call it unscrewing up. Well, that doesn't have a really good set of initials and so I went with barely late teaching. And so the ongoing joke is it's a great strategy or making sure that information you intended to communicate gets communicated even if it's on the second try. It's a tremendous way of letting them know that you give a shit. You just took time out of your day after the class to catch up on something, to fix something, to make things better for them. And it's a great sandwich. - I wanna jump in on that really quickly. For something that... I'm on sandwiches. It's funny how, when you don't have to talk through a slide, you can actually think about what you're saying. So I don't know how many of you are young instructors and maybe it will affect you more than those of us who are seasoned. But I gotta tell you, what Cal just described there, is a really powerful thing. Because you're telling your students, "I didn't know in that moment, I don't know." And for some reason that's one of the cruxes of being a good scientist, is holding onto that humility and saying, "I could very well be wrong here." And you're telling your students you're modeling to them. I didn't know that I wasn't doing a good job here until after I did it. It's okay to say, "I don't know." As long as you immediately take action to remedy it and fix it. And when you model that in front of a classroom, I have found a collective side takes place in the entire room where they go, "It's okay if I don't know in the moment, whether I'm doing the best work I can do, or even if I don't know the answer to something." And I think that that's one really important lesson we can tell all of our students is that it's okay to not know in the moment, as long as you model to them, the corrective action that has to take place. That was one of the most freeing things for me as a young teacher, when I told my students, "I may not know the answer, but I'm gonna show you how I will deal with it diligently figure out how to come up with the answer if you do that with me." So this is another really powerful way I think to partner with your students. Is to show them in our own humility. Maybe sometimes we don't know if something's gonna go over well in the moment and we'll show them how we intend to fix it as quickly as possible. So the last thing that we have is just the link. So if Cal, if you wanna say anything in the meantime, I'm gonna pull this up and drop it into the chat. But that is the last of the techniques that we wanted to cover with everyone today. - The big take home messages, and you've probably noticed this. I'm sure you've noticed this. But that these are all getting at the same thing. You can take a particular piece of information and you can solicit it multiple ways. You can solicit it by Just-In-Time. You can solicit it by minute papers. You can solicit it by assessments you already have. And then you can give them information multiple ways. You can call it barely late teaching. You can call it your grading rubric. You can call it your instructions. You can call it an FAQ, or you can call it material feedback. The idea is that you are increasing the amount of intentional interchange between you and your students, and you're taking credit for it. You are showing the students, "I am gonna lead us to a conversation to maximize your engagement in your performance." I don't even talk about engagement in my classes two or three weeks in. I look at them and say, "Have you all noticed I've busted my ass to get you to tell me how we're doing? And now we still have four days before the exam opens. This is kind of like your last chance. So here comes another round of opportunities to let me know what to emphasize as we prep for the exam." And two things happen. There's all bunch of shit they haven't told us before that, now they've suddenly realized they care about and don't understand. It might be that they just didn't care before, or that they didn't know they didn't understand. But I always try to have a whole layer in between sort of an exam prep demo. Some sort of, "Here's what we're gonna do to you on the exam and the actual exam." And the best of all possible worlds, I set up my reviews for Friday and Monday. So I go through a review on Friday, or they do some exercise on Monday and they've got a whole weekend to notice and tell me what they want me to go over again on Monday. - Cal, I want to ask you this because I think it's really important that you clarify what you mean. I know what Cal means when he says this, but I want Cal to talk to you about it. Coddling. I want you to tell everybody why you use that word and where it came from. I have gone through the same thing, but what do you mean when you say coddling, and why are you using that word? - When I say coddle, I use it because it was used against me when I was a young professor, as a pejorative. I was told that I was coddling students. Sometimes I am. I try to make a purposeful, intentional decision, what things I want to carry them and what things I want them to learn on their own. I do vast amounts of discovery application, not as much discovery learning. I do that on purpose. Because a lot of the stuff that I teach frightens them. Nobody says, "I'm a psych major when's the stats class?" I start out in a motivational hole. And so part of my deal with them is, "Listen, some of this is important stuff that you have to be able to know and think about and have all the pieces for it. Some of it you just do. And so I coddle on the just do, and I put all of our instructional pedagogical learning energy on the things that I think that's how we have to interact and that's how they have to learn. So I use it before someone else does. It's like referring to myself as older than dirt. I wanna get that out in the conversation before somebody else does. I don't want to hear- - [Ranae] I'll have to jump in- - I wanna say. - [Ranae] I'll have to jump in, this is- - I'm trying to remove it as a pejorative and treat it as a pedagogical strategy. Yes, dear - [Ranae] And Cal, I have to thank you for that. This is Ranae and I appreciated the coddling because I was terrified. And now I'm really looking forward to starting 941. So thank you. And I love the older than dirt because you make me feel better. - It's emotional. I'm a Bloom's taxonomy guy, in the middle of taxonomy is valuing. I need to carry these kids into. I'm willing to sit here and listen. That's the first stage. And if you teach in a stats class that I know lots of you teach things that are required. And the only reason of course is required is because it's sucks so much that nobody would attended if it wasn't required. So you're starting out in a motivational hole. So just roll around in that hole, add some water, roll around in the mud and say, "Listen, there's a reason this course is required. And I'm gonna carry your ass through this. Here we go." Then you act on it some, and they just... you're competing for their time. You are competing for their time and their attention. And you've got two ways to compete. When it's two o'clock in the morning and making do your homework or somebody else's, they're gonna do the homework for the one that they think gives a shit. There is something about relative point value. But if they're gonna be driven in part by which one they're gonna get the most out of? And the person who builds up a history before that two o'clock moment, of being willing to carry them where they need to be carried, being willing to push them when they need to be pushed, of seeming to have an idea of what they need next, you're gonna get their time. - So there was a question in the chat back in the material feedback section, I think from Katie. So you make this really great material feedback document, where you've got all of these comments that you want all of your students to read, how do you get them to actually read it? - I think the way that I increased the chances of reading is that everything in the class has a rewrite. And I tell them, "Listen, if you missed points, I can tell you how to get those points back. Go look at this one document." And it's kind of like a BLT that turns barely late material feedback into an FAQ. Send them the damn link and tell them to read it or they're an idiot. I say, things like that- - You have this moment of greatness and then it's like shit. - Here's a grading rubric, you've got to read the grading rubric or you could read the grading rubric, right? What kid doesn't pick... doesn't look at the grading rubric. We found there were some, so my grading rubric has the grading rubric down the side with blanks beside it, where they put in the part of their paper that fulfills that point system in the rubric. Then when they fill that in that they turn into a word document that's headed APA paper. That was my solution for they don't read it, make it part of the assignment. You just keep beating on it until you find the combination of things that they are unable to avoid. - I think what's really important to remember here, especially if you've not done all five of these. Now isn't the time to incorporate all five of these. - Absolutely. - Your job here is to forge connections with your students in the way that makes the most sense to you and resonates with you. So if you already use one or two of these, your job is pretty simple. Just make sure that you frame everything first with this extension of partnership, that you're doing your work to make sure that you already know what they're struggling with and you can help fix it. Just continue to try to make those emotional connections with your students, with what you've already done. Do not overwhelm yourself with the technical stuff that we threw at you. The bigger picture here is the adaptive stuff of how do we forge, valuing and expectation of success in our students with what makes the most sense to us. - And don't be afraid to claim credit for caring. One of the expressions that I use all the time is that in my webpage there's stuff that's orange. And orange is known as 'Cal loves your stuff.' I call it that in public. I click on it and I say, "This is a handout that has the five things that you are most likely to screw up." And I look at me and go, "Who loves you?" And that is beat into the fabric of our communication. Not everyone is comfortable with that form the expression. But if I'm gonna whore myself, it's for the kids. - On that note if you have any other questions like to discuss, we don't have any more content for you. Cal don't talk anymore. No, just kidding. I feel like the 15 year old who's like, "Dad, you're doing so good." Thank you all so much for sticking through the webinar. Yes. - Sorry to interrupt, but Cal, you both of you are very different personalities. And I really love this. You've reinforced some things that I've been trying to do over the years. But I'm wondering if you could speak to that point, that our personality, how we come across in the classroom is a lot of this as well. When I first started teaching, some of my colleagues said, "Don't worry about the way I interact with my students. You got to find your own way." And it seems to me that underlines a lot of what we're doing here. Some of what Cal does, which I think is great. I don't think I could carry off that way. I need to find kind of my own style to be authentic. I guess that's... What kind of things would you say about developing that authenticity? So the students know when you do say that when you are joking, when you say, "Okay guys, let's not be idiots here. We know what we're doing." But they don't hear you calling them an idiot. They hear you joking with them that we're cutting in that same place. You know what I mean? 'Cause I think I've been misread in my early teaching on some of those notes. - So I always thought I was really, really authentic. Because I have no filter. And I thought that was authenticity. Still I had kids, that the same kid would be in both a stats class and the perception class with me the same semester. And they would look at me and they say, "You are two completely different people teaching those two courses. In the senior perception class, you're a little demanding. You expect us to do stuff. You keep referring to us as seniors. And saying, 'I will help motivate you, but it's by putting a foot in your butt. You're a senior, this is how seniors play this game. If you need help ask, but get after it.'" And then even the former level stats class, you are all you all "Winnie the Pooh and Tigger." And you are always supportive and you are always making sure that we feel comfortable. It makes some of this crazy until we realized that both of them was just what we needed for that class. So I don't wanna say this cause I'm a psychologist. I'm supposed to have a different set of values, but authenticity is overdone. - Okay. - Think of it, your teaching persona. And matching that teaching persona to your class and your kids. And the only thing you have to be able to do is be comfortable enough with it to maintain it. I've known all kinds of people who just, I never sat in a class. They asked me to do a peer review. I've known somebody for 15 years. Their teaching style was a complete surprise to me. But it works for them. Again, authentic is a goal. Authentic is a tool if it works for you. I can't imagine being anything but loud. I can't imagine pulling off anything that isn't loud. I need a relationship with my kids that is so close that I can say off color things, because some of the stuff that we do in class, no matter how we talk about it, is on the edge. On the edge of don't you dare. When we start talking about age and race and sex as causal variables, we're gonna have conversations that most people are afraid to have. I have to... already have buy-in that anything I say that pisses them off is cause I love them. 'Cause I'm trying to make sure that they are ready to join a community that thinks about things differently than they do. Not trying to change their mind. I'm trying to prepare them for another community that they haven't joined yet. And so that's, that's my strategy Lot to be said for squaring and they're pretty jokes. - There was a question Cal about how we plan on doing this in the flex first week online model. How we plan on developing these connections with our students. And the really cool thing, I'll just start in Cal can again mop up. The nice thing, I'm a little spoiled in that I was already, I already went through the training through CTC 11 years ago on how to forge communication in online classes. And I still rely very heavily on that. And when I want my students to hear it in my voice, that this is important and I care, I don't type it. I drop videos. I will drop videos, short videos, into an announcement either with my face or just my voice, so that they can hear what I needed emphasized in the instructions or what I need to emphasize in them in terms of how I'm fighting for their success. And so even with regard to the syllabus, I don't have necessarily one big orientation video. I pull out parts of the syllabus that I'm sure they're gonna have questions about. And I record myself and I hold myself accountable. That what I speak has to be less than a minute and that it has to be meaningful. And that I tell them that repetitively, but we have to put our faces in our courses. And that first week I'm telling you, in my intro class, the first week, they are reading two pages out of their textbook. That's the goal. Everything up till Friday is me connecting with my students, they're asking them questions, getting their schedule set up in their phones. If I have to do it through a canvas chat, I will. If I have to do it through an announcement, I will. But I am just making myself overwhelmingly present non-Academically the first week in that asynchronous class. I have 25 Thompson scholars, who are going to be terrified when they come into this class and onto this campus, in this format that we're using. And I don't care if I have to cut a week out of the semester. If they trust me and they're comfortable in one class because of how I handle myself the first week, fine. So that's, I just... again, the videos and the note a whole lot of rigor that first week, but establishing connection I think is critically important in this fall. - And just to see the other side of the coin, I'm gonna do something completely different. I'm gonna do almost no course introduction the first week. The first week I am going to send them to a web page that explains a couple of things. And then they're gonna do an online assignment. And then I'm gonna send them to another thing and they're gonna do another online assignment. And the first thing I'll show them the... the first time we get together, is how well they did at this. How well they can walk into new information they don't know anything about use a written resource and wash it. Then I'll say, "And that's only the beginning of what I've got for you guys to make this manageable. And then I'm gonna do the course introduction in person. And I do two of them. I do one, that's just all of the stuff. Just basically introducing them, to the learning tools that we will use. The webpage, the canvas, the big things, the blue things, the great things, the orange things. We have a very formal system. And then the second one is plain old sell on them on why they need to know this stuff. Why is it a required course? I can't imagine any way of doing that as in personally as this Zoom. I want them in a room. And so I am gonna at the end of two weeks, have them convinced they could do this without me. And they don't have to. - [Ranae] Can I throw out a quick little question for the group? So my job is to teach low income families, nutrition, physical activity. So when you're talking about people who don't necessarily strive to learn new things, what tricks do I need to do? Would you do a blended canvas and Zoom? Does it need to be live? What are your thoughts on making that successful? - When somebody asks to be convinced to do something they don't wanna do, a psychologist will tell you that you have two tricks. One is early efforted success increases the value of something. So instead of talking them into doing it, literally just get them to do it. However you have to. Get them to do it and set up such a simple version of it that it's accomplished and it's rewarding. The second layer is cognitive business. If you've done something in public, it's easier to imagine that you value it. And so you set up that early successful investment, and then you say, all right. So you can see that that worked. What are other things like? Which by the way, is why the first thing that we're gonna do is an assignment. And it's an assignment that I know they're gonna beat up. And the assignment is set up to be crushed. The harder parts of that we pick up later. But it is intentionally set up so that you're doing something they don't particularly wanna do. They don't wanna learn stuff from reading it, but they do. They don't wanna take a quiz, but they do. And when they get a 95 on it quiz, "Oh, all's forgiven." So you find a way to create early invested success. Then you play on that. As what you're doing is just more of the same thing that already like. Easier to say than do sometimes. But that's the strategy. - [Ranae] Thank you. - And as far as your really reasonable questions about how to convey it, I don't care. I think that's back to how you are as a teacher and what tools you find most successful. Manda makes much better videos than I do. So I don't use nearly as many videos as she does. - [Ranae] And I have to be honest. The biggest struggle I have is that we have to, we're guided by the USDA to use evidence based curriculum. So that's gonna be my challenge, how to jazz that up and make it look so inviting that you don't wanna pull away from my class. - Yeah. We all have that problem. You're just having a dictated and it's in your grading rubric. - I try to look for applications. - [Ranae] Exactly. - If there's some evidence based thing and it comes across as super dry, can I figure out where it exists in the real world in a way that's less heavy or less snobby? I'm a big fan of crabbing videos. I've shown my students con founding of variables with assessing the street clip. So- - [Ranae] Nice. - Just try to have a concrete applied platform in various places I think is helpful. - [Ranae] Okay. You just brought me back into, we had a whole conference that the leader did an excellent job of bringing in Seinfeld Festivus and aired our grievances. And it was around Christmas time. But yeah, so maybe just get creative. It's still that evidence based junk that I have to give you and you have to regurgitate, but just looking outside the box. That's helpful. Thank you. - You're welcome. We've got 10 minutes. I don't think there was anything else I saw in the chat, but I haven't scrolled up. Does anybody wanna talk about anything else or are we okay? - I hope you'll send emails and ask questions. - I will... Yeah, cgarbin1? - Just cgarbin. - [Manda] Is it? - I think both will get it to me. I've never really understood some of the rules. - Amy. - [Cal] Amy laughs. - No Amy, aort what? One? - Just aort. - [Cal] She's been around a while. That's before the ones and then the twos. - No. I'm so old- still be as aort I had to make to make it not look like I'm a student anymore. - Nice. - I had a J Smith 400 and something last semester in my class. - Oh we have a Zoom question. This is critically important. I think you have to be in your own Zoom. So you log into your own Zoom first, with your link and then you can click on more or something to change your background. Is that what you have to do Amy? Do you have to be in your own zoom link to create a picture background? - I'm finding a tutorial for it right now. You can do it like right now. If you click on the little up arrow next to the video button on the bottom, you'll see an option for choose virtual background. And then you can upload one. - Where? - So with the video button on the bottom where you turn your video on and off, there's a little up arrow. - Oh, well done. - She already knows this tech stuff. - [Amy] It really depends on like the quality of your camera though. I personally can't do it. 'Cause I just ended up looking like a chameleon going in and out of the background. Pretty terrifying. - Thank you all for your positive comments. These things like it reminds me of running or sprinting in high school. Whenever I'd get down in the blocks, I was sure I was going to wet my pants. I feel like this every time I'm about to do one of these things. So thank you so much for your positive comments. I'm gonna assume it was all me and not Cal at all. Y'all have a great day. I know that there was a question, Amy. One of the members has a question for me to hang out after. Is that okay? If I just talk to somebody about a previous thing that we did, anybody can stay, but... - Yeah, that's totally fine. I'll go ahead. - [Manda] You quit. - I'll stop the recording now so that it doesn't end up in it. - Okay. That would be great, thank you. - [Martha] Manda, can I just ask a quick question about your Martha Rhodes. I find this really great. This was a great tip for me. So do you give them unlimited time to complete those or do you just like give them two days someone to spend too much time on a reading quiz? - Yes. So I post all of my deadlines in the weekly schedule and I tell them they can work as far ahead as they want. But my students know that every Sunday at 11:59 p.m, those short quiz questions are due. And they can, and that actually has helped me a few times because it records the amount of time they're interacting with the textbook. So if they come in and they're struggling, I can actually pull that data and say, "Wow, you're spending way too much time here. Show me what it is that you're doing." Or I can say, "Oh, you didn't really spend a whole lot of time at all reading, judging by the amount of time you were in your book." But they know that I will assign a reading probably on a Monday in the syllabus. I'll say, "Please start reading chapter nine that's due on Sunday." And so they know they've got that time. It's their time to get it finished. I also have extensions for some students because their schedules are a little wonky and especially with COVID, I will extend the deadlines for these quizzes twice, once at what typically is fall or spring break. So they can go back and do them if they haven't gotten the points yet. And then once during dead week. 'Cause the final exam is cumulative. So if they're doing the quizzes, then that's fine with me too. - [Martha] Okay. Very good. Thank you for that. - [Manda] You're welcome. - Oh.