EPIC Newsletter:
April 2021
|
|
I am buoyed by some really great conversations I have been having with students during office hours this week. While much of our discussions have been about their papers, we’ve been able to dive into our readings—outside of their paper concerns— and even talk about some of their interests outside of class. I attribute some of this openness from students on being able to meet with them when it’s best for their schedule rather than imposing a permanent set of office hours for them to follow.
Undoubtedly, a great many of you have also set-up office hours this way and have seen some positive results in terms of student engagement. And while, yes, I have set some boundaries about when I am able to meet with students, I have found that students have been more willing to share their thoughts and concerns when they’re able to meet with me at a time when they feel more at ease, without any worries about having to jump on to another Zoom class or leave for another commitment. As we look ahead to our return to in-person instruction, Zoom office hours is something that I’ll likely keep doing moving forward.
Thank you for joining us again this month and we wish you well as we rally to the end of the quarter.
Lisa Felipe
EPIC Program Director
|
|
Save the Date!
EPIC-Lang Initiative:
Launch Event and Open House
|
|
Please join us for the launch of EPIC-Lang, a set of new EPIC initiatives that expands EPIC's language pedagogy programming to include more workshops, new grant opportunities, and access to resources on language instruction.
This open house will feature introductory remarks from Dean Schaberg and an overview of all EPIC-Lang initiatives from Gyanam Mahajan, EPIC Faculty Co-Director. The event will be held via Zoom on Friday, May 14, 2021 from 4-5 PM PDT.
Please visit our event page in the upcoming days for more information and the registration link. We look forward to seeing you! |
|
Rethinking Participation Grades
|
|
|
In all my years here at UCLA as a Teaching Assistant in the Humanities, I have never encountered a course syllabus that omits participation from the student's overall grade. I think by now students are used to seeing syllabi that outline how crucial class participation is. It is seldom a surprise to students that they are to be graded on participation to some degree. While instructors all seem to agree that engaged students make for a robust classroom experience, what exactly makes for good student participation? How do we identify and evaluate it? Can it take multiple forms? How has remote teaching made us reconsider what participation can be?
|
|
Given that remote teaching has opened up new avenues for student engagement (EPIC events like our recent winter and spring Ready, Set, Teach! panels touch upon this), it is high time we rethink our approach to participation grades. Something so dynamic and so subjective surely needs to be looked at regularly to minimize bias and to take into account the ever-changing teaching landscape. |
|
Some instructors take what could be considered a fairly radical approach upon revisiting their approach to participation grades: they do away with them altogether. James M. Lang, professor of English and director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption University, recently wrote an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education that advocates for abandoning participation grades. He believes there are better ways to get students to participate; having a grade-based incentive over students' head is not ideal. I encourage you to read it, though for your convenience here are some of his salient points about grading for participation: |
|
- It's too subjective, and it's difficult to mitigate bias.
- It's not easy to evaluate and keep track of the quality and quantity of students' comments.
- It makes the classroom a less equitable space, particularly for students with anxiety or learning challenges or disabilities.
- Participation, which can take place in many shapes and forms, is just the reality of being successful in the classroom. Motivating students to participate does not have to be linked to grades.
- What is important is to create a welcoming environment for students and to have students feel empowered to engage in a way that makes sense for them.
|
|
However, many are reticent to do away with it entirely since it does impress upon students that they need to be active in class. A Q&A from Tufts University's Teaching@Tufts website offers some guidance for those who still want to evaluate students on participation. It boils down to this: let your students know what your expectations are, and do your best to be openminded about what participation can look like. The goal is transparency in your pedagogical approach so that students feel comfortable and have a good idea of how they can meaningfully contribute to the class. Make your guidelines clear from the beginning, offer feedback throughout the course, and realize that participation can range from Zoom chat contributions to oral comments to asking generative questions to short, low stakes presentations to more! Have your students help you: ask them which kinds of things might be considered high effort engagement and which might be considered lower effort. We cannot read each other's minds. This is a great way to foster a welcoming classroom community while sharing your pedagogical aims. |
|
|
Don't let the participation grade section of your syllabus be something stagnant and impervious to change. If anything, the move to remote teaching and learning has showed us that nothing is static! Participation can be much deeper than raising a hand and saying something. Students participate all the time. It's up to us to think about how best to encourage and cultivate it into meaningful critical skills that serve them well in the class and beyond.
|
|
Author: Anne Le
Graduate Student Researcher, EPIC Program
PhD Student, European Languages and Transcultural Studies
|
|
|
Ready, Set, Teach!
From Zoom to Classroom:
Remote Teaching Strategies Worth Keeping
|
|
On April 16, we held our Spring 2021 Ready, Set, Teach!, From Zoom to Classroom: Remote Teaching Strategies Worth Keeping. This event featured a faculty panel comprising Sarah Beckmann (Assistant Professor, Classics), Susannah Rodriguez Drissi (Lecturer, Writing Programs), Stephanie Bosch Santana (Assistant Professor, Comparative Literature) and Latifeh Hagigi (Senior Lecturer, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures) and was facilitated by EPIC Faculty Co-Director, Gyanam Mahajan (Senior Lecturer [Senate], Asian Languages and Cultures). It was a lively discussion on remote teaching strategies that can be adapted for in-person teaching.
Please feel free to view the recorded event embedded here or on our YouTube channel. |
|
|
|
Closed captioning available
|
|
On Teaching and Learning:
Resources Round Up
|
|
|
There are a TON of resources, scholarship, and advice for instructors out there. Here’s just some of what we have been reading and exploring this month.
|
|
|
“Faculty are trained to know their disciplinary content backwards and forwards, and they know it in a mostly abstract, complex way. But even as we know what to teach, we seldom address the why. Students, on the other hand, are motivated by what’s meaningful. It’s as if there’s a constant refrain in their heads: ‘Why is this content important to me—why should I learn this—how is this meaningful to me?’”
“If the genuine goal of college is to prepare students for life, then it’s vital that they develop their own standards. So rather than ask students to submit work with the hope that I’ll think it’s excellent, I encourage them to develop honest standards and self-scrutiny. Every assignment is accompanied by students’ written self-assessment of their work. What were they trying to get out of the assignment? What did they learn? What was successful? What was less successful? Why? What might they do differently? What would they like help with?”
“Design all course elements for accessibility. Recognize the diversity of different learners’ abilities and experiences and provide multiple ways for them to engage with course materials and express what they have learned. Using Universal Design for Learning approaches to course design and teaching ensures that all students will be able to demonstrate their learning without unnecessary challenges unrelated to the academic content of the course. Such approaches benefit all learners and eliminate the guesswork for instructors when determining whether the learning experiences they are designing will be both cognitively and physically accessible to everyone.”
|
|
Contribute to Our Newsletter!
|
|
EPIC would like to feature more stories on innovative and inclusive Humanities teaching, and we invite colleagues and EPIC collaborators to participate. This could take the form of writing an article relating to teaching and learning, such as inclusive teaching pedagogies and in-classroom interventions, or by suggesting a faculty member or TA to feature. We’re looking to amplify the voices of faculty members and TAs who have done innovative work in terms of their teaching, as well as inclusive or culturally responsive teaching. If you have any recommendations, we will gladly follow up with the faculty member or TA. Please use this form to add ideas and suggestions. |
|
|
|
|
