This article was originally published on November 2014 as part of a UW Provost report on trends and issues in public higher education.
One UW Tacoma professor says online class makes her a better teacher
Meet in person | Start ungraded discussion | Set clear limits | Let students lead
—Christine Stevens
Associate Professor, Nursing & Healthcare Leadership, UW Tacoma
“Teaching online allows me to talk to each student personally every week,” says Christine Stevens, Associate Professor, Nursing & Healthcare Leadership at UW Tacoma. “I don’t get that in a big in-person class of 45 students. Some students are too shy to talk to me in person.”
Stevens teaches multiple online and hybrid classes that involve graded, online discussions. Students are required to respond to questions prepared by Stevens in a forum open to the full class. Stevens also emails each student individually. “I comment on what they’ve said in the forum,” says Stevens. “I point out that they’ve made a good connection to the research, or made a good point. If for any reason they’re having difficulty or need a push on their thinking, I don’t go into the discussion and point that out, I do it privately.”
In personal emails, Stevens may also address cultural and other issues. In her class Representations of Adolescents in Film (T HLTH 330) international students or students who have just immigrated to the U.S. may have difficulty interpreting specific cultural nuances of language of the films under discussion, which include Remember the Titans and Rebel Without a Cause. “They can get help with their questions without having to bring them up before the whole class,” says Stevens.
This kind of communication and review does “take a lot of time,” says Stevens. So does setting up online modules. She credits the staff at UW Tacoma, including Colleen Carmean, Assistant Chancellor for Instructional Technologies, and Darcy Janzen, E-Learning Support Manager, Academic Technologies, with providing the help she’s needed to be successful in her online and hybrid classes, which include Genetics, Genomics, and Nursing Practice (T NURS 345) and Promoting Health Through Social Marketing (T HLTH 320). “They understand technology and they love it, and they understand pedagogy and teaching outcomes,” says Stevens.
“In the online classes where I have students meet in person for the first class, students tend to feel more connected than in the classes that are completely online. There’s something about the visualness of seeing each other when we meet together that they can take with them,” says Stevens. “I ask my online students every quarter if they think I should continue to hold the first class face-to-face. The majority — 85–98 percent — say yes.”
The first assignment, where students introduce themselves, is ungraded. During the quarter, Stevens increases the grading requirements as students get used to the discussion format. “I have a clear grading rubric for points in online discussion,” says Stevens. “Students have to show evidence that they’ve considered the readings and that they’re thinking critically about them with the other students.”
“The students live online, so they feel very comfortable contacting you and talking to you, and that’s really thrilling. But I tell other faculty you have to make a rule about when you respond,” says Stevens. “I had one student who wrote me at 2 a.m. and then at 7:30 a.m. was calling my boss saying I was unresponsive. Well, at 2 a.m., I am unresponsive.” Stevens advises setting clear expectations. “Some faculty say, ‘If you send me a question on Canvas, it’s going to be 24 hours before I respond.’ Others say ‘Weekends are mine.’ The students don’t care what the rules are. They just need to know about them ahead of time. Otherwise, they assume you’re online all the time.”
“I think the ability to respond respectfully to people online or to lead an online discussion will be very important in my students’ work as nurse educators or health leaders,” says Stevens. So she has students in her master’s class Curriculum Development in Nursing and Health Education (T NURS 511) take turns leading the online class discussion. “It’s been very, very successful,” says Stevens. “Students take their online leadership very seriously. The questions they come up with are deep and detailed, because they’ve really spent time in the reading, which inspires a great conversation.”
This article was originally published on November 2014 as part of a UW Provost report on trends and issues in public higher education.
Research shows that students will reveal more of their thinking and advance further in their learning when questions and tasks are scaffolded. Scaffolding can take a variety of forms, but generally means breaking a complex assignment into smaller steps, or giving students other structures or resources that help them produce better quality work. Closely linked is the design of deliberate practice for skills students need to succeed in a course or discipline. According to the authors of How Learning Works, “Research has shown that learning and performance are best fostered when students engage in practice that (a) focuses on a specific goal or criterion for performance, (b) targets an appropriate level of challenge, and (c) is of sufficient quantity and frequency to meet the performance criteria.”20
UW instructors build such opportunities into course design, scaffolding tasks in a variety of ways.
Laboratory exercises and essay questions can be scaffolded as well, by providing elements such as vocabulary or concept “banks,” checklists, sub-questions, or tutorials that help the student build towards a result, argument, or conclusion.
Designing a course to include deliberate practice means ensuring that there are smaller-scale, low-stakes, often self-directed assignments that effectively simulate the skills needed to show mastery and pass a final assessment. Creating sufficient opportunities for deliberate practice is a task often made easier by technology tools such as Canvas. In Canvas, faculty can create question banks students can use to quiz themselves on their own time, helping students identify and fill gaps in their understanding of the material.
In courses where learning goals include strengthening critical thinking, students will need multiple opportunities—
with constructive feedback—to practice critical thinking during the term. Many UW instructors design the learning
experience to include this practice.
Practice alone doesn’t maximize learning. “Recent research…has converged on the notion of classrooms as communities,” according to an article in Studies in Philosophy and Education. 22 Students need a positive environment in which to learn—one that is supportive and inclusive. Instructors can cultivate this climate of inquiry and equity and set norms for interpersonal behavior. In a forthcoming book chapter, UWprofessor Mark Windschitl asserts, “Over the past 20 years, this idea of teachers making clea
r, in talk and in practice, what everyone’s role is in the production of knowledge, and whose knowledge will be valued, shows up consistently in classrooms where widespread student participation and learning are evident.”23 UW instructors seek to establish such norms and expectations to foster a more supportive learning environment.
Instructors also work to cultivate a climate that supports learning by preparing for differences in linguistic and
cultural backgrounds, disabilities, and attitudes and motivations towards schooling, classroom roles, and ways of
learning. For example, accommodations for persons with disabilities need to be available in online contexts, as well
as in face-to-face classrooms.
Technologies can also provide accommodations that are not available in face-to-face classrooms. One example is the opportunity for self-paced learning offered by lecture capture tools like Tegrity.
Most of all, research indicates that students need regular and constructive feedback that they can directly and immediately apply.24 Authors of an article in the Review of Educational Research found that “A detailed synthesis of 74 meta-analyses…demonstrated that the most effective forms of feedback provide cues or reinforcement to learners; are in the form of video-, audio-, or computer-assisted instructional feedback; and/or relate to goals.”25 Furthermore, online settings offer tools that can enhance immediacy and clarity of feedback,26 such as posting and reviewing rubrics,27 while helping faculty balance the desire to give rich feedback with other demands on their time.
At the UW, faculty provide meaningful feedback in many ways, such as peer-review, descriptive commentary on problem-solving, and online quizzes that provide correct/incorrect answers—with explanations—immediately after students answer each question.
Like many UW instructors, Assistant Professor Riki Thompson provides feedback while modeling expert thinking. She leads and records workshops where students discuss anonymous student papers.
Designing a learning experience where students can learn and thrive is an area where technology can be particularly helpful by supporting scaffolding,
practice, and rubrics for constructive feedback. Technologies can also make it easier to gather real-time feedback that helps faculty gauge understanding and adapt accordingly, a practice called formative assessment. Formative assessment is a particularly powerful tool to provide information to students about their progress and inform the instructor’s choices about the next lesson, or even the next few moments in a class discussion.28 According to the authors of an article in Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, “Practice in a classroom is formative to the extent that evidence about student achievement is elicited, interpreted, and used by teachers, learners, or their peers, to make decisions about the next steps in instruction that are likely to be better, or better founded, than the decisions they would have taken in the absence of the evidence that was elicited.”29 Formative assessment, when done well, is both adaptive and iterative.
Shelly Rasmussen, a junior physiology major, thinks it is especially important for instructors to check student understanding during class, as some of her professors do using clickers. “The professor can manage class time better. If a large number of students don’t understand a question, the professor can address it.”
Read the full Provost report on how students learn and how technology helps.
Additional resources for teaching with technology.
For a full list of referenced works, click here.
Evidence-based teaching involves making students’ thinking visible to the instructor and to the students themselves, uncovering students’ prior knowledge and assumptions in order to build on them. It also involves making the instructor’s thought process visible to students, modeling how an expert in the discipline thinks through issues and solves problems.
“Understanding what students know—or think they know—coming into our courses can help us design our instruction more appropriately. It allows us not only to leverage their accurate knowledge more effectively to promote learning, but also to identify and fill gaps, recognize when students are applying what they know inappropriately, and actively work to correct misconceptions,” write the authors of How Learning Works. They add that activating students’ prior knowledge can help them learn and retain more: “In essence, new knowledge ‘sticks’ better when it has prior knowledge to stick to,” and students may need help to “bring their prior knowledge to bear on new learning situations.”4 A wide range of approaches can help students reveal and organize knowledge and apply it in new contexts, such as concept mapping,5 digital storytelling,6 and “thinking out loud” in discussions and brainstorming sessions held in either face-to-face or online spaces.
UW instructors share some of the ways they help students uncover their prior knowledge and build their understanding of content, concepts, and connections between ideas.
Uncovering student thinking is important, but making thinking visible also includes sharing the instructor’s thinking process with students. Research shows that novices and experts in a discipline approach problems quite differently. Novices, such as undergraduates, tend to focus on discrete and tangible labels, formulas, and terminology, while experts focus on transferable and generalizable patterns.11 “One big difference between novices and experts is that novices only see the superficial details of a problem while experts see the underlying foundational concept or pattern,” says Mary Pat Wenderoth, Principal Lecturer of Biology at UW Seattle.
To develop their critical thinking skills, students need exposure to the ways experts think. They benefit from observing how scholars organize knowledge, both in general and within their discipline. Instructors can help by describing their own problem-solving processes and explicitly revealing the norms and knowledge structures of their field.12
Modeling expert thinking can be as straightforward as working through a problem out loud in front of students.
This approach can be especially powerful when the instructor walks through a novel challenge, one he or she is truly grappling with in real-time, such as in research settings where students observe faculty solving problems first-hand.
In other cases, instructors build development of expert thinking into the whole curriculum, with science instructors repeatedly asking students to connect content to “big ideas,” and history instructors reminding students what counts as evidence in historical analysis. Across disciplines, instructors find it valuable to clearly and regularly identify themes, highlight discipline-specific language, and connect disparate information.
Making thinking visible uncovers students’ prior knowledge, helps them build on that knowledge, and shows them how to think like a profession.
Read the full Provost report on how students learn and how technology helps.
Additional resources for teaching with technology.
For a full list of referenced works, click here.
Students are more invested in the learning process when they have some sense of control, and when they see ways they can directly apply what they learn to their daily lives or career goals. According to the authors of a literature review in the journal Computers & Education, research demonstrates the “need to offer complex and authentic activities that engage the learner in decisionmaking and problem solving that is relevant to their real world situations.”13
UW faculty use a variety of methods to cultivate buy-in and motivate students, and often employ technologies to help.
UW students respond well to efforts to keep them engaged with the material and with each other. “Having clicker questions is engaging. It keeps me more attentive,” says” Xinia Ebbay, a junior in Pre-Nursing. Brian Perez, a senior in Pre-Nursing, agrees, “It’s like a mini-quiz every day; you’re more motivated to keep up with the class reading.
Reflection is another way to motivate students. Research shows that when students reflect on their learning— that is, engage in metacognition—their learning deepens and their thinking becomes more sophisticated. Instructors who engage students in complex and authentic activities can also “enable them to reflect deeply on both their learning processes and outcomes, which subsequently drive them towards metacognitive thinking and self-learning,” according to authors of an article in Computers & Education, who add that metacognitive thinking is associated with enhanced ability to transfer knowledge to new situations.15 Others note that metacognition is a key component of critical thinking.16 The authors of an article in Internet and Higher Education argue,“Metacognition must go beyond simply thinking about thinking…[to] include self-corrective strategies.”17
Guiding reflection and metacognition means asking students to consider questions such as: How did they arrive at an idea? How has their thinking changed? What has been their learning process, and what might they do next time?18 Not all students do this or know how. Instructors can help by providing opportunities for self-reflection and clear prompts, such as those Principal Lecturer Mary Pat Wenderoth uses when she asks biology students to write learning paragraphs (shown below and in a video produced by the Office of the Provost’s 2y2d Initiative).
Many UW instructors use a variety of tasks and technologies to create opportunities for students, individually or in groups, to reflect at the assignment or course level.
By focusing on motivation, engagement, and reflective metacognitive skills, faculty can help gradually build student understanding and teach students to become increasingly autonomous, self-directed, lifelong learners.
Read the full Provost report on how students learn and how technology helps.
Additional resources for teaching with technology.
For a full list of referenced works, click here.
Some instructional approaches, when implemented effectively, can incorporate several learning principles simultaneously to foster student learning. For example, activities that include a structured discussion can make thinking visible by eliciting ideas, give students practice in expert problem-solving by having them reason and respond to ideas in a group, and engage them in creating a community of learning and scholarship.
Not surprisingly, research shows that “Individuals are likely to learn more when they learn with others than when they learn alone,” according to a review in Advances in Physiology Education. Discussion is a great way to facilitate such group learning. As UW faculty know, cultivating productive discussion requires forethought and guidance, whether the conversations happen face-to-face or online.
A number of approaches synthesize the principles of how learning works in a holistic way and can employ technology to help. For example, team-based learning, and problem- or case-based learning,32 are multi-phase, structured techniques for engaging students in authentic and complex work. “All these approaches have something in common; they are student centered to varying extents, encourage students to seek, synthesize, and integrate information from a variety of sources, and assess performance in diverse ways,” according to the author of an article in Advances in Physiology Education. Active learning can be fostered in a variety of settings ranging from small to large groups and in face-to-face settings as well as online, through the use of wikis and other tools. Groups and departments throughout the three UW campuses implement these approaches successfully.
Instructors across the three UW campuses work to make thinking visible and motivate students. They thoughtfully design instruction and learning environments using tools ranging from the low-tech, such as whiteboards, to the high-tech, such as concept-mapping software.
While the plethora of research-based approaches and technologies can offer tremendous potential benefits, the variety of options can be overwhelming. Instructors can take comfort from the authors of How Learning Works, who write, “the number of strategies we must master to be effective teachers is not infinite. The same can be said for tools. The UW instructors profiled in this report have found that the best standard for selecting and retaining tools and techniques is finding which best serve their students’ needs. They are putting learning first.
We welcome your comments, questions and suggestions. Please email edtrends@uw.edu.
Read the full Provost report on how students learn and how technology helps.
Additional resources for teaching with technology.
For a full list of referenced works, click here.
1. Evrim Baran, Ana-Paula Correia, and Ann Thompson, “Transforming Online Teaching Practice: Critical Analysis of the Literature on the Roles and Competencies of Online Teachers,” Distance Education 32, no. 3 (2011): 421–439, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01587919.2011.610293.
2. Susan A. Ambrose, Michael W. Bridges, Michele DiPietro, Marsha C. Lovett, and Marie K. Norman, How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2010); John D. Bransford, Ann L. Brown, and Rodney R. Cocking, eds., How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2000), http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309070368. For a concise overview of these principles, see Colleen Carmean and Jeremy Haefner,“Mind over Matter: Transforming Course Management Systems into Effective Learning Environments,” EDUCAUSE Review 37, no. 6 (2002): 27–34, http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0261.pdf.
3. Catharine Hoffman Beyer, Edward Taylor, and Gerald M. Gillmore, Inside the Undergraduate Teaching Experience: The University of Washington’s Growth in Faculty Teaching Study (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2013).
4. Ambrose et al., How Learning Works, 14–15.
5. Concept mapping and mind mapping are ways to illustrate connections between ideas. Much of the value comes during the process of trying to identify and create meaningful relationships between vocabulary, concepts, and ideas, rather than from the finished product. Nonetheless, instructors and students alike can find value in explaining and reflecting on the final result. Concept maps can be used for brainstorming or for synthesizing (e.g., at the end of a unit). Try it: Some free online tools include CmapTools, Coggle, MindMup and bubbl.us. Read more: Chris Clark, “Best tools and practices for concept mapping,” NSpired2, May 10, 2011, http://ltlatnd.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/best-tools-and-practices-for-concept-mapping/; Gladys O. Esiobu and Kola Soyibo, “Effects of Concept and Vee Mappings under Three Learning Modes on Students’ Cognitive Achievement in Ecology and Genetics,” Journal of Research in Science Teaching 32, no. 9 (1995): 971–995, doi:10.1002/tea.3660320908.
6. Digital storytelling revolves “around the idea of combining the art of telling stories with a variety of multimedia, including graphics, audio, video, and Web publishing… As with traditional storytelling, most digital stories focus on a specific topic and contain a particular point of view.” They “can vary in length, but most of the stories used in education typically last between 2 and 10 minutes,” according to Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling, the University of Houston’s comprehensive guide and collection of examples and resources.
7. Low-stakes writing assignments, such as “exit tickets” and free writes are typically ungraded and sometimes anonymous, and are often used as formative assessment. Effective, short writing assignments can occur either inside or outside of class. “Exit tickets” are typically given at the end of class, with a single, short-answer question (e.g., What concept from today’s class is still unclear? What success did you have today? Describe one relationship between idea X and idea Y.). Upon departure, students submit their answer on an index card or online. In-class free writes (sometimes called “minute papers”) give students time to organize their thoughts and develop an argument or hypothesis regarding a novel phenomenon or problem. Assignments written outside of class include the paragraphs assigned by Senior Lecturer Mary Pat Wenderoth and described in a video produced by the Office of the Provost’s 2y2d Initiative. These in-class and out-of-class exercises can provide useful data that prompts extension and application of course content or helps instructors prepare for discussion. Minute papers are described in Thomas A. Angelo and K. Patricia Cross, Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers, 2nd ed. (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1993), 148–53, http://www.ncicdp.org/documents/Assessment%20Strategies.pdf (excerpt).
8. Learning Management Systems (LMSs) are online integrated software packages—such as Canvas, Moodle, or Blackboard—that enable instructors to manage a course, deliver materials and resources, and promote student interaction. An LMS supports online discussion, quizzing, submission of assignments, sharing of files, and assessment and grading. Canvas is the preferred full-function LMS at the UW. Catalyst continues to be available; however, it will not be developed further by UW-IT and lacks many of the integrated features of Canvas.
9. Social media—such as blogs, Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook—allow instructors and students to share and comment on relevant articles, resources, and events outside the classroom. Each tool has different strengths and each type of forum different norms. However, all can be useful for sharing written work, commentary, links, and media. When successfully incorporated into a course, social networking tools can help students become better consumers and curators of media, refine their writing skills, connect with public figures and events, and engage networks of people who are working to learn more about the very questions that a course is addressing. Social media offer students the opportunity to shift from being consumers of information to active participants in broader, public conversations about course topics. Read more: Rey Junco, Greg Heiberger, and Eric Loken, “The Effect of Twitter on College Student Engagement and Grades,” Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 27, no. 2 (2011): 119–132, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2010.00387.x.
10. Google Docs allow people to easily share and collaborate on documents online, saving the trouble of emailing attachments back and forth. Furthermore, individuals can create documents, including presentations and spreadsheets, directly within Google Docs, without having to upload and download files across computers. These documents can be edited by multiple contributors in real time. All UW faculty and students have access to Google Docs using their UW NetID.
11. Ambrose et al., How Learning Works, 45; Bransford, Brown, and Cocking, How People Learn, 31; Mark Windschitl, “Rigor and Equity by Design,” in AERA Handbook on Research in Teaching, Drew Gitomer and Courtney Bell, eds. (in press).
12. Harold I. Modell, “How to Help Students Understand Physiology? Emphasize General Models,” Advances in Physiology Education 23, no. 1 (2000): 101–107, http://advan.physiology.org/content/23/1/101.reprint.
13. Joyce W. Gikandi, Donna Morrow, and Niki E. Davis, “Online Formative Assessment in Higher Education: A Review of the Literature,” Computers & Education 57, no. 4 (2011): 2333–2351, doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2011.06.004.
14. “Clickers,” or audience response devices, are small keypads that allow students to instantly “vote” for an answer to a posted question (UW clicker information and specifications). The instructor’s computer receives and collates the submissions, and the instructor can then post the responses publicly (e.g., on a bar chart). Some instructors have students purchase clickers along with textbooks at the start of a course, while others use inexpensive or free computer and smartphone apps such as Poll Everywhere and Socrative. Read more: David C. Haak, Janneke Hille Ris Lambers, Emile Pitre, and Scott Freeman, “Increased Structure and Active Learning Reduce the Achievement Gap in Introductory Biology,” Science 332, no. 6034 (2011): 1213–1216, doi: 10.1126/science.1204820.
15. Gikandi, Morrow, and Davis, “Online Formative Assessment,” 2338.
16. Priya Sharma and Michael Hannafin, “Scaffolding Critical Thinking in an Online Course: An Exploratory Study,” Journal of Educational Computing Research 31, no. 2 (2004): 181–208, doi: 10.2190/TMC3-RXPE-75MY-31YG.
17. Zehra Akyol and D. Randy Garrison, “Assessing Metacognition in an Online Community of Inquiry,” Internet and Higher Education 14, no. 3 (July 2011): 183–190,http://campestre.phipages.com/storage/.instance_12129/assessment_metacognition_in_an_online_community.pdf.
18. William B. Wood, “Innovations in Teaching Undergraduate Biology and Why We Need Them,” Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology 25 (2009): 93–112, doi: 10.1146/annurev.cellbio.24.110707.175306. LEADING CHANGE IN PUBLIC HIGHER EDUCATION: A PROVOST REPORT SERIES 17 ©2013 University of Washington. All rights reserved.
19. Portfolios (including ePortfolios) are cumulative end-of-course or end-of-degree collections that demonstrate mastery. They consist of a variety of student work, typically called “artifacts,” organized with justifications and reflective commentary. Portfolios vary in format; some are paper, some are electronic documents, and some are multimedia. Read more: Darren Cambridge, E-Portfolios for Lifelong Learning and Assessment (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2010). Learn more: Why Use ePortfolio, Boston University’s comprehensive guide and collection of examples and resources.
20. Ambrose et al., How Learning Works, 127; Alexander Romiszowski, “The Development of Physical Skills: Instruction in the Psychomotor Domain,” Instructional-Design Theories and Models: a New Paradigm of Instructional Theory, Volume II, ed. Charles M. Reigeluth (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999): 457–481.
21. Roumen Vesselinov and John Grego, Duolingo Effectiveness Study: Final Report (Duolingo.com, December 2012).
22. Sarah Michaels, Catherine O’Connor, and Lauren B. Resnick, “Deliberative Discourse Idealized and Realized: Accountable Talk in the Classroom and in Civic Life,” Studies in Philosophy and Education 27, no. 4 (2008), 283–297, doi: 10.1007/s11217-007-9071-1.
23. Windschitl, “Rigor and Equity by Design.” See also Gikandi, Morrow, and Davis, “Online Formative Assessment.”
24. Ambrose et al., How Learning Works, 137; Bransford, Brown, and Cocking, How People Learn, 139.
25. John Hattie and Helen Timperley, “The Power of Feedback,” Review of Educational Research 77 no. 1 (2007): 81–112, doi: 10.3102/003465430298487.
26. Gikandi, Morrow, and Davis, “Online formative assessment,” 2338.
27. Rubrics are scoring tools that clearly communicate to students how their work will be evaluated and what constitutes different levels of quality. Using a rubric makes grading easier for the instructor, as well as more consistent. Learn more: “Using Rubrics,” a review and guide by the Center for Teaching Excellence at Cornell University; and “Grading and Performance Rubrics,” a review and guide by the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University.
28. Margaret Heritage, “Formative Assessment: What do Teachers Need to Know and Do?” Phi Delta Kappan 89, no. 2 (2007): 140–145,http://easlinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/Heritage_formative_assessment.pdf; Ambrose et al., How Learning Works, 139; Windschitl, “Rigor and Equity.”
29. Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam, “Developing the Theory of Formative Assessment,” Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability 21, no. 1 (2009), 5–31, doi: 10.1007/s11092-008-9068-5.
30. Joel Michael, “Where’s the Evidence that Active Learning Works?” Advances in Physiology Education 30, no. 4 (2006): 159–167, http://
advan.physiology.org/content/30/4/159.full.
31. Team-based learning focuses on the careful design of collaborative work among student groups. It is characterized by long-term affiliations, structured processes, and well-defined roles. Learn more: The Team-based Learning Collaborative provides extensive resources,
videos, and workshops.
32. Problem-based learning and case-based teaching hinge on the nature of the task presented to students. In these constructs, instructors choose or design particular scenarios that are complex, authentic, and do not have a single, discrete solution. Originally popularized in professional schools (e.g., medicine and business), but now applied across disciplines and levels, these approaches require students to apply disciplinary knowledge, higher-order reasoning skills, and evidence in the service of argument, and usually encourage collaboration among peers. Learn more: “Problem-Based Learning,” a review by the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan. Read more: Deborah E. Allen, Richard S. Donham, and Stephen A. Bernhardt, “Problem-based learning,” New Directions for Teaching and Learning 2011, no. 128 (2011): 21–29, doi: 10.1002/tl.465; John Doran, Margaret Healy, Maeve McCutcheon, and Steve O’Callaghan, “Adapting
Case-Based Teaching to Large Class Settings: An Action Research Approach,” Accounting Education: An International Journal 20, no. 3 (2011): 245–263, doi: 10.1080/09638180.2011.583742.
33. P. K. Rangachari, “Steps to Pluripotent Learning: Provocative Teaching,” Advances in Physiology Education 35, no. 4 (2011): 323–329, http://0-advan.physiology.org.library.pcc.edu/content/35/4/323.full.pdf+html.
34. Wikis are spaces on the web where multiple contributors, such as students in a class or team, can share work, ideas, pictures, links, videos, and media. Wikis can be hosted in any number of ways (such as through social media tools such as blogs and Google Docs) other than the original platform. offers free wiki services for teachers and students. Read more: Pekka Makkonen, Kerstin Siakas and Shakespeare Vaidya, “Teaching Knowledge Management by Combining Wikis and Screen-capture Videos,” Campus-Wide Information Systems 28, no. 5 (2011): 360–366.
35. Ambrose et al., How Learning Works, 217.
Riki Thompson
Assistant Professor, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, UW Tacoma
Dr. Thompson is an assistant professor of Rhetoric and Composition in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences department at UW Tacoma. In her writing courses, she has often used technology tools such as Camtasia to grade student essays using a form of video feedback that has been dubbed ‘veedback’. Dr. Thompson and a colleague recently published an article in The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy (JITP) about their experiences with the tool, concluding that “screencast video feedback serves as a better vehicle for in-depth explanatory feedback that creates rapport and a sense of support for the writer than traditional written comments.”
The goal: “My goal is to find a way to use the more informal communication technology tools to help students understand that I am having a conversation with them about their paper, not editing it. I’m trying to create a change around how we teach writing.”
Benefits for students: “The main thing is that this audio format gets rid of the red pen in feedback. It moves to a conversational format. When I give feedback through veedback, students say, ‘I can hear you talking to me,’ and they didn’t seem to be as stressed. I knew that there was something there; that I was making a difference. It’s motivated me to use this tool for this purpose. It feels like a more intimate connection. It’s also changing the power dynamic.”
Challenges: “Flexibility and having tools that allow mobility have probably been the biggest challenges with using audio feedback tools for me. The other problem was saving files in a way that was accessible to everybody. At Tacoma, there are still a lot of students who don’t have the latest tools at home, or they’re still working on a really old system that doesn’t have new media cards.”
Advice: “Get on the radar of the technology people on campus, and find out who your peers are. Don’t expect that it’s going to take less time; there’s a learning curve and it might take more time. Be flexible and check in with the students throughout the quarter to see if it’s working and if you need to make changes. Mid-quarter assessment is vital when using new tools. You have to be willing to say, okay, we’re going back to paper (or other traditional means). Because if they’re not getting it, students fail to learn the content, and that’s not worth it.”
Links: JITP article “Talking with Students through Screencasting: Experimentations with Video Feedback to Improve Student Learning” with co-author Meredith Lee
The UW Tacoma Teaching Forum blog, created and updated by Dr. Thompson
Dr. Thompson’s faculty web site
Read the full Provost report on how UW faculty are enhancing teaching with technology.
Belinda Louie
Professor, Education, UW Tacoma
Dr. Louie, a professor in the Education department at UW Tacoma, was a 2012 UW Tacoma Tech Fellow and developed “Methods and Curricula in Literacy Instruction for English Language Learners” (TEDUC 564) into an online course. It is one of five required courses for teachers who would like to be certified in English as a Second Language in Washington state.
Access: “Online courses allow teachers flexibility and increase their access to muchneeded professional development. If they cannot come to me, I will bring the training to them.”
Efficacy of online instruction: “I see online courses as an alternate form of course delivery, neither superior nor inferior to face-to-face classes, just different.”
Benefits for students: “Teachers need the professional development; however, it is difficult for them to come to campus to take courses after a long day of work at school. Teachers in smaller districts, such as the Yakima Valley, have limited professional development opportunities.”
Advice: “Have clear goals for converting a face-to-face class to online. It takes much mental energy and hard work to launch the first online course.”
Links: One of the videos Dr. Louie uses in TEDUC 564, in which she interviews a local expert on teaching English as a second language http://vimeo.com/46115791
Read the full Provost report on how UW faculty are enhancing teaching with technology.
