Teaching and Learning News

At the end of November, Jon Driver, Vice-President, Academic, sat down for a conversation about his academic vision for the next five years. He emphasized the importance he attaches to teaching within the university culture, addressed the subject of learning outcomes, and talked about some key priorities in the next Academic Plan. Here are excerpts from his comments.

What is the relationship between teaching and research?

There’s a real connection between teaching and research, a two-way connection. First of all, when people are active in research, that makes their teaching more interesting. But also, we can take our research methods and apply them to try and understand our teaching.

How would you compare the place of teaching vis-à-vis research at SFU?

We value teaching and research equally. We try to evaluate faculty members equally based on their teaching and their research. And so it would be nice if we had a culture in which people talked about “What have I done new in teaching” as well as “What have I done new in research.”

What can be done to make good teaching a priority?

On research we’re very good at being able to say, “Your performance is not as good as it should be”, or “your performance is satisfactory”, or “your performance is really good” … On teaching, we tend to say either “Your performance is not as good as it could be” or “It’s satisfactory.” And we stop at satisfactory … In fact, I just reviewed all of the guidelines that every department in the university has for how they evaluate their colleagues during salary review and during tenure and promotion, and what I found was that most – not all, but most – of the departments talk about satisfactory teaching, and then they talk about what you should be doing if your teaching isn’t satisfactory, but they don’t talk about how they’re going to measure outstanding teaching and how they’re going to reward outstanding teaching. And so, having reviewed all of these documents, I’m going to go back to the departments and make some suggestions about what methods they could use to identify the outstanding teachers and reward them through the salary review process or through the tenure and promotion process.

Are there other obstacles to good teaching?

The issue that would be raised by many people is the time issue. If I don’t get rewarded for being a really good teacher and I’ve got a lot of pressure to do research, why would I focus on teaching and learning? One of my answers to that is [that] I wouldn’t expect people to be doing this continually, but … that maybe every few years they would … spend a semester working primarily on some changes in their teaching or getting some new skills around teaching.

You’ve raised the issue of learning outcomes. Why do you think they are important?

I think one of the most important reasons for stating [learning] outcomes and trying to assess them is to communicate to students. Students want to know what the purpose of the course is. They want to know, “How does this course that I’m about to take fit into my overall major?” … The second thing relating to students is that you can explain to them how the evaluation that you’re using relates back to the outcomes … I think for students it’s really important that they get that sense of why they’re in a course and why they are doing the things that they’re being asked to do … The other component of learning outcomes is partly about ensuring that we’re getting the results that we think we’re getting. And one of the ways to do that is to define what you want students to get out of your course and then to try to assess that.

Some people see this process as a threat to academic freedom.

My attitude is [that learning outcomes are] up to the department. I don’t want to tell people what to do. We’re still in the process [of considering learning outcomes] here, but I think one of the outcomes of this project ought to be that assessing how well you are doing should not be a function of my office. It should be your own colleagues who [do that] in the context of external review.

But there do seem to be concerns about a loss of control.

The other problem is that we do have some external bodies that accredit our programs. So, for example, the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board accredits our Engineering programs, and they have very specific requirements around learning outcomes that are much more narrowly defined than what I would expect a department to do, and there’s a tendency for what happens in Engineering to be cited as though this is what it’s going to be like for everybody.

In May you released an Academic Plan for 2013–2018. How would you compare that plan to the previous one?

I’ve tried to put less detail into the upcoming plan and I’m trying to encourage academic departments to come up with their own [approaches for] the way they would like to handle some of the goals of the program … My aim with the Academic Plan is to have some general goals and then encourage departments to find ways that they can meet those goals.

Is the new plan a continuation of the previous plan or does it represent a shift?

I think it’s more a continuation. The plan that we’re just wrapping up now certainly had a focus on the undergraduate student experience. I think perhaps the current plan has got more of a focus on teaching as a component of the undergraduate experience. It references some projects that we have actually already started – like the support we can give to students for whom English is not the first language, that’s mentioned, the learning outcomes [initiative] is mentioned very specifically, getting to a better system for evaluating teaching is mentioned – so there is some reference to ongoing projects, and there probably is more reference generally to teaching and learning rather than the overall student experience.

How do you see teaching contributing to the undergraduate experience in the next few years?

What I would like to see in terms of support for students in the classroom is, firstly, that a more supportive environment is created by having a greater range of teaching practices, so that the way in which teaching is done matches the learning outcomes better … We know that students or people generally don’t learn by sitting in a classroom and having people tell them things. They learn by doing things … We need to worry less about the content and speaking the content of a discipline to students, and we need to worry more about them getting the major principles and the theories and the methods and somehow experiencing that.

The Experiential Education Project concluded that there is breadth but not depth of experiential learning opportunities at SFU. Do we need to do more?

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a large number of courses with a smallish component of experiential [education]. What we really need to do is select some areas of the university for a deeper experiential education, and when I say select, I don’t mean I would select them. I mean people could self-select … I think we just need to encourage departments to approach it strategically, to identify an area within their curriculum where they think a deeper experiential component would be really valuable to students and to try to build those areas first.

Related links:

Academic Plan 2013–2018

Report of the Learning Outcomes and Assessment Working Group (draft report; see link in right sidebar)

The State of Course Based Experiential Education at SFU (report)

This post is drawn from an article on the Beedie School of Business News blog. Read the full article here.

For a group of undergrads (above) in the Beedie School of Business, classroom theory has been complemented by practical experience in the world of finance, with positive results on multiple levels.

The students act as managers of the Beedie Endowment Asset Management (BEAM) fund, an investment fund launched in 2011 with $5 million in Canadian equities, fixed income, and cash. It’s the largest undergraduate-run fund in Canada and is designed to give students hands-on experience in investment research, analysis, and trading in bonds and equities markets.

During the third quarter of this year, the fund yielded a return of just over 3% and a profit of $147,000, bringing the portfolio above its starting level for the first time since it was established. Ryan McCutcheon, a student who acted as chief risk officer and diversified sector co-manager of BEAM, notes that the program’s benefits go beyond dollars and cents: “Managing the BEAM fund is an incredible hands-on experience, one which I would recommend to anyone with an interest in finance. The calibre of technical knowledge and networking experience you gain from taking part in such a real-world exercise is amazing. Participating in BEAM is far above and beyond regular school and forces you to learn many things which you would not otherwise be exposed to.”

As part of their experience, the BEAM program participants travelled to Toronto for a tour of the city’s financial sector, including visits to the head offices of several banks and hedge funds and guided tours of some of the largest trading floors in North America.

“The trip to Toronto was an amazing experience and really gave us an insight into what it would be like to pursue a career in Canada’s financial hub,” says McCutcheon. “At each visit we had industry professionals waiting to talk to us about their roles and what it was like to work for each company, which was very impressive. Just being able to network with that level of professionals and hear their insights into the markets was a major highlight of the trip.”

The BEAM program is one of many initiatives at Beedie designed to extend student learning experiences beyond the classroom.

This post is drawn from an article on the Beedie School of Business News blog. Read the full article here.

Related links:

Beedie Endowment Asset Management program >>

Beedie School of Business News blog >>

Beedie teaching website and teaching news blog >>

“I assumed university would be the best years of my life,” writes SFU student Zahra Abdulla in the most recent issue of The Peak, SFU’s student newspaper. But academic pressures – some of them self-imposed – soon left her feeling isolated and depressed, and she was forced to withdraw from her classes during her first year.

Abdulla’s case isn’t unusual. What’s somewhat unexpected, and potentially of great interest to instructors, is her account of the role experiential learning played in her recovery. She credits experiential learning, and particularly three work placements, with helping her to move beyond a narrow focus on grades and academic success. In her article, she suggests a number of ways in which experiential elements could be beneficially incorporated in the classroom:

• “Universities could implement a variety of interactive for-credit courses for their students. Course topics [could] include ‘developing compassion’ or ‘living in balance’ and could require students to volunteer in the community, interact with community leaders, and engage in community projects.”
• “Students would benefit from a more collaborative and deep learning style, rather than traditional lectures and exams that foster memorization and a passive approach to learning.”

Abdulla returned to SFU after a break for counselling and will be graduating next summer. Her article concludes on a hopeful note, both for students dealing with pressure and anxiety and for instructors wondering whether their efforts in the classroom make a difference: “Depression may never be eliminated, but meaningful learning options can help students to recognize their full potential and to enjoy their years in university.”

Read Abdulla’s full article (“The Dark Days Are Over”) in The Peak here.

Related links:

Peak article by Zahra Abdulla >>

SFU Health and Counselling Services resources for instructors concerned about their students >>

Workshops on “Dealing with Students in Distress and Distressing” >>

David Newman (left) and Roman Onufrijchuk encourage their students to try new approaches in their presentations.

Newman typically divides his tutorial students into groups of three. The groups take turns making presentations based on research questions provided by Onufrijchuk. The same questions form the basis of the course mid-term, creating an incentive for students to attend tutorials and prepare thorough responses. But Newman also informs his students that creativity will be an important element in their assessment, and many have responded with unique and memorable presentations. Some groups have employed skits complete with costumes. Other presentations have involved charades, games, and interview formats. One group created a video complete with hand-drawn illustrations to present the evolution of the earth in eight minutes.

Lindsay Pasichnyk, who took the course last fall, says that although presenting wasn’t new for her, the emphasis on creativity was.

“David really encouraged us to try new things,” she says. “Being marked on our creativity kept our minds engaged instead of falling into a routine of doing the same thing that we did last week just to get it over with.”

She feels that the emphasis enhanced her learning experience: “Because we had the opportunity to try out different presentation styles that may seem too risky to try in other classes, I gained a better understanding of how I present best and what works or doesn’t work when teaching or presenting in front of others.”

She also thinks the approach improved her knowledge retention: “If I think back, I could list things off the top of my head that I learned from that course. I certainly can’t do that for other courses.”

Caitlin Hill, a fellow student, agrees: “If groups present [content] in a unique way, then you are more likely to remember what they said or what the point was.”

Roman Onufrijchuk likes Newman’s approach because of its connection to the course content: “It’s taking the discipline seriously – not just learning about communications, but applying it.” Onufrijchuk also likes the opportunity it gives him to assign material that can’t be covered in lectures because of time constraints for discussion in a peer-learning environment.

Of course the TA still has an important role to play. Newman notes that he corrects and supplements the presentation content where necessary to ensure that students receive all essential information. However, he is pleased with the engagement they have shown and the learning that has resulted.

“Tutorials have become fun events that students look forward to,” he says.

Newman welcomes inquiries and conversations about his experience. He can be reached at dbnewman@sfu.ca.

"To a job well done": Melek Ortabasi (left) and her students toast the end of the ACLA conference at SFU.

Innovation is often a matter of combining familiar elements in new ways. This past spring Melek Ortabasi employed that method to create a course offering students a more direct exposure to the activities of a research community than undergraduates typically receive.

Ortabasi, an assistant professor in the World Literature program at SFU Surrey, had been looking for ways to broaden the academic experience of her undergraduates. When she heard that her program would be hosting the annual meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association in late March and early April 2011, she decided to incorporate the conference directly into a course on “youth as depicted in world literature.”

The course description (WL330) warned students that the class would have a “split identity,” combining literary exploration with “an opportunity to participate in the wider profession of literary scholarship” through the ACLA event. Fortunately, careful planning ensured that the two halves formed a unified whole, even if the course schedule was a bit more packed than usual.

Students began by reading the published work of the conference keynote speakers in order to develop a methodology for approaching the diverse world literature in the syllabus. Then they used their new comparative skills to examine provocatively paired texts: The Motorcycle Diaries by Che Guevara and Nihilist Girl by a nineteenth-century Russian writer, for example. The result was an applied lesson in academic discourse.

More than that, though, they took part in the conference in ways that allowed them to see how that discourse extends beyond the classroom. In particular, they helped Ortabasi organize an undergraduate seminar, reviewing abstracts and selecting papers – including two by members of the class – for presentation. Later they attended the seminar and critiqued both papers and speakers. As volunteers at the registration tables, they also acted as ambassadors for SFU’s World Literature program.

A highlight for students was the plenary discussion between David Damrosch, chair of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a heavyweight literary critic and professor at Columbia University. Expectations were high – perhaps because Ortabasi had jokingly promoted the event as a “smackdown” – and the students, packed into the first two rows of the crowded hall, eagerly followed the clash of ideas.

The conference involvement offered students an opportunity to develop specific skills – for example, the ability to write a good abstract. They also gained a deeper appreciation of what their professors do outside the classroom. Most importantly, they grew in their understanding of how scholarly ideas evolve through dialogue – and how undergraduates can and do participate in that dialogue.

Ortabasi hopes to preserve some of the experiential elements the next time she teaches the course. Of course, because the ACLA conference was a one-time event, certain aspects of the course design will need to be rethought. She’s already envisioning the possibility of having students hold their own conference. That, she notes, would give every student the opportunity to present his or her work in a public forum.

In the meantime, the student course evaluations have been highly positive. Ortabasi has an explanation.

“These are young adults,” she says. “They get excited when they’re included in something real.”

Have you designed a course that involved activities outside the lecture hall or lab? How did it go? Share your experiences and comments.

In the third part of our Back on Track series, BOT Program instructor Ruth Silverman, Learning Services Coordinator at the Student Learning Commons, suggests five strategies SFU instructors can employ to ease students’ transition from high school to SFU.

This voice, from a Back on Track Program student, is probably familiar to seasoned instructors. You might even recognize a younger version of yourself in these comments. First year students typically struggle with similar, interrelated issues including:

• Class attendance in an environment of newfound personal freedom;
• A lack of a personal relationships with instructors and classmates in large classes;
• The need to be self-motivated and self-directed in one’s work habits;
• The need to develop study strategies for managing a larger amount of content, delivered at a faster pace than in high school; and
• Misunderstandings related to academic culture and jargon, including the nature and purpose of tutorials.

With so much to learn even before engaging with course content, is it any wonder that many first year students find themselves on academic probation (OAP) after their first term and Required to Withdraw (RTW) after their second?

Not surprisingly, summer term is always the biggest intake term for BOT, accounting for 44% of intakes in 2010, 50% of which were students who had entered SFU from high school the previous September.  With the advent of Back on Track, students are no longer forced out of SFU just because they need more than 8 months to make the transition.

Although some instructors would note that it is not their responsibility to “fix” these problems for students, there are a few relatively simple things that you can do to ease students’ transition to SFU:

• Clearly communicate your expectations. Don’t leave anything to guesswork.  Some examples of clear articulation of expectations are found on the Student Learning Commons’ “New to SFU?” webpage.
  
• Avoid making assumptions about students’ prior knowledge (e.g. that the abstract is not the entire journal article, that students will know that class attendance is important even though slides are readily available online, or using jargon (GPA, TA, MLA, APA, SLC).  When in doubt, spell it out.
• Foster a sense of community in your classroom. Students want a sense of connection with each other and to their instructors but are often intimidated to seek that out.  Regularly encourage students to come and see you, even if it is just to introduce themselves.  One SFU instructor made a practice of this and had 390 students out of a class of 450 visit him by the end of the term.  Create opportunities for students to connect with each other, such as frequent “pair and share” discussions in large lectures. Encourage them to exchange contact information and form study groups.
• Provide reality checks about upcoming deadlines. Even a reminder as simple as “Your papers are due in 2 weeks.  If you haven’t started yours yet, you are now at the last minute” can make a difference.
• Help students familiarize themselves with SFU resources.  For example, add links for the Student Learning Commons, Health and Counselling Services, the Centre for Students with Disabilities, Academic Advising, and other services to your class’ WebCT page.  Show your students the SLC’s “New to SFU?” web page or ask for copies of the SLC handout, “Moving from High School to University – a road map” to distribute to your class.

These simple suggestions could make a significant improvement to our students’ learning experience. Imagine the difference we could make to our students if each member of the SFU community did his or her part in easing the transition from high school.

If the transition is tough for most students, imagine how difficult it must be for international students coping with the transition in an unfamiliar language, from a high school system that bears even less resemblance to SFU than the BC secondary system.  Stay tuned to Teaching and Learning News for an upcoming feature of our BOT series that considers the problems facing international students new to SFU.

For more information about the Back on Track program, please contact Annette Santos at avsantos@sfu.ca.

Have you had experience with the Back on Track program?  Give us your feedback in the comments below.

In the second part of our Back on Track series, David Lindskoog, a Career Advisor at Career Services, let’s us in on some of his ideas about students’ academic success and the career connection.

I can picture the scenario vividly: there I am, in my small, dimly lit office at SFU Career Services, listening carefully to a student vocalizing his or her anxieties about career direction and the paralysis of indecision, lost in an endless sea of invisible options.  The conversation is going something like this:

Student – “I don’t know what my options are.  I don’t even know what to study.

Me – It sounds like you’re feeling pretty lost.  Let me ask you something: When you first decided to come to university, where were you hoping that would take you?

Student – Well, to be honest I didn’t know.  I thought going to school would help me get a decent job, so I chose my degree based on what I thought would get me there. It turns out I didn’t do so well in my first year.”

I’ve heard this kind of story more times than I care to count.

(more…)

Student Services produced the following videos of SFU students giving advice to their fellow students on how to achieve academic success.

In this video, SFU students give tips on how to take advantage of classes for a better academic experience.

(more…)