Center for Teaching and Scholarly Excellence: Spring 2011

Center for Teaching and Scholarly Excellence CTSE Official CTSE Newsletter

Hitting the Mark

Spring 2011

Vol. 7, No. 2

by Jade Keena

All grading methods are not created equal Different methods of calculating grades can produce widely different results.

Hofstra accounting professors Daniel Tinkelman, Elizabeth Venuti, and Linda Schain drew that conclusion from a study comparing three methods of calculating final course grades. They looked at the grading methods most popular among professors, which are: v Total possible points: In this method, students receive a score on each assignment based on possible points. The professor calculates the student’s final grade in the course based on total number of points earned over the semester. v Weighted average: The instructor converts the score on each assignment or test into the numerical equivalent of a letter grade, from F to A, using the familiar 0 to 4.0 scale. The instructor then computes a weighted average of the various assignments and tests.

v Median letter grade: The professor uses the median of the various course grades.

Thus, if the student had three assignments, and earned a C, C+, and A, the median is a C+.

Where different assignments have different weights, an instructor using this process would adjust the process to count the assignments with higher weights more heavily.

These grading methods may seem similar, but in fact, they have the potential to produce disparate results. For example, if a student has two grades, 100 and 19, each weighted equally, her final grade for the class will depend on the grading method used by the professor. With the weighted average and median

In this issue Teaching the Unthinkable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Audio Comments on Student Essays. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 From the Director: How to Curb Cheating. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Rubrics for Better Grading. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Scholarship in Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 What’s New in Blackboard 9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Nurturing New Students? It’s Elementary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

letter grade methods, the student’s final grade would likely be a C. With the total possible points method, her final grade would likely be an F. The researchers looked at the grades of 223 students in five accounting classes.

They found that the three grading methods produced the same grade only 43 percent of the time. The research also revealed that while no method was always the most or least generous, the total possible points method made it hardest for students to pass. continued on page 2

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All Grading Methods Are Not Created Equal Why is there such a disparity among the methods that professors use to determine course grades? Professor Venuti explained that the inconsistency might be due to professors’ own educations. Most professors need a terminal degree in their field in order to teach at a university, but they do not need a degree in education.

Without being taught how to grade students, many professors rely on instinct or guesswork or their own experiences as students when it comes to the methods they should use.

continued from page 1

telling you how to do anything,” says Professor Tinkelman. “We don’t have the guts for that.” The purpose of the research, presented at a CTSE event this past fall, is mostly intended to make professors aware that this disparity exists.

“We want to sensitize people,” Professor Venuti explained.

Additionally, professors often take more subjective measures into consideration.

All professors use students’ assignment grades to determine their final course grades, but many also take into account other factors such as the work of comparable students, work ethic and participation, and improvement over time.

There are some possible ways to lessen these differences, suggested Professor Linda Schain.

Professors could make 50 the minimum possible score instead of zero, in order to make up for the large gap between an F and a D. Dropping the students’ lowest grade can also help in some instances.

Another possible cause of this disparity is the grading system itself. For instance, on a 100-point scale, the letter grades of A, B, C, and D exist from 100 to 65, but an F is anything from zero to 64. “It would seem to me that the student who gets a 50 knows a lot more than the student who gets a 15,” legal studies in business professor Susan Martin noted.

The most important step in addressing grading issues, the researchers say, is communication between professors and students.

Because grading methods vary so widely, professors must make their own methods clear if students are to understand exactly what is expected of them.

Professors’ perceptions of grades matter as well. While one professor may consider a C a good grade, another may see it as the bare minimum. Also, professors seem to disagree about when and how to assign pluses and minuses to letter grades. Issues like this make it even more difficult for professors to remain consistent with one another when it comes to grading students.

“We want to do the right thing,” Professor Tinkelman said. “We also may not like fighting with students all the time.”

Jade Keena is a Hofstra junior majoring in creative writing and public relations.

While no grading method is always most or least generous, one does make it harder for students to pass.

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Photos by Ashley Kooblall

The authors of the research admit that there is no perfect solution. “We’re not

Accounting professors Elizabeth Venuti, Linda Schain, and Daniel Tinkelman explore the idiosyncrasies of different grading systems.

Teaching the Unthinkable

She cited T.S. Eliot: “Human beings can only bear so much reality.”

Dr. Longmire said students tend to hear about such painful realities only in satirical contexts.

“The denial of these issues is constant in our culture of distraction,” Dr. Longmire added.

“But there are brave people addressing these issues, and we need to learn about some of the solutions as well as the causes of these complex problems.”

Kari Jensen, another panelist and assistant professor in the Global Studies and Geography Department, teaches classes that focus on social and cultural issues in developing countries. She encourages students to choose an aspect of an important issue, such as child labor, to study in depth; this allows Dr. Jensen to see where each student’s interest lies. Students write reflection pieces in which they envision alternatives for changing these realities.

Her goal is to “create a space in which students can share their feelings and thoughts and hear conflicting views.”

Students need to be aware of the realities people face around the world, and that there are things that can be done to solve problems.

However, it is important to convey that there is no such thing as a quick fix, she said.

Lyndi Hewitt, assistant professor of sociology, said, “there’s a delicate balance between shocking students and easing them in.”

Dr. Hewitt has found that students appreciated having a reading about a horrific topic before discussing it in class, because it allowed them to prepare themselves for the discussion to come.

It helps students to see that their professor is sensitive to the difficulty of facing the topic.

“Having emotional difficulty encountering it is OK,” she said.

when

However, she added, “We need to be careful about working toward that feel good moment. If students aren’t a little bit uncomfortable, I’m not doing my job well.”

Greg Maney, associate professor in the Sociology Department, has come across students who have experienced these harsh realities first-hand, as victims, witnesses, or perpetrators. In some instances, he recommended that students seek PTSD counseling referrals via Dr. John Guthman, director of Hofstra’s Student Counseling Services.

Dr. Maney offered four strategies for teaching the unthinkable: The Thin Edge of the Wedge – Professors encourage students to think about how a behavior that is often considered to be deviant may be consistent with practices that are widely considered to be normal.

“For instance, in examining human trafficking, we discuss how the practice involves objectification, commodification, and exploitation. I then ask students to identify other instances of objectification, commodification, and exploitation. We often come to the disturbing realization that these underlying processes are widespread and common in the world today. Historically, slavery has ended when other forms of production become more profitable. With innovations in transportation and communication, slavery is now less expensive and more profitable, hence its re-emergence. Rather than being deviant, human trafficking is a logical manifestation of existing class, gender, and ethnic regimes.”

The Boomerang Technique – Instructors may start by applying theoretical and methodological frameworks to analyze a case of the unthinkable involving social groups with whom most students in a class do not identify. Instructors then apply the same frameworks to understanding other cases where students instead identify deeply with one or more of the social groups being studied. The technique encourages students to take a step back and see similarities across cases – to recognize ways that groups

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Photo by Ashley Kooblall

“It’s hard to walk in a classroom and know that I have to share with my students challenging realities such as sex trafficking, child soldiers, and the trafficking of human organs,” Linda Longmire of the Global Studies and Geography Department told colleagues at a CTSE-sponsored panel in November.

by Ashley Kooblall

Sociology professor Greg Maney shares some approaches for exposing students to such brutal realities as sex trafficking and child soldiers.

with which they identify either contribute to or benefit from the unthinkable.

Harnessing Hegemony – This strategy involves appropriating a familiar assumption that is widely taken for granted and using it to highlight similarities between the behaviors of the powerful and the less powerful. For instance, after acknowledging the assumption that terror is something that is socially undesirable, students and the instructor can carefully define the concept of terror and then examine rigorous empirical studies that measure acts of terror committed by both state security forces and non-state actors. Usually the ensuing discussion highlights tit-for-tat dynamics of violent contention, where unthinkable acts by one actor encourage unthinkable acts by his or her opponent.

There But For Grace … Go I – Here, the professor encourages students to “put ourselves in the position of the perpetrator” to realize the important role of social inequalities in explaining deviant behaviors among those in disadvantaged groups.

Dr. Mahesh Chandra, associate professor of information technology and quantitative methods, responded by saying we don’t have to be Bill Gates or Mother Teresa to make a difference in the lives of others; we are all “statistically significant.”

Ashley Kooblall is a print journalism major at Hofstra.

Audio Comments on Student Writing

Despite such a significant investment of time and effort, written commentary often confounds student efforts to revise their essays. Some comments invite an overly broad range of interpretation: one check mark here, two squiggly lines there. Other comments create a palimpsest: whole sentences from the original text are rewritten, and paragraph-length statements crowd the margins.

Faced with this dilemma, I decided to try responding to student essays with recorded audio comments. This practice isn’t new.

Composition researchers such as Susan Sipple and Jeffrey Sommers, among others, have written favorably of audio comments for many years. On their website, “A Heterotopic Space,” the authors argue that the audio comment exists in a space between the student/teacher conference and the written comment: “The divergences and spontaneity of the spoken word […] allow for a richness of response that writing, due to its more formal, structured nature, might never address.”

I agree with the spirit of Sipple and Sommers’ argument, but I had two

reservations. First, until recently, the technology seemed too cumbersome for efficient use. Second, I often ask students to work with my written commentary in a class activity, during which they summarize my responses and note how (or if) they might use the response in a revision. In order to do a similar activity with audio responses, each student would need to be able to listen to my comments in class.

I met with Faculty Computing Services and discussed my interest in, and reservations about, audio commentary. We agreed on a solution, which involved installing the audio editing program Audacity onto my computer. The program allows users to pause, review, or delete parts of the comment, and, with the help of a plug-in, save the comment as an MP3.

This file can be e-mailed to the student or uploaded to Blackboard. Most Hofstra students have the means to play the feedback in or out of class: laptops, iPods (or any digital music player), and most cell phones will work for this purpose.

My initial experiences with recorded commentary felt awkward, but after a period of adjustment, I settled into a voice and style that felt consistent with classroom-based discourse. I asked questions, read sections of the paper out loud, and remarked on successes and occasions for revision. The audio comments averaged about 10 minutes in length, and I was able to grade approximately three papers an hour. In this way, at least, audio commentary was not radically different from the written commentary with which I was familiar.

However, as Sipple and Sommers suggest, I felt different while commenting: I was not writing on the paper; I was speaking to the student, or so it seemed. I didn’t simply praise or critique moments in the paper; I interacted with the student and the writing. In general, I’ve come to feel as if the audio comment provides students with an accessible dramatization of a reader’s reaction to their work.

Students access the audio comments on Blackboard and save the file to their laptops or digital music players. On a

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Photo by Ashley Kooblall

Faculty members spend, on average, 20 to 40 minutes writing commentary on a student essay, according to Nancy Sommers in her article titled “Responding to Student Writing,” in College Composition and Communication. Even at the low end of that range, it takes nearly 7 hours — not counting breaks and interruptions — to respond to 20 papers.

by Frank Gaughan

Writing professor Frank Gaughan finds that verbal comments on essays, recorded as MP3s, can provide more helpful feedback for some students than writing in the margins.

predetermined day, I ask them to bring this equipment to class. (I also borrow a few portable MP3 players from Faculty Computing Services so that students who do not have access to these tools can participate in the activity.)

I return hard copies of the student essays without commentary. Students then listen to the audio comments through headphones and write their own comments on their essays. Interestingly enough, these studentauthored comments tend to resemble feedback from teachers: a check mark here, a marginal note there, an end comment. The difference, of course, is that the student is the one responsible for making the marks.

If it is not practical to record comments for an entire class, Audacity may still prove useful in specific cases. Some student essays, for example, present such a range of problems that a complete written explanation would likely overwhelm the writer (and the teacher, for that matter).

Furthermore, students who struggle to produce good writing often struggle to comprehend extensive written commentary.

In these cases, the audio comment helps students identify and correct problems they might otherwise miss.

Responding to student writing is never easy. Audio commentary cannot change that fact, but it does offer new and, in many cases, better options for teaching writing and guiding revision.

Dr. Frank Gaughan is an assistant professor in the Department of Writing Studies and Composition.

From the Director Encouraging Honesty

Photo by John McKeith

­Susan Lorde

Martin

Dear Colleagues, Happy New Year!

I hope you have joined in the conversation about academic integrity and responsibility that was taking place all over campus during the fall semester. While faculty, students, administrators, and staff are discussing such things as campus-wide honor codes and penalties for cheating, we can each in our own classrooms do a great deal to create a learning atmosphere that encourages integrity and responsibility.

None of this is new to us. At the end of this column, I will list just a few of the many websites devoted to this subject. We all incorporate at least some of the ideas that appear on many of these sites. Nevertheless, by sharing our experiences and practices, we might all discover a different approach to classroom situations that we hadn’t thought of or just never tried.

I have listened to a discussion about using turnitin.com. Some faculty asserted the importance of this tool in catching

plagiarizers. Others complained that its use creates a faculty-against-student milieu in which faculty try to “catch” students, and students try to think up new ways to cheat. All finally agreed that the point to remember is that faculty and students are in this learning enterprise together. It is in students’ interest, most of whom are honest and hard-working, for faculty not to disadvantage them by allowing a few “rogue” students to succeed by cheating.

The following are some techniques I have tried or heard of others using successfully to focus on student learning and discourage cheating: 1) T ell students as precisely as possible (in class, on syllabi, in assignments, on tests) what you expect them to do and why it will help them learn.

2) Anticipate situations that might encourage cheating and, if possible, change the rules. For example: learning may be just as good if collaboration is allowed rather than prohibited; spending more class time on footnoting might make it easier for students to cite the work of others; using multiple versions of exams in crowded classrooms decreases students’ fear of just looking around the room or of being copied from.

3) C reate a series of deadlines for paper assignments so that students have to show their preparatory work as they go along and cannot wait until the last minute to research and write the entire project.

4) Have the same rules for all students. For example: rules for extended deadlines and makeup exams should be stated at the beginning of the semester and should include rules for unusual circumstances; rules should not be created ad hoc for students with the most audacity.

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5) B e vigilant about enforcing the rules for academic honesty that you have set out so that students know those rules really are important to you. For example: be a diligent proctor of exams; when returning multiple choice exams, tell students you have copies of their scantron forms so they know that changing an answer is not an option; report cheating so that a repeat offender is punished appropriately.

I hope you will use the blogs and meetings arranged by the Task Force on Academic Integrity and Responsibility to share with all of us those techniques that work best for you in your classes.

Best wishes for a successful and enjoyable spring semester.

Susan Susan Lorde Martin is director of the CTSE and the Cypres Family Distinguished Professor of Legal Studies in Business.

Helpful Resources http://academicintegrity.syr.edu/index. php?page=66 http://www.rochester.edu/college/ honesty/docs/Letter_To_My_Students. pdf http://www.sas.upenn.edu/ctl/auth/ IntegrityTeaching.htm http://etec.hawaii.edu/ proceedings/2010/Dyer.pdf http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/ cpurrin1/plagiarism/docs/McCabe_et_ al.pdf http://hebrewscripturesandmore.com/ APTS-Subpages/RES536/Documents/ SomeNotesonPlagiarismandits Prevention.pdf

Alternatives to Lecture Under the Rubric In the last couple of columns, I have dealt with issues of assessment, focusing most recently on writing effective tests. Now I’d like to argue that tests alone provide an inadequate appraisal of student achievement, typically. Not every student is a good test taker; sometimes nerves get in the way, and nervousness is the sworn enemy of human performance. But there are other reasons as well: tests often provide too lean an appraisal of what students know and can do. Can you imagine assessing a research psychologist strictly on test scores? At minimum, you’d want to see some of the psychologist’s research articles, to gain a deeper understanding of his or her ability to design and implement a research project.

In this instance, the psychologist’s work could be called performance assessment: assessing achievement by looking at actual work product (e.g., essays, book reviews, presentations, artworks, and newspaper articles, to name but a few). Performance assessments provide a snapshot of academic achievement that is in-depth and reflects students’ ability to carry out meaningful, relevant tasks.

How do we come up with tasks worth assessing? Let me put in a plug for tasks that are to some extent authentic, that is, tasks that reflect the kind of work people do in the real world, not classroom exercises far removed from context. Asking law students to write a legal brief is one example; requiring prospective teachers to write lesson plans would be another.

In each case, the assignment mirrors what professionals do once they leave the academy’s halls. Of course, not all classroom tasks need to be authentic; exercises play a useful role (e.g., scales and arpeggios when learning to play the bassoon). But too many “decontextualized” tasks can turn a class into an ivory-tower experience that leaves students lacking fundamental, real-world skills.

by BRUCE TORFF

“Why did I get a B?” The challenge comes in grading performance assessments, which are complex and messy compared to tests.

First, it’s worth pointing out the serious shortcomings of “summary grading”: when the professor reviews student work and slaps a grade on it without apparent rhyme or reason. Clearly, this does not cut the mustard; students have no idea how they were graded (and are frequently irked as a result). They gain little feedback with which to improve their work unless the professor writes comments on the hard copy, and even then it’s often unclear how those comments produced the grade.

Summary grading is egregiously subjective; the assessment could be as much about the professor’s impression of the student as the student’s work.

Assessment rubrics can counter this problem. A rubric is a scoring system with two parts: a set of dimensions (aspects of the work product to be scored), and a scale on which the dimensions are scored.

Let’s start with the dimensions. Suppose you ask students to write essays comparing and contrasting the main arguments made by the existential philosophers Soren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger. Heady stuff. Now that you have collected a stack of papers, you ask yourself: what sorts of characteristics should these essays demonstrate?

You make a list of characteristics you think ought to be assessed; these are your dimensions. See Figure 1 (page 7) for possible dimensions for our existential philosophy essays. (You may have other dimensions in mind, and that’s as it should be. If you put five professors in a room, you get six opinions.

Or more.)

As for how many dimensions to include, I’m suggesting five to 10 as a general rule of thumb. If you have too few, the assessment is too stark, and it borders on summary grading. If you have too many, assessment becomes unwieldy, and you end up overloaded and ready to drop the whole thing.

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Bruce

Torff

Keeping score Once you have dimensions in hand, it’s time to figure out how to score them. One option is to use rating scales for each of your dimensions (say, five-point scales wherein 5 = terrific and 1 = terrible).

Rating scales can differ, of course, but if you have too few numbers, it will reduce the amount of variation in the data. That’s not good, so make sure you have at least four. Also make sure you have fewer than 10; with larger numbers, scoring reliability tends to break down.

Sometimes “descriptors” are added (for example, 5 = excellent, 4 = good, 3 = average, 2 = fair, 1 = poor).

Make a scoring form to record your assessment of each student’s work (Figure 1). The form is a table with dimensions along the left side and the ratings (1 through 5, say) across the top. When you assess student work, check the box that indicates your rating for each dimension.

If you have 10 dimensions scored with five-point scales, your rubric carries a total of 50 points. Give dimensions different weights if you prize some more than others.

When you return the scoring forms along with the blue-penciled essays, each student will know what he or she did well and what could have been better. Beats summarygrading-plus-comments hands down.

But use of rating scales still leaves plenty of room for subjectivity and the measurement error that goes with it. If that’s got your knickers in a twist, try writing rubrics that have the table’s cells filled in with “indicators” – brief descriptions of what student work looks like in each cell. For example, score the first dimension of the philosophy rubric using the following indicators:

5 = complete coverage, including all key points in Kierkegaard’s work 4 = mostly complete coverage but missing one key argument in Kierkegaard’s work 3 = adequate coverage but missing two key arguments in Kierkegaard’s work

2 = unsatisfactory coverage missing three or more key arguments 1 = Kierkegaard’s work not summarized.

Once the dimensions are assessed, you may have all you need: a number of points earned to put in the grade book. If you find you need to turn the assessment of each assignment into a letter grade, so that students get better feedback about how they are doing in the class, include on your score sheet a grading scale (Figure 1, again). I prefer scales in which perfection is not required for an A, but the performance must be outstanding nonetheless; even high-achieving students need to know there’s headroom for making their work better.

Performance assessments, accompanied by well-crafted rubrics, have rich potential to enhance university-level grading.

Rethinking how you assess student learning might lead to a significant improvement in your classroom teaching, and be fun besides.

Bruce Torff is a professor of educational psychology; director of the Doctoral Program in Learning and Teaching in the School of Education, Health and Human Services; and pedagogical research consultant for the CTSE.

Figure 1. Rubric for Scoring of Existential Philosophy Essays Student’s name ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Scoring

Dimension

Comments

5 points 4 points 3 points 2 points 1 point

Coverage of key points in Kierkegaard’s work Accuracy of summary of Kierkegaard’s work Coverage of key points in Heidegger’s work Accuracy of summary of Heidegger’s work Extent of comparison of key points made by Kierkegaard and Heidegger Accuracy of comparison of key points made

by Kierkegaard and Heidegger Extent of contrasts drawn between key points made by Kierkegaard and Heidegger Accuracy of contrasts drawn between key points made by Kierkegaard and Heidegger Clarity of exposition Grammar and usage

Total: ______________ out of 50 points Grading scale: A A-

49-50 47-48

B+ B B-

45-46 43-44 41-42

C+ C C-

39-40 37-38 35-36

7

D+ D

33-34 31-32

F

0-30

18th Annual Scholarship in Teaching Program Dr. Deb Sledgianowski examined whether students were happy with discussion boards.

Dr. Daniel Sciarra compared the long-term academic success of high school students who did and did not study advanced math.

Dr. Mauro Caputi created a TV show for his First-Year Connections engineering design class.

At the 18th Annual Scholarship in Teaching Program in October, Hofstra faculty demonstrated the wide variety of projects that can be pursued with a Special Teaching Leave.

Each year, Hofstra sets aside several sabbaticals for faculty members who want to pursue projects related to teaching, from developing courses to conducting pedagogical research. Faculty members may apply every five years, and applications are accepted in the fall.

Boards but not bored Deb Sledgianowski, an assistant professor of accounting, spent her teaching leave examining the factors that affect student satisfaction with discussion boards and the perception that the technology is useful.

Dr. Sledgianowski uses discussion boards in her large classrooms to facilitate student interaction. Working in small groups on Blackboard, students respond in class to discussion questions relevant to course lectures and respond to posts from other students.

Of almost 100 students across four sections of IT 14 assessed while Dr. Sledgianowski was a member of the Information

Technology and Quantitative Methods Department, 72 percent were satisfied with discussion boards as a way to participate in class. Students were almost evenly divided, however, as to whether they preferred traditional or online group discussions.

Dr. Sledgianowski advises faculty members who use discussion boards to be explicit about the quantity and quality of posts expected of students, and to “listen in” to group discussions to help students stay on topic.

Math and success Daniel Sciarra, a professor of counselor education, devoted his teaching leave to analyzing data on 12,000 high school seniors to discover whether non-academic factors contribute to a student’s decision to take advanced math courses in high school.

Previous research (Adelsman, 1998) found that students who study math beyond Algebra II and go on to college are more than twice as likely to earn their bachelor’s degree as students who do not take advanced math.

Dr. Sciarra found that non-academic factors do affect students’ decisions to take advanced math, particularly such factors as parental aspirations, race, and socioeconomic status. Whites are much more likely to take a course beyond Algebra II than any other racial group besides Asian. A huge factor in whether students take advanced math is whether they expect to graduate from college.

In short, although GPA and achievement scores play a major role in determining a

student’s math curriculum, non-academic factors account for more than 25 percent of the variance among students. School counselors need to understand the importance of taking advanced math, Dr. Sciarra noted. His study suggests that increasing the college expectations of students of color could greatly affect their choice of high school math courses, and ultimately, their long-term academic success.

The leap to college Mauro Caputi, associate professor of engineering, teaches the First-Year Connections cluster ENGG 15: Designing the Human-Made World. He conducts the course as though it were a live TV show, complete with video clips, Flash animation, music and voice-overs. Dr. Caputi used his teaching leave to develop a story line for the show, which aims not only to teach students design but also to help them through the difficult transition from high school to college. The story line revolves around a group of high-powered high school seniors who come to Hofstra, get blind-sided by the realities of college life, but ultimately overcome their longing for the glory days of high school to become successful first-year college students. For more about Mauro Caputi’s class, see “Nurturing First-Year Students? It’s Elementary” (page 10).

To learn more about Special Teaching Leaves and how to apply, go to: hofstra.edu/Faculty/CTSE/ctse_teaching_ leaves.html

Photos by Ashley Kooblall

Engineering professor Mauro Caputi, accounting professor Deb Sledgianowski, and education professor Daniel Sciarra share the fruits of their teaching leaves.

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What's New in Blackboard 9

by Paul Carson and Ron Chalmers

Since the 2001-02 academic year, Hofstra has used Blackboard as our learning management system. From humble beginnings, usage has grown to the point where, during the 2010-11 academic year, there will be more than 2,600 Blackboard courses made available by more than 600 Hofstra faculty members. These courses reach some 80 percent of Hofstra students.

Over the 2010-11 winter break, Hofstra converted to the latest version of Blackboard – Blackboard 9. This new version builds on Blackboard 8, our current version, while also providing additional features that faculty members have been asking for.

Blackboard 9 has a new, different look.

Tools for instructors are in different places and are easier to use. During the spring 2011 semester, Faculty Computing Services is conducting Blackboard 9 training, both online and face to face. You can sign up for a training workshop through the Hofstra portal at my.hofstra.edu/ Faculty/main/FCS/FCS_bb9_training.jsp.

Here are some things you should know about Blackboard 9: 1. EDITING A COURSE: The control panel has been redesigned in Blackboard 9.

While there still is a control panel, basic course editing takes place by having the EDIT MODE ON. With the EDIT MODE ON, faculty can modify course content and assessments. EDIT MODE OFF shows you the student view of the course.

The EDIT MODE ON/OFF can be found in the upper right corner of the screen.

2. DRAG AND DROP: Blackboard 9 provides a drag and drop capability. You can re-order content, announcements, assignments, navigation items – just about anything, in fact – by dragging and dropping. This makes it a lot easier for you to try different ways of re-ordering items so that students can find what they need quickly and efficiently.

Ron Chalmers and Paul Carson from Faculty Computing Services explain some of the cool new features in Blackboard 9.

3. COOL NEW FEATURES: Blackboard 9 provides new features for engaging students. One of these features, MASHUPS, provides the capability to search for and add Flickr photos, YouTube videos, and Slide Share presentations right into your course.

4. SORTING IN THE GRADE CENTER: In Blackboard 9, all the columns in the grade center can be sorted. For example, you can sort an assignment by grade and send an email to those students who have not submitted it or send a congratulatory e-mail to students who submitted and did well.

5. MODIFYING ITEMS: Many items in Blackboard 9 are controlled by the new double-down – “Action” – arrows. To modify an item, click the double-down arrow next to it, and select the action you want from the list that appears.

6. NEW LINKS ON THE LEFT-SIDE MENU: To add new content areas and other items to the left-side menu, make sure the EDIT MODE is ON and then look for the plus (+) sign above the leftside menu. Click the plus (+) sign to add content areas and other items to the navigation menu.

7. HIDE AND SHOW THE LEFT-SIDE MENU: With the EDIT MODE either ON 9

or OFF and the menu showing, look for the “<” symbol at the right edge of the menu. Clicking “<” will hide the menu.

If the menu is hidden, look for the “>” symbol at the left edge of the page.

Clicking “>” will restore the menu.

8. NEW CONTROL PANEL: The new control panel is always visible below the left-side navigation menu. Each of the choices on the control panel will open a submenu. The choices on the submenu are links to tools that will help you manage your course.

If you have been using Blackboard in your courses, consider using some of the additional features you might not have tried to increase student engagement.

If you have not yet used Blackboard in your courses, perhaps now, when we are offering Blackboard 9 faculty workshops, is the time to investigate and see if it can facilitate teaching and improve learning in your courses.

As always, Faculty Computing Services is ready to help. Call us at 516-463-6894 or e-mail us at fcshelp@hofstra.edu.

Paul Carson is instructional designer, and Ronald Chalmers is manager of instructional design, for Faculty Computing Services.

Classroom Lessons by Andrea S. Libresco Nurturing First-Year Students?

It’s Elementary.

Creating a safe space

Andrea S.

Libresco

Classroom Lessons highlights examples of excellent teaching by our Hofstra colleagues. If you have a colleague whom you would like to volunteer for observation (or if you would like to volunteer yourself), please contact Dr. Libresco at Andrea.S.Libresco@hofstra.edu.

When Professor Mauro Caputi invited me to observe his engineering class, I was a bit confused. As I clicked on the links he had sent me, it appeared that the class was run as a series of television programs and held in a TV studio.

Dr. Caputi’s approach to helping students transition successfully to college reminded me of the best elementary teachers I have seen. Excellent teachers (elementary through college) work hard from Day 1 to: know their students; make it safe for students to participate; demystify the class procedures; create a feeling of class community; appeal to a variety of learners; anticipate and address any fears or questions students may have; and scaffold the academic skills students need to succeed in their new environment.

As for knowing his students, I certainly did not have high expectations for the first day.

Imagine my surprise, not to mention the students’, when he called on most of his 56 students by name! He had been studying their pictures and names (from the Hofstra online system) in advance. Students were both impressed and flattered that their professor had taken the time to begin to get to know them. At the same time, Dr. Caputi telegraphed the message that, even in a tiered lecture hall, there would be no

hiding in this class. (Dr. Caputi also avails himself of the opportunity provided by the First-Year Connections program to take small groups of students to lunch at the University Club to get to know them better – no small feat when one has 56 students.)

Dr. Caputi asked for student input many times throughout the first class. Several times, students were asked to write information on index cards that pertained to the course (what they hoped to get out of the course, what came to their mind when they thought of “design,” “teamwork,” “communication”); Dr. Caputi then called on about 10 different students to share their responses to each question. Because there could be no wrong answers, and because Dr. Caputi conveyed genuine enthusiasm for their answers, students could contribute without fear and, having spoken in the first class, they would be more likely to do so in the future.

In addition to making the classroom a safe space for participation, Dr. Caputi used the first class session to lay out course expectations and reinforce the themes of

He certainly succeeded. More than his clever use of media, I was impressed with the many purposeful activities and organizational strategies Dr. Caputi created to help recent high school seniors make the transition to first-year college students.

Photo by Brian Ballweg, University Relations

Entering the room, I found most of the students seated, and a clock displayed on a screen, with theme music from the old show Truth or Consequences playing in the background. At the stroke of 12:50 p.m., Dr. Caputi bounded down the stairs as the host of WDSN 15 (“Channel 15 at World of Design studio”), and the media-rich class began. Dr. Caputi had invited me to his class to see how, while on a CTSE teaching leave, he had redesigned the introductory course “Designing the Human-Made World,” required for all engineering majors, into an engaging experience for first-year students.

Professor Mauro Caputi energizes an introductory engineering class.

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the course by introducing a series of overarching questions: How can informed design help me reach my design goals?

What if engineering design is omitted?

Will I do all the design work by myself or with others? How do I avoid teamwork disasters?

Welcome to Fun 15

Every point that Dr. Caputi raised in the class was done to appeal to a variety of learning modalities. As Dr. Caputi made the point that being a first-year student in college feels very different than being at the top of one’s high school, he showed excerpts from High School Musical (“Goodbye high school, hello Designing the Human-Made World”). When discussing the importance of engineering design, the students saw 30-second videos of bridges that collapsed and flying machines that couldn’t get off the ground. As an illustration of the value of teamwork, they viewed an excerpt from a Three Stooges skit, where the inability to work together to get a block of ice up flights of stairs produced predictable, yet hilarious, results.

Everything you need to know …

Dr. Caputi has developed an extensive Course Workbook (about 140 pages – “everything you’ll need to stay completely organized in class”) and Lab Manual (100

Photo by University Relations

An important part of the opening class was establishing classroom community. Dr. Caputi worked toward this goal in a variety of ways. He ventured up into the tiered seating and asked, “How’s Row 1 (2-3-4-5) doing today?” This question had the effect of making the row of students turn to each other and check in, thus giving the students in each area a sense of solidarity as a row.

Dr. Caputi also used humor to foster a sense of connection. In addition to poking fun at himself with corny jokes (that the students could groan at together), he looked for an opportunity to establish a class joke, so that everyone would become an immediate insider. When students were asked what they hoped to gain from Design 15, they had a variety of answers. Dr. Caputi asked if any students had written “fun” on their cards. He then referred to the course as “Fun 15,” and continued to do so throughout the class – the class’s first “inside joke.”

Students compete in the Grand Design Challenge to cap off their experience in the class “Designing the Human-Made World.”

pages), spelling out all the expectations for the semester. He explained how the firstyear cluster worked; the lab team procedures; grading policies; the mixture of individual and team assignments; field trips; and the “guest star appearances” (the department chair who would address which major is right for which students, a patent attorney on patent law and engineering, and a former student who works at Underwriters Lab to discuss project and design work). This level of detail and organization sent a clear message to students that the ability to plan in advance was a desirable attribute in both professor and student (as well as in engineers).

Indeed, in the next journal assignment, he asked students to map out their 24/7 time management schedule, complete with courses, homework, extracurricular activities, meals, recreation and sleep.

As attentive as Dr. Caputi is to his students’ varying academic needs, he is even more sensitive to their social-emotional needs as first-year students at a university. During the second class, he used excerpts from High School Musical 3 to acknowledge the enormous transition from high school to college. He also showed a humorous video excerpt of a protagonist in the movie, who warns high school seniors that college is nothing like high school (“No one bursts into song in college!”).

Finally, I was impressed that Dr. Caputi scaffolded the academic skills students

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need to succeed with assignments that always introduce a new skill with familiar content. For example, to teach students to consider trade-offs in the design process, Dr. Caputi used a well-known scenario from Fiddler on the Roof where Tevye must weigh his daughter’s happiness against tradition when she wants his blessing to marry the man of her choice. Students could always think back to this example for an understanding of trade-off analysis.

This may be the first column I have written where the professor’s methods may generate controversy.

I have heard colleagues recoil at devoting such a large amount of class time to developing organizational and academic coping skills.

After all, they argue, the students are not in high school anymore, and they need to become independent and function as the young adults they are. I don’t believe that Dr. Caputi would take issue with that sentiment. It’s just that Mauro Caputi, like outstanding teachers on the elementary, secondary, and college level, gives his students the tools, the confidence and the support to get them there. Whether you buy into his model of extensive use of media or not, especially for those of us who teach first-year students, there is much to learn from Mauro Caputi.

Andrea Libresco is associate professor of teaching, literacy and leadership in the School of Education, Health and Human Services.

Current CTSE Members

CTSE Staff and Contact Information

Habib Ammari, Ph.D. (Computer Science), 2009-2012

Director Susan Lorde Martin, J.D.

Pedagogical Research Consultant Bruce Torff, Ed.D.

Cypres Family Distinguished Professor of Legal Studies in Business 208 Weller Hall Phone: 516-463-5327 Fax: 516-463-6505 E-mail: Susan.L.Martin@hofstra.edu

Professor of Teaching, Literacy and Leadership 128 Hagedorn Hall Phone: 516-463-5803 Fax: 516-463-6196 E-mail: Bruce.A.Torff@hofstra.edu

Associate Director Carol Fletcher, M.A.

Program Evaluator Marc Silver, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Journalism 403 New Academic Building Phone: 516-463-6464 E-mail: Carol.T.Fletcher@hofstra.edu

Professor of Sociology 202F Davison Hall Phone: 516-463-5645 Fax: 516-463-6505 E-mail: Marc.L.Silver@hofstra.edu

Margaret Burke, M.A. (Library Operations), 2009-2012 Debra Comer, Ph.D. (Management, Entrepreneurship, and General Business), 2010-2013 Gregory DeFreitas, Ph.D. (Economics), 2009-2012 Frank Gaughan, Ph.D. (Writing Studies and Composition), 2010-2013 Victoria Geyer, M.A. (Journalism, Media Studies, and Public Relations), 2010-2013 Kari Jensen, Ph.D. (Global Studies and Geography), 2010-2013 Elena Jurasaite-Harbison, Ph.D. (Teaching, Literacy and Leadership), 2009-2012 Nancy Kaplan, Ph.D. (Radio, TV, Film), 2009-2012 Andrea Libresco, Ed.D. (Teaching, Literacy and Leadership), 2011 Linda Longmire, Ph.D. (Global Studies and Geography), 2009-2012 David Powell, Ph.D. (Romance Languages and Literatures), 2009-2012 Ronald Sarno, Ph.D. (Biology), 2009-2012 Andrew Spieler, Ph.D. (Finance), 2009-2012 Daniel Tinkelman, Ph.D. (Accounting, Taxation and Legal Studies in Business), 2008-2011 Kathleen Wallace, Ph.D. (Philosophy), 2010-2013 Boonghee Yoo, Ph.D. (Marketing and International Business), 2010-2013

Senior Assistant Jeanne Racioppi, B.A. 200 West Library Wing Phone: 516-463-6221 Fax: 516-463-6505 E-mail: Jeanne.Racioppi@hofstra.edu

English Editing Consultant Carol Porr, M.A. Adjunct Instructor of English Assistant Director, Composition Program 208 Calkins Hall Phone: 516-463-5252 Fax: 516-463-6505 E-mail: Carol.J.Porr@hofstra.edu

Public Speaking Consultant Cindy Rosenthal, Ph.D. Associate Professor and Teaching Fellow, School for University Studies 107 Roosevelt Hall Phone: 516-463-4966 Fax: 516-463-4822 E-mail: Cindy.D.Rosenthal@hofstra.edu

Quantitative Analysis Consultant Michael Barnes, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology 101 Hauser Hall Phone: 516-463-5179 Fax: 516-463-6505 E-mail: Michael.J.Barnes@hofstra.edu

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