Embedded Files
Note: On this page are ideas for rethinking your pedagogy. Several of them link to additional pages so be sure you click on the title for anything that is underlined (so it links to a new page!)
Demystifying Expectations/Conventions
Some students arrive in your class with a knowledge of the “culture of college” (an understanding of how institutions work and what is expected of them) while some do not, yet students are often evaluated on how well they navigate the college environment. Smith explains that “The hidden curriculum consists of the 'norms, values, and expectations' that govern interactions among students, faculty, staff and administrators. To excel in college, at-risk students must navigate a world of new social norms – typically those of the white middle class.”
As part of combating the hidden curriculum, you can try to be more explicit about the formal and informal rules, assumptions, and values that are important for the course and your discipline. As you think through your expectations, you may locate implicit norms and ambiguous processes that need to be demystified. You may consider some of the following:
Norms for Class Participation and Instructor Interaction
Norms for Class Participation and Instructor Interaction
What rules and norms are important for class participation and interacting with you?
Is it clear to students what you value in terms of participation in class discussions?
Do you grade participation? If so, do you provide rubrics?
Do you have community guidelines for class discussion?
Do students know your expectations for how often they should check their email? Expectations for emailing you? How to refer to you?
Do you explain the purpose of office hours?
Do you clearly communicate your teaching philosophy?
Conventions in Your Discipline that Might Be Unfamiliar to Students
Conventions in Your Discipline that Might Be Unfamiliar to Students
What are the assumptions and values that are important for your field that need to be demystified and contextualized (or even challenged)?
Do you explain what counts as evidence in your field?
Do you provide instruction about style guides (e.g., APA) or resources?
Do you explain academic jargon that may be unfamiliar to students (or provide a resource that students new to your academic field can refer to)?
How to Be Successful in College
How to Be Successful in College
What should students be aware of as they navigate college?
Do you include information about campus resources (e.g., Writing Center, Disability Support Services, Library, etc.)?
Do you mention effective strategies that you used as a student/that other students use (for approaching research, getting feedback on writing, managing deadlines, etc.)?
Consider including a Campus Resources Statement (e.g., Writing Center, library services, DSS, mental health services like WellConnect, etc.)
Links to other Pedagogies
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a research-based set of principles to guide the design of learning environments that are accessible and effective for all. Now endorsed by federal policy and that of many states and districts, UDL informs all of our work in educational research and design, professional learning, workforce development, and publishing. (From CAST.org) Antioch encourages all instructors to follow UDL principles when designing course materials, planning their content, and determining how they will deliver instruction. The resources provided here help to define UDL and guide faculty toward a pedagogy that is accessible to all.
Attending to and including the diverse range of voices that your students contribute is part of facilitating an inclusive course. However, calling upon the one or few students who belong to a given group to speak on behalf of that group is tokenism. Thus, a careful balance of inviting all voices without placing the burden on the students to educate the class on a given group's experiences is imperative. This is particularly important when you are facilitating a conversation that addresses race and ethnicity.
The last few decades of scholarship on socially just classroom environments have outlined frameworks such as culturally responsive, culturally relevant, and now culturally sustaining pedagogy that can be enlisted transformatively towards creating more just and inclusive learning communities in classrooms. All can be considered “asset-based” approaches to teaching and learning in which students’ home cultures and group identities represent ethical and strategically equitable resources that should inform how classes conduct inquiry into their subject matter. In this way, cultural differences within a learning community can be acknowledged to foster diverse standpoints from which to engage course curriculum, as well as to provide languages through which stronger democratic understandings of course topics can be produced. This in turn can transform relationships between faculty and their students, between the students themselves, and ultimately work to occupy space within the institution proper on behalf of historically marginalized, silenced, or otherwise unacknowledged populations of people–thereby offering the curriculum as a place of cultural sustainability predicated upon restorative and right relationships in service of our mission.
As a disclaimer, it should be noted that while these and other affiliated frameworks for socially just educational practice have stimulated core principles and actionable methods that can be summarized and consulted (as will be summarized in brief here), these frameworks represent complex philosophical and methodological pathways into reflective pedagogical practice, are necessarily situational and context-based, and aspire to interrogate coursework on behalf of larger sociopolitical change by opposing unjust cultural norms and standards. Thus, as the noted theorist of culturally relevant pedagogy Gloria Ladson-Billings recently opined in her 2021 editorial, “Three Decades of Culturally Relevant, Responsive, & Sustaining Pedagogy: What Lies Ahead?”, if an instructor simply consults a “Culturally Responsive Checklist” to ensure that their syllabus appears to enlist requisite culturally relevant language and/or approaches to the curriculum, such hardly guarantees anything about the nature of how that course will in fact be conducted save perhaps that it will likely not be culturally relevant enough (and may be actually directly oppositional to the theory outright!). Instead, more robust change is sought across institutional (e.g., how is the school is organized and staffed, policied and budgeted, or community engaged?) , interpersonal (e.g., how do faculty and students recognize prevailing cultural biases at work in their comprehension of others?), and instructional domains (e.g., how do faculty and students move responsively to center cultural assets in the learning community through their teaching and learning together?).
Addressing Microaggressions in the Classroom
Addressing Microaggressions in the Classroom
Microaggressions are likely to occur in the classroom setting. In addition to engaging in self-reflection and education around what a microaggression may consist of, instructors would benefit from learning about the microinterventions suggested by Derald Wing Sue, Ph.D. and colleagues (2019) for addressing microaggressions. Of note, "micro" in this context means between two people, whereas macroaggressions happen on a systemic level.
Providing Feedback on Student Work
Providing Feedback on Student Work
As a social justice institution, Antioch promotes pedagogical practices that support student learning while honoring students' individual identities and learning styles. One area that highlights the importance of recognizing students' unique needs involves how we provide feedback to students. The goal is to provide constructive and compassionate feedback with the goal being affirmation of strengths and pathways for growth. Feedback on student work should be directly linked to the assignment goals and the course learning outcomes, focusing on what is observed through the students' demonstrations of learning. Formative feedback takes place during a learning activity and is for guiding students' movement toward learning goals during that course or activity. Summative feedback, on the other hand, comes at the end of a learning activity and speaks to where students end up relative to the final learning goals. However, both types of feedback play a role showing students their potential for growth.
Formative Feedback
What it looks like:
Questions
Suggestions
Examples
Links to resources
Structural guidance
Content redirection
Marginal notes
Conferencing
Referrals to support staff
Praise
Process-oriented tips
What it does:
Provides individualized guidance to promote growth
Allows space for learning and reflections
Provides concrete next steps to pursue
Creates space for revisions
Redirects content and corrects misunderstandings
Encourages dialogue
Affirms what’s going well and highlights strengths
Connects students to resources and increases student agency while IN the process
Summative Feedback
What it looks like:
Overall impression
Focused on behaviors & performance
Specific wins/areas of strength
Areas for growth
Suggestions for future assignments
Praise
Connection to learning outcomes
Links to resources for further learning
What it does:
Justifies grade or performance evaluation
Highlights student’s achievement
Identifies how the student can continue to develop skills and knowledge in this area
Provides a connection between the student’s behavior & performance and the learning goals of the class
Names concrete next steps to pursue
Communicates student’s learning to an external source
Link to summative narrative evaluation guideline infographic
Modes of Delivery
Modes of Delivery
Verbal
Video
Written
Peer-based
Audio recordings
Rubric-based
Instructor Responsibilities: Avoiding Unintentional Harm
Instructor Responsibilities: Avoiding Unintentional Harm
Centering learning as a process at the forefront of your feedback.
Recognizing your own biases; being aware of your personal assumptions about learning and language
Acknowledging the power differences between your role and your students’
Being purposeful and intentional in your timing, word choices, and focus
Knowing what barriers exist for your students within the academic context
Creating an inclusive classroom culture that makes space for student intersectionalities
BUT ALSO,
Disconnecting feedback from comments on student:
Personality
Illnesses
Disabilities
Attendance patterns
Personal conversations unconnected to the course outcomes, processes, or progress
Legalities & Compliance
Maintain confidentiality with information from in electronic Letter of Accommodation and/or that a student discloses regarding accommodations, disability, or condition; this information doesn’t belong in an evaluation!
Equity-Centered Assessment
Academics are becoming increasingly aware that traditional assessment methods are inadequate for recognizing student learning and disproportionately impact minoritized students in various ways. Creating a more inclusive pedagogy addresses some of these inequities but faculty must intentionally shift their assessment practices to give all students equal footing and opportunities to demonstrate their learning achievements. We provide here some resources as well as narratives inviting faculty to look critically at how they are assessing learning, both at the individual student level and at the program level. We ask you to share your insights and add to our resource list as this emerging field becomes the dominant conversation for faculty assessment of student learning.
Equity-Centered Assessment Practices
Every Learner Everywhere offers several resources to help faculty get started using equity-centered assessment practices.
Every Learner Everywhere offers several resources to help faculty get started using equity-centered assessment practices.
Important Guidelines
From the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment:
Check biases and ask reflective questions throughout the assessment process to address assumptions and positions of privilege.
Use multiple sources of evidence appropriate for the students being assessed and assessment effort.
Include student perspectives and take action based on perspectives.
Increase transparency in assessment results and actions taken.
Ensure collected data can be meaningfully disaggregated and interrogated.
Make evidence-based changes that address issues of equity that are context-specific.
Equity-Minded Assessment includes culturally responsive, social-justice-oriented, and critical assessment priorities:
Culturally Responsive Assessment
1. Be mindful of the student population(s) being served and involve students in the process of assessing learning;
2. Use appropriate student-focused and cultural language in learning outcomes statements to ensure students understand what is expected of them;
3. Develop and/or use assessment tools and multiple sources of evidence that are culturally responsive to current students; and
4. Intentional improvement of student learning through disaggregated data-driven change that examines structures, demonstrations of learning, and supports which may privilege some students’ learning while marginalizing others.
Socially Just Assessment
1. Includes the elements of culturally responsive assessment and refocuses them within a framework that analyzes the interplay between culture, bias, power, and oppression in the assessment process;
2. Calls for the acknowledgement that assessment takes place within various departmental and institutional cultures which impact the processes we follow;
3. Acknowledges that personal biases can influence the types of tools used, the sources of evidence to which more weight is assigned, and the interpretations drawn from assessment data along with possible solutions on how to go about improving student learning;
4. Challenges structures of privilege within institutions and society writ large to better serve and support learners.
Critical Assessment
1.Disregarding the objectivity myth and accepting that assessment is inherently subjective and guided by the biases and experiences of those conducting assessment;
2. Varying the types of evidence used to assess learning outcomes to not privilege specific ways of knowing or preferred ways to demonstrate knowledge;
3. Including the voices of students, especially those who belong to minoritized populations or those whose voices can often be left unheard, throughout the assessment process; and
4. Using assessment to advance the pursuit of equity across previously identified institutional parameters that demonstrate disparate outcomes across student populations.
From: Montenegro, E., & Jankowski, N. A. (2020, January). A new decade for assessment: Embedding equity into assessment praxis (Occasional Paper No. 42). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois and Indiana University, National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA).
Opportunities for Students to Provide Evaluative Course Input
A truly inclusive learning experience for students translates to them having a role determining what the classroom environment looks like and how it can change to better serve student needs. Some faculty invite students to co-create the course at the start, negotiating the syllabus elements and sharing responsibility for what the learning and engagement expectations will be for all stakeholders. Many faculty also solicit mid-term feedback that serves as a formative assessment of the course, providing faculty the opportunity to make adjustments midstream. These opportunities for student input indicate that programs intend to improve pedagogical practices and resources while the students are still in the course. For almost all courses, students are asked at the end of the term to provide summative feedback about the course and the instructor in service to improving pedagogy and the student experience for those who enroll in future terms.
The ways in which faculty welcome students into the construction of their courses, either at the onset or midterm reflects their interest in learning about the course climate, how accessible students find the course and its resources, and ways to serve different learning styles. Utilizing feedback tools prior to the final course evaluation is one way that faculty can move toward a more inclusive course design.
Course Evaluations
The nature of the feedback faculty members solicit from students has historically depended on the choices of their academic program. However, in 2014, Antioch's Assessment Resource Team wrote a white paper declaring principles and preferred guidelines for evaluation instruments used by university programs. These principles provide a framework for how faculty think about and use student evaluation information.
Principles for a Course Evaluation Process at Antioch
Collecting student ratings data must be characterized primarily as a way to answer a question that a faculty member or program wants to address. Thus, developing rating instruments for course evaluations should be driven by faculty who have specific research questions to address, both for a particular course and for a program’s curriculum as a whole. If the research question is “how can we improve the effectiveness of a course?” then the elements of the rating instrument must be crafted to directly query students about the way a particular course was delivered and how it met expectations. In addition, student ratings data can address questions such as “does this course help students to meet the program learning outcomes?” or “do the cumulative data generated by courses across a program indicate that the program is fulfilling its goals?” Program directors and other academic administrators might benefit from summary reports of student ratings to address questions related to quality assurance and faculty accountability. Any course evaluation process for Antioch University thus must be able to address a range of key questions, with the first priority to inform the faculty teaching the courses followed by the program whose goals the courses were designed to serve.
While flexibility and faculty/program ownership is essential, we do believe that a student ratings instrument should contain three kinds of items, irrespective of discipline or profession:
Items linked to congruence of course with program goals (thus allowing students to validate the mapping of curriculum to the program’s intended goals);
Items linked to student accomplishment of course objectives; and
Items about instructor fairness and respect for students, and the degree to which the instructor was responsive to student needs.
Methods for Midterm Evaluations
Faculty have many options when soliciting feedback from students midterm. The goal of this formative assessment process is often to learn what is going well and what students would like to see adjusted for the remainder of the term. What mechanism faculty use should ensure student confidentiality and anonymity while providing them a way to be candid about their experiences. Consider the following options for gathering this type of information from your students:
A google form with specific prompts for students to provide input, offer feedback, or ask questions (either multiple choice or open-ended)
Anonymous polling within Sakai
Simple polls with multiple-choice options created in Zoom to be gathered during a synchronous course
Invitation for students to add to a google doc that does not link their comments to their identity
Note that providing a safe way for students to honestly share their opinions is key to creating an inclusive classroom environment.
Other Feedback Opportunities
WORK IN PROGRESS
When a student has a concern in a particular course or with a particular instructor, we encourage them to approach that faculty member directly. But what does a student do when that faculty member is unresponsive? Who do students contact for concerns beyond the course that are more indicative of a problem at the program level?
As we build our university within a schools structure, it is important to be transparent with students about the resources they can access for support. These resources include:
Course liaison or program chair
Academic advisor or mentor
Academic program coordinator
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