Communication

Communication is vital in any workplace, and it is especially necessary in the classroom. I aim to model good communication habits for my students in each of my courses. From a learning perspective, my goal is to clearly communicate to students what they are expected to learn, how they can learn it, and why it is important. Beyond the transfer of knowledge, I want my students to be engaged and motivated to learn. 

There are certain communication exchanges that should occur every class. The learning outcomes or goal for the lesson should be clearly stated, and I also regularly update a course calendar that shows any upcoming due dates and assessments. It is, of course, important that the ideas and concepts associated with the learning outcomes are clearly communicated in class as well. This communication with the students should ideally continue outside of class. As a teacher, I can easily show my excitement and enthusiasm for the material. I also maintain high encouragement and empathy. I am grateful of the many relationships I have developed with my students and proud of the achievements many of them went on to achieve. 

I take time in the beginning to get to know my students as best I can, and I make sure that my class is an environment where they feel they can freely share ideas. Good communication begins on the first day of class (and maybe even before then). On the first day, I aim to show students that I am open to communication and invested in their learning. Below is an example ice breaker I like to use on the first day to have students introduce themselves. Each student interviews one person (many of which use the example fun questions I provide below), then pairs of students join to make groups of four and everyone introduces their partner.

At the end of the first day of class, I often send a survey asking students three questions:

1. What is something important you learned on this first day?

2. Did your expectations of this course change?

3. What are any questions or concerns you still have about this course? Anything you want to tell me?

I use a survey to gauge how my students feel after the first day. Many students have indicated feeling less anxious about my course after the first day. Some students have said in question 1 that I seem to care about their learning and want to help them. 

I have used both Survey Monkey and Google Forms to create survey questions to check in with how the class is going and whether the students have any suggestions or frustrations they want to talk about. I also ask how useful students find the resources I create or find. Based on the feedback, I can make changes or adjustments to hopefully improve my students' experience moving forward.

I believe it is important to portray my desire to help my students achieve academic success throughout the semester and not just heavily on the first day. In the past, I was not consistent enough in telling my students how my specifications grading works. The result was that many students ended up not understanding how their overall grade was achieved. Starting in spring 2019, I emphasized the cimmunication of my grading system by discussing different aspects of the grading and ways to benefit from it throughout the first month or so of the semester. As an example, sometimes I explained what to do when they get a problem back that is not correct, and that making mistakes is part of the learning process. I relay that in order to grow, one needs to rework the problem and find out how it should have been answered. Then, after they feel more confident in their ability, they can hopefully do better the next time I offer a version of that problem in class. As another example, I remind students about how their scores on assignments combine to form their overall grade. I also speak individually with students over Discord or in office hours to check their understanding of my grading system.

Below are some comments from my calculus 1 course in spring 2019 concerning my use of specifications grading that show improvement in my communication of how it works.

I have maintained this consistent communication with students about my grading scheme and how to benefit from it. I also remind them of my availability, and any resources they should consult. To help students organize this information, I send out a weekly message over Discord that outlines this information for the upcoming week (see "Using Discord" sub-section below). 

Below are two comments from my statistics course in spring 2019. Notably, these comments are a stark difference from the first semester I taught the course in fall 2017. These recent comments clearly reflect my efforts to gain better student rapport.

Using a Calendar TeX File

To help students keep track of the due dates for all assignments, due dates, and assessments, I borrowed a calendar file template that outlines this information on each day. I update this calendar each week and post it on Canvas. I also send it out as a message over Discord to the class. Below is an example of a month from my calculus 1 course in fall 2022. Each quiz day states which learning outcome will be tested. For example, the quiz on Day 6 says S1, which is the learning outcome, “Compute a difference quotient for a given function and describe the meaning of a difference quotient.” Students are given a list of all the learning outcomes on the first day of class. I keep this list explicitly described in a separate file on Canvas as well. 

A Weekly Email Update of Points

Another way I help my students keep track of their progress in the course, I use mail merge in Word, which I link to the Excel file where I keep their grades. I am able to compose an email in Word which will then insert the corresponding field entries from my Excel file. This allows me to send out a personalized email blast to each student that displays their grade information. Unfortunately, just about all learning management systems do not allow me to share the level of grade breakdown that is needed for specifications grading. 

Here is an example of an email update of a student's progress part way through the semester.

I describe my grading scheme in much more detail in the "Academic Standards" section. The main purpose of these emails that I would like to convey at this point is that it allows me to keep students up to date on all aspects of their grade. Research shows that both quick and meaningful feedback helps to facilitate practice and is part of the learning cycle. As a result, I hand back quizzes at the next class meeting and exams within one week. 

Helping Students to Communicate

I have been working to incorporate more writing assignments into all of my courses. Explaining a concept in writing can be challenging for students, as I have continually witnessed. In calculus, I have students volunteer to show how to solve one of the homework problems on the board. This type of communication is good for students to practice, even if only a few times.  The other students also enjoy hearing their peers explain how to solve a problem.

In other courses, I give students periodic writing prompts based on the course material or the applications I covered in lecture. Within these prompts, I ask students to describe the relationship between different mathematical objects learned in class, or to describe how the course material was used in an application. I also ask students to research some of the history behind a historical figure who helped to develop the material. 

In addition to these essays, I sometimes have my students complete homework reports. Homework reports are meant as a way for my students to let me know of their progress on the homework and any difficulties they have faced. This also allows me some insight into their experience with my course. It is difficult to know why certain students are not doing well or not doing the work at all. Through these reports, I learned some of the challenges that several of my students were facing and has helped me to better understand why some students had a poor performance or missed an assignment or absent. These reports have also given students the opportunity to reflect on their learning in a non-mathematical way and whether outside factors are affecting their ability to study for my class.   

A Student Grade Book

Another way that I help my students keep track of their progress in the course is my creation of an Excel file for use by each of my students to input their own grades and see how their overall grade is determined. An example of this grade book for elementary statistics is shown below. The learning outcomes are on the left side and labeled as 1.1 – 1.4, 2.1 – 2.4, etc. The "First Time" and "Second Time" columns have to do with mastering learning outcomes, which is something I will discuss in much more detail in the "Academic Standards" section. The homework scores go in the upper center part. The tables with an orange header automatically update to show progress toward each letter grade. The table on the right visually shows the gains by using progress bars. Within each letter grade, there is one progress bar for knowledge points, and one for homework points. They must both be completely filled in order to earn the corresponding letter grade. This has helped most students keep track of their individual progress. There are typically some students who choose not to use it or who felt confused using it; these students then rely on my weekly email blast described above.

Using Discord

Discord is a messaging system (similar to Slack), where I put each class in the separate private channel. I can send messages to everyone in the channel for all with access to the channel to see, and students can post messages or questions in the channel as well. Often, other students answer a peer's question before I even see it! Below is an example of a class message I sent to my calculus 1 class in fall 2022.

I can also message students privately, which I extensively do throughout the semester. I usually focus on reaching out to students that are doing poorly on assessments and invite them to office hours so that we can go over it together. Below is an example of my communication with a student using Discord. This student did poorly on a quiz and I was inviting her to meet to go over it.

The next example is from a student in calculus 1 from fall 2022 who was working on completing the homework assignments in WebAssign due that night. From the time stamps, you can see the student is working on them Sunday afternoon (which is fine). Using Discord, it is more natural for students to send a quick question and a picture of their work or the question. I can easily address their questions in a response message, or if not, set up a meeting to talk further.

Student Ratings of Communication

Below are my overall student ratings for three questions that address communication have been consistently high, especially since I started implementing specifications grading in spring 2019. When I first implemented it in statistics, the communication was rated poorly as many students did not understand how my grading worked. Building a solid rapport with all my students has been a challenge that I have had to overcome. By building better rapport with my students, many other aspects of my courses have also improved. 

Student responses to the three questions, given below:

Q1: "The professor was receptive to student opinions (outside his/her own) throughout the course."

Q2: "The professor’s standards for evaluating my work were clearly communicated."

Q3: "The professor clearly communicated student learning outcomes or course objectives (as seen in my syllabus) that were expected of me."

The question is rated from 1 - 7, with 7 being strongly agree, 4 being neutral, and 1 being strongly disagree. 

I end this section with some comments I have received in my evaluations that concern communication with students. 

It took me several semesters for me to learn how to become more open with my students. Prior to 2019, I was not communicating much with many of my students outside of class. Ever since I began implementing specifications grading and using Discord to organize all student messages and conversations, my ability to reach out to my students has continued to improve. The positive results from my efforts is evidenced by the following comments.