Academic Technology Podcast - Episode 16

Kimberly: Hello and welcome to the sixteenth episode of the Academic Technology Podcast. I'm Kimberly Hayworth, the manager of Academic Computing's Consulting and Multimedia Services group.

Today's episode includes an interview with Jeremy Sabol about the Center for Teaching and Learning. Jeremy Sabol is the Academic Technology Specialist for the Center for Teaching and Learning in the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education. Hi Jeremy, thanks for coming in today! So what is the Center for Teaching and Learning?

Jeremy: The Center for Teaching and Learning is a department on campus that’s part of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and we promote and help teaching and learning on campus and that take a couple of different forms. We work with faculty, we work with graduate student in their role as teachers, generally as teaching assistants and we also work with undergraduates generally in the form of learning skills and peer tutoring. The Center for Teaching and Learning has been at Stanford for about 30 years now and the Director is Michele Marincovich.

Kimberly: Can you tell us what you do at the Center for Teaching and Learning?

Jeremy: Well I'm the Academic Technology Specialist and essentially I help faculty and graduate students think through how technology can be integrated into their teaching. And I tend to find myself not selling or pitching that folks that use technology in their teaching but more if they’ve kind of decided to do it or if their curious about it then I can be a resource for thinking how it might fit in their teaching goals or in the particular class that they're teaching. So I offer some workshops both for faculty and for TAs or teaching assistants but I also do a lot of one on one consulting where a faculty member would come and tell me about their class and I’ll make some suggestions about some things they might want to try in terms of technology. Generally they'll come with something already in mind. I'm interested in doing things with video or I'm thinking about should my students be using blogs or how would I do that. So have some sort of vague interest in some particular thing and then we'll kind of take a step back and talk about what's going on in the class and what they want to achieve and then I can make recommendations about different technologies to try.

Kimberly: Do faculty actually come to you, or do you go on site to their classes or how does that work?

Jeremy: It happens both ways. In fact a lot of the folks that I end up talking to might have come to CTL through another door, so they may have come for a small group evaluation or videotaping or they've been consulting with one of our Associate Directors and something regarding technology will come up and they'd say hey you should go talk to Jeremy and likewise someone that I'm talking to I might send them to  Marcelo or Robin or Mariatte. We do a lot of baton passing within CTL but in terms of where things happen I am happy to and I observe lots of classes so I'll go out and watch a class, sometimes faculty come to my office if we're gonna do some show and tell but in general I'll go to their office and they can tell me what they're interested in trying.

Kimberly: Hmmm and your office is located in Sweet Hall?

Jeremy: Yeah I'm up on the 4th floor of Sweet Hall. In fact the whole Center for Teaching and Learning is with the exception of the Oral Communication Program which is in Meyer Library.

Kimberly: What types of services do you offer?

Jeremy:So we offer a pretty broad range of services. They're broken down a little bit by category. So for undergraduates our primary services are learning skills and peer tutoring, so we have our academic coaching which is the learning skills part and that's Adina Glickman and she works with students one on one to do some academic coaching to improve performance and it tends to be on the upper level rather than the lower end. There’s not a lot of kind of remedial things going on, it's more like students trying to tweak their skills so that they do better. Then there's a lot of peer tutoring on campus. Also for undergraduates we offer oral communication support through our Oral Communication Tutoring program.

Kimberly: Could you talk a little bit more about the peer tutoring. Is that something that is offered by the CTL, do you coordinate that?

Jeremy: Yeah we coordinate it. It's run through CTL but it's all undergraduates tutoring undergraduates. So all the tutors are current students tutoring each other, generally more advanced students tutoring less advanced students in particular courses. So they go through a training process before they become tutors and they're paid. Some of the tutors are residential, so they live in a dorm and the tutoring happens in the dorm and others are just single subject tutors so they tutor around particular topics. That could happen anywhere.

Kimberly: Oh, that's great. And what is the selection process for selecting a peer tutor or training them?

Jeremy: There's a pretty rigorous application process actually that's happening right now, I'm not involved in it so I can't tell you too much more about it.

Kimberly: But it's good to know it's happening now.

Jeremy: Our tutor coordinator, Amy Chambers as well as our Associate Director for Academic Coaching, Adina Glickman work together to hire the students and they actually have to tutor in front of current tutors, so that's been part of the hiring process.

Kimberly: That's a good feedback system as well.

Jeremy:So that's our undergraduate services. But we also offer, the majority of our services traditionally have been for faculty and graduate students in their teaching roles and those include consultation services, and that's the core of what CTL does is one on one consultation with faculty and graduate students about their teaching and then we offer a range of evaluation services and those are voluntary and they’re generally mid quarter based and the idea is that you can have someone from CTL come and observe your class, you can have Events and Services come out and tape your class and then talk about that tape later and then the most unique for of evaluation that we offer is called the small group evaluation where a consultant will come to your class the last 20 minutes of the class. The instructor leaves and the students divide into small groups and they come to a consensus about what's working in the class, what could use improvement and often we ask the students to think about they could do to make the experience better themselves. So then after they talk about that for a few minutes, then the big group comes back so the whole class meets as a whole and basically weighs in on the things that the small groups brought up. And then so that feedback is given to the instructor in aggregate form in an actual meeting with the faculty member or the graduate student afterwards. And the neat thing about this is that it kind of gets rid of the outlier responses. One of the things that happens when you get feedback from students is that you tend to hear very loudly one or two students that love the class and one or two students who don't like the class at all and you weigh those inordinately versus the general experience of the class. And the great thing about the small group evaluations is that it tends to even out those outlying responses and you get more of an idea of what the whole class is really feeling.

Kimberly: That’s fascinating. So as far as when that happens in the quarter is that something that usually, they might do it at the beginning of the quarter or mid-quarter? And is there a follow up after the fact?

Jeremy: So generally it happens mid quarter. Some of our services we recommend to do early on in the quarter. For example, videotaping is a good thing to do early on in the first couple of weeks. There’s another thing that we offer called the Lecture Gauge which is kind of an on-line way to get feedback just about how lecturing is going so if you’re in a large class that’s another thing that that’s good to do kind of early on. But in terms of the small group evaluation, that tends to be in the middle of the quarter, so somewhere between weeks 4, 5, sometimes week 6. We’re just about finishing up all those mid-quarter evaluations now. And then the follow up would be generally the end quarter evaluation.

Kimberly: And so, the mid-term evaluation is generally in an online survey the students take?

Jeremy: The small group one is in person.  We do also offer online mid-quarter evaluations, and we have a couple of different models for what that can look like, but essentially faculty and graduate students can tailor those surveys to look however they like.  And again, that's something we recommend doing in the middle of the quarter.  And one thing to keep in mind about those is that end-quarter evaluations generally try to gauge performance, so you get numbers about how you did.  But it's often hard to get, for example, with the evaluation forms that we use here at Stanford there's not a lot of room for figuring out what you might do to improve or what in particular students thought was valuable.  And one of the neat things of what we call Formative Evaluations or Formative Assessment is you don't necessarily get a number, you don't get a, "I did 4 or I did very good-point 3.  You tend to get suggestions.  So you find out what's really working and also what you could do to tweak the class to make it work better.  So it's  -- the formative feedback looks pretty different than the end quarter evaluation, it's more on making changes in real-time and getting some of that student feedback to play a role in the class.

Kimberly: Well, that's incredibly useful.  Do you get many repeat visitors where faculty will come for an evaluation or consultation initially in one quarter and then will follow up with you to get a snapshot of how they're doing over time?

Jeremy: That generally is the way that it works is that a faculty member will try something out, they'll get video taped, or they'll come in for an SGE, and then maybe they'll meet with us for a consultation.  Or another thing that we do -- another one of our services is we have a lot of workshops.  So we have course-design workshops, we have technology workshops -- so people will also find us through workshops and then they'll learn about our other services.  That's generally how it happens, is they'll find out about one thing and then maybe they'll try out something else another quarter or another year.  But especially for SGEs, we have people who do it generally do it again cause it's really valuable feedback.  I know every time I teach I definitely get Small Group Evaluations.

Kimberly: Yeah, that does sound like an incredibly useful tool, especially if you're talking about a new thing you're trying out.  Would have been some of the things that people have tried and asked for evaluations on?

Jeremy: Most of the mid quarter evaluations that we offer are more, kind of course-based, but that's interesting because the idea of getting an evaluation is, most faculty at least see it as something that's really valuable the first time they teach a course, so, or that they dramatically modify it.  So, for example, I work with some faculty who when they incorporate a new element into the class, they will use the Lecture Gauge, so this online tool which asks students about how it's going and it's generally used to assess if the lecturing pace is going well.  “How did it go?  Am I clear enough?  Am I shooting too low or too high?"  But it can be tailored to give feedback, "what do you think of this new project?" or "Are we doing to much MatLab this quarter?" Things like that.  So faculty sometimes will use it to kind of tailor it a little bit to particularly target new things that they're doing.

Kimberly: Hmm.  So, is that a real-time thing, where the faculty would ask people participate in the class like a poll or is it generally after...?

Jeremy: It's basically a poll.  It rarely happens in class, although that's happened a few times in classrooms that are wired or there's enough folks with laptops.  But, in general it's -- the idea is, you would give a lecture, you’d ask your students to go fill out this poll in the next 24 hours, that kind of thing.  So, and then the faculty can kind of check as results come in and so it's on line.

Kimberly: That must be a great experience for the students to know that their feedback and input is actually resulting in changing the class itself.

Jeremy: Yeah, it's neat.  And it tends to actually change the end-quarter results as well.  Students generally feel that faculty or graduate students who are interested in finding out what they think and improving their teaching, they generally tend to give better evaluations at the end of the quarter. That's a nice, extra bonus and it does help the students feel like you're accessible.

Kimberly: Mmm hmm.  Do you notice an increase in engagement in those students who feel they have more say in how the course is going or where it's going?

Jeremy: Yeah, I would say, anecdotally yes.  I'm not sure we have good research to show that that's the case, but I've certainly seen that in my own courses that once the students are asked about how the course is doing, they're engaged more.  And I guess that happens on two levels: they're engaged more because they know that I'm engaged.  But it's often -- I was, I've been a student more of my life than I've been a teacher, and it's hard when you're a student to think about how the class is going from kind of a teaching perspective, or just what's happening in the class at all -- you don't tend to reflect very much on your own learning.  And one of the neat things about, especially the Small Group Evaluation, is you have to do that, and you do it actually with other people.  And so students tend to think a little more like, "Oh, I guess I don't like it when she writes on the board, but other people really do."  So, you start learning things about different learning styles, like it's an opportunity.  Sometimes the first time that a student really starts thinking about their own learning process or what's actually going on and the level of the structure of the class, which is kind of neat.

Kimberly: That is an amazing service you offer.  So, you also have a lecture series?

Jeremy: We do.  So, that's another thing that CTL offers is a series of Award-Winning Teachers on Teaching.  So this is a lecture series of faculty who have won teaching awards here at Stanford.  They generally happen at Thursdays at noon, and there's generally maybe one or two of them a quarter, so we'll have maybe 5 or 6 throughout the year.  Our last speaker was Professor Clifford Nass in Communication, gave a really great talk about incorporating projects into large, traditional classes.  Really fascinating talk.  So those generally happen Thursdays over in Mitchell Sciences building in the Hartley Conference Room.  And we also tape, so they're available in streaming form on our website at ctl.stanford.edu.

Kimberly: Okay, so you mentioned the Center for Teaching and Learning's website: ctl.stanford.edu, is that the best place to go for more information about CTL?

Jeremy: Yeah, that's a good starting place.  In particular, that's the best place to go to request any of our services.  So, for example you wanted to try out a Small Group Evaluation, or an SGE as we call them, that would be where you'd sign up for one.  That's also where you're request Events and Services to videotape your class.

Kimberly: Is that a free service?

Jeremy: It is a free service.  All of CTL services are free -- Free for folks that want to improve their teaching.

Kimberly: Well, that's a great deal.

Jeremy: Yeah, so that's a wonderful service that is not -- yeah, Events and Services does charge some money to come out and tape things, and that's free of charge and you get your own DVD of your own teaching which is sometime a little terrifying to see the first time you've done that, but it's generally worth doing.  I always found it a little terrifying to watch, but I always found I got a lot of good stuff out of it.

Kimberly: Well, just the feedback has got to be incredibly valuable to the faculty.

Jeremy: Yeah.  And there, I've got to make a pitch for our Associate Directors.  So, we have three Associate Directors at CTL who are disciplinary areas.  So, for example, Robyn Dunbar who is our Senior Associate Director for Science and Engineering, and Marcelo Clerici-Arias who is our Associate Director for Social Sciences and Technology, and Mariatte Denman who is our Associate Director for Humanities.  So, each of them consult with faculty in those disciplinary areas and they're the ones that faculty would consult with if they got a video taping.  So, in general, you ask Events and Services will come out and tape the class, you'll watch it either alone or together with one of the Associate Directors, and then have a brief meeting where you talk about what you've seen, and that's where the Associate Directors are really brilliant.  It’s…you get so much out of watching that.  Whether or not you watch the tape with them, getting feedback from the experience from them, they really have great suggestions on things that you can change and also what's working, what's -- you sometimes don't have a lot of insight into what you actually are seeing about your own teaching and they can offer some really good insight into that.  So that's very -- I found that incredibly useful.

Kimberly: Yeah, and it seems like that would be a great resource as well for, for example, your presentation skills, responding to questions, body language that you have while you're teaching.

Jeremy: Yep.  Yeah, it's good for, not only the content but yeah, presentation  as well.  And that brings me to the Oral Communication Program, which is a big part of CTL, run by our Director of Oral Communication, Doree Allen.  So Doree and her team, which is Tom Freeland and Marianne Neuwirth and Jennifer Hennings, meet with graduate students and also faculty to work on presentation skills in general.  So, they offer a number of workshops, they also offer undergraduate and graduate courses in speaking skills and presentation.  And they have some great one-on-one, like, you can go in and give a course, or a little piece of a course, or run through your PowerPoint slides, or things like that, and they're just fantastic at helping you think about how you teach and how you present.

Kimberly: Wow, there's so many services and resources available to faculty and students.  Thank you so much Jeremy for coming in today and telling us about them.

Jeremy: You are welcome.

Kimberly: Well, that's it for Academic Technology Podcast, Episode 16.  Thanks for listening.  Episode 17 will include an interview with Sik Lee Dennig about how she and her students use technology in her language courses.

Links to information discussed in this podcast and other show notes are available online at acomp.stanford.edu/cams.  Just click the Academic Technology Podcast link.  You'll also find a link to our blog if you'd like to provide feedback or suggest topics for future podcasts.

Links to information discussed in this podcast and other show notes are available online at http://acomp.stanford.edu/cams Just click the Academic Technology Podcast link. You'll also find a link to our blog if you'd like to provide feedback or suggest topics for future podcasts.