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| A week later, my head is still abuzz (does anyone use that word anymore?) with all the ideas, questions, challenges, and connections that emerged from the CfLT gatherings and RAISE (Readiness and Inclusion in Science Education) workshop led by guest speaker Leonard Geddes. I’m going to use my next few columns to highlight some ideas that stood out across these discussions, in the interest of promoting further reflection and conversation and, I hope, providing food for your teaching thought as the semester begins.
On this first day of classes, the word of the day is: Expectations. As in, one key to our success as teachers and our students’ success as college-level learners is helping them to make the shift from the expectations formed by their high school experiences to the expectations they need to have of themselves (and us) in college. Two brief (and connected) examples: 1. Canvas. Our Tuesday conversation on tech in our classes started with shared reflections on the “oys and joys” of using Canvas (credit to my daughters’ long-ago preschool teachers for the framing). One realization that emerged was that our students’ high school experiences with LLMs like PowerSchool lead them to expect uniformity across our class Canvas pages, to think of classes as entirely contained on Canvas, and/or to approach classwork as a highly transactional checklist of tasks. As a group, we agreed that communicating clearly about how we each use Canvas is important but that uniformity across campus—whether on Canvas pages or in our classrooms—is antithetical to our teaching principles and our learning goals for our students. But the pressure from some students is real. This connects directly to … 2. The RAISE discussion about how to help students rethink the study strategies required to succeed on college-level exams. As Leonard Geddes explained, we need to bridge the gap between some students’ expectation that “understanding” materials means being able to recall and replicate it and most faculty’s expectation that “understanding” means being able to analyze, apply, and/or interpret the material covered in class. For example, moving from memorizing a formula to being able to break down an unfamiliar word problem and recognize which concepts and formulas are required to solve it. Realizing that these gaps exist does not mean—as Geddes emphasized—lowering our expectations or entirely changing our classes to accommodate our students’ high school styles of learning. But being aware of these gaps can help us to strategize about the explanations and conversations we need to be providing in order to help our students understand what work we’re requiring of them and learn to take ownership of their own academic growth. |