The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

My journey with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) started serendipitously. 

In January 2019, I got a ping in my inbox. A forwarded email about a "call for applications for the 2019 ISSOTL International Collaborative Writing Group". If you are unfamiliar with ISSOTL (International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning), they are an organisation that "serves faculty members, staff, and students who care about teaching and learning as serious intellectual work... and fosters scholarly work about teaching and learning" (ISSOTL, n.d.).

One of the proposed research topics caught my eye, "Investigating boundary crossings within SoTL collaborations". I took my chances and applied to be a part of an International Collaborative Writing Group. Almost two years and two manuscripts later, I am still a part of that writing group and the amazing larger community of SoTL colleagues. 

If you are wondering "What is SoTL?", I had the exact same question when I saw that email back in 2019.  

What is SoTL? 

SoTL work involves

"... the habits of asking questions, gathering evidence of all different kinds, drawing conclusions or raising new questions, and bringing what they learn through that to… students’ learning."

This video series produced by ISSOTL and Elon University’s Center for Engaged Learning can offer more insights on the field of SoTL. 

Why does SoTL matter? 

The landscape of higher education has gone through a year of unforeseen challenges and has had to respond with significant pedagogical and technological shifts. Most students and teachers are navigating this uncharted territory for the first time.

Have you had any of the following thoughts in the past few months? 

"Are the new teaching approaches effective?" 

"Are students watching the recordings and interacting with the learning materials?"

"Are you students enjoying the class?"

"How do I get students talking and keeping them engaged?" 

"How do I get students to work together online?" 

If so, you are not alone. It is natural to be curious about what your learners are going through, and whether the implemented changes are effective. And that natural curiosity will ultimately benefit your learners and their learning experiences tremendously. 

It is now a better time than ever for educators to reflect on their practices, to ask questions and seek answers that benefit students in your cohort and beyond. 

How to get started on your own SoTL journey? 

Talk to someone. It is THAT simple to get started. 

In fact most radical changes and innovative ideas often stem from a chat with a someone down the hallway from your office, or from a coffee catchup with colleagues in your "small significant network" (Roxå & Mårtensson, 2009). These are private conversations that can often inspire bold, experimental, and even rebellious ideas against the conventional regimes in teaching (Mårtensson, Roxå and Olsson, 2012). 

As ideas from these conversations transform into investigations in your own classroom and inquiries related to your own teaching approach and practices, the results of these investigations can feed into a larger discourse. There are many avenues for the sharing of your ideas and reflections, including but not limited to a blog posts, presentations at departmental meetings, seminars, teaching and learning showcases, conferences, and peer-reviewed journals. 

Simultaneously, it is also important to build up your capabilities as an educator and ensure that your teaching is informed by research. You can do so by taking advantage of the the wealth of training and development opportunities provided by your Faculty Teaching and Learning Team (TaLT) and the Monash Education Academy (MEA). Subscribing to the TaLT's newsletter and the ISSOTL's newsletter, attending conferences and doing your own reading are also good ways to stay up to date with the literature. For SoTL literature, the Teaching and Learning Inquiry is a great place to start. 

And finally, don't forget to join a network of like-minded people who are also interested in doing SoTL. You may not only find moral support, but also your next SoTL collaboration!

1. Chat with your colleagues (academics in the department and your Educational Designer)
2. Attend training and academic development opportunities to ensure your teaching is informed by research. 
3. Investigate what is going on in your own classroom. You can conduct your own reflection and gather feedback from students.  

4. Publicly share your reflection and knowledge with colleagues in and outside of your institution and discipline. 

5. Join the SoTL community.

The following visual representation of different teaching activities by Kern and colleagues may help you reflect on your teaching activities and what you can do to start engaging in SoTL.

A closing thought

Be kind to yourself. Whether you are privately reflection on your practices, chatting with a colleague about your teaching, or adopting scholarly teaching, it is worth remembering than every journey has a beginning. Nothing you do is too small or insignificant, as long as students' learning is at the core of it.

References: 

Center for Engaged Learning. (2013, September 9). Key characteristics of the scholarship of teaching and learning. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/yvDKHHyx7YY.

Francis, R. (2007). Getting Started with SoTL in Your Classroom. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 1(2), n2.

Kern, B., Mettetal, G., Dixson, M., & Morgan, R. K. (2015). The role of SoTL in the academy: Upon the 25th anniversary of Boyer’s Scholarship Reconsidered. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 1-14.

Mårtensson, K., Roxå, T., & Olsson, T. (2011). Developing a quality culture through the scholarship of teaching and learning. Higher Education Research & Development, 30(1), 51-62.

Roxå, T., & Mårtensson, K. (2009). Significant conversations and significant networks–exploring the backstage of the teaching arena. Studies in Higher Education, 34(5), 547-559.

Collaborative Reading and Video Watching with Perusall

Perusall is a free social reading platform integrated into Moodle which allows students (and teaching staff) to digitally annotate readings and videos collectively and respond to each other’s comments and questions. It creates an environment for online collaborative reading and discussion and provides auto-marking of student comments and the analytics which will enable you to see not only who has completed the set readings but also to measure their interaction with the text.

The tool was first introduced to Monash community by Prof. Eric Mazur from Harvard University in 2016. We have done several trials in the following years but they were not that successful. This is mainly due to the copyright restriction at that time that we could not upload the needed reading documents into Perusall while it only supports documents but not video before 2020. At the end of 2019, Dr. Jeff Wang from Marketing and the Educational Designer Tristan Cui came up with an innovative idea of using Perusall in their flipped unit MKF5955 - Marketing management: Theory and practice. After students watched the online lecture videos before class, they were required to comment on marketing theory applications in the lecture slides before they attended face-to-face class. This assessment was designed to replace the traditional MCQ after video watching, to keep students engaged on the social learning platform, and provide the teacher with an overview of student confusion topics. The students were quite engaged in the assessment and went to the tutorials better prepared.

And finally, some major journal publishers, such as Ebsco Host, Gale Cengage Expanded Academic, Jstor and, Taylor&Francis, approved our requests and allow us to use their articles in Perusall. In S1 2020, Dr. Glen Croy has carefully chosen articles from those publishers and organised pre-class reading assessment for his unit MGX3121 - International business strategy. Students read and commented on the selected articles actively. The reading formed the basis for students' topical discussions to start class each week, and proved very useful for their assignments.

Following the success of the two units, more Buseco teachers begin to try Perusall in S2. Dr Marjorie Jerrard from Management and Dr. Toan Le from BLT have also set up their Perusall assessments. Also, Perusall has just announced that it starts to support student annotation on videos. It will be really interesting to see how students interact while watching your lecture recordings. If you are interested in that as well, please feel free to get in touch with us and we can have a chat. Here is a shot video of Perusall journey at the University of Groningen. The feedback from the teachers and students there are also valuable to our design as well.

Reflections on Teaching From Semester 1, 2020

Semester 1 had many challenges associated with teaching and learning in the Business School (and indeed - the entire university). To say it was stressful is an understatement; in one reflection interview, it was said that it ‘shaved 5 years off’ the CEs life!

Throughout the first semester we have spoken with a number of educators and CEs and this post is a summation of many conversations that took place, in order to to help you - Semester 2 CEs - to avoid the sink-or-swim nature of Semester 1.

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Point 1 - Keep it simple

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The Take away

• Minimise the types of tasks given each week (but keep them meaningful!)
• Make sure there’s a clear path for the students to follow each [with regards to what activities to do, and in which order, including checks of understanding through quizzes, H5P, etc]

In Detail

The false-start nature to Semester 1 had a huge impact on everybody -

The students started off one way, mentally gearing up for a particular mode of delivery and experience - but then having to suddenly change tracks. As for the teaching staff - many had to come to grips with new technologies and approaches that they had not tried out yet;

Online is much more exhausting and mentally involved; Clear information is critical, and repeating and re-emphasising also ensures students understand and are directed to what they need to know or do. Of course, there will always be some students that do not read, or seemingly miss all the information.

Something that has explicitly been mentioned by students is having a good clear layout - that is consistent from week-to-week - and one that includes high quality resources.

Lectures should be broken up; ideally, in lecture packages - but, even if that’s not possible - breaking up the videos into smaller chunks makes it more manageable and ‘easier to digest’ for the students.

Make the assessment pathway clear and unambiguous. Weekly check-ins (quizzes) and then the assignments. Where traditionally you might have lots of smaller tasks littered throughout the semester - in class - it can get complicated online, and thus can cause stress and anxiety for the students.

Stick to trying only 1 new ‘big’ thing; for example, using polling, Coggle, or Kahootz. These take time to integrate (pedagogically) into the unit, and then to integrate it into the students activities in a meaningful way.

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Point 2 - Management is key

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The Take away

• Communicate, communicate, and over-communicate - but make it clear which channels and what frequency will be used (for direct communication, and responses to the students)

In Detail

Not just managing yourself, and time; but managing your own - and your students - expectations. Ensure you have introduction to the week (short video, or paragraph of text, introducing the week and anything else relevant to the students understanding of the upcoming topic); A end of week ‘recap’ in a similar vein would also assist the students to reflect and ensure they have understood all they needed to.

Make it clear to the students when you will be available for consultations, or when - and how - you plan on responding to emails.

Eg. Please ensure you have the unit title in the subject line, with a clear indication of the nature of the enquiry. I will respond to all emails on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in the afternoon. Tuesday and Thursday I will respond to Forum posts.

Alternatively, you could make it clear that the forums are the primary form of communication for the unit, and this would allow you to leverage assistance from TAs (if available to you). Whatever it is, make it known to the students, and stick with it.

One academic said to ‘undersell and over-deliver’; try not to make promises you cannot keep - or may not be able to keep. But when you can provide something ‘extra’ that really helps the student learning experience, or just makes it more interesting - students can respond positively.

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Point 3 - Think - and feel - like a student

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The Take away

• Showing empathy and understanding to the student experience makes you really consider the tasks and expectations being placed on the student
• Be sure to provide direction to support services if students are indicating they’re struggling

In Detail

In particular, those registered with DSS – they have a much harder time adapting. One academic reached out to each of these students at the beginning and prioritised consultation with them. This has been a tough year so far - and it’s only going to continue (and, perhaps, get tougher). We need to show that we care, that we can understand what students are going through - or show that we are willing to try to understand.

Some of the positive feedback that came from students indicated that they knew the CE cared and wanted - encouraged - the students to learn, and to learn more.

Especially during these times, students may voice that they’re struggling with anxieties, or other mental health issues - but most are typically not registered with DSS. Make sure you encourage the students to do so - making them aware it is there, and the support available to them through the university.

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Point 4 - Maintain connection

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The Take away

• Give students the opportunity to ‘connect’ and communicate in a variety of ways; including face to face as appropriate / possible
• Also consider other tools - particularly where they can voice frustrations or concerns

In Detail

For some academics - particularly CEs - they felt more distant from the students than ever before. However, some felt even closer. This seemed to depend on the role the CE played; in some cases, they became a primary point of contact; others leveraged their TAs for day-to-day teaching.

Many of those I spoke to mentioned having specific consultation with students for exam preparation; and these were well received by the students. It’s important that the students feel a connection to the CE - as it’s very easy to get lost, particularly in large classes - and especially during online delivery. In larger units - where possible, TAs should spend the time with smaller groups of students, to ensure they’re learning and have a point of contact with the unit.

Some form of synchronous activity really helps with this; Zoom has become a popular tool, but the Moodle Chat Activity has also proven to work well, as has Forums (where properly scaffolded and supported, students thrived in these environments!).

Also, be sure to get regular feedback from students; let them know you are learning and adapting (as much as possible) and reflect that in little changes based on the feedback given to you.

Even if you don’t take on the feedback immediately - let them know that their voice will be heard and considered for future iterations of the unit. This will make the students feel like they’re being listened to, and feel a greater sense of connection to the unit, and being agents of their own learning - and impacting future students' experience in the unit.

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Point 5 - Leverage your support networks

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The Take away

• Although mostly remote - we have many people around us in the department and faculty - be sure to leverage them for brainstorming ideas and trying to resolve issues. 
• The TaLT is also here for a chat should you ever need it

In Detail

Clint Eastwood said “A [person]s gotta know [their] limits” - know what you are capable of and work within that. Seek advice or suggestions from colleagues - or just use them as a sounding board to explain an idea. The TaLT is also here for you - even if you just want a chat, or want some thoughts on how you might improve some element of your unit.


And above all, look after yourself: It’s very easy to get caught up in the teaching - especially those of us more empathetic and really wanting to support students to succeed. You are but one person, with your own life and challenges. Be sure to try and set clear boundaries with your own time - for your sake, and your students.

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Overall many felt surprised and empowered by what they were able to achieve and accomplish throughout the semester. We hope that many of you - who may be teaching for the first time this year - will have a similar experience.


Good luck and stay safe!

Authentic assessment - Embedding the development of 21st century skills in your unit

What is authentic assessment?

You probably have heard of the term authentic assessment before. Authentic assessment has been increasingly adopted in higher education, and is certainly proving its relevance and value to both educators and learners.

But what is it, and why should we care?

Svinicki (2004) offers the following definition of authentic assignments:

" Authentic assignments should be based on 'student activities that replicate real world performances as closely as possible'."

Examples of authentic assessment may include simulation, role-playing, case study, creation of different forms of media, e-portfolio, you name it. The authenticity of an assessment task may be determined based on the nature of your discipline, and how well it is contextualised to reflect real work scenarios in a particular industry.

So, you may be thinking, 'is traditional obsolete?', and 'is it even possible to make all assessment components authentic?'. Those are valid questions, and my answers are 'no', and 'probably not'.
Firstly, traditional assessment such as multiple-choice questions and essay writing are valuable in evaluating students' understanding of foundational concepts, and their critical thinking to some extent.
Secondly, given the constraints in time and resources, it is not likely that every assessment task could be authentic. Therefore, it is important to think about assessment in your unit as a portfolio of assessment, containing an appropriate balance of both traditional and authentic assignments.

Why authentic assessment? 

Now, let's take a moment and reflect on our own work context. Despite the structure in place to establish our goals and ensure quality of our work, we are often given the autonomy to choose how we work, i.e. how we solve problems. We often need to provide direct evidence of our competence (performing a task), which is the essence of authentic assessment. 

"Student learning experience and development is beyond the grade they get at the end of the subject."  

(Frey, Schmitt & Allen, 2012) 

Similarly, authentic assessment requires students to perform tasks and provide direct evidence of their competence. Furthermore, by allowing students some freedom in how they can demonstrate their competence in terms of skills and knowledge, you are effectively developing students for their ability to think critically and solve problems creatively. Students may also be enabled to collaborate with their peers and communicate their work with an audience other than their grader. These are the 4Cs of many frameworks on 21st century skills, which is gaining attention and sparking meaningful conversations in Higher Education about how we should prepare our students. 

An example 

Damien Lambert and his team teaching Auditing and Assurance has had a busy S2. The team have implemented storyboard and role-playing performances as parts of their assessment for their unit. Students first get to work in teams to come up with their own work scenario for auditors, and subsequently create a storyboard for submission. Finally, they get to act out their scene to an audience inclusive of fellow students and assessors. 

Damien and his team are not the only ones in the Department of Accounting to adopt this form of assessment. In fact, other CEs teaching Auditing and Assurance including Ashna Prasad and Lisa Powell have also collaborated and shared knowledge to refine this form of assessment and make it work for their own cohorts. The three CEs were motivated to implement storyboard and role-play in an auditing course to develop students on creative thinking and effective communication skills. These are highly desirable attributes of auditors, and will enhance graduates' employability.

I have also had a chance to provide some feedback on the marking rubric for this assessment task and saw tremendous value added to students' learning experience. So last month, Kris Nagy and I paid a visit to one of Damien's role-play sessions. Without further ado, here are some of the highlights. Enjoy!

Students during their performances

Two assessors discussing their results

A closing thought

Finally, I'd like to leave you with an inspirational message. The future of education is you, and you have the power to change how students learn and develop.  

References

1. Svinicki, Marilla. (2005). Authentic assessment: Testing in reality. New Directions for Teaching and Learning. 2004. 23 - 29. 10.1002/tl.167.

2. Battelle for Kids. (n.d.). Retrieved November 12, 2019, from http://www.battelleforkids.org/networks/p21/frameworks-resources

3. Frey, B. B., Schmitt, V. L., & Allen, J. P. (2012). Defining authentic classroom assessment. Practical assessment, research & evaluation, 17(2).

4. Designing Authentic Assessments. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2019, from http://www.queensu.ca/teachingandlearning/modules/assessments/20_s2_12_designing_authentic_assessments.html 

Open up the classroom - A class on the Lawn

BTB3221 - Taxation law and practice is a unit that many students (especially those with international background) find difficult to study. As it is a specialist technical discipline. Our colleague Toan Le tried to make tax law easier to learn for students by introducing group learning workshop and presentations.  But in Semester 1 2018, he was allocated a seminar room that was not suitable to conduct the 3-hour long group learning workshop. The room had no window or no screen on the wall. And it was in a long rectangle shape which made it difficult for the students at the back to see the front.

We had to improvise - with the help of Deb McCormack and Tristan Cui from the TaLT, we moved the students out of the traditional classroom and we facilitated the outdoor on the lawn of the Peninsula campus.

Each week, after the 90 minutes lecturers, Toan took the 38 students out to the lawn in front of the Peninsula library and ran a 90 minutes workshop there.

How it works is that like in the traditional classroom students were broken up into groups and allocated a space to work and then to present their group work. As the students did their work Toan would facilitate their learning by going around each group and joining in the discussion, assisting them to answer their allocated tasks.

To communicate with the larger group and deal with the occasional noise, Toan carried a portable microphone that the TaLT supplied.

Feedback /outcome

The workshops proved to be successful. Students enjoyed the different learning setting! Happy students generally correlated to a better learning experience!

Perhaps because they were being outdoor and have an open space to work, students showed better engagement than when they were learning in the classroom. They did not check their mobiles or access Facebook or Twitter on laptops and they were even taking selfies for the special classes.

When it was time to present, the students listened inattentively as the picture shown. The noise was not a problem. Thanks to the portable microphone I was heard and the student presenters did not experience any issue. In fact, students overcame it by moving closer in to listen.

However, you need to consider the students with health issues for this setting. Also, the cold weather stopped us from doing that for the whole semester.

Overall, it was a successful experiment of a flexible and new approach to teaching and learning. And it is FUN!

New Features: Images, Code, Maths in Monash FLUX

New Features: Images, Code, Maths and More!

Our Monash polling system FLUX has just added some new and useful features: it is now possible to add images, code and LaTeX to Polls in FLUX!

Images in Polls

It's now possible to add images to Multiple-Choice Polls by dragging and dropping your image into the question textbox (see below).

Code in Polls

You can now write code in Multiple-Choice Polls either `in-line like this` or ```in blocks like this``` (see below).

Maths (LaTeX) in Polls

It's also now possible to render a limited subset of LaTeX in Multiple-Choice Polls by typing equations like this: $$ \sqrt(4) = 1 + 1 $$ (see below).



If you are excited about the new features like me, why don't you login FLUX now and give it a try? If you have any further questions, please contact us or you can find answers in this support document.

What's going on at STARLab?

I visited Caulfield's STARLab (Simulated Teaching and Research Laboratories) to observe the BFX5260 Treasury and Financial Markets teaching team in action, and I was in for a treat. The morning started out with great energy. Students were lining up to get their ID card scanned for attendance, and looking eager to get started. 

This semester, the BFX5260 teaching team have implemented co-teaching, the flipped-class model, trading simulation, and digital in-class assessment all at once. How do they do it? Let’s dive in. 

Co-teaching

Wayne Huf, Amale Scally, Simon Yap, Long Pham and Linh Nguyen make a great teaching team. They did a fantastic job collaborating to facilitate two classrooms simultaneously. One of the goals was to keep the two classes going at the same pace, and timing of in-class assessments to be in sync. 

In order to achieve that, responsibilities are shared among the teaching team. Everyone takes turn to instruct, facilitate activities and provide technical support to students every week.  

The co-teaching model got everyone in the team on their feet, and actively attending to every group in the class. It was great to see how much attention and support students received throughout the session. 

Flipped-classroom model

The concept of a flipped-classroom model has been around for some time, and has earned its place in the current landscape of higher education. Exploration and familiarisation with the new weekly topic happens prior to class time, and that's what has been implemented in BFX5260.

'Pre-load' materials including short videos, reading and exercise files have been provided for students to engage in independent learning every week. Moodle resources were referenced frequently during the session, which was a fantastic way to reemphasise the significance of the Moodle site as a one-stop-shop to assist students with their study. Workshop times are dedicated to hands-on activities and peer-learning where students exchange ideas and consolidate new knowledge. What's more, is that students are incentivised to complete pre-class work by a weekly test at the beginning of class. Even though questions are randomised, students were allowed to discuss and work collaboratively through this assessment.

An important note to take here is that the link between pre-class and in-class work has been well illustrated. Without having done their work prior to coming to the session, students' learning experience would not have received the same benefits and impact.

Excel classes were offered to students to help them
become more confident with using the software

Trading simulations

Throughout the session, students went through a range of simulated trading scenarios. Pre-programmed prompts were scheduled during some of the activities to increase interactiveness and sophistication of the exercise. This was a fantastic illustration of how complex and fast-paced a real trading environment could be.

The design of these workshops has thoughtfully taken into account valuable opportunities for students to apply what they have learned, and go from knowing to doing. What's more, is that students go to practice making decisions promptly and effectively, to respond to the dynamic nature of their future employment context.

To guide students through these simulations, procedural knowledge was demonstrated on Excel by the facilitator, followed by time for repetition on students' computer.

Students working on their Excel sheet

Learning is then solidified by peer learning. The trading simulations happened as individual exercises as well as group activities. Conversations were buzzing among students in the room to discuss the process and results of their practice. 

Students discussed during the exercises

By closely watching and assisting students while the simulations occurred, the facilitator was able to recognise and showcase outstanding work from individual student for the whole class. The students were also rewarded with very encouraging comments from the instructor and their peers, adding even more energy to the atmosphere. 

In-class assessment

In-class assessment was conducted at the end to solidify everything new students have learned throughout the session. To ensure the integrity and authenticity of students' attempt during the assessment, a software called AB Tutor was run in the control room. Excel files containing students' work were pulled from their Monash computer and deleted once the transfer has been completed.

The control room - where the "magic" happens

The vision

The learning activities in STARLab do not only provide an opportunity for students to gain simulated trading experience, but also expose students to ethic considerations, encourage them to be professional and understand the value of their human inputs behind machines. Click the video below to hear from the teaching team and a unit alumnus themselves. 

A closing thought

It was inspiring to see the amount of thought and effort that went into designing and delivering the unit. Perhaps it took trial-and-error to continuously improving their teaching practice, but the team have been rewarded with the level of participation and engagement among students.

We look forward to observing more active learning strategies in your classroom.