Jason S. Todd is the Director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching & Faculty Development at Xavier University of Louisiana. He has also served as the Faculty Director of the Core Curriculum, Director of the Digital Humanities Program, QEP Director, and Writing Center Director. Todd completed his Ph.D. at the University of Southern Mississippi in 2006 and his undergraduate studies at Webster University in 1996. His short stories and articles have appeared in journals such as Southern Literary Journal, Southern California Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Fiction Weekly, and Xavier Review. He teaches courses on American literature, comics and graphic novels, and genre fiction. He is the instructor of the popular transdisciplinary course Dystopias, Real & Imagined. He also serves as contributing editor for the Xavier Review and a troop leader and merit badge counselor for Scouting America.
About Jason S. Todd
Jason S. Todd is the Director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching & Faculty Development at Xavier University of Louisiana. He has also served as the Faculty Director of the Core Curriculum, Director of the Digital Humanities Program, QEP Director, and Writing Center Director. Todd completed his Ph.D. at the University of Southern Mississippi in 2006 and his undergraduate studies at Webster University in 1996. His short stories and articles have appeared in journals such as Southern Literary Journal, Southern California Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Fiction Weekly, and Xavier Review. He teaches courses on American literature, comics and graphic novels, and genre fiction. He is the instructor of the popular transdisciplinary course Dystopias, Real & Imagined. He also serves as contributing editor for the Xavier Review and a troop leader and merit badge counselor for Scouting America.
The ePortfolio Process: Collection-Reflection-Interaction
The use of portfolios as an educational tool is not a new idea. Nor, in fact, is the idea of making portfolios digital. A quick literature search will find numerous articles discussing the benefits of using either traditional or digital portfolios, often focusing on the impact in discipline-specific settings. Portfolios are not only effective teaching tools, but also effective assessment tools. As the need to conduct college- or even university-wide assessment becomes more common, we've seen renewed and increased interest in digital portfolios — or ePortfolios as a way to assess a student's learning over the course of his or her academic career. ...continue reading "Empowerment through ePortfolios"
I'll be honest: I can't remember the last time I penalized a student for turning in a late assignment. I used to be very strict about this. I was taught, in fact, to be very strict about deadlines. Make your policy clear in your syllabus and never deviate from it, I was told. Don't let the students take advantage. So I used to deduct one letter grade for each day a major assignment was late. Small assignments couldn't be late at all.
At some point though, I started to wonder about the effectiveness of this approach. Mostly, I started to worry, as a writing teacher, that I was hindering good writing by making the deadline some important. A few times, because of my clearly stated policy, I had to give an A paper -- I mean a truly excellent paper -- a C, simply because it was late.
I still have a policy in my syllabus that says, clearly, that a deadline is a deadline, but I follow that up with a statement that says, "If you anticipate having difficulty meeting a deadline, please speak to me about it." Basically, to an astute reader, I'm negating my policy right there.
Ellen Boucher discusses this a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education: It's Time to Ditch Our Deadlines. Her new policy is that all assignments come with an automatic two-day grace period. If a student needs still more time, all that's required is a meeting. As a result, she says, she's seen higher quality work and less stress from her students. She makes a good argument, especially by focusing on how this helps under-prepared college students.
I should say though that so far, I've only taken this approach with big assignments -- essays and research papers. Daily homework, quizzes, and such still come with fairly rigid deadlines.
The Faculty Communities of Teaching Scholars (FaCTS) initiative is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support faculty in planning and implementing innovative curriculum and/or pedagogical projects over the course of an academic year.
We would like to take a minute to congratulate the 2016 FaCTS Fellows. The Faculty Communities of Teaching Scholars (FaCTS) initiative is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support faculty in planning and implementing innovative curriculum and/or pedagogical projects over the course of an academic year. Each year, we select a pedagogical theme that addresses the needs of the university. The theme for the coming year is Inverted Teaching, commonly referred to as "flipping the classroom". Each of the awardees below submitted a proposal to modify an existing course to incorporate the ideals of inverted teaching.
Cary Caro, Assistant Professor, Division of Business
Project title: "Inverting BSAD 2200: Balancing the Global Perspective"
Kelly Johanson, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry Project title: "CHEM 4140: Converting Metabolism into a Flipped Course"
Wyndi Ludwikowski, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology Project title: "Inverting the Psychological Statistics Classroom"
Elizabeth Manley, Associate Professor, Department of History Project title: "Teaching History in the Archives: Inverting a Research Methods Course"
Ariel Mitchell, Assistant Professor, Division of Education Project title: "Experiential Learning of Career and Lifestyle Development"
Ifeanyi Onor, Assistant Professor, Division of Clinical and Administrative Sciences Project title: "Implementation of Inverted Learning Strategy in Applied Pharmacokinetics"
Megan Osterbur, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science Project title: "Activating Black Politics using the Inverted Classroom"
Richard Peters, Assistant Professor, Division of Business Project title: "Freshening Up Freshman Seminar: Creating an Environment of Expectancy, Excitement, and Empowerment"
Cirecie West-Olatunji, Associate Professor, Division of Education Project title: "Use of Inverted Teaching to Facilitate the Integration of Social Action and Advocacy within Counselor Identity among Graduate Counseling Students"
In May, the FaCTS Fellows will participate in a week of intensive training to learn about the theories behind and the best practices for inverted teaching. Lisa Schulte-Gipson, Associate Professor of Psychology, will serve as the faculty coordinator for the 2016 cohort. During the 2016/2017 academic year, the FaCTS Fellows will offer their redesigned courses at Xavier.
In "The Eight-Minute Lecture Keeps Students Engaged," a brief but informative article on Faculty Focus, Illysa Izenberg, a lecturer for the Center for Leadership Education in the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, discusses her use of this data-driven pedagogy. According to Izenberg, there have been a number of studies supporting what we all fear: namely, that our students don't remember those brilliant oratories we deliver with passion and zeal. More useful, though, is the data suggesting that students will remember information presented in eight- to ten-minute chunks.
Such data is useful not just for the traditional classroom, but also for faculty members considering inverted or flipped teaching. Whether delivering lecture content in the class (the traditional model) or outside of it (the flipped model), faculty should contain their presentations within that eight- to ten-minute frame. Whether sitting in an uncomfortable plastic desk or running on a treadmill or vacuuming the carpet, the student is going to remember what you say after that ten-minute mark.
This idea of the eight-minute lecture can also be useful to the faculty member interested in, but also concerned about, inverted teaching. The common advice for anyone interested in this recent trend, which you can hear from Aaron Sams, one of the coiners of the term "flipped classroom," in our most recent podcast, is to start small. The eight-minute lecture might be one way to start small. Try it out in with one class session, following Izenberg's advice. If it works, try it with another session, but this time, record the eight-minute lecture ahead of time and put it online for the students to watch before coming to class.
As with any pedagogical shift, talk to your students about it ahead of time. Izenberg points out that part of the success she finds with her eight-minute lectures is that her students know what's coming -- they know they are about to receive just enough content for them to remember. Let your students know what you are doing and why you are doing it, and make sure they understand what you expect them to do in response.
