Winter+2011+Meeting+Summaries

Winter 2011 Meeting Summaries
Following each gathering of the Teaching First Year Students (TFYS) Community of Practice (CoP), Educational Development will summarize highlights of our discussion. These will be captured below under each meeting date. If you have additions or amendments to the summary of each meeting, feel free to edit.

Today's closing meeting of the term ended with a discussion of chapters 6 and 7 of the book: //My Freshman Year.//
 * Wednesday March 30, 2011**


 * Tuesday, March 8, 2011**

//Chapter 4 – As Others See Us//

It was noted that the demographic profile in Southern Ontario is quite multicultural that, at times, international students blend into the general student population. The issues raised in this chapter are not as predominant here at Laurier. Terry mentioned that the Department of Physics has a program with a university in China that allows students to complete their last 2 years of study at Laurier. Criteria such as high grades and high TOEFL scores greatly reduced the academic challenges. He also noted that international students often pair with native students in labs.

Humera told us that the Diversity Office is working toward building inclusive communities for first year students (e.g. anti-depression workshops). The office is considering moving toward short workshops in class. Helen Ramirez (from Women’s Studies) sponsors refugee students to speak in her classes bringing their experiences into the course curriculum. Anne-Marie mentioned that the Study Skills and S.I. Centre runs a program called “Speak” which works with the international student and immigrant student population to improve their speaking and listening skills. The program also looks at social challenges as friendship, student-professor relationship, etc. Like the book, it seems that these groups initially find Canadians to be open and friendly without following through on their invitations or offering.

//Chapter 5 – Academically Speaking…//

As educators, some members of the group expressed some discouragement that students expressed that they learned more outside the classroom at university than inside. However, on the other hand, as students they remember taking courses at the graduate level and couldn’t remember anything from the course. Tina mentioned that student tutors in the Mathematics Assistance Centre claim that they learn a lot more as tutors than in the classroom. Although applying skills can yield greater retention, the tutors needed the basic knowledge and experience taught in a classroom in order to apply it. Ken pointed out that we teach students as if we are training future scientists but a large percentage of them are not going into research or academia. The consensus was that hopefully the students will take skills attained in their degree (e.g. problem solving, communication, technical writing, etc) into the workforce.

The scientists of the group expressed their frustration that students come from high school trained that there is always one right answer and their goal is to communicate this answer to the professor. They agreed science students don’t seem to pay attention to the process. It is difficult to get these students to think “outside the box” and try an educated guess to approach a problem. Mary pointed out that is rather interesting that instructors of “exact sciences” seem to have this concern just as much as those who teach in argumentative-based courses. Chris mentioned that he is constantly promoting critical thinking in political science classes through compare and contrast, argumentative analysis, looking for evidence for opinions, etc. He also noted that when he gave students the option of handing in drafts or only the final essay, most students chose to go through the whole process.

Terry brought up the book “The Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz and how the author mentions that too much choice tends to cripple us. An example from the book talks about jam tasting and how when only 6 jam flavours were available for tasting more people purchased a jam than when 20 flavours were available because customers were never sure they made the best choice with so many options. Perhaps this is the same with students and the number of degrees/options available. Perhaps it isn’t about choice but about making GOOD choices. Chris suggested that we need to promote the department advisors for this role. Mary mentioned that the problem high school students face coming into university is that they do not know about all the possibilities available to them for majors and programs because they usually only have a core set of courses that they are familiar with.

Anne-Marie concluded the meeting very well with her comment that students are at university now to get a job. We, as educators, need to emphasize the transferrable skills we can teach them to get the job they want. Students may feel stifled because they seem to be tested mostly on content. In order to encourage students to learn skills, consider the process and “think outside the box”, we need to separately mark the process, skill, etc.

Special thank you to Terry for facilitating this discussion!


 * Wednesday, February 9, 2011**

Today's discussion on the first three chapters of //My Freshman Year// **began with a discussion about how students spend their time** (p. 32-33) prompted by Margaret Leask. What was interesting was that students, compared to a 1970s study on students conducted by Moffat (referenced in book), is that **students today are spending approximately the same (or slightly less) amount of time preparing for class/studying**, albeit less distributed over the week and chunked more on a given day, **and more time working**. Perhaps no surprise, but the **result seems to be less student down time** and to a degree a little less social time. **And while participation in extracurricular activities (clubs, volunteering) showed no significant increases, the reasons for student involvement did seem to be different**. In this, students seemed to be more strategic in their involvement than ultruistic (alone). How would it benefit them? Enable them to get ahead? This led to an interesting discussion of the impact of the mandatory service component in high school and the expectations and values (if any) it created for service upon arrival at university? Not only that but with more opportunities out there to become involved, the question of: Does too much choice dilute audience pool for such events/opportunities? Does too much choice breed apathy? Is this the paradox of choice?

Interestingly, Michael Lisetto Smith pointed to a theme (that paralleled one in the book) based on survey feedback from students who did not attend course specific SI (supplemental instruction) that students often want to be engaged and attend these sessions, but for some reason couldn't (whatever that may be). This response was listed consistently across SI courses upwards of 50% of time, begs the question of what are students doing with their time? How are they prioritizing school, work, social activities, and **what does this mean for the classroom? Teaching? Learning?** Well, there was a sense among the group that students needed staged structure to support meeting expectations for student commitment and follow-through (i.e., to do the work), and to help students understand why and how what they're doing is relevant and has meaning, especially if they view scheduled class time as optional versus a priority (like paid work). From here**, a recognition of the importance of supporting core skill development in the first year** that can benefit students across their programs and from different disciplines (thinking of service courses) was also situated. Lastly there was discussion of where faculty can be strategic in providing students choice in completing work outside of class time such that in-class time can be used for more strategic purposes.

Aside from how students spend their time, **we discussed the issue of individualism and community, more specifically, which communities do students belong to?** How strong are these communities? How does community support students in their personal and academic growth? Terry Sturtevant postulated that the smaller size of his department and program (Physics and Computer Science) facilitated a cohort kind of effect that seemed to enable students to connect early in their program with others, establishing friendships and academic peers with whom they could come back to and work with throughout their program. A positive from his perspective. There seemed to be less opportunity for this in other larger programs and large first year courses that had a high percentage of majors from other programs in the course. Hence there was some appreciation of the difficulty students may have in establishing strong peers groups and community to sustain them in their program (and yes find housemates to sign a lease in their second year - a concern for many students it seems), especially if the culture at Laurier in the first year (most of whom are in residence) is to go home on the weekends (because they're close and they can) to be with family, to see their friends from high school, and to work at jobs they had before coming to university. This led to a discussion about encouraging community and a "commons" for students to connect via individual courses/programs to learn to think and develop ideas, yet not cross the line academically when it came to expressing their socially constructed ideas on their own in assignments that are to be completed individually.

Well, in a nutshell that seems to be it. I'm sure a few things were left out, hence I invite those who attended to amend/edit as they see fit. We meet next on **Tuesday March 8th at 11am** and will **continue the conversation with a focus on chapters 4 and 5**.


 * Tuesday, January 18th, 2011.**

In our first meeting of the term, Gail Forsyth brought up the huge number of students who were seeking out advising appointments because of the academic challenges that they are facing. She mentioned that the top three concerns that students were bringing to these appointments are:
 * 1) feeling as if university is not the right fit for them
 * 2) disappointment over fall term grades
 * 3) panic over getting into post-graduate programs

This led into a discussion about how our first year students are less prepared today because of the reduction in the number of years of highschool that they have today (four) versus ten years ago (five). Gail shared that our educational system is radically different from that of the United States, in which the first year of college is considered (to us, in Canada) as another year of highschool. To this effect, Laurier will not often recognize first year credit transfers from students coming from (some) American institutions.

We briefly discussed this article from a recent issue of the //Journal on Excellence on College Teaching// which highlights some results from a study done with first year students. While many first year professors focus on teaching vast amounts of content necessary for upper-level courses, this article reveals that first year students spend the majority of their time focusing on learning skils rather than content acquisition. This article seemed quite relevant as it touched on many of our themes from last term's CoP meetings, such as a "less is more" teaching philosophy, how to make our teaching practices and methodologies explicit to students, how to balance teaching content with learning to learn skills, and the general lack of student preparedness for the transition from highschool to university learning.

Next, we discussed how we would approach //My Freshman Year//, the book that we will be reading for the remainder of the term. The group decided that we would divide up the book over the remaining three meetings of the term as follows:
 * Wednesday, February 9th: Preface and Chapters 1-3
 * Tuesday, March 8th, Chapters 4-5
 * Wednesday, March 30th, Chapters 6-7

At each meeting, we decided that we'd each share a particular quotation or passage that resonated with us, as well as discuss how what we read in the book could be applied to our own first year classrooms here at Laurier. CoP participants who have already started reading Nathan's book described it as an easy read, best enjoyed before bed with a nice glass of red wine.

Margaret Leask shared an assignment that she is currently using in her first year Religion & Culture course to try and provide students with incentive and motivation to do their reading before coming to class. Margaret has students select a quotation from one of the course texts, identify the author, page number, quotation, and explain what the quotation says about evil (the course theme). A copy of this assignment has been uploaded to the Participant Practices page.

Tristan Long, who is teaching large first year Biology classes for the first time, shared some of the strategies that he's using in his class, many of which were informed by the CoP meetings from last term. Although it is not a common practice, Tristan is having his students keep a writing journal that will comprise part of their grade so that they have the opportunity to practice their writing skills. He has also thought extensively about how much information to put on his PowerPoint slides and what relationship these should have with his lectures. Tristan has been especially pleased with the results that he has been getting from the pre-class online quizzes that he is using in his course to help students be better prepared for class; 90% of the students have been completing the quizzes and scoring an average of 88%. We briefly discussed what midterm feedback mechanisms Tristan could use to find out how these strategies are being received by students.

Hasan Shodiev asked the group what he might do in his first year Physics labs to encourage students to think for themselves before asking questions. Some possible solutions that came up included putting students into pairs or groups to formulate or solve questions / problems and redirecting the question back to the student by asking where they thought they might be able to find the answer themselves. The former strategy can help to alleviate the "fear factor" associated with speaking in front of a large group of students, and the latter can help students to become more self-directed learners. Michael Lisetto Smith also suggested that students be encouraged to create and keep their own glossary of course-related terminology to help them to learn disciplinary jargon.

Whew! We covered a lot today. Our next meeting will be held on **Wednesday, February 9th at 11:00 a.m.** where will we discuss our experiences with the Preface and Chapters 1-3 of Rebekah Nathan's //My Freshman Year//.