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The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.
This is the Transform Your Teaching Podcast. The Transform Your Teaching Podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.
Ryan:Hello, and welcome to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. In today's episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles continue our series on online teaching practices and talk about ways to integrate reflection into an online course. Thanks for listening.
Jared:Yeah.
Jared:Here we go.
Rob:Let's take it. Let's do it.
Jared:I'm ready.
Rob:Part deux.
Jared:Part really kind of a part do of the previous episode talking about educator reflection and the importance of having reflective practices. And now we're gonna talk, kind of based on what we talked about previously, modeling instructor reflection for your students and then ways that students can do it in the class.
Rob:So computer based education has been doing this for a while. The army has a history of this. I recall back in the early two thousands, an opportunity to actually look at some some training by the US army that was computer based. It was called CBT.
Rob:And one of the things that was that got my attention early on was how they used quizzes. So they had these quizzes that actually led into a module.
Jared:K.
Rob:And I think this is a way that we can use self reflection inside of a course.
Jared:Okay.
Rob:So what would happen is you'd start it and it would say, we're gonna start this out with a quiz or something like that, you know, start here and you click. And then it would ask you a question like, are you ready to spend the next x minutes, number of minutes to focus in on this unit? And it was a open ended question, so you actually had to type in yes, no, or maybe something else. It didn't grade it, and so then you just hit enter and you go on to the next one. It's like, is there anything that's keeping you from focusing?
Rob:Like, have you had a bad day or something kinda like the, you know, how do you feel today? We see that nowadays. I've seen it on several different places where somebody was just like, how are you feeling today? Where you have that little smiley face and then a kind of a middle flat face
Jared:Right.
Rob:And then a frowny face.
Jared:Yeah.
Rob:So you just have to choose three. And I was like, time I did it, I was like, this is kinda dorky, you know. Then
Jared:Army being dorky.
Rob:Yeah. And so you're just like, okay. But at the same time, I'm thinking about how do I feel today? So they're causing me to reflect upon even my own mental state and whether I'm ready to learn. You know, are you prepared to learn?
Rob:And so something that that simple, I think, is something you could do easily at the start of a video. Like, we can use Kaltura. We've used it before. And for those who don't know, Kaltura is a video platform that we use here at Cedarville. I've used it in course design myself.
Rob:And I find, especially if it's like self paced, like you want somebody to go through it.
Jared:Sure.
Rob:Then having those kinds of reflective questions that you're not grading, but you're just kinda trying to get an idea. Where is the student at? That gives you all this really good data. But
Jared:I wanna ask about that though because if they say I'm not ready, what's the that will the video stop or would there be anything like that that was Yeah.
Rob:There was a follow-up. There was a follow-up to the question. If I and I did because I did that on purpose. I was like, well, no. I really don't wanna be here.
Rob:It picked up on that and it said, well, what would help you? What what would help you be ready?
Jared:Okay.
Rob:And I was like, how in the world did it? You know, this was back in early two thousand where branching wasn't really for those of you who know anything about, you know, self based corgis, decision trees, and and software was is in its infancy in terms of branching scenarios and those kinds of things.
Rob:So somebody had to spend an awful lot of time thinking through the different scenarios that could happen and then program that in to the system. Right? Sure. So I was like, wow. They they did quite a bit of work here Uh-huh.
Rob:Because I was testing it out. And it's like, so what would help you move forward? And then you had an opportunity to to give feedback. And it kinda gave you one one way or the other. One way was like, if you said, well, I I don't really know and I don't wanna do this right now or something like that.
Rob:It would pop up since that it was a negative answer and say, well, maybe you should just stop right now and and come back at another time when you're when you have time or you feel feel like you should you should take this.
Jared:So the the purpose then for them to do that is to reflect on themselves so that they're ready to learn. Yes. Interesting.
Rob:It was getting at your your motivation one to be there.
Jared:K.
Rob:And they were really pushing at that. So I thought it was a really good tool in terms of something you could use, and you could do something along those lines. You know, you could do something inside of Canvas or Schoology or Google Classroom. You can do it in a quiz, and you can just have it not graded. So they're from, you know, questions that are zero points and they're open ended essay or something like that.
Jared:Yeah.
Rob:Or you could do it with, you know, pick a drop down or something and then it branches to something else.
Jared:I definitely see the value of that.
Rob:Uh-huh.
Jared:I think it's great. But I feel like I don't see the purpose if you're like, I'm not ready to learn today. Like, can imagine doing that and we're talking about online education specifically.
Jared:So maybe this is something I should even bring up, but I can just see face to face students abusing that and saying, I'm not ready to learn, so I wanna go home.
Rob:Right. Right. And and I never used it in a face to face situation.
Jared:Yeah. It makes sense.
Rob:Although you do use those kinds of things.
Jared:Hey. How are doing?
Rob:Like, students yeah. I mean, you do that. Right? You're like Yeah. Hey, class.
Rob:How are you doing? And you're reading faces. Yep. Right? And if you see some issues, you might you might think of some way of trying to lighten the mood, get people focused in on what you're doing, or just maybe something really bad happened.
Jared:Sure.
Rob:And you're you're just putting it out there in the room. You're letting you're letting them kind of vent for a little bit, get it out of their system so that you can focus back on what it is you need to learn or you need to you need to teach them. So
Jared:I do like that idea because it's like preparing you mentally for it and making you assess your own. It's like pre learning. I've always thought of reflection as a post learning activity. The idea of pre learning reflection is interesting, but also doing it in the middle as well. Like you were talking about using Kaltura, like doing a pause the middle of the video to have them reflect, not necessarily to something that they need to grade, but asking them a question.
Jared:This goes back to uncommon sense teaching. Yeah. Giving those quote unquote brain breaks for them to stop and then, process. Right? Right.
Jared:Not only is it reflecting on their understanding, but it's also helping their brain process the information before they move on. Yeah. The value of giving that pre learning reflection allows them to assess their time and their, mental capacity at that point. Think one of the great way you can do that without having to do, something advanced like Kaltura or creating a quiz is literally just if you're using a video in a course, I like to put the length of the video in the title. Mhmm.
Jared:So they can go, oh, is thirty minutes. I I don't have thirty minutes. I'd better wait until I can I have the time set aside to do that or something like that?
Rob:Yeah. You could also you could do something small in the description if you've got it linked inside a page. You know, you could maybe use a couple of sentences to just get them to instead of just telling them what the video is about. Yeah. You can say, this video is about x.
Rob:You're gonna need about this much time. Yeah. You know, where are you today in terms of your ability to focus in on this subject Yeah. For this given time?
Jared:It's more like you may also need to have a firm understanding of the stuff from the previous module or the previous video or, something like that, where it's like, this is or this is completely new material. We haven't covered this yet. Yeah. It's gonna be a steep climb. So are you ready for it or be ready for it?
Rob:Yeah.
Jared:So, you know, we talked about pre learning kind of a mid learning. Like, we just talked about that a bit with the idea of videos and then having them reflect in the practice of it if they're aware of the content or they're, feeling ready to engage with new content while they're in the midst of it. My favorite thing is the post learning. And, I love giving students a chance to reflect.
Jared:I think there's plenty of research that shows that reflection in an online course is vital because there are certain things that your students will talk with you in a face to face course that they're not going to share or is not going to organically come up. Because you mentioned earlier, a face to face pre learning reflection activity would be asking them how they're doing. You can read their faces. You can't do that in an online course. Correct.
Jared:And sometimes you'll be a month down the road and you realize this student is completely behind or they don't have a firm understanding. And by that time it's too late. You can do that through formative assessments before they get to the summative. And I think the idea of reflection is a great formative assessment. And one of the things that I love to do when I went through Boise is they would have these reflective pieces at the end of each week.
Jared:And there was always three questions. One of them is to reflect on what they learned as far as the content goes. The one that I absolutely loved is what have you learned about yourself as a learner as a result of the content in this or the activities that you did? And then the last one is what challenges did you face? And it could be related to the one.
Jared:But then what are you going to do to improve? I absolutely love it. And I think it should be in every online course. And I push for it in every course that I build. And I just think it's an absolutely vital tool.
Jared:It allows the students to reflect to see here's what I learned. Here's where I struggled. Like maybe I'm, I need to give myself more time to read the content or I need to study more because I totally bombed the quiz this week. And then the last question is then, okay, what's a plan moving forward? Right.
Jared:And the students reflecting, but then you're getting valuable insights as an instructor and you're saying, oh wow, they really, you know, they really picked up on this content. They kinda like all of from all of the things that I've seen, I'm I'm noticing that none of my students picked up on this key aspect. I need to go back and revisit that. So you're reflecting as well by reading those, which is an indirect result of this, but it's so it's it's invaluable. And then you realize you get these maybe these pain points the students are talking about that I learned that I need to budget my time better or I need to better understand this concept.
Jared:And that gives you insights and ways that maybe you can support the students as you go through. And then, you know, the idea of, what can you do to improve? I mean, my goodness, there's a chance for you to follow-up and there's your accountability with your students as well. And to say, hey, you mentioned that you were going to have a better you were gonna budget your time better. You're actually gonna plan out your week.
Jared:How did that go? Or how is it going?
Rob:How's it going?
Jared:It's incredible. I I I'm such a big fan of it. I I I talk so highly about it as I go through. So
Rob:Yeah. And one of the one of the things I think you do is you just close that circle, and we talked about it in the episode. When we talked about self reflection practices, we talked about the plan, the implement, and and then the evaluation Yep. Cycles. And so I think that's fairly simple.
Rob:So, you know, you could you could call it pie. Right? Plan, implement, and evaluate.
Jared:Why not?
Rob:It's easy as pie. I like pie. And this exactly what the student is doing. You're getting them into that cycle. And anytime you get them into that cycle and bring them back to how are you going to do things differently?
Rob:Even if they don't even if they don't do anything differently, the fact that you got them to think about it for a instead of just saying, oh, I got my grade. I'm done. Yeah. You know, jump through that hoop. Let's go to the next one.
Rob:Yep. Because you're tying it back into it's not just you jumping through a hoop. It's actually for your good and for your benefit for you to change. If it doesn't change you, if it doesn't change your life, then I would argue it's not real education.
Jared:Dang. That's good. It's like a mic drop.
Rob:And I think that's what you were saying in in a sense because you're like you know, and I think you've got some examples you're gonna share with us too about Yeah. Where we've actually seen this
Jared:Yeah.
Rob:Happen, where you got to get this into a course.
Jared:So these are legit student reflections that we pulled. They're anonymous. We don't know who they are. We didn't write them ourselves. We didn't have chat GPT do it for us.
Jared:It's a from a core a history course that I built with, doctor Tom Mack we've had on the podcast early on. We need to have him back on because he's podcast gold, as they say. But here are the prompts that we used. Based on how well you did this week, activities, how can you improve for the next unit? So that's the kind of the assessing yourself as a learner.
Jared:Then what key information did you learn while engaging with this unit? So there's the content. And then we added a what biblical principle helps as you evaluate the material from this unit because Doctor. Mack and we as a team wanted to really hammer down the biblical worldview and looking at history through that lens. So we didn't necessarily take out the we didn't really talk about the plan as much.
Jared:But, you know, well, guess we did because in the prompt we said, how can you improve? So I guess we did both. You did. We got the two for one deal there. So let me read this one from a student.
Jared:I thoroughly enjoyed this unit due to the captivating topic of exploration. My favorite piece of information that I learned was how technological advancements enabled exploration expeditions to expand further and endure long journeys. Alongside technological progress, I was intrigued by the prospect of discovering a new continent or finding a shorter route to the Far East. I felt disappointed with my performance on the quiz because I spent the majority of my time reviewing the material. I realized that I could improve by taking more time to carefully review each question and answer to identify the best possible answer.
Jared:I have loved the start of the class and I am ready to continue to engage and pursue learning this material to the best of my ability to glorify God through it all. A biblical principle I learned from this unit is that we should learn from examples of history to learn how to improve the ways we treat others. I believe that God gives us these examples so that we can continue to glorify him in each of our lives. I mean, there's I mean, what's what? Six, seven sentences?
Jared:And the the depth of that is, I would argue, something you're not gonna get from a student in a face to face course. No. No. So it's even great to put into a face to face course as well. But I mean, let's look at that.
Jared:We talked about the summarizing, what they learned, and then the pain points they talked about. I could improve by taking more time to carefully review each question and answer. I need to spend more time on the quiz itself, not just reviewing the material. I mean, there's so many good things. Here's another one.
Jared:For this unit, I did pretty well on quizzes. I made a 90 on the one. I took for this unit and a 100 on the one. So I thought I did pretty well this week on quizzes. For response essays, I think I am doing okay on them.
Jared:I just need to learn how to make my argument strong enough for my teacher satisfaction. So that's reflecting on the feedback from an instructor as well. I must admit that I am a bit worried on the capstone paper since I am not very good at writing strong arguments. See? Identifying weaknesses.
Rob:Yep.
Jared:It's great. Let me scan this a little bit more. Anyway, two things I learned in this unit is that William Garrison contributed largely to the movement of anti slavery. He even based his arguments on Christian values. So, I mean, it's just the amount of stuff I could read the rest of this, but the amount of stuff you can pull from these reflections is invaluable.
Jared:And these are just these are freshmen in college. This is the dual credit course too, so these could be high schoolers going through this. So it's incredible. Yeah. It's my favorite by far.
Rob:And it just kinda makes you wonder how how you can incorporate that in your in your class. And I I would say you can do it with any subject.
Jared:It doesn't Yeah.
Rob:Doesn't have to be history. No. It it could be it could be math, especially if you, you know, you set up math as a language created by God. And then you teach them certain things and show them how to do even addition, division, and and then say, what does this show you about who your God is?
Jared:Yeah. It's great. I fully I mean, I know I could talk for hours about it. I just think it's an incredible tool. And it's not difficult.
Jared:I mean, as an instructor, you read through it and you give them a complete, incomplete, and you it's not a high stakes thing. It's a low stakes, performative. Mhmm. And you leave some feedback, a couple sentences feedback, and you move on. It's so great.
Jared:And it's so enriching. Mhmm. And it's enriching. It's reflective. It's good.
Rob:One of the things that I've done in reflecting on my business ethics course that I teach here on campus is I use, you know, mastery quizzes
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:When I've been using multiple choice, true and false questions. I'm gonna move away from that, and I'm just gonna go strictly to short answer because it's the recall, again, a part of reflection.
Jared:Yep.
Rob:It's that recall that we learned in uncommon sense teaching
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:You know, that really drives learning and drives that linking. And so I realized that I was giving those answers to the students in the multiple choice or truefalse, and that's not exactly what kind of linking I want them to do. They really need to have that information in the head long term, so it's going to be mastery quizzes with, you know, short answer that I'm going to use as a tool in terms of kind of providing a version of reflection and recall
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:That they wouldn't have otherwise. But it's not gonna they can take it as many times as they're as they want. I'm gonna have it, you know, an hour probably between takes, so I'm not gonna let them just retake it immediately. I think that's where I've landed at least an hour.
Jared:Yeah. You talked to me about that.
Rob:And Yeah. I love that I'm curious to see how that's gonna go this coming semester. Maybe we'll have to bring it back up on the podcast.
Jared:Yeah. I think it'd be great. I I know we talked about this, but I wish there was a way to, extend the time based on how well they do on the quiz. Like, if they bomb it, they gotta spend ninety minutes
Rob:waiting. Yeah. That would be cool.
Jared:Or if it was they get a ninety five minutes.
Rob:One and they wanna get a 100.
Jared:Give them five minutes. Yeah. They Something like that. Yeah. Go to the go to the penalty box for five minutes.
Rob:Right. The other thing I do wanna do is I do wanna provide them what questions they got wrong. Yeah. So that they can go back and they can Yeah. They can look at that.
Rob:So that's another thing that I'm gonna do. Mhmm. But there is gonna be a space of time between it.
Jared:Yeah. But not including the answer.
Rob:Right.
Jared:Yeah. So I think it's painfully obvious that we're such a big fan of student reflection in a course because it can help them pre learning, mid learning, and post learning.
Jared:I think it's super important. If I were to say there's one takeaway from this entire series, it's that model reflection and then have your students reflect as well. Whatever content it is, matter what it is. Our next episode we're talking about organization and organizing your course effectively.
Rob:Looking forward to
Jared:it. Organizing your online course effectively for student engagement and learning.
Ryan:Thanks for joining this episode of Transform Your Teaching. This has been an episode where we talked about self reflection, and as we move through the series, we hope that you continue to practice that yourself, creating a culture for your students that helps them improve as well. If you have some self reflection ideas, we would love to hear about them, so please reach out to us via LinkedIn. You can also connect with us through our email, ctlpodcastcedarville dot edu. And we'd also recommend that you check out our blog, cedarville.edu/focusblog.
Ryan:Thanks for listening.