Whitney Clay: Welcome to the West Valley College TEACH Center podcast.
Michelle Francis: TEACH stands for training educators advocating change.
Whitney Clay: I'm Whitney Clay, Instructional designer.
Michelle Francis And I'm Michelle Francis, Professional Development Coordinator and Instructor in Child Studies.
Whitney Clay: At the TEACH Center, we support faculty as they cultivate excellence in teaching and learning and welcome their students with engaging pedagogies.
Michelle Francis: In this podcast, we discuss hot topics in teaching and learning. We interview educators about what they are doing in their fields, and we talk to learners about what inspires them.
Michelle Francis: Today, I'm here to welcome Brad Phillips, the president and CEO of the Institute for Evidence-Based Change. Brad's here today to share with us some information about West Valley College's Caring Campus Behavioral Commitment number four: assign and assess early and often. How are you today, Brad?
Brad Phillips: I'm doing great, Michelle. How are you?
Michelle Francis: Wonderful. So glad you could join us today. And I love having an expert really talk to us about these commitments that faculty have created that are based on research. I've really been hearing this one coming up in a ton of higher education circles and presentations I've been going to. What do you think it means to assign and assess early and often?
Brad Phillips: Well, the idea here is we want students to get a cadence of accountability. And one of the ways we do that is we start with low stakes assignments and assessments early on, so that what we're doing is we're having that student practice being accountable for the material and the kinds of things that they are going to have to share with faculty about their engagement and their knowledge of the curriculum. And the way this begins, Michelle, it's something we recommend, and that is start with a syllabus quiz. And the reason we say that is – look, faculty, I hear all around the country, say the two things that drive them crazy is questions that students ask in two areas. The first is "Is this going to be on the test?" And the second one is, "You never told me I had to do that." So in terms of assigning and assessing early and often, it's really important for faculty to be very clear about student expectations. And the way that works is developing a comprehensive syllabus. And there's a great book that talks about how to do this. It's called The Course Syllabus A Learner Centered Approach by Judith Grunert O'Brien. And what she recommends is exactly what I'm saying is – everything in the world you can think of goes in that syllabus. And that cadence of accountability is very clear in that syllabus.
Michelle Francis: I really like that – the cadence of accountability. I'm going to just start using that with my students, because really it's about me also being accountable to them, right? Because when I assign and assess early and often, I'm providing them that feedback loop so that they understand where they're getting it right and where they need to work. Because oftentimes students don't necessarily know what they know and what they don't know.
Brad Phillips:Exactly right. And so that's a great point, Michelle, because, you know, we get students from all over, all different backgrounds. How do we know what they bring to the class unless we assess early on and understand what their needs are, how they are best able to engage in the curriculum?
Michelle Francis: So Brad, I think one thing when I'm thinking about faculty listening to us talk today, I wonder about what message that sends to students when we assign and assess early and often. Maybe as we're working on that equity piece, how are we actually seeing it impact on student achievement?
Brad Phillips: The message that we're sending is you are providing, as a faculty member, your expectations of accountability. And by the way, it's also accountability from the faculty members perspective that I'm going to provide you feedback, as you're suggesting, Michelle, right away. And so when an assignment or an assessment is given, feedback has to turn around very quickly because students need to know how they're doing. You know, my youngest daughter went away to Boston University, actually on a partial opera scholarship. Then she switched to economics and computer science. And I remember saying to her three or four weeks into her semester, "Hey, Meg, how you doing?" And she said, "Dad, how do I know? I haven't had my midterm yet." And I was aghast at that statement. And of course, I didn't tell her that. But for most of our students, whether they're really, really smart or they've struggled in high school and now they see community college as a way to really better their lives – the idea is they need feedback to understand how they're doing. And by the way, our colleagues in our high schools, they're providing feedback to students very quickly, and they provide a lot of feedback through all sorts of different mechanisms. In the community colleges and post-secondary education in general, we have not done as much of that as we should be doing. The other thing to think about, too, is providing assignments and assessments early on, also for the opportunity to connect with your students as you're assessing assessments, quizzes, tests, whatever it is, you're able to engage with students early on in the semester to help them understand how they're doing. And that's so important for that connection.
Michelle Francis: So Brad, I'm just thinking this might come off as a lot of work for faculty to feel like, you know, "Hey, I only have two assignments, one midterm, one final. Doesn't this just add so much more to my plate?"
Brad Phillips: Well, you can think of it that way. But then let's talk about what we're really trying to do here. If you were only doing a midterm and a final, how do you know how your students are doing before that point? How do you know that they are engaged with and learning the material if you're waiting six, eight weeks to make that assessment? If you early on know how your students are doing, you can make needed adjustments in instruction to ensure, as Michelle was saying, if you're scaffolding, to ensure that they are getting an understanding of the needed material before they move on to the next topic, which may require an understanding of that previous material in order to engage.
Michelle Francis: Right. So it's that building model, right? And we can't know if we built the scaffold accurately if we don't get some feedback.
Brad Phillips: You don't build a house if you just start building the frame and not the foundation first.
Michelle Francis: And I'm thinking too, does the feedback always need to be in the form of an assignment or an assessment? Or can I do things like have one assignment and then provide scaffolding throughout, meaning if I know I'm going to assign an essay question to give them some practice working in the class, maybe with a peer around that and walking around and giving general feedback or having a rubric, and then looking at the rubric and looking at the assignment that there are steps I can do as a faculty member that then lead to a better assignment for me to give feedback on. Seems like that actually might save me time in the end because I'm not grading something that they just created at 1:00 AM.
Brad Phillips: What we're expecting students to do is engage with, learn the material, and then provide evidence of their learning. And there are many different ways to do that. But perhaps small bites with short quizzes, short assignments provide the same amount of understanding about engagement and their mastering of that material. What I'm saying is, if you make it in bite sizes, I'm not so sure the work is going to be much more, but you're going to keep a lot more students and you're going to be able to provide them early feedback if they're going off the track.
Michelle Francis: So can you think of maybe one example of a faculty member who initially had some hesitancy about this particular strategy and maybe what they found at the end?
Brad Phillips: So I think there are several examples, but let me just kind of make it a bit generic. So, many of us, when we went to school, we had only a midterm and a final, right. And I'm old, so in those days, that's what I had. So when faculty are first engaging with this particular behavioral commitment, they're like, "Oh gosh, I've got to change everything." But then when they start to get in it, they realize that it's actually much better for their teaching environment to do this work. And I think what's fascinating, too, is if we think about student retention, right, ultimately Caring Campus is about retention – keeping students in that class to retain to the end of the semester and to be successful in that class. What we find from the data, is that a lot more students are retained, and a lot more are earning A's, B'S, C'S and credits. So it really changes that behavior. But trust me, if you're used to doing midterms and finals, you're going to struggle with this a little bit. But what I always say to faculty who are reticent is, "Look, just try it. See how it feels after doing it." And I will almost guarantee you that your students will be so much more appreciative of getting this feedback. Because think about it this way – how would you like to play golf or, I'm a tennis player, or play tennis and not know how you're doing in the match until halfway through it's over. I mean, that just doesn't make any sense. Any time we're engaged in an activity, we tend to know pretty early on how we're doing. I mean, there's literally only one sporting event where you don't know in the end if someone won, and that's boxing or mixed martial arts. Every other sporting event, they keep a leaderboard. You know how people are doing. You know who's winning and who's losing. Why are we not doing that in the classroom?
Michelle Francis: Okay, I'm going to get my scoreboard out and start broadcasting my scores to my students. I love that analogy. Actually, that's a wonderful one, because often I tell students that studying is like working out, right? It's going to the trainer, you're not going to run on the treadmill at a ten when you start, right. You're going to run the treadmill on a two, and then your trainer's going to make it harder for you each time you go. So I really appreciate that analogy because it makes sense to me and to the way we learn. So, Brad, I appreciate your time today and thank you so much for allowing us to have this discussion. I think because this is one of the ones that's a little bit harder and involves a little bit more effort in terms of faculty, I appreciate how you mentioned things like the syllabus quiz in the beginning – that's an easy lift. And also this idea of reminding myself of this cadence of accountability that this is about a relationship between my students and I, the feedback loop, and also that we can start small and do one thing and then the next semester try another thing. And maybe through our success we can say, "Oh yeah, we can keep doing this." So I appreciate that.
Brad Phillips: Thank you, Michelle.
Michelle Francis: Thanks, Brad. Have a great day.
Brad Phillips: You too. Take care.