Audio Podcast

Matt and Heidi sit down to talk with Dr. Janice Barrett about strategies for scaffolding learners with smaller assignments, regular feedback, and frequent opportunities for discussion.

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Text Transcript

Heidi Burgiel: Welcome back to the Teaching and Learning at Lasell podcast with Matt and Heidi from the TLC. Today we're talking with Dr janice Barrett professor and founding Chair of the communication department she's currently serving as graduate program coordinator for communication. Welcome Janice!

Janice Barrett: Thank you very much for inviting me, I appreciate it Heidi and Matt.

Matthew Boyle: Yes, thanks for coming!

Scaffolding Undergraduate Learners w/Smaller Assignments

Heidi Burgiel: Dr Barrett have you made any changes to your course to accommodate your undergraduate students, now that we're back in person.

Janice Barrett: Yes, I actually made quite a few this semester, because I realized the, this is a huge adjustment for the students and for the professor, to come back and be in a classroom face to face.

So one of the major changes that I made is I reduce the number of points to the major assignments. So the students wouldn't feel as though, if they didn't do well on the midterm exam or they didn't do well on the final project or the paper, that they’d fail the course. So I had those three major assignments, and I reduced them to 20 points. So the major paper at the end of the course would be 20 points. Their group project would be 20 points. And then I eliminated the midterm exam, and I created a number of smaller assignments that were 10 points each. So, what I did is asked them to write reflective essays on the topics covered in the course of only one or two pages, so that no student would feel is the one assignment would put him or her at a disadvantage to passing the course, and I paced them out through the whole semester.

Less Text-Heavy PowerPoints; More Case Discussion

Then, another couple of changes that I made: I shortened my PowerPoint so they don't take the whole class; they probably take half of the class. And I made sure I had lots of visuals in the PowerPoints and bullet points, not very text heavy, so that I could cover the material in the chapter with them in a way that they could understand very quickly.

And then after that, what I did is I found some very interesting cases online that related to the various topics we were covering every week, and what I did was I uploaded the cases where the set of maybe four to five to six questions. And then, for the remainder of the class, either as a class, we would read and discuss the case and how it related to the topics for that week. Or, they would work in groups of two to answer the questions, or they could be in in a larger group to answer the questions and do it as an assignment [that] they could submit for some credit. And what this meant is that they were actually doing work in class with each other to more or less help each other have sort of a confirmation of what topics we were covering that week. And it helped them to remember that by discussing these cases with each other.

Building Confidence up to Final Project

And then the other issue is that I have a final project that's a group project, and I made that worth only 20 points, and so they've been working on a topic in different groups that reflects the topics in the class. And if one of them is especially good, we’ll ask to present to the connected learning symposium, but all the students in the group have the same grade of 20 points.

So, overall, the major changes were reducing the number and the points for major assignments, and having a series of smaller assignments worth less that they could do some of them in class, and some of them online, but they could complete within a timely way and feel success and try to give immediate feedback, so that they felt success with every one of the smaller assignments.

Matthew Boyle: Very nice. Sounds like it could have really lowered the anxiety level.

Janice Barrett: That's what I tried to do. Fewer large assignments, have smaller assignments all the way through the course, but what that meant, of course, is that I had to be in there correcting every week and give them immediate feedback. I couldn't let it go for more than a week; I would have all of their smaller assignments worth 5 points or 10 points corrected, say, by Tuesday, have them come in on Saturday.

Checking in with Learners; Opportunities for Reflection

Matthew Boyle: But it does create those authentic opportunities for feedback and discussion. Do you have any other recommendations or do you have any specific recommendations you'd like to share with Lasell faculty, on top of those particular major changes, in general that you think would be helpful to them as well?

Janice Barrett: Well, I think it would be helpful to check in with them and ask them how they're doing, and you can even stop discussion at some point in a class and say, “Well, what I'd like you to do is take a few minutes to write down how you are feeling about how you're doing in this course.” And then, once they've taken the time to write that, you can either share with the rest of the class what you wrote, or you can give it to me, and I can ask questions around those. I think [it’s] important to check in with them how they're feeling, how the class is going, do they feel as though this is a fair way to approach the material and a fair way to grade them, and do they have any suggestions, or what do they like about it.

It’s checking in with them to let them know that they have this adjustment to being in person, and does it help you know to be talking about these cases with your classmates instead of going home and reading the case and answering the questions and uploading them to canvas.

Matthew Boyle: Nice. Opportunities for reflection to really consider how they're doing, definitely give them a chance to work in community.

Janice Barrett: Yes, yes, and give each other support.

Heidi Burgiel: Thank you for joining us Dr Barrett!

Janice Barrett: Thank you for having me.

Matthew Boyle: Yes, thank you so much. Bye bye.

Heidi Burgiel: Bye bye.

Matt: Thanks so much for listening to us, everybody; faculty interested in learning more about teaching and learning here at Lasell can visit MyLasell at https://my.lasell.edu, or you can send us an email at TLC@lasell.edu, or give us a call: 617.243.2001.

Creative Commons Music by Jason Shaw on Audionautix.com

See you later!