In this episode, I speak with Flower Darby about the way that assessment is and is not changing in the age of AI. She includes many tips and tricks as well as wonderful resources for you to use to make changes tomorrow! Including a book she co-authored that is FREE to download. For more information on the co-authors, jump to here.

From the Norton website, since time was short for our discussion of the new book, here are the author bios!

https://seagull.wwnorton.com/equityguide

ISIS ARTZE-VEGA

Isis Artze-Vega (lead author and editor) serves as College Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Valencia College in Central Florida, long regarded one of the nation’s most innovative community colleges, and a recently designated Hispanic-Serving Institution. She provides strategic leadership for the areas of curriculum, assessment, faculty development, distance learning, career and workforce education, and partnerships for educational equity. Prior to joining Valencia, Isis served as Assistant Vice President for Teaching and Learning at Florida International University.

FLOWER DARBY

Flower Darby is an Associate Director of the Teaching for Learning Center at the University of Missouri. In this role she builds on her experience teaching in person and online for over 26 years, as well as experience gained in previous roles as Director of Teaching for Student Success and Assistant Dean of Online and Innovative Pedagogies, to empower faculty to teach effective and inclusive classes in all modalities. Darby is the author, with James M. Lang, of Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes (2019), and she’s an internationally sought-after keynote speaker.

BRYAN DEWSBURY

Bryan Dewsbury is Associate Professor of Biology and Associate Director of the STEM Transformation Institute at Florida International University. He is the Principal Investigator of the Science Education And Society (SEAS) research program where as a team they blend research on the social context of teaching and learning, faculty development of inclusive practices, and programming in the cultivation of equity in education. Previously, he was at the University of Rhode Island. Dewsbury is a Fellow with the John N. Gardner Institute, where he assists institutions of higher education cultivate best practices in inclusive education.

MAYS IMAD

Mays Imad is an assistant professor of biology and equity pedagogy at Connecticut College. Prior to that, she founded the teaching and learning center at Pima Community College in Tucscon, Arizona. A Gardner Institute Fellow and an AAC&U Senior Fellow, Imad’s research focuses on stress, self-awareness, advocacy, and classroom community, and how these impact student learning and success. A nationally-recognized expert on trauma-informed teaching and learning, Imad works to promote inclusive, equitable, and contextual education–all rooted in the latest research on the neurobiology of learning.

Transcript with timestamps:

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Caleb Curfman: All right. So welcome Flower to

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Caleb Curfman: the podcast assess without the stress. I’m so happy to have you here. I was able to connect with you through some of your work, and then bring you over this way and so wonderful to be speaking specifically, at this very unique time in higher education. but what I want to do first is I want to use an exercise that I use for all of my classes

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Caleb Curfman: to get us started. I use it as a discussion board, but we’ll just do it in person here, and it is What is the story of you? In 3 to 5 objects. And first, I want to explain why I do this. in his

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Caleb Curfman: history there are a series of books. There’s a series of books, and it’s the history of ancient Rome and 50 objects, or something of that nature. And it’s all about the things or images that make up or tell a story, and so to try to connect right away with students. I like to share what that story might be, and so I’m going to turn it on you and say, Okay, flower, what is the story of you in 3 to 5 objects.

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Flower Darby: Caleb. First of all, thank you for having me as a guest on your podcast it’s a true privilege and joy to be here with you. So I love this exercise. It’s new to me. So I’m always learning and every conversation that I’m having. And I I love this exercise you gave me something to think about, because it’s hard to boil it down right

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Flower Darby: in my case. I did come up with 3, and the first one is the Union Jack. It’s the flag of Great Britain. Not a lot of people know that I, my mom, is an immigrant from England. I have dual citizenship, and that British heritage is actually a key part of who I am. She raised me, I like to say, in the most

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Flower Darby: British home in Arizona, so really influences who I am today.

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Flower Darby: Another object that came to mind is in similar vein, an artifact from created by the people of Quasulu Natal in South Africa. It’s a small basket, and my dad is from South Africa. He’s from Johannesburg again. Not many people know that. But this kind of global international influence really, has shaped who I am and and what my values are. And then, thirdly,

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Flower Darby: I had to think hard about this one, and I came up with an old school green grade book, the official name of it is a class record book I started teaching in 1,996, and I love my grade book. I just it’s like it was like a security blanket, and I started teaching English and dance during the exact same semester, and I had a different grade book for both.

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Flower Darby: And I just love that leather at little green book. So I think that sums up my passion for teaching and learning in all the different disciplines, modalities, formats, class sizes, and such

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Flower Darby: great question

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Caleb Curfman: fantastic. I love that exercise because

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Caleb Curfman: you know, one of the things I’ve noticed as online classes go. There’s kind of the general. Okay, tell me something about you, or introduce yourself right? But this was something that you know. I

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Caleb Curfman: there’s very few things I come up with as an instructor. Right? We we kind of do things, and we follow others, and and education is a place for great sharing, so so excited. When I I was looking at my bookshelf one day, I’m like, what if we narrow this down? And it works, you know, and that’s the part of when you try something you never know, and it could have flopped. But for the most part this has worked well, and I just learned so much about you

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Caleb Curfman: without asking more than just a little bit there, right? I just asked for 3 things, and if we were in the online classroom, we.

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Caleb Curfman: I would say, could you share an image? And then they show a picture, and then they give a description like, it’s a museum. And this isn’t something we do. Once we do it throughout the semester with different things they’ve learned. So what are 3 to 5 things that you remember the most.

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And then they do the same type of activity over and over. So thank you so much learned a lot about you there. I had just

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Caleb Curfman: just recorded with Thomas Tobin, and he told me to tell you, or or ask you about your dance instruction and and some of that wonderful stuff. So I’m glad you added that in So anyway, I mean, we could talk forever. But I do want to get down to business, and the business is what is happening right now in higher education, and that is the introduction of AI specifically chat gpt.

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Caleb Curfman: in how that is changing the way that we do what we do specifically with assessment, and just by luck, in my case you’ll have just published something. on this. And so would you begin by just explaining what what your article is about, and then also start talking about how you see Chat Gbt, changing what we do.

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Flower Darby: Sure. So yes, I’m delighted that I just have a new piece out today in the Chronicle, although this will be dated by the time you air this, I know.

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Flower Darby: But in this article in this advice piece. I’ve really worked hard to bring a pragmatic approach to calm faculty, fears to address the challenge that we’re facing, but to do so in a very practical way about. Here’s how we’re going to be able to move forward, and I start with an opening analogy

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Flower Darby: that I actually heard from Binton surf. He is a vice president at Google, and considered to be one of the founding fathers of the Internet, and he compared the advent of Chat Gpt and other AI tools as being like

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Flower Darby: the birth of the Internet. And then I extended his analogy, and thought about the difference that smartphones have made in our day to day lives both of these 2 things our experiences that we have lived through. At least I have. Maybe some of your younger listeners weren’t around for the first of the Internet

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but what they have changed the way we do things.

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Flower Darby: And we do have valid concerns about some of the changes that have occurred. For example, social media was not a thing before the Internet and smartphones, and not the way it is now. And we are concerned about youth, mental health related to social media and the impact that’s having. So I don’t want to brush under the rug that there are concerns related to Chat Gt. However.

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Flower Darby: I do believe that we are going to end up seeing the benefit and the value, and yes, it’s going to change the way we do things, but we don’t need to be alarmed about it. We need to go with the flow, so to speak, and start figuring out how we can use these tools, and I don’t have all the answers. I’m not going to tell us right now how this is going to change what we do in our classes.

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Flower Darby: I am going to provide 4 recommendations in those fees and the article about what we can start doing as we’re wrapping our heads around how this is going to impact us.

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Caleb Curfman: Yeah, fantastic. And and I really like that analogy. I had not heard that one before. I had heard a lot of comparisons to things like a calculator, you know, being something that gets added to a math class. But what I really like about what you just said, There, it’s not just

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Caleb Curfman: helping people or or this, this

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Caleb Curfman: new idea isn’t just helping people in one type of assignment. But this is just like the Internet. It could be affecting the way people think about how people feel about this stuff. You, you talk about the concerns with mental health for young individuals, you know, learning how to grow up in the social media age, which I’m glad I didn’t have to And and you know that a whole idea of of who these people are. I think that is so powerful. And it’s gonna help us get to this idea of that.

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Caleb Curfman: It’s not just a tool. This is changing a lot of things right? It it’s happening all over outside of academia. It’s being used a lot as well. And so in some ways we need to prepare.

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Caleb Curfman: So our students for a world where this exists. Right? And so you said, you’re going to mention kind of 4

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Caleb Curfman: 4 types of things. Would you be willing to share a little bit about? What you’ve observed so far?

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Flower Darby: Yeah. So, to be honest, I’ve observed a lot of very understandable angst

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on the part of faculty members, and folks like yourself, who lead teaching and learning efforts at your campus.

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Flower Darby: and I’m also observing a lot of hyperbole, and people who are out there saying the world is ending, and I don’t think

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Flower Darby: I don’t want to minimize or invalidate either of those 2 things, but the hyperbole is not helping us. I don’t think so. In this piece I do lay out for very simple recommendations. True to Flower Derby form, and that is first of all to start playing with it if we haven’t yet, because and you and I had this conversation before we hit record. A lot of folks are not yet

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Flower Darby: wrapping their heads around it. And I there’s no way that we’re going to think about how to use it in our teaching if we’re not actually playing with it ourselves. And so one example I developed a habit literally a few weeks ago, after keeping my head in the sand for much of the spring semester. Because I was busy.

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Flower Darby: I developed a habit of anytime. I was going to Google anything of instead or in addition, going to Google barred, I I, personally, I like Google Bar Chat Gpt is another one. and just asking that question and framing, and so developing the habit in my day to day personal and professional life, of asking and and

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Flower Darby: chat gpt the things that I would have Googled. And sometimes I also Google, the same topic when you get different results. So that’s good. You need to know that another thing that I recommend is to be ready to talk with students about it in this fall. there are some valid concerns out there among faculty who are concerned about the ethics of requiring students to use it.

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Flower Darby: And that is a really good point. However, my take on, this would be that we would not be doing our students a service if we are not talking about it, and even looking for ways to use it in our teaching. I understand that Chat Gpt has all kinds of hidden biases. And however, what I also understand, as you yourself said, is that it’s out there in the world, and we need to prepare our students to be

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Flower Darby: effective with it. It’s actually the number one interview question right now, how are you prepared to use AI in this job? And if we’re not talking with our students about it. If we’re not looking for ways to start to integrate it into our teaching, into our assessments, we’re not doing our students any service. So those are the first 2 the other 2 are more about. what to do. If you think a student is using AI.

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Flower Darby: The first recommendation on that line, you know, unethically or or with dishonesty. The first recommendation is to try to talk to the individual students, which I understand that that can be a challenge based on class size or even format.

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Flower Darby: but ideally, rather than rushing to hand out F, we, we need to talk with students about their process, and then the last recommendation is to use plagiarism, detection tools, with a lot of caution. If you’re going to use them at all. I I certainly would love that

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Flower Darby: to see us, not policing our students. But I also recognize that faculty have overwhelming workloads, and it is a tool that is available and is being used. But I have some specifics on how to be really careful with those tools and maybe not make that the default, maybe ideally try to talk to a student if you begin to suspect something.

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Caleb Curfman: Yeah, you know. Unfortunately, I I did hear of a few places where People were accused, and it it turned out they did not in any way, shape or form, use it. And and that can become a real problem right? And and so

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Caleb Curfman: I think it’s very important to realize the the way these things work. the the way that these plagiarism checkers work. I mean, we know they’ve had their problems. I’ve always been cautious in in using those, because then you start getting into well, how many percentage, you know, can this be made from someone else? And and that gets to be difficult to As, as I said, kind of

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Caleb Curfman: at the beginning, they’re about that. They? I don’t have a lot of original ideas and teaching. That’s just true. That’s just the way the world works right. And so if if I was to say I need to have 95% of my paper the original? Oh, no, it. It’s all about finding ways to do that. But I really want to focus in on

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Caleb Curfman: your second point of

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Caleb Curfman: talking with your students.

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Caleb Curfman: I I know this is something I’m gonna do right away I tried to do it. I caught on, maybe halfway through the spring semester that. Okay, something’s going on here. And I need to address it. And so what I did instead of you know, you talk about the ethics of having students have to use it.

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Caleb Curfman: I said. I’m going to be the one that uses it. We’re going to do it in class.

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Caleb Curfman: So we sat down. And I teach in the high flex modality somewhere online, somewhere through Zoom, somewhere in person. And so I. I recorded this part of our session, and I put it up there, and it was in the comparative Governments class and our assignment that we had to do is we were going to create the perfect government

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Caleb Curfman: very hard to do it. No one ever can pass that officially right. But the idea was, take all the things we’ve learned from the different places ironically. You know, you talk about the Uk. many students really like the the concepts in Parliament, and and so they always try to put that in there. But anyway, I asked Chat Gpt to form the perfect government.

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Caleb Curfman: and then we sat and took probably 2

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Caleb Curfman: 2 h. It took multiple class periods breaking that down, and how it did it, asking different follow up questions. And it was a great way for students to see, because there were parts that were very good and the parts that were terrible, and that was kind of the point to see. This is why you can’t just say, Oh, this is the answer, right?

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The other thing that I liked about that

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Caleb Curfman: it showed students that it’s not this scary thing that thou shalt not use. It was a great way. And so then I I started having students ask it

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Caleb Curfman: questions to to go against what they were thinking, you know. Try to make it to make their argument stronger.

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Caleb Curfman: and you talk about bias with it. It said it had to be a democracy which I thought was interesting. You know it. So it puts in these ideas. But you know, that’s one way that I’ve thought about using it with students and addressing it. is there any other ways that you’ve kind of thought about bringing that forward to students in some way.

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Flower Darby: Yeah, I love your example. that’s a wonderful way to, in a way, sort of do a think aloud or model how engaged citizens in today’s AI informed world can be using these tools and

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Flower Darby: not ignoring them. but also equipping our students to learn how to use those things. So what a wonderful exercise that you led for your students. When I talk. When I think about talking with students, I’m thinking about a couple of very specific things. First of all, I was literally in a meeting this morning in a Google group called AI in Higher Ed, with over 700 members.

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Flower Darby: and I was in an informal meet up with that group today. and there are many people who are expressing frustration because the institutions have not really set any policies. They are not providing any guidance.

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Flower Darby: So that is very regrettable. Unfortunately, I don’t have a high degree of optimism that’s going to change dramatically by the time the first day of fall gets here.

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Flower Darby: So I do think that we, individually or ideally, maybe, as a department kind of craft, some guidance within our own classes, and even better might be to co-create that with students it might be interesting to throw those questions out, to chat. Gpt. What is an appropriate way to use this tool in this class, and I also think it’s helpful to keep in mind that that guidance

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Flower Darby: may actually be slightly different for instructor to instructor based on discipline, professional preference, but it may also vary within the class itself from assessment to assessment for this particular assessment. Here’s how you might want to consider using AI for this particular assessment. here’s what is not appropriate. And here, you know, so given some giving some thought to

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Flower Darby: how we can provide guidance to our students and not ignore the elephant bot in the room, which is something that I wrote in today’s piece. is a good way to start.

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Caleb Curfman: yeah, yeah, I I really like that idea, because not only are you at the beginning of the course, saying, here’s what it is. Here’s how you can use it, how you can’t. But using an approach for each different assignment, kind of saying, Here’s some ways you could use it. I I really like that, you know. I I use the tilt version of you know, transparency, and and so the purpose the tasks.

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Caleb Curfman: But I think it would be great to add a piece to that that basically says, here’s how you could possibly use this.

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Flower Darby: I spoke with a psychology professor a few weeks ago, and he told me that he invites his students to use AI to help them learn challenging material in the class. For example, he said, I encourage my students to copy and paste really difficult

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Flower Darby: passages into AI and ask, for, you know, into Chat Gpt, and ask for a summary at a fifth grade reading level. Don’t use the tools to cheat, he said, but use them to help you learn. And I love that approach. Here’s here’s some ways that you can use it to support your success in this class. I’m not seeing very much of that happening right now.

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Caleb Curfman: Yeah, yeah, I I think that is great. And it’s it’s that. Unfortunately, I think it’s probably part of human nature of okay, how can this be bad? You know it? It. It’s that scare factor, you know I I a few weeks ago, when, if you were listening listeners I shared at the end of one of the episodes that I was quite fearful, because it was able to do something I had used as an assignment for 6 years, and it’d gone very well, and it was able to do it in 20 s.

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Caleb Curfman: and that really changed my perception. But since then I’ve been using it daily, looking at different things. And and it’s it’s become okay. And and I think it’s really going to a power students. 1 one aspect, I know that that flower you really

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Caleb Curfman: embrace as well this idea of universal design helping students helping accessibility. I think this is going to help a lot of students

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Caleb Curfman: because it’s giving you a 20 four-seven tutor

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Caleb Curfman: in a way right? If you are struggling with a concept in the class just like you talked about take that chapter or that piece and have it at a fifth grade level, change it up. That’s going to be so valuable to students. And I think we need to embrace that much more. So yeah. So if I sorry if I could just jump in I’m I’m seeing a lot of nuanced perspectives in the higher Ed media and the broader media as a whole in terms of AI tools

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Flower Darby: potentially advancing equity for students who perhaps English is not their first language, and that language barrier may have.

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Flower Darby: you know.

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Flower Darby: hidden some of the articulation of the thoughts and the and the contributions that these students might have, or you can. You can apply at the same analogy to students with physical disabilities or learning disabilities or all kinds of scenarios. I’m seeing this in the workplace with resumes, with cover letters, too, that it it could actually help people put a better foot forward

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Flower Darby: then what they are able to do now there’s a flip side, and and as we already addressed. In fact, there’s a really great piece recently, and inside, higher. Ed, I can provide the link. If if you haven’t seen that one. Yet

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Flower Darby: it’s about how AI helps and hinders equity. And there’s a great quote from someone in there that basically says if we’re not careful. And actually, we’re already seeing

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Flower Darby: that when when it comes to AI and our students, the rich are getting richer.

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Flower Darby: In other words, students who have access to good infrastructure to reliable Internet students whose high schools have not banned Chat Gpt, but, in fact, have helped students begin to use it. Those students are going to be ahead of students who haven’t had those opportunities. And so

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Flower Darby: that really struck me, I find that very sobering that if you know, if out of our own fear. We’re, for example, Banning Chat Gpt in our classes or out of valid ethical concerns.

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Flower Darby: And and again, you provide an excellent example of how we can use it in our teaching without requiring students to use it. So if if we’re not embracing this opportunity, even if it’s scary and overwhelming.

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Caleb Curfman: I worry that we’re going to perpetuate inequities and injustices in higher Ed and in our society as a whole.

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Caleb Curfman: more diversity in in some ways that the answers, because it’s it’s an ongoing tool. Right? That’s that’s one of the concerning, you know, one of the concerns that people had about it is, it’s using. If we put in prompts.

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Caleb Curfman: If you’re using the free version, it, it’s using that to build and to get better.

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Caleb Curfman: right? And and so I think the more diverse voices. We can get on chat Gpt, asking questions, asking important questions. Like, for example, in my class example, we asked, why did you automatically go to democracy as the best form of government.

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Caleb Curfman: and asking those tough questions. I I don’t know the science behind it, but I do know, from talking to some other people way smarter than me that the more you ask it that kind of stuff people are reviewing they can kind of see, and it’s going to make it better. And so we can’t change that that technology availability to everybody. But we can definitely use it for the good and try to try to voice this importance of letting people have access to it.

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because you don’t want to go to that.

Segment 2:
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Caleb Curfman: No, I think that’s really good information about the importance of equity an equity mindset when we look at the use of Chat Gpt, and you know we could talk about Chat Gbt all day long. It’s going to be a topic

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Caleb Curfman: for a very long time, and the other part about it is, it’s always going to be changing a little bit. And so in order to make sure, this podcast is relevant, regardless of where we are with chat. Tpt. One of the main reasons I want to have you on here is to talk about

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Caleb Curfman: the concept, just the idea of small teaching and small teaching online. In particular. You know, we see we see the small teaching come out first, of course, and then you get to pair up with James Lang, which is fantastic to to look at the second one. But

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Caleb Curfman: what made you feel like there needed to be an addition

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Caleb Curfman: to talk specifically about small teaching online. So I guess really 2 questions. First of all, what is small teaching

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Caleb Curfman: and of all? you know, what was the motivation to do the small teaching online.

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Flower Darby: Yeah, great questions. Thank you.

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Flower Darby: So all credit to James Lang for this brilliant concept. small teaching is the idea that we can make modest changes to our classes changes that are not overwhelming for us in terms of our time or grading burden.

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Flower Darby: and when those changes are based in learning science and what we know about how people learn. They have an outsized impact on student engagement and learning. So he originally came up with this idea

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Flower Darby: because of changes in, you know, big changes in teaching, like, for example, blended or flipped, or more recently, high flex models. Those are big and overwhelming changes, and he wanted to provide learning science based recommendations for little things that we could do and iterate over time. Do one more little thing in order to advance to learning in our classes. Now he came to our campus to to talk about this about his book.

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Flower Darby: and he said, the number one question he gets in those talks is, yeah. But how do we do it online? And I put up my hand. And I said, I think I could write that book because my passion is for effective teaching in online courses. I I still think we’re not quite there, and no blame and no shame to faculty who are teaching online.

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Flower Darby: My argument is that institutions aren’t doing enough to prepare faculty, even though both you and I are in teaching centers, and we do our best. But systemically, there’s not enough preparation for faculty learning how to teach in general versus teaching online. And the other challenge, I argue, is that many of our faculty who are teaching online today have not come up through online programs necessarily, at least not to the extent they were teaching

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and being students in physical classrooms, so many of us who, when we start teaching myself included, I was not really taught how to teach. Instead, I I fell back on what worked for me as a student, and on the flip side what I hated as a student, and resolved to not do those things

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I had a lot of experience to fall back on, and that is where the gap is for me when it comes to online teaching is that many of us don’t have that depth and breath of experience yet. So that is my passion. How do we equip people to be more effective teachers in online spaces, not facilitators, not graders, but.

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Flower Darby: you know, facilitators of learning. And that is how small teaching our mind came about.

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Caleb Curfman: Okay, fantastic. And you know, with that being the case.

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Caleb Curfman: first of all, I highly recommend the book. I’ll have the link there. because it it does go through the whole process of almost creating an online course. I I really appreciate that. But one place, I really want to focus on being that our podcast is focused on assessment.

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Caleb Curfman: What are some tips or or ways that that you could explain?

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Caleb Curfman: Small teaching or small changes in how we assess our students to E is specifically in the online classroom.

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Flower Darby: Yeah. So there’s a phrase that I learned about from a mentor early in my instructional design experience. And the phrase is assessment as learning.

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Flower Darby: You may also hear it. Assessment for learning, as opposed to simply assessment of learning, and I see that you’re really not in your head. Although your view, your our listeners, are not going to see that. So maybe this is not a new concept on this podcast but just, it has helped me. So I’ll just talk a little bit about this idea that, for example, in an online class having multiple attempts on an auto graded quiz

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Flower Darby: really does mean that the students are getting immersed in the content and in the concepts, if they have to or they choose to retake a quiz because they’re not satisfied with their grade. Or, for example, many faculty set this as a conditional release, that you cannot advance in the module until you earn

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Flower Darby: whatever score on that quiz that the instructor sets, for example, at least 80%, or you could take a mastery, quiz, approach, and students cannot proceed until they get 100. But there’s unlimited attempts on that quiz

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Flower Darby: that really does immerse students in the concepts. Even if it means they’re going back and flipping through their textbooks. That’s okay. They’re they’re spending time with the material, with the content. And that, for me, is really critical in terms of the learning itself. Now, one other way that I have honed my own practice in terms of assessing

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Flower Darby: or checking for student understanding is by my active facilitation in asynchronous online discussion boards for me. That is where I do my best teaching, and as we know when we teach in person, there’s a lot of responding. In the moment that we do. I I often think of teaching as an improvisational art form.

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Flower Darby: We read the queues in the room, we see the body language. We might see expressions of confusion, or quite frankly, boredom on our students basis, and we respond in the moment we change up the activity we provide another illustration or example, we pause. What we’re lecturing on and ask for questions from students and all of that real time. Responsiveness is not possible in an asynchronous online class, however.

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Flower Darby: at least not in that way. What I’ve learned after 15 years of teaching online asynchronous is that you can certainly do that in the Discussion Board. That is where you’re going to see the

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Flower Darby: expressions of confusion on your student faces. To use an analogy. That is where you’re going to see when students are going off track with a misunderstanding of the content. And so I really rely heavily on the discussion board in terms of getting a sense of where students are checking for student understanding. And that’s a key part of small teaching assessment practices and online classes as well.

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Caleb Curfman: Yeah, I really like that idea because, the Discussion Board. You have those that love it, those that hate it. trying to figure out. But I I try to tell Faculty and and myself many times when I’m thinking, Oh, why is this not working

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Caleb Curfman: it? It’s everything about how we set it up. It’s how we structure this place, but also allow the flexibility of the students within it. Right? You know, if you ask for one response and 2 replies, you’re going to get that exact thing. And so it’s more of a structural question for you. But would you mind sharing? You know what is

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Caleb Curfman: the in a given week or module? How often do you require students to engage with with your discussion? I know there’s a lot of differences

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Caleb Curfman: I’ve often tried to to give them the whole week to work on it. But then I get the same. Everyone replies at midnight, and you get a few quick ones, and so Would you mind sharing kind of your method to the madness?

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Flower Darby: Yeah, sure. And I will openly declare that I personally have a love hate relationship with discussion boards. They’re not great, and I don’t mind saying that, however, like you, and based on the research, I have figured out ways to make them work, and I am a firm believer in their value in all online classes.

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So I definitely and I hate that I do it this way. But I do it for a reason I definitely have. You have to post one original and reply at least twice. Sometimes I go with 3 replies. I staggered those deadlines The first post is if the module starts on Monday, the first post is due by maybe Wednesday night, and then you have to have all replies in by

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Flower Darby: honestly a model that I have not personally used, but that I really like is, you have to post on different days of the week. So your first post is due by Wednesday, and then you have to post twice, and they can’t be on the same day. So I like that definitely. By the Sunday of the module starts on Monday.

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Flower Darby: But here’s what I’ve also learned that these places are very, very stilted, and so I had a couple of strategies to, as you said, set them up better. And to create an environment in an online class that helps those online discussions be the best that they can be given. The awkwardness of text mediated communication. First of all

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Flower Darby: is what you yourself described that you do in your class with sustaining the conversation about posting objects or images that represent for students what they’re learning or where they are in a particular week or

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Flower Darby: that’s that idea of sustaining connections in a very intentional way in an online class, is going to go a very far way to help. Students want to engage in online discussions. There’s a phrase that I’ve come across recently in a wonderful book called Relationship Rich Education, by Leo Lambert and Peter Felton.

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Flower Darby: and they talk about the idea of relentless welcome, and I love how this captures the idea that we have to be intentional to sustain connections with and among our students. throughout the whole semester. So your your first week post an introduction about yourself is important.

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Flower Darby: but not enough. So let’s sustain those connections. It will lead to better conversations in in the discussion boards. And one last thing that I’ll I’ll share, maybe to. First of all, I really like the idea of asking multiple questions in each discussion Forum. I have used this to great effect, where I might ask

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3 to 5 questions and say to students, you can pick the one that you want to respond to, or more than one. What you end up with is a tapestry of multiple conversations, and students can respond to what they want to do and learn from others who posted about other questions.

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Flower Darby: and then my personal facilitation strategy, because there is a school of thought out there that says we should not be posting in discussion boards. I am not in that school of thought. We need to be in there. If you are asking a discussion in a classroom. You’re not going to launch the question. Then turn around and walk out the door and expect students to answer. So I post in the discussion forms I’m careful not to dominate. I ask guiding questions. I challenge students for to go a little further, provide a resource. and I.

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Flower Darby: I set a very intentional schedule for myself, based on the duration of the class. Sometimes I teach 4 weeks, sometimes 8 weeks, sometimes 16 weeks, and my frequency of posting in those discussion forms will depend on

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Caleb Curfman: how long, how many, how much time there is for each module. Yeah. And so here’s something I’ve I’ve heard. I guess I’ve read of yours and rid of others as well. But I’ve never really asked this question, because I really like the way that you promote

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Caleb Curfman: ongoing conversation, the discussion. And that’s really what sets it apart right from from a discussion board that falls flat where everyone asks the questions, okay, as yeah. But The last real question I have here

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Caleb Curfman: is.

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Caleb Curfman: how do you assess that discussion board? Then, when it’s

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Flower Darby: if you’re asking to add a little bit more. Do they lose points if they don’t. How? How do you facilitate that? I didn’t think so. Yeah, yeah. You saw you saw the headache? no, I really love using specifications, grading for discussion. Forums. now, to be fair.

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Flower Darby: my, you have to think about this based on your context and your discipline and what you’re teaching. So, for example, in my classes, it is not important to me to have scholarly citations, because I’m trying to replicate a conversation in the room, and every time a student contributes to an in person discussion they do not then rattle off a perfectly formatted citation.

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Flower Darby: So I don’t require that in my online discussions, however, I know there are plenty of classes and disciplines where a main purpose of discussion is to practice commonly writing. And so the citation is a necessary thing, so that for me it’s important to think through that purpose. and what will help your students achieve the learning goals, however.

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Flower Darby: for in my classes, and I think, generally speaking,

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Flower Darby: for many faculty, it’s helpful to just give good faith effort that way. We’re not worried about, do we deduct 1 point for this or that little grammar error for me? I grade all of my discussion forums as did you make a good effort. And did you put a reasonable level of effort into grammar and spelling and mechanics? Then you get full points and you lose. You get 0 points. If you either don’t post at all, or if it’s

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Caleb Curfman: not meeting the criteria, that’s the gist of specifications grading. Yes, and and that’s great. I use specifications for that as well. And so we actually have a little bit of conversation on that. So that is fantastic. Well, you know, this has been wonderful. We. We’ve been able to talk about a lot of

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Caleb Curfman: different aspects, and and I know the listeners will go away with some ideas about Chat Gbt. But I really like the deep dive we did in discussions, because I think so often it’s finding new ways or different ways, you discussion boards. And there’s such a value to what they’re meant to be, because it’s so similar to what I do in the classroom, or what you do in the classroom, asking questions, getting the responses as we do, and so I think there is a great value in that, and thank you for letting us kind of step inside your classroom if you will, and

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and really dissect that a bit. Now

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Caleb Curfman: thank you so much for joining us and and going through these conversations, I hope to have more conversations with you in the future. It it just seems like you know, when when you see people who are so engaged and excited

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Caleb Curfman: about getting into the classes and working with

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Caleb Curfman: teaching. And higher. Ed, there’s a there’s a connection, it’s a it’s a fun group. I always tell my so my colleagues. It’s a fun group. It’s kind of a small group. It’s very niche, but it’s wonderful. And we can connect and share ideas together. So thank you so much for joining us? And how can people contact you if they have any questions?

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Flower Darby: Yes, so thank you for asking. And before we even finish our final goodbyes. I’m not sure if you know that I actually have a new co-authored book available, and it is free as an ebook. It’s published by W. W. Norton. You may be familiar with them as textbook publishers.

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Flower Darby: this is a new free book called the Norton Guide to Equity, minded teaching, and I extend much of what I did in small teaching online in this new book, and it addresses all modalities. So I will provide a link to you because it. People can get it as a free ebook just by is entering their Edu email. So I’ll send that to you. Otherwise people can find me@flowerderby.com or you can email my school address. It’s F. darby@missouri.edu.

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Caleb Curfman: So really wonderful to have some time with you. I appreciate your interest and support and that of your listeners as well. Thank you.