Episode Transcript:

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Caleb Curfman: All right. Well, welcome to the show I am so excited to have Michelle Miller with me today. And would you be willing to start out by just kind of saying what you do. Some of the interests you have. as we get the conversation started.

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certainly. So. I’m Dr. Michelle Miller. I’m a professor of psychological sciences at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. And, as we always say, that that’s far northern Arizona. So I think pine trees and snow and not cactus and road runners very unique area. So that’s been a wonderful place to to grow my work.

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So my background is in cognitive psychology and behavioral neuroscience. that’s what I did my doctoral work and my post Doc, work in but fundamentally over the last 15 years or so. Kind of pivoted my my interest in focus just a little bit to look at, the more applied side. Northern Arizona University treasures teaching

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I. And I hope that’s true of many of your your readers institutions as well. And so that was just what was around me all the time, and I became a I had an opportunity to play a small part in what I see as a real revolution in folks who do work in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and similar fields to bring what they know to this incredibly important

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Michelle Denise Miller: a mission of how do we bring more learning to more people than ever before? And in particular, I’ve gotten very interested as well in technology. And just the first of all the practical ways that we can link learning sciences to technology. So use technologies to put principles into practice. But also, I, occasionally, my books and and research projects

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do get to play around with kind of some more abstract ideas of you know, like all these very powerful claims, you hear all the time about how technology is changing isn’t transforming us, and we think differently, and so on and so forth. And I have my own unique take on some of those issues. So that’s what I’m about professionally. And that’s what I do.

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Caleb Curfman: Yeah. And you know, thank you so much. for for joining today. You you, the book that really introduced me to your work was minds online teaching effectively with technology, and that

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Caleb Curfman: provided such a nice foundation for somebody who didn’t. You know? I know how to use a computer. But I don’t really know how to use the the technology in a way that engages with students that that that really helped us. So I’m going to make sure I link to that and your other works as well have been great. But but along with that

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Caleb Curfman: something that you have challenged us to do.

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Caleb Curfman: much of your work is also look at ways to challenge the way college works and what I mean by that is.

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Caleb Curfman: you know, there was this idea that to be good in college you had to be able to read very well, right very well, and perform well on 3 major assignments. I remember most of most of my classes, especially at the survey level. You would take 2 or 3 tests, maybe write a paper, and that was the course

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Caleb Curfman: worked great for some people, for others like me. I was sweating bullets the whole time. And so one of the reasons why I have really grown in this assessment place and wanted to work in the

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Caleb Curfman: this area is, I know, so many students who are very similar to myself, who

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Caleb Curfman: could find other ways. We could do wonderfully

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Caleb Curfman: if we have the opportunity to think through things, understand the process. But sometimes those timed high stakes assessments, not the material, but just the stress itself was the problem. And so I’ve really enjoyed following some of your work as you started to break away from that, so would you be willing to share a little bit about your process within that?

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Michelle Denise Miller: Oh, so I what a great question! And what a great opportunity to really kind of think back. Oh, my gosh, it! It is as a as this is what one of the occupational hazards of specializing in memory is, I? I go. Okay. What do I actually remember about this process, and what was the story and the and the narrative behind that? So I will say it just to first tie into what I would say is the kind of the biggest breakthrough that’s been made and applied

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Michelle Denise Miller: cognitive psychology for learning. Really, in the last 30 years I. I don’t think this is controversial. It’s retrieval practice. And I know that’s a that says a frequent theme of of this podcast. As well, which warms my heart. But here’s the thing is, we started hearing about that like when I was in

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Michelle Denise Miller: grad school and not to. I’m not going to exactly pinpoint when that was but let’s just say I was not tapping away on a on an apple iphone, and blackberry wasn’t even on the scene. So this is a long time ago, back in the nineties. And I was so fortunate to ta for one of the, you know, greatest cognitive psychologists of the last century Robert B. York.

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Michelle Denise Miller: And this is one of the things he came in to say. He’s like, Oh, my gosh! You’re not going to believe this. We’re discovering that just the act of taking a quiz on something changes the likelihood that you’ll remember the material from the quiz. And I I I mean my goodness,

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Michelle Denise Miller: And we all start to think, oh, wow! This is so practical! But here’s the thing we had at our disposal, you know, pencils and paper, and if you maybe sweet, talk the Dean for extra money, you could get those scantron sheets which we all loved. Right. Talk about this talk about the stress of assessing. is my pencil sharp enough? Is it going to snap halfway through crazy stuff? So I showed up my very first year of full time teaching

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Michelle Denise Miller: I was assigned. it’s like one on one. It was considered like I, you know. Come in, pay your dues in this this class. And I thought, I’m gonna put this into practice. So I made this pencil paper quiz every Friday we would do this, and it was like textbook. I am putting this research into practice, and I had, like boxes from you. Haul these papers, and you picture my poor T. As, and carts, and it was it. It took a week to

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Michelle Denise Miller: it, at the very least, to turn them around and grade them. So you know, we? We had this information, and so I I kind of filed that, and I tried to put this into practice as as frequently as I could. wasn’t always as hard in my other classes, which were, they were more like 30 people, not 100. 150. So so I can’t kind of sat on that information.

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Michelle Denise Miller: And then, I kind of 2 things happen. first of all, we we did start to be able to connect technology to that. So publisher started to come out with these.

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Michelle Denise Miller: you were the little CD. Roms, it would come glued to the Instructor Manual. You’re like, what do I? Where does this even go? But what they had is they had these low stakes assessments, and so students could actually quiz themselves as part of the learning process. So I kind of going all right. So now we’re making progress and putting this into practice. So so that was happening on the one side, and as part of that. I also became really interested.

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And how memory sort of

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Michelle Denise Miller: memory theories. We’re getting mistranslated into a lot of educational literature and some things that I wrote for my graduate students eventually became the nucleus actually for mines online. Now, the other thing that was happening.

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Michelle Denise Miller: my institution sent me to go to a conference by a wonderful organization National Center for academic transformation. It’s it’s it’s kind of gone away at its original form, but their idea was that we can do so much more to break down. You know what you’re describing as this very traditional high stakes assessment sort, of course. which

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works for a few students. and introduces some stresses on instructors as well. So they were introducing some at the time very new ideas for how to take a class like psychology, one on one which is typically the largest or one of the largest courses in any institution.

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and saying, How can we break out of this mold where we give you a couple of high stakes test and call it a day, and maybe you learn. Maybe you didn’t. So we started incorporating everything from you. You probably remember to like the clickers to the in class response systems and and bringing those in to do retrieval practice, and I, and kind of check for understanding and and make a more active learning. We incorporated a few very basic, more qualitative types of assignments. We pretty much tried everything to to do that. And and many of those innovations survive. And today.

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it’s like 101 course. So so that’s how I came to this work and along the way met so many others in instructional design and in leadership roles like the one that you’re in and and kind of tied in. And hey, there’s this whole community. And there’s this all this energy. And so that’s what I engage with pretty much every day to this day.

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Caleb Curfman: No, that is fantastic. I really like how you walked just through that process, because so often.

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We are not fortunate enough to to be thrown into that as a grad student being able to work in that situation. And so many of us as faculty fall back on. Well, how did we learn or what were our classes like? I wouldn’t say how we learned, but what our classes were like, and and that is starting to change. I think I think there’s a strong I’m very excited.

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Caleb Curfman: and it both the strong push for the study and science and teaching, learning how that is really taken off. It’s become its own, really. And and so you bring up some great points of that it was almost a technology history. There being a history instructor. I appreciate it that we went from the disks. I remember that right in the textbook all the way to the clickers and all the way through And so when it comes to that I really.

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Caleb Curfman: I think there is a value in having these types of assignments. But one of the concerns that I have noticed. And I I would like to hear your thoughts on. This

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Caleb Curfman: is how these types of assignments are being graded, and also the the pressure on those grades. For example, sometimes

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Caleb Curfman: faculty will try this, and they’ll do a quiz every week. But maybe you get one shot at it.

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Caleb Curfman: or you know, and then maybe they’ll throw one or 2 questions on the midterm. Now, that is technically moving in the direction. But could you explain a little bit about how

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Caleb Curfman: how you see this in an ideal situation for grading? So so maybe not the high stakes. But you know, what are you seeing in that way? And what are you seeing that works best from the cognitive side of things

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Michelle Denise Miller: right and at all. I’ll have a big qualification here, too. One of the things that I had to get my head around and kind of get some piece with as a

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Michelle Denise Miller: classically trained, some cognitive psychologists always looking for the confound or you know, the source of variance, and whatever procedure I’m looking at, I. You know, real classroom based innovation, and even scholarship is teaching and learning it. It’s messier than that. And I, I’ve come to be okay with that. So so with that qualification that we’re going to be kind of drawing on some principles that are demonstrated in labs, but also a lot of

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Michelle Denise Miller: you know what? What Reagan grown calls

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Michelle Denise Miller: the wisdom of experience. I love that phrase all right. So what are some ways to actually make low stakes? Assessments really work.

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Michelle Denise Miller: I do think that if you can make them repeatable. this is one of the. This actually is one of these innovations that I got from some of those early National Center for Academic transformation pioneers who tried some of these things, I mean at the time the wisdom was, oh, my gosh! If you

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Michelle Denise Miller: gave students access to this test bank, and they actually did the questions, and they tried them again. They they might remember them and get them right. And oh, wait a minute. That’s what we wanted all along. So so we had to kind of get around some of those things. So With that acknowledgment that that takes some work up front, or it takes.

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Michelle Denise Miller: you know, tapping into some resources that might already be there. making giving students more than one shot. Now I in. And I want to be careful here, too, because I’m also not a professional expert in stress. But it’s it. It is one of the things I think. reasonably, conversion with. one of the sources of stress is is uncertainty

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Michelle Denise Miller: right? So what if I have to. I I

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Michelle Denise Miller: get one shot at this quiz, and something happens, or it’s just this, it happens to be a question that I read the wrong way. And then oh, my gosh! I’m sort of

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Michelle Denise Miller: stuck with that great, and there’s nothing I can do. So giving, infusing a little bit more certainty and a little bit more. you get another shot. Now, with that, also the qualification that we can’t just have, since necessarily infinitely submitting more and more work just because we’re limited. there’s a lot of value to that. And and maybe I’ll bring in here to something that in a face to face. Classroom, I think, can be a pretty

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Michelle Denise Miller: near perfect instantiation of some of these these principles. so I’ve I’ve really advocated lately for this 2 stage exam

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Michelle Denise Miller: idea, which I did not invent as a brilliant folks like Carl Wyman over in in stem. But the basic core, the idea is that. Okay? So students do occasionally sit for these bigger, you know. Assessments. Right?

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Michelle Denise Miller: I I have them. We’ll have a mid term right? And that’s a real learning opportunity. But it’s if it’s simply a stressor. And like you say, you know, this wedding bullets that I leave, and I don’t even remember anything because I’m so stressed out. So what can we do about that? So what I have been doing in many of my face to face classes?

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Michelle Denise Miller: It’s not a one-shot thing you have the option

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Michelle Denise Miller: to. attend the very next class, where, instead of like going over the exam, you know that equally kind of my numbing thing of like. Here’s the answer.

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Michelle Denise Miller: I I I give the exams back

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Michelle Denise Miller: to students and put them in randomly assigned small groups, and there are some ways to kind of, you know. Handle that. The security so that people are, you know, footing with their answers that they’ve already put in. Now, can you mind? These are not graded. I have not looked at them, but what each group has the opportunity to do is to complete a new copy of this exam, using kind of the collective wisdom of the group.

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Michelle Denise Miller: And I I give it kind of an arbitrary benchmark of of anything that the group earns over 90% correct on that brand new exam, like, let’s say, they get a 95% on it. Then everybody gets 5% added to their individual grades. When I do go back and and grade their exam. So it’s not, you know, a a huge amount of points. But, boy that is so motivating, and the thing that I was not expecting

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Michelle Denise Miller: from this is it? Students say that somehow this makes the exam less stressful.

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Michelle Denise Miller: even though it’s not really a full retake of the exam. if they really really bonded. Even if their group does great, it’s not going to turn everything around.

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Michelle Denise Miller: but they say I got a chance to just go back and say, what? What was the answer to this? And and and as I’ve I’ve told a lot of groups. as I kind of talk up this idea. it’s amazing. Because I mean, I, my only role is really to make sure that my very minimal set of rules is observed, you know. Take a picture of the exam and post it. Stuff like that.

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but what I eats drop on are these amazing conversations. And there are the exact conversations we want students to have. So you know. Well, you know, what? What did she really mean by this? And and they’re dissecting the nuance they’re talking about? Well, where did I see this? What was the source of that idea?

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Michelle Denise Miller: And so it’s a great way to again tap into the tests are a great learning opportunity, but not if we’re all completely drowning in stress, and not if it’s this big one shot, and I walk away from that exam. I’m like.

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Michelle Denise Miller: will that happen? But I don’t even know how I did. unless I go and kind of try to dissect it later in office hours, which students are welcome to do. But we know that most students are not going to do that, and they would be prohibitive if every student did want to come and sit for an hour and talk about it. But this is a way to to do that. So that is like 1 one key way to take something that is a

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Michelle Denise Miller: you know, inherently stressful higher stakes and take the edge off of that through a variety means, but really surprisingly, just through saying.

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Michelle Denise Miller: this is not the end of the line. After you drop it on my desk. That’s not the the story does not stop there.

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Caleb Curfman: Yeah, I I really like that. that idea of of allowing students to, even if you don’t get a shot to do it over again, but to revisit that first. Because yes, that that review day. After a test, everyone just said, Oh, yeah, that’s not as helpful as as being able to sit and maybe get some points for that. And I think that’s really a beneficial piece. it it takes.

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Caleb Curfman: you know, again. And and though I’m not a expert in stress other than I know what I feel when I felt it I I I would feel that in that way it would relax some of that, because you’re not just doing it for that one event, because that’s the other part of things.

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Caleb Curfman: When we get into motivation which we talked about on this podcast motivation to do a test that you get to forget about right away.

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Caleb Curfman: Not very strong. But if you know that even if you’re not going to contribute a lot, you’re going to be

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Caleb Curfman: put into a group with others. And and talking about that, I think that’s a really good motivation to maybe even study a little bit more in that way. So I think that’s really awesome. Another thing you’ve really been working with lately is the idea of

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Caleb Curfman: penalties within grades, and how we look at grades themselves. And so I don’t think it’s too much of a jump to go from kind of the assessments to looking at grading strategies. Would you be willing to share a little bit about your thoughts on grade penalty first.

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Michelle Denise Miller: Oh, sure. So this this idea of challenging grade penalties. Again, I I want to be real careful and say that the

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Michelle Denise Miller: some folks have been raising this for quite some some time. and it’s so. Not nothing that I originated, but

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Michelle Denise Miller: especially as you know the pandemic causes to kind of question everything, and became a moment to make some, perhaps deeper changes than we would have otherwise. I I really started to to come back to this idea of grade penalties.

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Michelle Denise Miller: And this is I I think maybe it it does come back to that theme you were mentioning of like, well, this is what happened with me in school. So we’re going to do this. And I mean I I sometimes I just cynically wonder, is every syllabus we see

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Michelle Denise Miller: or I’ve experienced ourselves as some variation on. Well, it’s you can turn it in late, and either I’ll accept it or I won’t accept it. And then every business day or working day passed is excellent, and which also, by the way, it becomes a little bit more stress on me, the instructor, because now I have to look at time stamps and go back and

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So again, as a very practical person, I’m going well, this it it kind of compromises to with the grade even means, I mean not to, and view numerical grades with too much like

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Michelle Denise Miller: magical perfection. But it’s like, if I look in, somebody’s got an 85 on something. What does that mean? Does it mean that they did an outstanding job? And it came in.

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Michelle Denise Miller: you know, 2 days, and were they working days, or were they a weekend, I I mean, or does it really reflect the the quality of the work. So I I kind of wanted to separate those issues. I was starting to say, I don’t.

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Michelle Denise Miller: I think this is so helpful. I with Covid. I was also saying, What am I going to do if somebody is saying I work in health care, and I got called in for triple shifts, or I got Covid, or something like that. I

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Michelle Denise Miller: and I’m sitting there with a calculator and posing penalties on that. I I everything just kind of led led me to question that. So with that

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Michelle Denise Miller: I kind of threw it out the window, and I think I had been kind of traditionally by my mentors told to like, well, you have to. You gotta stay on students. If you don’t stay on them. They’re, gonna you know, walk all over you, and you’ll never get the work, and they’ll show up on the real estate class. And with all the work that they didn’t do.

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Michelle Denise Miller: and I was starting to wonder about that, too. I mean, that didn’t track with my again lived experience with students who

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Michelle Denise Miller: are not trying to get with something. They’re not generally on that kind of agenda. They really are just grappling with a lot of difficulties, and they’re doing the best they can. So That’s something that that I’ve talked about it like, have the grade. If it reflects hopefully the quality or the effort, or whatever you set up originally, stick with that, and

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Michelle Denise Miller: in lieu of penalties and 2 min past a deadline is this many points?

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Michelle Denise Miller: Let’s just have students channel that mental energy into setting up a time to talk. Now I will say that what I have not quite figured out with this is.

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Michelle Denise Miller: and then some of those boundaries to around. When I say, come to talk to me about your grade. I it’s not I. I don’t necessarily need to know that you lost your job, or the exact nature of your illness to kept you out. So I I kind of negotiate that. But basically it’s like, Tell me what a good time is, and and that’s, I think a very good thing for students to to have them again get out of this kind of stressful and somewhat

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Michelle Denise Miller: kind of helpless position of like. Oh, what is the great she’s gonna give me and said, say, well, here’s when I can do this work. And you know many very intelligent academics, too, who’ve advocated for this have pointed out, they said, Yeah, we we go into this and we say, Well, we’re we’re teaching the deadlines or the deadline. Right? We’re teaching students. They have to manage time. Well, by the time they’re missing the design that

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Michelle Denise Miller: that lesson is too late. It’s not a you’re not developing your skills, especially if you never bothered to tell them anything about good time management. But they’d say, Well, we’re preparing them for the real world. And but in the quote, unquote, real world, wherever that mythical place is.

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Michelle Denise Miller: Many deadlines are flexible now, not all the deadlines in my class are infinitely flexible. I do tell them, you know, like the last day of the semester is the last day of the semester. The final exam is a final exam. So here’s the ones that aren’t flexible, and the rest of it is like, come to me, and you tell me when you can have this done

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Michelle Denise Miller: so, when they come and say, Well.

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Michelle Denise Miller: I can, I can I give it? Turn it in late? How many days, I say again you tell me, whatever is causing it to be late. In the first place, give me a day, and let’s see if we can meet that target. So I think that that’s in some ways a a healthier thing, I said. I haven’t worked out all the kinks, but it’s something that does work, and it it’s a

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Michelle Denise Miller: it’s a deep change I like to tell people to, you know, when I have my little syllabus quiz, I have. I use Cahoot, or something like that real syllabus quiz at the beginning of the semester. I always have that. I say, Okay, which of these up is the penalty? Is the deadline for late work policy.

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Michelle Denise Miller: and most of the class inevitably will pick the. It’s 10% a day. They’re wrong. And it is pretty fun to see that. I mean, it looks of shock around the room on this ungraded quiz. as I say, no, go back and read the actual policy, and they’re just kind of going. Wait what?

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Michelle Denise Miller: And then I still get emails throughout the semester that are like, well, I know you probably don’t accept late work for credit going? Whoa! And I laugh. We? We can laugh about that. But it’s really that’s not so much a reflection on my students as just how ingrained this mentality is that

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Michelle Denise Miller: deadlines are counted in the minute for every single thing do in this class, and that the that. There’s some system behind all this that now you have to navigate, and I will say to you, you know, buried somewhere deep in minds online, is this other point about this small stakes assessment sort of a catch is that it does become more difficult for anybody.

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Michelle Denise Miller: including our students, to track all those deadlines. It’s not a reason not to do it. And there’s ways to make it easier when now you’ve got 30 deadlines instead of 3. But I think that’s another good reason to say, you know, especially students are getting into the rhythm of this semester. Do you really want to be penalizing students and maybe demoralizing them right out of the gate? If they said, Oh, my gosh, I the the weekly Klu is, or or Monday. I wrote it down as Wednesday. Can I still do it? Well, yeah.

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Caleb Curfman: do it. You’re here to learn right? So that’s some thoughts about how to make all that work. Yeah. And you know, that’s something that I I obviously struggled with as well as as I started teaching, and I’m looking at this assignment that was turned in later, and at that time I had a pretty strict late policy, same kind of thing you were

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Caleb Curfman: being told by your instructors and and professors. I have the same kind of idea going on. And then I looked at it. And okay, this assignment that was turned in 3 days late

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Caleb Curfman: is better than a lot of the ones that are turning on time. Get. It’s getting a lower grade, because somewhere in the history curriculum you have to have it in on time. Right? You know, there there is something that didn’t work. And and so no, I I think that is great. The idea to move that I’ve tried to use more of a token system to get away from some of the

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Caleb Curfman: All, and I’m not taking anything away from them but the the reasons, the excuses. My my argument is.

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Caleb Curfman: I can’t tell you what an emergency is to you.

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Caleb Curfman: and I don’t want to be the judgment of well, that seems to be a good emergency. But this one really isn’t that big of a deal, because everybody has a different feeling about it. And so, instead of

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Caleb Curfman: having that well, was it, was it not? I allow these tokens. They get 3 days for each token they can build on them. They have ways to gain more tokens with some extra things, and for me that really helped, and I’ve talked a little bit about that. Another episode as well. But the idea of

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Caleb Curfman: of taking that out of the picture and letting them just deal with real life. You talk about the real world. I mean.

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Caleb Curfman: they’re in the real world, that car tire that went flat. They couldn’t make it to class, you know, that’s not pretend. That’s that’s something they’re gonna have to pay for, right? And so I really appreciate you bringing up those important points. and and that whole process.

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Caleb Curfman: Well, yeah. And and as you said, you know, it was not my system. In in, in higher education very few ideas are original. and we love to share with each other. And so yes, The the idea of tokens. It came from some of the specifications grading stuff, and and some of that work that I’ve I’ve talked about prior as well. and

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Caleb Curfman: talking about different grading systems. I feel like you and I. We could talk for a couple of hours. This is fantastic, but I would like to hear a little bit, because you have started to kind of, like myself, kind of dip your toes into the on grading world in some different ways, and so would you be able to talk a little bit about your work that you’ve been doing within that realm.

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Michelle Denise Miller: Yeah, I,

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Michelle Denise Miller: you know here to the the disciplinary lens cognitive psychology is also a real driving force here. So in some ways it’s been an opportunity to get back to some of those those roots believe it or not. And like a lot of my early work was actually in psycho linguistics, and how we kind of process language and pull things out of our memory and create new memory structures any. And I, it’s funny that that really started to come up as

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Michelle Denise Miller: I like so many of those I I first work through the the the practicalities. yeah. So I do token, should I have a woman? How do I have a list of emergencies? How does all that work? so figuring that out. And now, having the opportunity to kind of take a breath and say.

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Michelle Denise Miller: Well, it all right. Well, what are some, maybe more philosophical or kind of undercurrent here. So, but having having some fun with that, as I consider the ungrading

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Michelle Denise Miller: question, and you know, what kind of changes does that make? Not just to get into the syllabus or our point structure, but to how we really think and how we communicate with our students. so kind of jumping into that

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Michelle Denise Miller: first of all. So when I say, like, how do we actually think about and and manage grades with students? and and and how do we? How? Where do we notice that manifesting?

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I I think that it’s it’s funny that we we can get into especially in this very stressful end of the semester kind of a start to focus on that, like what falls apart and those grading conversations at the end of the semester.

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it’s it’s almost as if we’re have a sort of a deep

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Michelle Denise Miller: metaphor or deep understanding of grades. a little bit as as it is sort of piece work or tokens like in exchange. And I think that’s where I start to get

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Michelle Denise Miller: uncomfortable in my grade. Focused conversations with students. So just really kind of looking at. Yeah, why does that happen? How do I, if not, throw grades out the window, change the focus? Right?

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Michelle Denise Miller: So just refocus refocused back on the learning and back on that big purpose. So even when it’s it’s the stressful of the semester time, I mean, I’m still the leader in the class, and I could still I want to see myself is still setting that tone. So those end of semester conversations that I find problematic, and transactional. They can be very friendly. But there and and sometimes there was very motivated students. But they come with the checklist, and it’s like, Okay.

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Michelle Denise Miller: if I do this, many of the quizzes, how many points do you give me? And I said, Well, okay, I can kind of let this one go. But you gotta give me this, and I’ll trade you that.

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Michelle Denise Miller: And all right, I mean, that’s maybe not awful. But it it does see. Why are we trading these points? In the first place, I

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Michelle Denise Miller: I don’t need another quiz to great. I really don’t. If that’s all the student is doing is putting something in my hand so I can take a box. Well, then, that’s on me. I I I’ve let that kind of

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Michelle Denise Miller: stray from the core purpose. The tricky thing, is it? We still have to be realist. And we are. You know, they’re stressed. I’m stressed. And yeah, we we have a a point structure in the class, and they do need to meet this in order for me with integrity, to be able to quote unquote, give them a specific grade, but I think that there are some subtle things that we can look at here. So I’ve I’ve also kind of been playing around with encouraging faculty and and encouraging myself

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Michelle Denise Miller: as well to say, You know what are even some little words that we put in there that might activate that schema. As we, as we said, it’s call it, you know, that whole set of that framework or set of ideas that all of this stuff is you, you know, trading me work for points.

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Michelle Denise Miller: so I try to steer myself away from even those those phrases of I’ll I’ll give you X points for for why work. or I, I mean, if I need work by particular date. I I put that real practical terms. I say, well, in order for you to have really a really good final project for your portfolio for graduate school, which you might want it for that.

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Michelle Denise Miller: then you’re gonna need this much time to be able to revise it. You’re gonna need my comments by this time. So working backwards. Here’s when I,

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when you need to have that work to me, so I can kind of refocus it away from that that trading trading kind of mentality.

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Michelle Denise Miller: or say, hey? In order to be prepared for this discussion or this group project. Here’s what you’ll what you’ll need to do. So there, there is that I I I always say to faculty like don’t get in that simplistic, okay? Extrinsic motivation is all bad all the time. It’s again. We’re not getting rid of the points.

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but I can suddenly try to reframe that. And I I even I. I’ve had some success, even reframing the names of assignments. So I mean, you can call something homework number 5, or you can call it a skill building assignment, and that might help. And I, you know, here do we have a whole lot of evidence that it’s going to change everybody’s mentality flip like flipping a switch if you just tweaks and wording.

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Michelle Denise Miller: But I I do have some experience that that yeah, it can matter. I’ll give you an example of in my language and cognition class. I talked for years. One of the things I wanted students to do is kind of because we’re talking about language, and that’s all around us.

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I wanted them to kind of keep a journal of what they were seeing the class concepts, and I think I just everything called it. This is your journal, and you make an entry every week. And yeah, and and frequently on the end of semester evaluations. What did I get? A lot of comments of like? I didn’t see the point of that. That was busy work, and I got some real good. I got great things. I liked reading him. But, boy, this student of perception was way off.

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Michelle Denise Miller: and what I did with some inspiration from James Lang, Chronicle columnist and and author I. I reframed it as the connections notebook, and I just made a few little tweaks to the wording of the prompt. That, said I. I specifically want you to make a connection between something, anything you’ve learned in class and a book, a movie, another class. when you’re hanging out babysitting your nephew, and something funny that he said it could be anything. But the point is the connection. And now

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Michelle Denise Miller: I get. I mean, the the feedback, at least from students, is at the end of the semester is this was one of the the best things this really helped me start to build a deeper understanding. So I think, kind of taking the opportunity, maybe this fall to go through and say, where can I

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kind of get, communicate that to students, even through what the assignment is called, and even through the finer points of the prompt that I use to focus on. This is not to build more points toward a grade. This is to do a very specific thing for your learning in the class, which is what I care about.

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Caleb Curfman: Yeah, I I really like those. Those are some great examples. And I had a very similar experience when I had a reflection journal. And yeah, it was the same kind of thing. I tried to reframe it a bit, and

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Caleb Curfman: again, it wasn’t necessarily scrapping the assignment. It was changing how

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Caleb Curfman: I presented it in a way, and and showing that purpose. I try to use the tilt method a lot in my classes. What is the purpose. How are we going to use this? And I really think those are are very valuable ways. And I really like that Tip. I think that’s a great tip for anybody to look at their class and see what are the things

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Caleb Curfman: that don’t sound like? They’re gonna be very helpful, I mean, how many have we seen? Yeah. Assignment 1, 2, 3, unit assignment 1, 2. But you know, trying to do that. And so, as we close out here, is there if you were talking to somebody that was new to this whole idea. Maybe they have mainly done a more traditional type of of class. what is a small step

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Caleb Curfman: that somebody could implement like tomorrow to try to implement more of these ideas of you know, having multiple chances or even having opportunities for students to use retrieval practice outside of those larger assignments.

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Michelle Denise Miller: Okay? yeah, that. And that’s a that’s a wonderful point.

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Michelle Denise Miller: I so picturing, get somebody who’s relatively new to this idea, and

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Michelle Denise Miller: we, of course, we don’t want to get in over our head. So it’s very smart thing to say I’m not going to just totally overall and just adopt what somebody else to come up with but some small steps. Here, I would say I, I would adapt some advice that I often use around technology, which is, if we bring in something that’s new, and it’s going to take some time.

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Michelle Denise Miller: Take a moment to identify like where it’s going to do the most good. So where I mean, if you like the concept of bottlenecks, you can look at that. But I think most faculty, even if they’ve only been teaching for a while, they can write off the bat. Say, Okay, yeah. In this intro class, here’s what they’re not going to get. It’s like, I’ve been marketing these answers wrong for a while. You know what the hard part is, and and this might seem obvious. But it’s also

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Michelle Denise Miller: surprisingly easy to just be like, oh, I learned about this thing, and it’s going to be really cool. And students are gonna love it as fun, and if it’s just reinforcing stuff that they’re pretty much getting already. Well, you haven’t. You haven’t done much, so so make sure you get a lot of return on that initial investment by saying, What is

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Michelle Denise Miller: the like? Pinch point the worst thing If you could wave the magic one and say, if I could only get my students to just notice one thing, understand this one thing, have this one skill, or put in work in this one area

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Michelle Denise Miller: to go for that magic one spot. So find that and start there, built out from from the hard part, rather than just picking, picking some points at random. so that is one. I would also say that

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Michelle Denise Miller: when in doubt put it on the students. And I mean, this is in a good way. I mean, I’ve for example, I sat for a while once in in one class. I’m like, Oh, I need. I need video clips to demonstrate Xyz principal. It’s going to be really hard. And then I was like, wait a minute. I’m going to crowdsource this to the students. They can. They’re gonna find better examples than I can And in the context of assessment, for example, something that I’ve really like doing some classes

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Michelle Denise Miller: on Tuesday you come in and and you give me quiz questions that you write on an index card, and then I pick with them, and we pass them back out. And it’s like, Okay, here’s an assessment that I didn’t have to write and agonize about and has worried that students are going to say that question was unfair.

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Michelle Denise Miller: I I don’t have to run it, and I don’t. In this case I didn’t have to grade it as like y’all, at the questions you. You figure out if they’re right or wrong, I’ll be an arbiter if you need it. But So there to find some some points where you can step back and say, Wait a minute. This is something that they could actually not just kind of complete the finished product, but come up with some of the like raw material for so those are some kind of start. Small assessment sanity pieces of advice I’d offer.

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Caleb Curfman: Yeah, well, thank you so much?

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Caleb Curfman: that that really goes well. I just was speaking with Brian B. D. On High Flex, and one of the things that he said, you know, using those class moments for content creation. And in a way, that’s really what you’re talking about. You’re talking about having that ability to let’s put some of that with the students and work with them in that way

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Caleb Curfman: and talk about a great motivation. I I think that is phenomenal. And then maybe those questions come back later, and I’m sure they will right. so thank you so much for for joining me. this has been very helpful, and I know the listeners will love some of the the specifics you gave us. You let us walk right into a classroom which is always enjoyable. So thank you so much for joining us. How can people get a hold of you if they want to learn more?

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Michelle Denise Miller: Oh, yes, so One relatively new project for this year is that they can always check out my sub stack. It’s called R. 3, but you can find it within a sub stack. I also have a a website, Michelle Miller, ph, d.com, and that’s got by blog where I blog is. The spirit moves me. you can find more and find some information about my books, and so on.

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and has some additional contact information. So those are the big ones also link to in is sort of my professional social media platform of choice these days.

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Caleb Curfman: All right. Well, thank you so much for joining me and listeners. I will be back with you next Monday. Take care, everybody.