CRLT

Using Online Collaboration Tools to Improve Student Teamwork

Can technology help student teams improve their group process—and ultimately their learning? CRLT's recent Occasional Paper on "Teaching in the Cloud" explains some ways it can. In particular, the paper highlights how Online Collaboration Tools (OCTs) can enhance students' ability to collaborate effectively. OCTs can facilitate group members' access to one another and the team's efficiency by reducing spatial and temporal barriers. OCTs can also provide novel, efficient, and effective means for instructors to monitor and provide feedback on group projects.

The paper features two U-M faculty members who successfully utilize OCTs to improve student teamwork as well as instructor management of group projects.

Robin Fowler of Technical Communication and Engineering: Fowler has improved student teamwork in Introduction to Engineering by shifting from face-to-face team meetings to synchronous, text-based online discussions. Her students share and assess design plans using Google Docs, a system that has increased student engagement and participation in group decision-making. To learn more, watch a short video of Fowler discussing this teaching strategy and some of its outcomes.
Melissa Gross of Kinesiology: Gross's studio course uses 3D animation and motion capture technologies to study the biomechanics of human movement. Students' group presentations include such animations to illustrate their research findings, and these require sharing and collaborating on many large video files. Gross uses Box.net, a cloud-based storage and sharing service, to solve storage and capacity challenges and facilitate student management and coordination of their teamwork. To learn more, watch a short video of Gross discussing this teaching strategy.

For additional resources about using student teams effectively in a range of course settings, see this section of our website and this recent CRLT Occasional Paper.

College of Engineering Recognizes Outstanding GSIs

4 winners of the 2013 Richard and Eleanor Towner Prize for Outstanding GSIs

Congratulations to the four College of Engineering Graduate Student Instructors who have been honored with the 2013 Richard and Eleanor Towner Prize for Outstanding GSIs!

Engineering graduate students Apoorva Bansal, Connor Moelmann, Jay Patel, and Holly Tederington were awarded the annual prize to recognize their exceptional creativity as instructors, their mastery of course content, and their remarkable dedication to student success. Selected from a pool of nearly thirty talented nominees, the four were officially presented their awards on Sunday, March 17.

For more information about these outstanding teachers and the particular innovations they have brought to a range of Engineering courses, see this story on the CRLT-Engin website.

Congratulations to Golden Apple Award Winner

CRLT congratulates Shelly Schreier on winning the 2013 Golden Apple Award! Shreier, of LSA's Department of Psychology, was nominated by students for this annual prize honoring "teachers who consistently teach each lecture as if it were their last." Co-sponsored by over 30 U-M departments and programs, the Golden Apple is the campus's only teaching prize awarded by students. See this University Record story for more information about Shreier, the award, and her upcoming public lecture as the newest Golden Apple recipient.

Improving Student Writing: U-M Faculty Using Online Collaboration Tools

students working at a computer There's no question that students' writing improves most when they have frequent opportunities for practice and feedback. But instructors sometimes struggle to find ways to provide those opportunities, especially in large courses. One method that many U-M instructors use to good effect is structured peer review. These three faculty members--featured in CRLT's recent Occasional Paper about Online Collaboration Tools (OCTs)--have made creative use of OCTs to facilitate collaborative writing as well as timely, frequent, low-stakes peer feedback:

Congratulations to the New Thurnau Professors!

CRLT congratulates the six U-M faculty members recently honored by the Regents with Arthur F. Thurnau professorships. The awards recognize the following outstanding teachers for their remarkable contributions to undergraduate education here at Michigan:

Samuel D. Epstein, Linguistics
Martha S. Jones, History and Afroamerican and African Studies
Fritz Kaenzig, Music
Janie Paul, Art
Volker Sick, Mechanical Engineering
L. Monique Ward, Psychology

portraits of the six 2013 Thurnau professors

More information about each new Thurnau Professor can be found in this University Record article. We look forward to spotlighting their innovative teaching here on our blog in the coming months. More information about the Thurnau Professorships can be found at this link.

PowerPoint and Student Learning

picture of a neuron Have you ever wondered whether you're using PowerPoint effectively to enhance student learning in your classes? Or hoped you could learn how to do so? This coming Tuesday, CRLT Assistant Director Rachel Niemer will lead a seminar on strategies for designing presentation slides that successfully serve several purposes: an organizing platform for a lecture, a study guide for students after class, and a place for students to take notes during class. Informed by recent research on how students learn, the session will equip participants with techniques to avoid "Death by PowerPoint."

"PowerPoint Supported by Science of Learning" will take place Tuesday, 2/19, 2:00-4:00pm in Palmer Commons. More details can be found on the registration page for the event. For full information about this term's Seminar Series, click here or pull down on the Programs & Services menu above.

Photo Credit: Mike Seyfang via Compfight cc

Increasing Student Engagement in Large Courses: Faculty Use of Online Collaboration Tools

CRLT recently published an Occasional Paper by Assistant Director Chad Hershock and U-M Associate Professor of Political Science Mika LaVaque-Manty detailing a range of innovative ways U-M faculty are teaching with Online Collaboration Tools (OCTs). In the coming weeks, we will highlight sections of this paper on our blog, starting this week with ideas from two Thurnau Professors about ways to promote student engagement and participation in large courses. Follow this link to the full paper, including recommendations for implementing OCTs effectively and efficiently in teaching.

Although students can easily become passive learners in a traditional lecture setting, with the right approach lectures can be a very effective way to disseminate content efficiently to large numbers of students, to present cutting-edge material not available elsewhere, and to model expert thinking. Here are two examples of U-M instructors who have used OCTs in large courses to increase student interactions and engagement.

The Rewards of Being a Graduate Teaching Consultant

CRLT is currently accepting applications for our Graduate Student Instructional Consultant (GSIC) team. For more information about the program, including a link to application materials, click on our GSIC page. In this guest blog, current GSIC Melody Pugh, a Ph.D. student in English & Education, highlights some rewards of her participation in the program.

Melody Pugh

I taught my first college level writing course in the Fall of 2005. I’d had no formal training in how to teach writing, and in fact, I was teaching a course that I had never actually taken myself. Thankfully, I was surrounded by generous teacher-scholars who mentored me toward excellent teaching. They took time out of their busy schedules to think with me about the challenges of curriculum design, classroom management, and writing assessment.

When I came to the University of Michigan for further graduate study, I received formal training both from my department and from CRLT. But I also knew how valuable I’d found the informal mentoring that I received early in my teaching career, and I wanted to offer similar guidance and support to other new teachers. So when I learned about the GSIC program, it knew it would be a great fit for me. And it has been. Here’s why:

Preparing Future Faculty Seminar

CRLT is accepting applications through February 25 for the May PFF Seminar, which you can learn more about here. In this guest post, English and Women’s Studies joint Ph.D. student Cat Cassel reflects upon her experiences in the seminar last spring.

Every May, Rackham and CRLT co-sponsor the Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) seminar, providing graduate students from across campus important information about preparing for a faculty career trajectory. I participated in the seminar last year and came away with several valuable insights:

a deeper understanding of the role of faculty in the context of higher education
an arsenal of knowledge, tools, and tips for effective teaching, and
a broader sense of the different kinds of faculty career paths available.

Below I highlight two facets of the seminar that were especially useful in helping me feel equipped to face the rigors of future faculty life.

Photo of program participants

CAMPUS VISIT: Seminar participants have the option of visiting Albion College, Eastern Michigan University, Kalamazoo College, and University of Toledo. I chose to visit Kalamazoo since both my undergraduate and graduate educations have been at large R1 institutions and I wanted to see what campus life at a small liberal arts college looked like.

Classroom Challenge: Encouraging Student Participation

Having trouble getting students to speak up in class? This is one of the most common challenges we hear about when consulting with faculty about their teaching. Below are some resources you might find helpful if you're trying to increase student participation in your classes.

This section of the "Solve a Teaching Problem" tool at Carnegie Mellon's Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence offers a range of teaching strategies to encourage student participation. The site invites teachers first to consider why students might be reluctant to join the conversation (Are they unprepared? unaccustomed to contributing in class? uncomfortable sharing certain kinds of ideas with their peers? unsure what you're looking for as an instructor?) and then suggests tailored solutions.

Here on the CRLT website, we provide a range of resources to support your success in teaching discussion-based classes. See this page of Discussion-Based Teaching Strategies for ideas about how to get good conversations started, develop a classroom environment in which students engage readily, and manage several issues that can arise in a discussion--from dominators to classroom controversy.