Self-Service Tech Help – Using the UWGB IT Knowledgebase

Have you ever encountered a tech issue and wanted to troubleshoot it yourself, but weren’t sure where to begin? For instance, say you and another instructor want to collaborate on course content and share Canvas materials with one another, but you’re unsure of the best way to do this. While you can email DLE or the CATL inbox for advice, you might prefer a quicker solution. Luckily, you can find an immediate answer to your Canvas question by using the UW-Green Bay IT Knowledgebase (UKnowIT). 

If that example doesn’t speak to you, perhaps this one will. Let’s say you are an instructor and one of your students emails you asking for an extension on an assignment due date. You know that Canvas has the capability to do this, and you’ve asked DLE in the past for help with this task. This time you want to try and do it yourself, and you turn to the UWGB IT Knowledgebase (UKnowIT) for guidance. It provides you with a quick answer and a step-by-step guide on how to extend the due date for an individual student on an assignment. What other helpful information is stored away in this knowledgebase? 

The UWGB IT Knowledgebase includes many short tech guides to help UWGB faculty and students on topics from Office 365 to Zoom operations. You can also find step-by-step instructions, complete with screenshots, for common Canvas issues (e.g., exporting grades, combining course sections, course dates/access, etc.). As an instructor, you can even link and share UKnowIT guides in your Canvas course to provide additional technology support for your students (e.g., understanding Canvas modules and organization, embedding files in a Canvas discussion, viewing instructor feedback in Canvas, etc.). 

Searching the IT Knowledgebase (UKnowIT) by typing “Canvas” and filtering through search results.

The UKnowIT is a great resource for UWGB instructors, students, and staff! Grow your confidence in troubleshooting common technology problems by consulting the knowledgebase to discover quick and easy solutions. When it comes to immediate Canvas help beyond what is available on the IT Knowledgebase (UKnowIT), there is even more support for instructors available like the Canvas 24/7 support line and a whole suite of step-by-step guides for each Canvas tool and setting.   

The following frequently searched topics and guides can be found on the UWGB IT Knowledgebase (UKnowIT): 

 

Fostering Information Literacy to Create a More Positive Learning Environment

In an ever-evolving digital landscape that includes unsubstantiated claims on social media, sneaky advertising disguised as unbiased resources, and articles with completely fabricated citations authored by AI-powered chatbots, it is more challenging than ever before to filter out misinformation (and disinformation) from the truth. Like all of us, students can be susceptible to this misinformation, which can have devastating consequences.

How, then, can we as educators work to counteract the misinformation our students are continually exposed to and instead cultivate their information literacy and critical thinking? In the past couple years CATL has sponsored several events around this subject, in which instructors have shared their own experiences, challenges, and triumphs, including a panel at the 2021 Common CAHSS conference and a follow-up event at the 2022 IDI. While we encourage you to watch the recording of the panel in its entirety, we wish to recap some of the main takeaways from those discussions that you may find useful for your own teaching.

Using a Proactive Approach to Information Literacy

Preventative solutions are often the simplest and most effective, and that seems to hold true when it comes to teaching information literacy as well. While the follow-up to this post will focus on directly addressing misinformation that students share during class, this first post will outline measures you can take to reduce the occurrence of such incidents by proactively equipping students with the knowledge and skills they need to engage in your content area.

Teach Thoughtful Critical Analysis

Instructors typically spend a lot of time carefully curating the resources that they include in their courses. As subject matter experts, they know what a “good” source in their field looks like and can select ones that come from reputable sources and are substantiated with solid evidence. Students on the other hand may not have had the chance to hone these critical analysis skills and can get easily led astray when sifting through resources. Fortunately, we can help students develop this important life skill by teaching them how to analyze a source’s credibility.

One framework you could try using with your students is the CRAAP test (or the CAARP test, if you prefer), which besides having a funny, easy to remember acronym, asks students to evaluate a source based its currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose. Another framework is SOCC (source, observe, contextualize, corroborate) which was developed for history courses but can be applied across disciplines. Frameworks like these help students break down the difficult task of evaluating a resource into smaller steps.

Lateral reading is another excellent strategy to teach students, which is when one conducts external research about the author, publisher, and/or claim to evaluate a source. Often a quick search online can help students identify potentially misleading or outright false information without the need for a more comprehensive analysis. The UWGB Libraries have a plethora of excellent sources on lateral reading and other strategies for evaluating sources, including pre-built lesson ideas. You can even invite a librarian to your class to help conduct a lesson on one of these topics.

Identify Gaps in Students’ Knowledge

Students will likely be walking into your class with varying degrees of background knowledge on the content. In order to help even the playing field, you might want to consider offering students the opportunity to ask questions anonymously, such as in the form of a Canvas survey or a paper “exit ticket.” Once you’ve collected their responses, you can address their concerns in class without identifying the contributors. This helps take the pressure off a student that might be embarrassed to admit their lack of knowledge or misconceptions in front of the whole class.

Another idea is to create an icebreaker activity where students brainstorm common misconceptions about the subject area in small groups. Then, as a class, you can compile their lists and discuss and dispel these myths. Walk through the inquiry process with each misconception—where did this idea come from? Who created it? Why might they have created it? Are there societal or historical contexts that shaped this idea?

In addition to the ideas that students submit, you may wish to do your own inventory of common tropes, myths, stereotypes and misconceptions around the content in your course. If you don’t know the origins of these misconceptions, do a little research so that you can explain their background to students. These types of discussions and activities help students see that challenging their preconceived notions is a natural part of the learning process.

Scaffold Discussions on Complex Topics

Complex issues, such as climate change or structural racism, can be challenging discussion topics due to the substantial number of misconceptions people have. To make things more difficult, students may hold strong opinions on these issues even if their actual understanding of the topic is rather shallow.

To have productive conversations, we first need to teach students the fundamental background knowledge, skills, and frameworks for discussing these topics. Going back to the example of climate change, if students have already had the opportunity to learn about concepts behind climate change, like how matter and energy move through the environment or how humans can influence those movements, they will have an easier time understanding climate change itself once that topic is introduced. Consider ordering the activities in your course to naturally build from foundational concepts towards more complex topics.

Do You Have Other Ideas?

Information literacy is not an easy skill to teach but is so important that we continue to do so in an age when information and misinformation of all kinds is just a Google search away. What are some additional strategies you have used to proactively address common misconceptions or teach information literacy? Or, if you have used any of the methods mentioned here, how did they play out in your own course? Let us know by posting a comment below or by emailing CATL@uwgb.edu. Let’s continue the conversation!

Our special thanks go out to Preston Cherry, Christin DePouw, Lisa Lamson, J P Leary, Brian Merkel, Valerie Murrenus Pilmaier, and Jessica Warwick for their contributions to the 2021 Common CAHSS panel and follow-up 2022 IDI session that served as the inspiration for this article!

Small Teaching: Ways to Make Quick, Impactful Changes on Student Learning

While the spring semester is now partially completed, it is still critical to engage in reflective practices as a constant component of teaching students. While analyzing how your courses have gone throughout the first couple of months and looking to make improvements throughout the remainder of the semester, you may notice small changes you can make to adapt your curricular delivery, assignments, or assessments for the betterment of student learning and engagement. In February, we posted on The Cowbell a blog post that centered around the TILT (Transparency in Learning and Teaching) Framework. In this blog post, we will take the tenants or ideas of the TILT framework a step further, and focus on ‘small teaching’ – ways to incorporate a one-time modification or intervention that can be done in a period of no more than 5-15 minutes. 

James Lang wrote about small teaching in 2016 with his book entitled Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. The book has since published a second edition. In it, he contends that for anything to be designated as an impactful technique regarding small teaching, it first must be accessible. This accessibility includes the ability for the technique to be translated for every content delivery mechanism, from small group instruction to large lectures. Secondly, it requires minimal prep and grading. This ensures that it is a small and incremental change, rather than a complete overhaul. Lastly, it must be foundationally rooted in the learning sciences.  

One adaptive instruction technique that embraces the small teaching criteria is to frame your curriculum with predictive questioning for analysis and background knowledge. This effectively challenges the students to go beyond their current level of understanding and ability to critically analyze and predict. If the prediction is incorrect, students can begin to analyze why they thought that way, where they may have thought differently, and develop a deeper understanding of what the correct response would be and why.  

Much like in the world of academia, the same patterned learning can be found in real-world examples. If you have ever taken leftovers from a meal and predicted incorrectly at what size container to utilize, or you have stepped out on an ice-covered driveway only to realize a better pair of shoes may provide more grip, you have engaged in predictive living. Our lives are in a constant predict-detect-correct cycle of learning. There are several ways predictive learning can be utilized in the classroom in small ways. You can activate prior knowledge through pre-quizzes or writing prompts, utilize polls or informal class predictions, or as a closing discussion about predicting upcoming lab experiments and results. These can be followed up with short discussions at the beginning of a future class. 

Another minor change that can impact your students is the practice of information retrieval. Dr. Pooja K. Agarwal has done extensive research around memory and retrieval practice, and in a recent publication of Educational Psychology Review, she concluded that “retrieval practice improved learning for a variety of education levels, content areas, experimental designs, retrieval practice timing, final test delays, retrieval and final test formats, and the timing of feedback” (p. 1427). This sort of retrieval practice lends itself to long-term learning, rather than short-term success. 

There are a few ways you can effectively implement retrieval practice in short amounts of time. For example, implementing small quizzes at the end of each Canvas module can help lead to a greater depth of understanding. This could be utilized for several modalities, such as asynchronous online teaching, for a version of conditional release to move on through other modules. You could implement a short writing analysis of the current day’s lesson and information presented, or, to achieve a similar result, conduct an ‘exit ticket’ question as students wrap up class for the day.  

These are just some of the ways to utilize small, incremental changes that provide deeper learning and student understanding to be enhanced. It is important to keep in mind that any sort of small teaching modification should continue to be aligned to course expectations and learning outcomes as students will be more successful when it is done with consistency in a holistic sense to maximize its impact.

If you would like to learn more about how to use the tenets of small teaching within your own course design, feel free to contact the CATL office by email (CATL@uwgb.edu) or schedule a consultation with us. If you are interested in reading more about small teaching and the science of learning, CATL has copies of Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning available for checkout as well. 

Transparency and Student Success: Time-Saving Small Changes

At the recent Instructional Development Institute (IDI) 2023 Conference, our community came together to discuss the topic of student success. One common theme discussed was how instructors and staff can help students succeed in college. An answer that came up repeatedly within various sessions was to adjust our course design methods. While making changes to a course can seem a daunting task, supporting student success does not have to involve doing a large-scale course overhaul. Instead, making small, sustainable changes to a course or even to individual activities and assessments can help increase the chances of student success within the classroom. These small changes are also an easier and more realistic lift for instructors, and some of them can even be time saving overall. In this blog post, we will explore some examples of how including the transparency in learning and teaching (TiLT) framework and proper scaffolding can help reduce confusion and barriers between instructors and students when engaging with learning materials. 

One of the easiest ways to include the TiLT framework within your course is to include detailed instructions for activities and assessments. Provide clearly written and detailed instructions to students on why an assignment is being given, what tasks students must do to complete the assignment or assessment, and what criteria will be used to grade their work. Assignment and assessment descriptions can be broken down into three clearly defined categories. ‘Purpose,’ ‘Task,’ and ‘Criteria for Completion’ or similarly named categories can help guide students through activities. At the end of the day, using the TiLT framework to make the “why” and “how” of your assignments and assessments more transparent to your students can also save time for you by reducing the number of emails or messages you receive from students asking for clarification. 

Another way to easily incorporate TiLT is the inclusion of scaffolding using low-stakes assignments and assessments. Smaller scale, low-stakes assessments or assignments can scaffold towards a final summative assessment. By breaking the process up into smaller, more manageable chunks, students can more easily track deadlines, which can reduce procrastination. Making these assignments and assessments worth only a few points can also provide incentive to complete them, and act as a buffer towards the final grade. Lastly, scaffolded assignments can also cut down on plagiarism cases, as you will be able to see the student’s work as they progress towards the final deliverable for your course. 

Using Canvas Rubrics to identify and explain assignment and assessment grading criteria and to show students what is required to complete an assessment is a third way to include TiLT within your course. This option can be used for both formative and summative assessments. You can also align rubric criteria to match with the expected outcomes of your course. Choosing to align course outcomes directly with course activities and rubrics also shows transparency in how different course elements will met expected course outcomes. The inclusion of detailed rubrics that match the expected outcomes for module assignments, discussions, or other assessments can help guide students through formative assessments. Rubrics can also show transparency in assessment purpose, goals, and completion in line with the TiLT framework, and are integrated with the Canvas Speedgrader to make grading assignments and assessments based on the rubric faster. 

If you would like to learn more about how to use the TiLT framework to make small, sustainable changes within your own course design, feel free to contact the CATL office through email (CATL@uwgb.edu) or schedule a consultation with us. Interested instructors may also want to sign up for our professional training opportunity LITE 201: Trail Guides when it is offered in the summer. This course will walk you through creating modules, assignments, and assessments using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TiLT) for your own courses. 

Implementing Negotiable Grading Schemes

Article by Amy J. Kabrhel, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Chemistry & 2022-23 Instructional Development Consultant

For years I have seen students enter my courses on the first day of classes eager to engage with the course material who then slowly stop doing the homework but still perform well on the exams. I wondered if this was due to exhaustion, being overwhelmed with other demands on their time, or, frankly, just laziness. On the flip side, I have had students who rock it on the homework and fumble on the exams. I know they have learned the material being assessed but their ability to show me what they have learned via my exams is hindered. There are several reasons for this (undiagnosed learning disability, test anxiety, lack of sleep, etc.), but after 16 years of teaching in higher education, I have finally decided to make my course grading scheme more equitable for the wide variety of students I see in my courses. In Fall of 2022, I implemented a negotiable grading scheme in my CHEM 211 (Principles of Chemistry I) course as detailed below.

Negotiable Grading Scheme for CHEM 211
#1-Consistency Commander #2-Exam Rockstar #3-Quiz Master #4-Final Boss
Exams (4): 40% (10% each) 56% (14% each) 24% (6% each) 40% (10% each)
Final Exam: 15%

(equiv. to 1.5 exams)

 21%

(equiv. to 1.5 exams)

 9%

(equiv. to 1.5 exams)

 25%

(equiv. to 2.5 exams)
Online Homework

(42-lowest 2 dropped):

 20%

(0.5% each)

 5%

(0.125% each)

 40%

(1% each)

 15%

(0.375% each)
Pre-Lecture Quizzes

(37-lowest 7 dropped):

 10%

(~0.33% each)

 3%

(0.1% each)

 12%

(0.4% each)

 5%

(~0.17% each)
Discussion (4 graded): 5% (1.25% per graded week)
Project: 10%

#1–Consistency Commander: Tends to maintain consistent and successful study/learning strategies across the semester, appreciates the use of homework and quizzes to regularly check in and keep motivation up.

#2–Exam Rockstar: Prefers to spend time studying for exams, does not place a high priority on weekly check-in assessments (homework and quizzes).

#3–Quiz Master: Places a high priority on weekly check-in assessments (homework and quizzes) to regularly keep up with the material, places a lower priority on exams.

#4–Final Boss: Prefers synthesizing knowledge across the term and proving their knowledge acquisition at the end of the semester on the cumulative Final Exam, places a lower priority on weekly check-in assessments.

In this negotiable grading system, students select the grading scheme that best matches their abilities, learning preferences, time constraints, and anxieties. On the first day of classes last fall, I introduced these grading schemes, described each in a bit more detail, and then asked each student to fill out a small sheet of scratch paper with their name and their preferred grading scheme. I made it clear that they were not locked into this scheme on Day 1 but that by reflecting on their choice at the beginning of the semester, they knew where to focus their efforts. After Exam 2 (approximately halfway through the semester), we revisited the grading schemes, and students locked in their scheme for the semester.

On Day 1, half of my students picked #1-Consistency Commander and the other half picked #3-Quiz Master. This did not surprise me since a large number of students have some form of test anxiety. However, after seeing their exam scores on Exams 1 & 2, which were quite good this fall, and seeing how a few of them had started not completing the homework and pre-lecture quizzes on time, a few students switched to #2-Exam Rockstar. After the Final Exam, I calculated each student’s final course grade in each grading scheme (easily done via Excel) and found that most students had picked the scheme that best matched their skills and learning preferences. A few, however, had a higher grade in a scheme different than the one they had selected. I discussed this with them (via email or in person) to help them reflect on their metacognition and to help them get a better sense of their strengths (and weaknesses) as a college student. They were very appreciative of this, and I believe this will help them realize where they may need to focus more of their attention in courses that do not use negotiable grading schemes.

This spring semester, I am using a similar negotiable grading scheme in my CHEM 212 (Principles of Chemistry II) course. Most of my CHEM 212 students took CHEM 211 with me last fall, so they were anticipating this grading system, and when I introduced it on Day 1, they were very thankful. Many of them stated that they wished more of their professors used this system, which is what prompted me to write this blog post. I think negotiable grading schemes are a wonderful way to make your course more accessible and equitable to our students who come from varying backgrounds with unique skill sets that speak to some assessment types more so than others. In addition, negotiable grading schemes give students agency in your course and a feeling that they have more control over their course grades. They can more easily balance their workload and put their efforts into the assessments that matter most to them. As you can see from my schemes presented above, all assignments are still included in each overall scheme; it is their weight that changes. In some cases (e.g., Discussion and Project for my course), the assessment is too important for it to have varying weight from scheme to scheme. This can express to students the value of certain assessments.

One minor drawback is that Canvas can only show one grading scheme. I chose #1-Consistency Commander for the scheme I put in my CHEM 211 Canvas page. This means students who chose a different grading scheme had to see me (or email me) to know what their current grade was on their chosen scheme. Thankfully, if you keep your Excel grade book up to date, this is not too difficult to communicate to those students.

Overall, I found this method of grading liberating for students and wonderful for student-instructor rapport. As mentioned, I am using this method in Spring 2023, and I plan to continue using this method in most of my courses from now on. If you have any questions for me about negotiable grading scheme, I would be more than happy to chat with you about them.