Muddiest Point

What is it?

The “muddiest point” activity is meant to be a quick exercise where an instructor asks students to jot down the most confusing or difficult to understand part of a lesson, lecture, reading, or other instructional material for a given amount of time. It can be anonymous or identified, and is scalable for synchronous and asynchronous modalities.

This activity does a few things: provides the instructor with a snapshot of understanding and comprehension or misdirection where they might wish to clarify the muddiest point if they’re seeing it crop up in multiples. It can also be an opportunity for students to perform a metacognitive exercise to assess their own understanding of instructional materials.

When to use it?

The “muddiest point” activity can be useful when students are encountering new material and instructors are looking for a formative exercise to assess for understanding, analysis, or evaluation.

Modalities Examples

  • In-person, Hybrid, or Blended: At the beginning of class, an instructor can ask students to write down on a sheet of paper one thing they learned from the new material, and one thing about which they are still unsure. The instructor can tell the students the sheet will be collected at the end of class, but they can add to or alter the responses as the class time unfolds. At the end of class, the instructor should ask students to hand in their sheet of paper, and the instructor can review them after class. At the start of the next class or using a Canvas announcement/email/other messaging tool, the instructor can provide a summary and response to some of the muddiest points if a pattern arises.
  • Interactive Video: An instructor might ask students to submit an ungraded Canvas survey the night before each class meeting with their “muddiest point” and after the instructor has reviewed the responses they might provide a summary and response via a Canvas announcement/email/other messaging tool. If the instructor is able to review the questions before the next class they could begin with clarifying those questions. This is a good option if the instructor has time to review responses before the next class meeting and allows students to pose questions to the instructor without the pressure of other students knowing what their questions are; however, if the instructor isn’t able to review the questions before class they could provide that summary and responses to questions using a Canvas announcement/email/other messaging tool.
  • Virtual Classroom: If an instructor wishes for student questions to remain anonymous, at the start of the meeting time they might ask students to send them a message via the chat with their “muddiest point” articulated. If an instructor would like for students to see each other’s questions, they might ask students to respond with their “muddiest point” using the chat feature in Teams or Zoom. An instructor could also tell students that if they have the same question as someone else they can “like” that student’s chat message. In the moment, or at the start of the next class, or using a Canvas announcement/email/other messaging tool, an instructor could provide a summary and response to some of the muddiest points.
  • In-person with streaming capabilities: An instructor might ask students to submit an ungraded Canvas survey the night before each class meeting with their “muddiest point” regardless of whether they are attending the in-person meeting to create equitable opportunities for in-person and remote students. After the instructor has reviewed the responses they might provide a summary and response via a Canvas announcement/email/other messaging tool. If the instructor is able to review the questions before the next class, they could begin with clarifying those questions in-person, but also ensure the response is available to those who are attending remotely via some other communication like a Canvas announcement/email/other messaging tool.
  • Online: An instructor might ask students to respond to a Canvas discussion, similar to “Raise Your Hand,” but associated with a week, unit, module, or chapter. This may allow other students to respond to questions and gives the instructor a place to directly reply to questions that may require more nuance than a summary “announcement.” Alternatively, an instructor could post a link to a collaborative document for that week, unit, module, or chapter and ask students to post their “muddiest points” there.

Managing Course Pacing and Student Access (Canvas)

As you’re organizing your course content, you should also consider how you would like students to move through your course in terms of pacing. Generally speaking, online courses are built to be more adaptable than face-to-face classes in order to accommodate students’ work and class schedules, as well as other commitments like childcare. That being said, there is also research that supports creating a structure for student pacing in an online environment using the conditional release of content (Fisher, L., Brinthaupt, T. M., Gardner, J., & Raffo, D., 2015). Choosing the right pacing style is a balancing act between what will foster the best student learning for your content area, while also delivering on the promise of self-paced learning and the added flexibility that students have come to expect from online courses.

Module access

By default, all published content is visible to students from the start of the class. While this is good for transparency with your students, it also means that students can work on assignments out of order or work ahead. If this is not your intention, one option to manage student pacing is a conditional release, in which each module will automatically unlock when a student fulfills certain conditions. This is accomplished in Canvas by adding prerequisites and/or requirements to each module. These conditions can vary from simple and broad (view all items in Module 2) to assessment-based and highly specific (complete ‘Lab Safety Quiz’ with a score of at least 8 out of 10). The conditional release allows students to work at their own pace, while also encouraging (or requiring) students to demonstrate mastery of an area before moving along.

A different way to manage student pacing is to lock modules based on date, or scheduled release. This could be helpful if there is timely content that needs to be delivered before a student can move along to the next unit, like a synchronous class session or feedback on an assignment. For this method, each module becomes available to students at the same time.

Additionally, content can also be manually released if the instructor chooses to manually publish each module when they feel the class is ready to move along.

Lastly, there is open visibility, in which instructional content is visible for the entirety of the course (though instructors can still manage students’ ability to submit to assignments, discussions, and quizzes if they have availability dates set, detailed further down the page).

The table below compares some of the upsides and drawbacks of conditional release, scheduled release, manual release, and open visibility of course content.

Pacing Style Description Pros Cons
Conditional

Release

 Each module becomes available to a student once they meet the predetermined conditions.
  • Students can work at their own pace.
  • Allows students to focus on one unit at a time.
  • Students are required to either engage with all content (at a minimum) or demonstrate mastery in an area before moving along.
  • Heavily reliant on auto-graded assessments.
  • Could cause additional stress if a student falls behind and is unable to move along/stuck.
  • Limited/no collaborative opportunities.
  • Limited/no class discussions.
Scheduled

Release

 Each module becomes available to all students at a certain date and time.
  • All students move through content in the course at the same pace.
  • Allows students to focus on one unit at a time.
  • Less flexible for students.
Manual

Release

 Each module is available to all students once an instructor manually publishes it.
  • All students move through content in the course at the same pace.
  • Allows students to focus on one unit at a time.
  • Allows the instructor to decide when to move along based on the gauged understanding and needs of the class as a whole.
  • Less flexible for students.
  • Requires instructors to remember to publish each module manually.
Open

Visibility

 All modules are available to all students for the entirety of the course.
  • Students can work at their own pace.
  • Instructors can still choose to manually publish certain materials and restrict access to submit to assignments, discussions, and quizzes with open/close dates.
  • Allows for the greatest degree of transparency (students know exactly what to expect in terms of future assignments, etc.).
  • Students may rush through content without fully engaging with all the materials.
  • Students may get overwhelmed by the amount of material, especially if they fall behind.

Assignment and Assessment Access

If you are using an open visibility model for your course, you can still control students’ access to things like assignments and quizzes if you so chose. When deciding on how long students should have access to an assignment or other assessment, consider allowing a window of at least a few days so students can properly plan when to complete their assignments and assessments.

The first option for limiting student access is to simply leave select materials unpublished until you would like students to be able to see them, similar to the Manual Release method for module delivery. When an item is unpublished, it is completely invisible and inaccessible to students. This method requires you to be proactive in your communication with your students, as students are not automatically notified when you publish an item in Canvas. Note that if you unpublish an activity that students have already submitted for a grade, the activity will be excluded from students’ grade calculations until you re-publish the item.

If you would like the process for managing student access to be more automated, the other option is to add availability (open/close) dates to activities in Canvas. Discussions, assignments, and quizzes all can have availability dates. Pages can have “to-do” dates. Unlike unpublished Canvas items, closed activities are still partially visible to students. This Canvas guide details the differences between due dates and availability dates, and the table below provides a brief overview of what students can see and do before an activity opens, when it is open, and after it closes.

Canvas Activity Before opening While open After closing
Discussions Students can view the discussion prompt, any attached rubrics, and the due date. Students can post responses and reply to their peers’ posts. Students can no longer post to the discussion board but can read all the posts that were made while the discussion was open.
Assignments Students can view the assignment description, any attached rubrics, and the due date. Students can submit their work and comments. Students can no longer submit their work but can still view their submissions and make comments.
Quizzes Students can view the quiz description and the due date. Students can open, take, and submit their quiz. Students can no longer take the quiz but may be able to see their responses, depending on the quiz settings.

Adding “to-do” dates to Pages in Canvas allows you to set a read-by or engage-with-by type of reminder to students. This will appear in their Canvas calendars and also their course to-do list. The to-do date in Pages does not restrict student access after the set date. To add a to-do date to a Page, edit it, scroll to the bottom, and check the box “Add to student to-do.”

The option to add a page to the student "to do" list

Assessments (Formative vs. Summative)

(Adapted from Carnegie Mellon’s: Design and Teach a Course)

Assessments should provide instructors and students with evidence of how well students have mastered the course objectives.

There are two major reasons for aligning assessments with learning objectives.

  • Alignment increases the probability that we will provide students with the opportunities to learn and practice knowledge and skills that instructors will require students know in the objectives and in the assessments. (Teaching to the assessment is a good thing.)
  • When instructors align assessments with objectives, students are more likely to translate “good grades” into “good learning.” Conversely, when instructors misalign assessments with objectives, students will focus on getting good grades on the assessments, rather than focusing on mastering the material that the instructor finds important.

Instructors may use different types of assessments to measure student proficiency of a learning objective. Moreover, instructors may use the same activity to measure different objectives (as I am doing with the alignment grid in this module). To ensure more accurate assessment of student proficiency, many instructional designers recommend that you use different kinds of activities so that students have multiple ways to practice and demonstrate their knowledge and skills.

Formative

The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning. More specifically, formative assessments:

  • help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work
  • help faculty recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediately

Formative assessments are generally low stakes, which means that they have low or no point value. Examples of formative assessments include asking students to:

  • draw a concept map in class to represent their understanding of a topic
  • submit one or two sentences identifying the main point of a lecture
  • turn in a research proposal for early feedback

Summative

The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark.

Summative assessments are often high stakes, which means that they have a high point value. Examples of summative assessments include:

  • a midterm exam
  • a final project
  • a paper
  • a senior recital

Information from summative assessments can be used formatively when students or faculty use it to guide their efforts and activities in subsequent courses.

Essential Statement for Your Course

Much of instructional design and online learning focuses on objectives which gauge student progress by measuring what students do. This is important because teachers ought to know the degree to which student mastery results from the instruction of the course. Yet, those objectives cannot get at the immeasurable benefits of learning that we hope students take from the course and transfer to their lives outside the classroom. Essential statements are where instructors articulate those big ideas which make the course meaningful for students and allow the course to live on in the minds of students long after they have forgotten many of the specific details they learned.

Essential statements work hand-in-hand with course objectives. The essential questions allow instructors to remain focused on the big important ideas of their disciplines even as the course objectives try to give a measurable shape to those big ideas. Essential statements help instructors answer the question: Why am I having students complete these objectives? While the objectives help instructors assess: How will I know that students grasped the essence of this course?

One way to think about the essential questions of a course is to ask: What do I want students to remember about the course five years from now? Students will probably not remember specific objectives, but hopefully they will remember some enduring question, such as:

  • Whose perspective matters here?
  • What is the relationship between truth and fiction?
  • How does what we measure influence how we measure?

Resources