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A Summary of the November DOLCE - Check out the video!

  • by Margaret Merrill

Dear Faculty Colleagues,

Thanks to all of you who attended our November 5th special DOLCE (Discussing Online Learning and Collaborative Education) on technology affordances and challenges when assessing our students. Find the recording of the event here.

Our speakers for this DOLCE included four different faculty presenters who contributed pre-recorded content to the 2021 Summer Institute on Teaching and Technology (see their presentations and interviews). Each micro-presentation was followed up with discussion by your host and other attendees, all with a focus on new and effective ways to assess our students’ learning.

We are grateful to our friends and colleagues who joined us and shared their experiences and expertise.

  • Debbie Fetter (Nutrition) reminded us of the opportunities afforded her and her Nutrition 10 team as they reformed how they assessed their students.
    • Fetter encourages faculty to communicate with students what we mean by academic integrity, and why we assess the way we do;
    • She found success in trusting her students, rather than to focus primarily on infractions and other sorts of rule-breaking;
    • She strengthened her assessment techniques, including by asking a variety of new questions, among them, open ended questions;
    • She made assessments an engaging opportunity to dig into the material, more a puzzle than a punishment.
    • And she has moved beyond multiple choice questions by using UC Davis Canvas features to require students to answer fill in the blank questions, drop down menu questions, and “choose all that apply” questions. She also puts illustrations and photographs in the questions to make the assessment more engaging. 

    • Please see her SITT 2021 interview with Dr. Andy, “A conversation about assessing with academic integrity in mind”

       

  • Sarah Faye (University Writing Program) introduced us to contract grading, in which grades are removed from day-to-day classes, with a focus instead on getting the work done.
    • This approach encouraged Dr. Faye’s students to attend office hours, to submit their work on time, and especially to remove student (and professor) anxiety from the grading process.
    • Please see Sarah Faye’s SITT 2021 presentation, “What is Contract Grading?” 

 

  • Audrey Fan (Biomedical Engineering) discussed how she moved to team-based projects in her graduate course.
    • For this class, Fan showed students how each working group could design their own problem sets.
    • Fan and her students were inspired by three original scientific papers, some of which were written by scientists and engineers whom Fan had Zoom into the class for the final group presentations.
    • Fan and her students described this approach as “intimidating but exciting.”
    • Please see Dr. Fan’s SITT 2021 interview with Dr. Andy, “A conversation about moving to project-based assessment”

 

  • Mona Monfared (College of Biological Sciences) sought to foster connection with her students in an asynchronous course.
    • She created a weekly Canvas quiz / graded survey that earned her students points for completion.
    • In this assessment, she asked straightforward questions about course content.
    • Most notably, she asked open-ended questions about their interests, and invited questions for the instructor. 
    • Students shared their mostly positive comments about the class, made some suggestions, and offered sometimes revelatory comments about their own (mostly) academic joys and challenges.
    • Dr. Monfared responded to these questions with video responses that she shared with the class, as well as in written form, functionally deepening and extending the function of office hours for herself and her students.
    • Please see the Monfared SITT 2021 presentation, “What do students really want to know?: Making space for student inquiry in a high enrollment course”

 

  • Patricia Turner (Center for Educational Effectiveness) helped us understand peer feedback with three takeaways:
    • Establish a cooperative environment, add structure by creating a feedback sheet with guiding questions, and ake the feedback interactive and applied by leaving time in class for students to talk with each other and use the feedback when they revise their writing.
    • Faculty attendees pointed out that students may learn more from reviewing each other’s work than they do from having their own work reviewed.
    • Please see Dr. Turner’s CEE workshop, co-created and co-presented with Dr. Margaret Merrill of ATS: “Exploring testing alternatives: Promoting student learning through low-stakes assessments” 

We so much appreciate the contributions of our five presenters, and the questions from those in attendance. We hope you will enjoy the video of this all-star DOLCE, and we look forward to seeing all of you on November 19th for an open-ended discussion of effective use of Canvas tools.

Best,
Dr. Andy Jones
Academic Associate Director, Academic Technology Services
University of California, Davis

Links / resources shared by presenters

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Faculty Events