The power of the instructor in the solo experience: An empirical study and some non-empirical questions

The purpose of this study was to investigate participants' perceptions of an organized solo within a wilderness experience program and the influence that the instructors have on their perception of the solo. More specifically, this research project focused on the role of the instructor in the solo as perceived by the participants while still on solo, at the end of their wilderness experience, and three and a half months following the program. Qualitative data indicated that the instructors do have an influence on the participants' perception of their solo experience through the (a) preparation for, (b) facilitation during and (c) discussion after the solo. Recommendations to enhance the use of the wilderness solo include: (a) understand student expectations prior to the solo, (b) provide a clear rationale for the solo and associated activities, (c) implement an optional instructor/student visit during solo, (d) provide a one-on-one discussion with students prior to a group debrief after the solo, and (e) carefully consider the impact of the solo on program events and group dynamics that follow.     

Sources of variance in end-of-course student evaluations

Abstract

Evaluation of college instructors often centers on course ratings; however, there is little evidence that these ratings only reflect teaching. The purpose of this study was to assess the relative importance of three facets of course ratings: instructor, course and occasion. We sampled 2,459 fully-crossed dyads from a large university where two instructors taught the same two courses at least twice in a 3-year period. Generalizability theory was used to estimate unconfounded variance components for instructor, course and occasion, as well as their interactions. Meta-analysis was used to summarize those estimates. Results indicated that a three-way interaction between instructor, course and occasion that includes measurement error accounted for the most variance in student ratings (24%), with instructor accounting for the second largest amount (22%). While instructor - and presumably teaching - accounted for substantial variance in student course ratings, factors other than instructor quality had a larger influence on student ratings.     

Student perception of instructors: the effect of age,gender and political leaning

Abstract

Students were asked to rank instructors, who differed by age, gender and political leaning, by their expected helpfulness, and how much a student expected to learn. Students selected older instructors as those from whom they would learn the most, but chose young instructors as the most helpful. Overall, male instructors were preferred over female instructors, especially when emphasis was placed on learning. The political leaning of the instructor was a discriminating factor in humanities classes, with liberal instructors preferred over conservatives. The preferred age, gender and political leaning patterns were distinctly different for instructors who were helpful, and from those from whom students thought they would learn the most, indicating a dichotomy between perceived helpfulness and learning. The stereotypic images of instructors did not differ significantly by the students’ own gender and academic major, except for male students ranking conservative instructors higher than females. Students do have stereotypical images of instructors based on the instructor’s age, gender and political leaning.     

The influence of individual- and class-level fairness-related perceptions on student satisfaction

This study advances two contributions to the study of student evaluations of teaching: (a) a multilevel conceptualization that allows for the simultaneous analysis of individual- and class-level correlates of evaluations and (b) an application of recent social/organizational psychology theory and research on fairness. Thus, this study examined the relative influence of individual- and class-level perceptions of fairness and expected grades on students’ satisfaction with their instructors and with their grades. Multilevel regression showed that, at the individual level, grade satisfaction was significantly related to perceived fairness of the instructor’s grading procedures, the perceived fairness of the expected grades, and the expected grades themselves; instructor satisfaction was significantly related to perceptions of the fairness of grading procedures, the fairness of instructor–student interactions, and the fairness of the expected grades. At the class level, instructor satisfaction was significantly influenced by the average perception of the fairness of interactions. The implications for research on student ratings are discussed.     

The Effects of Training on Instructor Beliefs about and Attitudes toward Online Teaching

ABSTRACT

This study examines the relationship between one approach to training new online instructors and the ways in which the program influenced their beliefs about and attitudes about teaching online over time. The Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) model serves as the theoretical framework for analyzing three primarily qualitative sources of data including (1) participants’ program application essays, (2) post-training program evaluation data; and (3) a follow-up survey of instructors after they delivered their redesigned course online. Findings reveal that, prior to and immediately following the training, instructors were highly optimistic about their course redesign and skill/knowledge development. After teaching the course online, participants were less optimistic and less satisfied with their training experience than they had been immediately prior to or following the training. Multiple instructors cited a need for additional or continued training and support.     

Perspectives on pedagogical change: instructor and student experiences of a newly implemented undergraduate engineering dynamics curriculum*

Engineering education has been slow to adopt research-based educational innovations. Few prior works on such adoption have investigated the combined classroom experiences of instructors and students when such innovations are being implemented. Therefore, this work focuses on the lived experiences of an instructor and her students when adopting an active, blended, and collaborative learning environment, known as Freeform, in a second-year dynamics course. Weekly reflections from the instructor were processed alongside student interviews using Thematic Analysis to discern prominent themes in their perspectives for comparison and discussion. The results indicate that the instructor navigated internal tensions between her previous instructional preferences and the philosophy and resources of Freeform. Similarly, students had to adapt to this new philosophy and suite of resources that were uncommon for their institution. Ultimately, this work highlights the contextual natures of teaching and learning, and how situational factors can influence educational innovation.     

Exploring the beliefs surrounding student evaluations of instruction in criminology and criminal justice undergraduate courses

Student evaluations of instructors are given consideration in a number of important decisions concerning instructors such as hiring, merit pay, and in the tenure and promotion process. However, a number of popular beliefs surround the interpretation of these evaluations. Using student evaluations for the three research-oriented universities in the state of Florida as a database, a number of these beliefs are explored. Specifically, the effects of instructor attributes (such as gender, rank and grades) and course characteristics (such as class size, type, number of course meetings, and time of day offered) on the end of the semester student evaluation rankings are discussed.     

Instructional practices in reformed undergraduate STEM learning environments: a study of instructor and student behaviors in biology courses

ABSTRACT

Theoretically, organisational culture, instructor training, and learning space design influence how faculty teach STEM courses. Previous studies have used classroom observation protocols to characterise the range of teaching practices in mostly teacher-centered, traditional STEM classrooms. In this study, we examined the classroom behaviour of 13 STEM faculty teaching biology courses in a reformed undergraduate STEM learning environment. Our findings indicate that instructors teaching in this reformed environment guided student learning (58.4?±?1.9%) almost three times more than they presented information (20.0?±?2.2%). Students worked individually or in groups and talked to the whole class (57.1?±?1.8%) 1.5 times more than they received information (35.5?±?1.9%). We found significant positive correlation between ‘instructor presenting’ and ‘students receiving’ information (r?=?0.743, p?=?1.4?×?10^?4) and ‘instructor guiding’ and ‘student working and talking’ in class (r?=?0.605, p?=?7.2?×?10^?5), suggesting that instructors can change their own classroom behaviours and expect concurrent change in their students’ behaviours. Finally, sequencing teaching practices in high active-engagement classrooms showed instructors move and guide student group work and lead whole class discussions before lecturing to students, which could lead to deeper learning of conceptual knowledge. We discuss insights from these findings that have implications for acculturating evidence-based teaching practices in STEM departments.     

Stories that stayed "under the skin"

This paper is a critical reflection on students' withholding of relevant personal stories in a college classroom which was uniquely designed to validate and welcome them. The instructor in Stories Under the Skin, an interdisciplinary course in history of science at Harvard, generously shared her own stories in lectures, regularly called upon students' subjective judgement, and engaged them in explicit discussion of the value of personal experience as evidence. Still, students' reactions were those of hesitancy and questioning the appropriateness of personal stories in an academic or scientific discussion. The qualitative lens used in this research not only helps capture the polyphony of student opinions on the subject, but also serves as a key point of debate about the use of interpretive, qualitative data in an academic setting today. The paper calls on students and instructors to acknowledge the difficulty of presenting subjective experiences in the context of academic or scientific discourse, and to consider ways of legitimizing and stimulating the constructive use of personal story in a college classroom.     

The Value of Peer Interaction in the First-Term Community College Classroom: A Faculty Perspective

ABSTRACT

Existing literature suggests that social connection with peers is beneficial for first-term college students. First-term community college students are less likely to experience social interactions than their counterparts at residential universities. However, recent attention has pointed to the classroom as the main place where social interaction can occur. The objective of this study was to understand the value in promoting social integration in the first-term community college classroom. This qualitative study used a multiple case-study design to interview 13 instructors who promote social interaction in their community college classrooms filled with primarily first-term students. The sampling was reputational. Coding and thematic analysis was applied to each completed interview, and then a cross-case analysis was used to generate comprehensive themes for the entire study. According to the data generated by this study, the value of promoting social interaction in the community college classes is found in: (a) enhanced learning, (b) appealing classroom atmosphere, (c) student development and growth, (d) membership in supportive community, (e) student success, and (f) safety and comfort. The themes that emerged from the data indicate that there is qualitative value for both the student and the instructor when social interaction is present in a community college classroom. This study also suggests further research is needed to better understand how social interaction activities impact the student, and how practices can be delivered effectively and beneficially.     

REFLECTIONS OF COMMUNITY-COLLEGE STUDENTS REGARDING MENTEE/INSTRUCTOR TEACHING AND LEARNING EFFECTIVENESS

This investigation used data collected from students who assessed their instructors' teaching and learning effectiveness. Instructors were community-college career and technical-education faculty enrolled in the Community College Induction Mentoring Program (CCIM), a jointly sponsored program between Iowa State University and the instructors' respective community colleges. These new faculty were involved in a structured mentor/mentee program in which the mentor was involved in a 1-day mentor training program. The mentor/mentee relationship was designed around annual goals with an action plan developed, executed, and assessed for each goal. One component of the mentor/mentee program involved documentation of an effectiveness plan, including students' perception of their mentored-instructors' teaching and, as a consequence, their own learning effectiveness. Students were asked to complete an evaluation instrument comparing their “reactions” and “learning” in classes taught by mentored instructors enrolled in the CCIM program relative to other nonmentored instructors. A total of 9 hypotheses provided the direction of the research. Student ratings were typically higher for new instructors who received peer mentoring. Mentees and mentors consistently reported a high level of satisfaction about their partnership. Supervisors voiced strong support for the program. This paper shares student survey results of mentee/instructor teaching and student learning effectiveness.     

Content Familiarity: Differential Impact of Effective Teaching on Student Achievement Outcomes

Improving the quality of higher education for all students requires researchers to focus on factors that potentially influence learning. Of particular interest are student entry characteristics and effective teaching behaviors. Accordingly, structural equation modeling was used to examine the relationships between student differences, prior experience with the subject material, past performances, teaching behaviors, and perceived learning and achievement. A theoretical model containing 8 variables was formulated and tested on students who were either experienced or inexperienced with the course material. The data were gathered at a large midwestern university fitting the Carnegie classification as a research institution. Overall, student achievement is affected by test anxiety and high school GPA. Prior experience with the course content revealed that content-unfamiliar students' perception of learning is more positively influenced by instructor organization than by instructor expressiveness, whereas for content-familiar students, expressiveness is much more influential than organization. Additionally, content-unfamiliar students are more sensitive to both teaching behaviors than content-familiar students. These findings have important implications for administrators, instructors, and researchers.     

Similarity of student ratings across instructors,courses, and time

This study raised three questions about the similarity or generalizability of student ratings of courses and instructors. First, how stable are student ratings of the same instructor giving the same course during twodifferent semesters? Second, how similar are student ratings of the same instructor in twodifferent courses? Third, how similar are student ratings of a given course being taught bydifferent instructors? Instances were identified in which student ratings on seven different factors were available for pairs of courses for each of these questions. For the case of the same instructor — same course—different semesters, student ratings were reasonably similar (median r for seven factors about 0.70). For the case of the same instructor—different courses, the median r was surprisingly low — about 0.40. For the case of the same course—different instructors, substantial correlations were obtained for some factors and insignificant correlations for other factors. Implications of these findings for practical use of student ratings and suggestions for further research in the area are discussed.     

New Books

ABSTRACT

How can we best support instructors to learn, practice, and retain student-centered, active-learning teaching strategies in their undergraduate courses? While approaches like professional development workshops may inspire some, permanent adoption of new pedagogy is rare. Here, we investigate “paired teaching” to achieve adoption and continued use of evidence-based practices. In this model, an instructor with little or no experience in student-centered teaching is paired with an experienced instructor in a semester-long course that has established student-centered pedagogy. This study evaluates information from eight pairs of instructors over a three-year period. Data was collected before, during, and after the paired teaching semester through interviews, written reflections, and teaching observations. Results indicate that paired teaching is beneficial as a professional development model for new instructors who have little teaching experience. The teaching practice of these instructors evolved to be increasingly student-centered, and they continued to use this pedagogy in subsequent classes. More established instructors who were less familiar with active learning showed lower tendencies to incorporate new pedagogies into their existing classes. We suggest best practices to maximize benefits and mitigate challenges associated with paired teaching.     

Instructor perspectives of multiple-choice questions in summative assessment for novice programmers

Learning to program is known to be difficult for novices. High attrition and high failure rates in foundation-level programming courses undertaken at tertiary level in Computer Science programs, are commonly reported. A common approach to evaluating novice programming ability is through a combination of formative and summative assessments, with the latter typically represented by a final examination. Preparation of such assessment is driven by instructor perceptions of student learning of programming concepts. This in turn may yield instructor perspectives of summative assessment that do not necessarily correlate with student expectations or abilities. In this article, we present results of our study around instructor perspectives of summative assessment for novice programmers. Both quantitative and qualitative data have been obtained via survey responses from programming instructors with varying teaching experience, and from novice student responses to targeted examination questions. Our findings highlight that most of the instructors believed that summative assessment is, and is meant to be, a valid measure of a student's ability to program. Most instructors further believed that Multiple-choice Questions (MCQs) provide a means of testing a low level of understanding, and a few added qualitative comments to suggest that MCQs are easy questions, and others refused to use them at all. There was no agreement around the proposition that if a question was designed to test a low level of skill, or a low level in a hierarchy of a body of knowledge, that such a question should or would be found to be easy by the student. To aid our analysis of assessment questions, we introduced four measures: Syntax Knowledge; Semantic Knowledge; Problem Solving Skill and the Level of Difficulty of the Problem. We applied these measures to selected examination questions, and have identified gaps between the instructor perspectives of what is considered to be an easy question and also in what is required to be assessed to determine whether students have achieved the goals of their course.     

Graduate teaching assistants: motives,difficulties and professional interactions and their relationship to perceived benefits

ABSTRACT

Graduate students play a major role in teaching in higher education, particularly in undergraduate programs. The purpose of the present study was two-fold: first, to identify graduate students’ motives for working as graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), describe some aspects of their work, and ascertain their perceived benefits; second, to predict GTAs’ benefits as a function of their individual background characteristics, motives, job difficulties, and richness of professional interactions with the course instructor. Data were collected from 189 GTAs who led discussion groups at a large research university in Israel by means of an internet questionnaire. Findings revealed that graduate students accepted the position of GTA mainly for extrinsic reasons, such as salary and convenience. They claimed to have faced few difficulties and that their professional interactions with the course instructors focused more on job responsibilities and less on pedagogical issues. They reported having gained a greater understanding of course content and improved teaching skills due to their experience as GTAs. Richness of contact with the course instructor, motives, difficulties, and faculty match significantly contributed to predicting perceived benefits. The implications of the results are discussed.     

Roles and Tasks of Field Instructors as Perceived by Chinese Social Work Students

ABSTRACT

From its inception, social work education has consistently embraced the position that field learning is an essential element of professional education. It is through field work that the student has the opportunity to apply knowledge gained in the classroom and to learn the skills necessary for effective social work practice

A study conducted by Fortune et at. (1985) on student satisfaction with field placement revealed that the field instructor or supervisor was a link to student satisfaction with the field practicum. Much has been written on the concept and principles of field education, with discussions on the field instructor's functions in field instruction. However, it seems that such discussions vary greatly in their degree of specificity in spelling out the field instruction tasks. On the other hand, relatively little has been reported on how social work students perceive the roles and tasks of field instructors. It seems obvious that students, with first hand experiences in field work practice, can contribute much to the formulation of knowledge in field instruction

Hence, it is vital and essential to study what social work students actually expect of the roles and behaviors of field instructors as contrast to what is written in the theories of field instruction.

This paper attempts to identify the set of behaviours and tasks perceived by students as important to the work of a field instructor. In the process, it is also envisaged that the “anatomy of field instruction” can be better understood through a clear specification of the activities involved.     

Using multiple levels of experience to promote autonomy in adventure education students

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to discuss how adventure education instructors in higher education may use different levels of experience in their teaching to promote student autonomy. The E model identifies four levels of experience and explains why it is important for instructors to provide students with higher-level experiences that will help promote student autonomy. The model is theoretically rooted in the fields of adventure education, experiential education and social psychology. Using these bodies of knowledge combined with practical application, the authors recommend ways of applying their model to all teaching situations.     

In your Facebook: Examining Facebook usage as misbehavior on perceived teacher credibility

Teachers sometimes do things that negatively impact their own credibility in classroom settings. One way instructors maintain credibility among students is by keeping a veil between their personal and professional personas. The advent of Facebook presents new challenges for instructors seeking to keep their personal lives private in order to maintain credibility among students. In educational settings, Facebook communications can blur the personal and professional boundaries that students and professors are accustomed to. As such, instructors in higher education sometimes struggle with the implications of ‘friending’ students in the context of social networking. The purpose of this study was to examine whether or not educator usage of Facebook had any impact on student perceptions of instructor credibility. Facebook presence was examined in the context of teacher ‘misbehaviors’ (that is, actions by educators that negatively impact their credibility). A modified version of Teven and McCroskey’s (1997) Source Credibility Instrument was given to a sample of college students (N?=?187) to compare instructors that use Facebook with those who do not. While students appear to be generally accepting of instructor usage of the social tool, some findings suggest that there are probably ways to abuse it in a manner that could lead to negative perceptions of credibility. Ultimately, results from this study indicated that there were no significant differences among student perceptions of instructor credibility based on whether or not an educator used Facebook.