Research Article
Improving Learner-Driven Teaching Practices through
Reflective Assessment
Matthew T. Regan
Instructional Services Program
Leader
Montana State University
Bozeman, Montana, United States
of America
Email: mtregan@montana.edu
Scott W. H. Young
User Experience &
Assessment Librarian
Montana State University
Bozeman, Montana, United States
of America
Email: swyoung@montana.edu
Sara Mannheimer
Data Librarian
Montana State University
Bozeman, Montana, United States
of America
Email: saramannehimer@montana.edu
Received: 7 Feb. 2020 Accepted: 1 July 2020
2020 Regan, Young, and Mannheimer. This is an Open
Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons‐Attribution‐Noncommercial‐Share Alike License 4.0
International (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/),
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial
purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the
same or similar license to this one.
DOI: 10.18438/eblip29729
Abstract
Objective – Reflective assessment is an effective method of teacher
evaluation, serving as an approach for assessing teaching practices, generating
insights, and connecting with colleagues, ultimately supporting meaningful
transformation of teaching practice. In this paper, three librarians model a
reflective assessment approach in evaluating and improving their experiences
implementing learner-driven teaching practices in credit-bearing courses in
topics related to library and information studies.
Methods – Following a model of reflective assessment, we asked ourselves how our
practice can better support learner-driven teaching practices, thus assessing
and improving our own teaching and improving students’ learning experiences.
Our process involved five steps: cohere around shared viewpoints, identify
teaching practices for reflection, conduct reflection, discuss and analyze
reflections to produce insights, and apply insights to improve teaching.
Results – We reflect on five different learner-driven teaching practices:
co-creative syllabus design, learner-defined personal learning goals,
soliciting and responding to learner feedback, interdisciplinary discussions
and exercises, and self-evaluation. We discuss improvements and refinements
that we implemented in response to our reflective assessment, including more
frequent checking in with students; more clarity regarding self-evaluation and
grading; one-on-one meetings with all students; allowing students to negotiate,
discuss, and determine assignment deadlines and dates; more flexibility with
students’ work products; and increased pedagogical transparency. As a further
result, our reflective process models an approachable framework for engaging in
reflective assessment.
Conclusion – This paper presents a model for reflective assessment of teaching in an
academic library. We present a discussion of learner-driven teaching practices,
and we offer a practical pathway for other teachers and practitioners to assess
their teaching. We find that reflective assessment is an effective and
insightful approach for understanding and improving learner-driven teaching
practices.
Introduction
As academic librarians continue to assume the role of
teacher—in both traditional reference and bibliographic instruction contexts,
and in delivering credit-bearing courses—the role of teacher assessment will
continue to become more important. At Montana State University (MSU), library
faculty members regularly teach credit-bearing courses on topics related to
information science, including library research skills, data curation,
information ethics, and privacy. To improve our teaching practice, we have
followed an approach of reflective assessment.
This article demonstrates a reflective practice to assess
teaching practice. Our individual and shared experiences led us to articulate
and cohere around a shared viewpoint: to develop and improve learner-driven
teaching practices. We evaluate via reflective assessment six learner-driven
teaching practices that we employ in our teaching. We find that reflection is
an effective method of teacher evaluation, serving as an approach for assessing
pedagogy, generating insights, and connecting with colleagues, ultimately
supporting meaningful transformation of teaching practice. In reference to
credit-bearing courses taught by librarians, Burke (2012) noted that many
librarians “find developing assessment tools daunting” (p. 169) due to
insufficient teacher training. In sharing our own approach to reflective
assessment of teaching, we consider this paper a response to Burke’s call: “the
author hopes that librarians, who have developed successful assessment
strategies, will share their experiences with the larger academic library
community in the not too distant future” (p. 169).
Librarians as Teachers
Vassilakaki and Moniarou-Papaconstantinou
(2015) identified six emerging roles for information professionals, one of
which is “Librarian as Teacher”—referring to librarians’ active engagement in
teaching and learning processes. In academic libraries, forms of teaching can
vary widely, from providing workshops and guest presentations to teaching
semester-long, credit-bearing courses. As Vassilakaki
and Moniarou-Papaconstantinou wrote, “it appears that
librarians as teachers assume a range of responsibilities associated with
teaching and learning and, thus, their educational role continues to develop in
a way that incorporates them entirely into the academic community” (p. 41).
Cohen et al. (2016) identified credit-bearing courses as the least common form
of teaching performed by librarians, amounting to only 19% of library teaching
efforts, but also suggest that there is “growing recognition of the teaching
mission of the library on campus” (Cohen et al., 2016, p. 576). Similarly,
Loesch (2017) described the foundations of library research assistance as being
essentially oriented toward teaching learners, solidifying the role of teacher
as an appropriate and even fundamental function for librarians. The Association
for College and Research Libraries (ACRL) (2017) also articulated the role of
librarian-as-teacher, emphasizing “activity in the classroom or other
instructional environments where the librarian interacts directly with
learners.” In this role, librarians enter the instructional environment
prepared to deliver learner-centered instruction, establish goals and learning
outcomes, employ “innovative instructional techniques and tools,” and perform
assessment. Of note, librarians demonstrate “enthusiasm for teaching and
learning and a commitment to professional development, lifelong-learning, and reflective
practice” (“Teacher” section, bullet 6). The landscape of librarian-as-teacher
is promising for further reflective investigation.
Assessment of Teaching in Academic Libraries
Analyses of teacher evaluation methods are
well-represented in the literature. Ackerman, Gross, and Vigneron’s (2009)
comprehensive review of the literature succinctly highlighted serious concerns
surrounding common assessment methods such as student evaluations of teaching
and peer observation reports, especially as related to validity, bias,
subjectivity, and abuse. Subsequent research has demonstrated student
evaluations of teaching to be inaccurate
and problematic, especially as they are likely to reflect biases such as racial
and gender stereotypes (Boring, 2017; Hornstein,
2017; Mengel, Sauermann,
& Zölitz, 2019; Mowatt,
2019). Assessing one’s own teaching can also potentially be “time consuming,
daunting, and disheartening” (McCartin & Dineen,
2018, p. 47). Assessment of teaching is further complicated by the unique role
of the librarian-teacher. In a 2012 study, respondents to the authors’ survey
reveal a somewhat cynical perspective: “feedback is often collected randomly .
. . in the event that there would be a need to ‘prove my success as a teacher
someday’” (Cunningham & Donovan, 2012, p. 198) rather than to demonstrate
an impact on student learning or to improve teaching. The question of who owns
the assessment process is also a paramount consideration: those engaging in
teaching assessment must assume personal ownership of the process in order to
support personal responsibility and investment in the outcomes (McGivney,
2017). In light of these concerns related to traditional methods of teacher
assessment, alternate modes of assessment—such as reflective assessment—can
serve as a model for an intentional assessment practice that can improve
teaching practice.
Reflective Assessment in Libraries
Reflection is a process of thinking about ourselves and
the world (Reale, 2017). It can also be a legitimate
method of assessment (Moon, 2004). Black and Plowright (2010) offered a working
definition of reflective assessment: “Reflection is the process of engaging
with learning and/or professional practice that provides an opportunity to
critically analyse and evaluate” (p. 246). Macaluso
(2014) furthermore told us that “the greater purpose of self-reflection is to
develop a sense of where one’s strengths and areas for improvement lie and what
steps one might take to improve or grow as an educator” (p. 124). Within this
frame, the growth-oriented act of reflection becomes a legitimate tool of
assessment (Graf & Harris, 2016).
Reflective practice, however, has not always been present
within librarianship. In calling for a practice of reflection, Doherty (2005)
noted that librarians at that time were “not very reflective practitioners” (p.
12). Six years later, Booth (2011) identified reflective practice as an element
of effective instructional literacy and called for librarians to reflect upon
prior experience as an act of assessment that can improve future teaching and
learning. And more recently, Corrall (2017)
demonstrated that reflective practice is an emerging standard for
teacher-librarians, as represented in textbooks, journal literature, and case
study analysis that focuses on the adoption of reflection to plan, evaluate,
and improve instruction; identify professional development needs; and foster a
reflective teaching culture.
At this point, the act of reflection can be found across
librarianship (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2016), and
particularly within the context of information literacy and instruction
(Downey, 2016; Tewell, 2018). For example, McCartin and Dineen (2018) describe an assessment practice
that empowers students as participants in their own learning and assessment,
along with reflective teacher self-assessments. They write that “continual
assessment of teaching is essential to professional growth” (p. 47), noting
that dialoguing with peers is a fruitful approach for reflective assessment.
For Sen and McKinney (2014), reflective writing proved effective for assessing
information literacy among undergraduate students, who reflected on their own
actions past and present while looking forward to future learning and
professional practice. And for Deitering, Rempel, and
Jensen (2018), reflection was a successful element of assessment within a
cohort of graduate student instructors.
Background and Institutional
Context
In this section, we describe our institution, the classes
that we reflected upon, and a statement about our teaching philosophy, which
centers around learner-driven pedagogy.
MSU is a mid-sized, land-grant university. MSU has a
Carnegie classification of “very high research activity” and a “very high
undergraduate” enrollment profile (Carnegie Classification of Institutions of
Higher Education, 2020). In 2019, the university enrolled 16,766 students and
employed 600 tenure-track faculty, 14 of whom are in the library. The MSU Library
offers courses under the LSCI rubric. One course, LSCI 121: Library Research Skills is permanently numbered and is
offered every semester. Other courses offered are usually “Special Topics”
courses that are only offered once or twice.
Courses
The courses assessed in this paper are:
●
LSCI 121: Library Research Skills
○
Library Research
Skills is a course focusing on both the concepts and skills needed to conduct
library research with an emphasis on electronic information sources. This
course is offered every semester, has been taught in multiple modalities
(face-to-face, online, and blended), and is required for some majors.
Undergraduate students—most often first and second year—from a variety of
majors typically enroll in this course.
○
This course was
taught by Young in Spring 2015, Mannheimer in Spring 2017, and Regan in Spring
2018, Fall 2018, and Spring 2019.
●
LSCI 491: Contemporary Approaches to Community Building
Using Social Media
○
This course looks
at social media from the perspectives of information analysis and community
building. Utilizing a service learning approach, students engaged in the
theories and methods related to social media community building through both
in-class discussion and community outreach. This special topics course was not
required; 24 undergraduate students from a variety of majors enrolled in the
course.
○
This course was
taught by Young and co-teacher Doralyn Rossmann in Fall 2016.
●
HONR 494: Information Ethics and Privacy in the Age of
Big Data
○
This course focused
on ethical theory and practice from an interdisciplinary perspective by
examining the ethical guidelines of various fields, with an additional focus on
practical skills related to privacy on the web. This course was an
upper-division undergraduate seminar taught for the Honors College. Eleven
students from 10 different majors enrolled in the course.
○
This course was taught by Young and Mannheimer in Spring 2018.
We then applied our reflective assessment insights to the
following courses:
·
LSCI 121: Library Research Skills
o
This course was
taught again by Regan in Fall 2019.
·
LSCI 391: Data Curation for a Data-Driven World
o
This course uses
hands-on activities to teach strategies for active curation and management of
data, covering a broad range of practical and theoretical issues in the
emerging field of data curation. This special topics
course was taught for the first time in Spring 2020; six students enrolled in
the course—all undergraduate juniors and seniors majoring in computer science.
o
This course was
taught by Mannheimer and co-teacher Jason Clark in Spring 2020.
·
LSCI 291: Technology, Ethics, and Society
o
This course
examined ethical issues in the development, testing, and implementation of
emerging technologies. Students learned about a variety of different
technologies and their potential applications, including CRISPR, synthetic
biology, reproductive technologies, food technologies, geoengineering,
artificial intelligence and autonomous systems, robotics, the internet of things
(e.g. smart cities), social media, and other information technologies. This
special-topics course was not required; 13 undergraduate students from a
variety of majors enrolled.
o
This course was
taught by Young and Mannheimer, and co-teachers Kristen Intemann,
Mary Ann Cummings, and Brock LeMeres in Spring 2020.
Teaching
Philosophy: Learner-Driven Teaching
As librarians and teachers, we draw together a wide range
of interests and sources that inform our pedagogical viewpoint and teaching
practices, focusing on social responsibility, participation, and power sharing.
These sources include LIS professional values, feminist ethics, constructivist
theory, transformative learning, and participatory design.
The American Library Association (ALA) stated core values
of democracy and social responsibility (American Library Association, 2019) guide us
toward a commitment to sharing power with students and supporting justice in
the classroom. The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education
(Association of College and Research Libraries, 2016) further inspires us to
consider that in the current information ecosystem, learners “have a greater
role and responsibility in creating new knowledge, in understanding the
contours and the changing dynamics of the world of information, and in using
information, data, and scholarship ethically” (p. 7). Individual practitioners
within the LIS profession also influence our thinking, particularly
conversations around the ethics of care (Nowviskie,
2015), described as an “intentionally feminist ethical framework centering
relationships and emotion” (Dohe, 2019, “Whither the
ethics of care” section, para. 1). We look beyond our discipline for additional
guidance and inspiration. The professional practice of participatory design is
important, as it centers on a “commitment to designing futures that challenge
power relationships and transform patterns of exclusion and social injustice”
(Robertson & Wagner, 2013, p. 68).
We also look to established learner-driven and
power-sharing strategies to guide our teaching. For example, constructivist
theory suggests that new learning builds on prior knowledge (Good & Brophy,
2008). By understanding students’ past experiences, we can build a trajectory
of learning that connects prior knowledge to the current learning objectives,
and then extends to a lifelong pattern of curiosity, connection, and
knowledge-building (Mannheimer & Banta, 2018). In our approaches to learner
evaluation, we are influenced by the idea of “grade contracts” that provide
learners with some guidance for expectations and paths of improvements (Danielewicz & Elbow, 2009; Posner, 2015). We are also
influenced by Trede and Smith (2014), who marked out
the complexities and power differentials of grading, recommending “transparent
and self-questioning assessment dialogues amongst assessors as well as between
assessors, the assessed and those who design assessments” (p. 165). The
concepts of minimal grading (Berns, 2020; Elbow,
1997) and “ungrading” (Ferguson, 2013) are also
influential to us, providing alternatives to traditional grading structures. In
practice, these ideas are built on a foundation of trust. In developing a
pedagogy of participation, Stommel (2017) said to
“start by trusting students” (para. 3).
In evaluating our own teaching, we look to Mezirow’s (1990) theory of transformative learning as
inspiration for applying reflective assessment as a way to improve teaching
practice. As Reale (2017) described Mezirow: “reflection paves the way for deep understanding
in the form of transformative learning. As we teach, we must also think of
ourselves as learners, in and among our students and colleagues” (p. 84). The
practice of reflection is therefore critical not only for improvement and
growth, but also for creating space for participation and trust in ourselves,
each other, and our students—all as both teachers and learners together.
As a statement of teaching philosophy, we approach our
teaching through the lens of participation and trust for everyone involved in
the learning process. Our foundational positionality and experiences inform our
reflective practice, in particular, all three authors are committed to sharing
power with students in order to support a trusting, inclusive, and
participatory classroom. This power-sharing is foundational to our teaching
practice and is the main subject of the reflective assessment described in
detail below. By sharing power with students, we support students as co-creators
in their own learning and assessment, and we also empower ourselves to
self-assess our own teaching practice in order to build and strengthen trust
and participation.
In applying the connected strands of teacher assessment,
librarians as teachers, and reflective assessment, we sought to use reflective
assessment as a method for evaluating our learner-driven teaching practices.
Our main research question can be formulated as follows: As teachers, how can
we apply reflective assessment to improve learner-driven teaching practices
that empower students as trusted participants in their own learning and
assessment?
Reflective Assessment with Colleagues
Within the broader methodology of reflective assessment,
we specifically followed the method outlined by Reale
(2017). After reviewing the literature on reflective assessment, we selected Reale to guide our practice because she is an LIS
researcher, teacher, and practitioner—as are the three of us. Furthermore, not
only is Reale’s reflective practice rooted in the LIS
profession, but she also offers specific approaches for a reflective practice
with colleagues. In our case, we wanted to co-develop our learner-driven
teaching practices as colleagues. Reale (2017) stated
that “when we reflect together, we have esprit de corps, and we understand that
reflection on our practice, both together and alone, is an added value to our
teaching” (p. 82). Reale’s approach is conversational
and emergent, and she acknowledges that some may dismiss this approach as just
a regular meeting. But a reflective assessment meeting is not a regular
meeting—reflection happens “with both the explicit and implicit intention that
we will improve our practice” (2017, p. 83). Thus it is the conscious intentionality
towards improvement that defines the rigor of reflective assessment for Reale, and for us as well. The data that we produced during
our reflective dialogues form the basis of our evidence based approach for
assessing and improving our learner-driven teaching practices. As an example of
reflection, Reale (2017, p. 99) described how
tangible evidence is produced through a deliberate attention to process that
involves both questioning and answering oneself through guided writing. In this
model, the reflective dialogue (Regan, Young, & Mannheimer, 2020) is the
evidence that we interpret to assess our teaching. We have attempted to model Reale’s approach to reflective assessment in a way that
demonstrates an approachable method for assessing teaching with colleagues.
As a scope for conducting our own reflective assessment,
we focused our reflections on our individual and shared experiences in
implementing learner-driven practices while teaching undergraduate
credit-bearing courses in a variety of topics in library and information
science, including library research skills, data curation, information ethics,
privacy, and social media. Our reflective outcomes were co-developed through a
series of dialogues and discussions among our author group, described in more
detail in the procedures section below.
In the subsections below, we provide a description of our
step-by-step procedures for conducting reflective assessment, summarized in
Table 1. Our author group conducted our procedures in Summer 2019, after the
close of the spring semester, with a view toward preparing for future teaching
semesters.
1. Articulate shared viewpoints and goals.
Our author group came together in coherence around a
shared viewpoint related to a learner-driven pedagogy. In our initial meeting,
we articulated our foundational positionalities in order to identify a shared
foundation for reflection. For us, our aim was to support a learner-driven
classroom by more intentionally and effectively sharing power with students. We
aimed to apply an assessment method that could help us understand our own and
each other’s teaching practices, and to make improvements based on reflective
insights. Our goals for conducting a reflective assessment of our teaching are
drawn from Moon (2004), which included building shared understanding, a process
of review, and action in the form of continuing development of teaching
practices.
Table
1
Overview
of Reflective Assessment Procedures
|
Procedure |
Description |
|
Cohere
around shared viewpoints |
Our author group came together in
coherence around a shared viewpoint related to power sharing and
learner-driven pedagogy. |
|
Identify
teaching practices for reflection |
Through
conversation, we identified five teaching practices that we wanted to explore
further using our reflective process. |
|
Conduct
reflection |
After
responding individually to a set of reflective prompts, we compiled our
responses into a single document for review and discussion. |
|
Discuss
and analyze reflections to produce insights |
We
met over several sessions to dialogue through our reflective narratives,
analyze our ideas, and develop shared insights. |
|
Apply
insights to improve teaching |
To
close the assessment loop, we applied our reflective insights to improve
learner-driven teaching practices. |
2. Identify Teaching Practices for Reflection
To identify practices for reflection, we asked ourselves,
“What are the practices that we employ to share power with students and support
a learner-driven classroom?” Through conversation, we identified five teaching
practices that we wanted to explore further using our reflective process:
1.
Co-creative
syllabus design
2.
Learner-defined
personal learning goals
3.
Soliciting and
responding to learner feedback
4.
Discipline-based
discussions and exercises
5.
Self-evaluation
Each author has separately applied these practices in the
classroom. This allowed us each to bring our independent experiences together
around shared practices in our reflective dialogue.
We structured our reflective practice around a subset of
prompts offered by Reale (2017), who notes that
“these are the kinds of questions that can initiate and support reflective
thinking and learning” (p. 88):
1.
What previous
approaches have worked for you? What approach would be its opposite?
2.
What limits would
you like to break through?
3.
What data are you
seeing, and what story are you telling yourself?
The courses assessed in this paper are LSCI 121: Library Research Skills, LSCI 491:
Contemporary Approaches to Community Building Using Social Media, and HONR 494: Information Ethics and Privacy in
the Age of Big Data. Among Reale’s full set of
eight reflective prompts, we felt that the three identified above were the most
stimulating and generative for our particular situation. A practical motivation
was also present: we chose three so that we could feasibly produce and analyze
the data. With the goal of our reflection in mind—to reveal insights for
enhancing learner-driven pedagogy—each author independently created written
reflections for each of our five learner-driven teaching practices. For each
teaching practice, we responded to the three reflective prompts identified
above. This procedure created a total of 15 short narratives. We then compiled
all of our responses into a single Google Doc (selected for its collaborative
functionality) for shared review.
4. Discuss Reflections to Produce Insights
The three authors spent four hours over the course of two
sessions to dialogue through our reflective narratives, analyze our ideas, and
develop shared insights. These discussions functioned as collegial inquiry
(Henderson, 2001), described by Reale (2017) as
“deliberate and intentional engagement with colleagues with the specific
intention of improving upon practice and problem solving—together” (p. 85). The
three authors read through all of the narratives and made notes about key concepts
and overlapping ideas. Then we discussed our reflections as a group. We
identified teaching practices that have worked to help promote and support
power sharing and learner-driven pedagogy. In addition, we identified practices
that have not worked as well. As Reale (2017) wrote,
“reflective practice with colleagues is a catalyst for development. It can be a
humbling experience, to be sure, and one in which we are challenged to
interrogate our own truths, our own way of being” (p. 86). As a group, we interrogated
our own truths and generated insights through dialogue to improve our teaching.
Note that our process did not take the form of a traditional content analysis.
Instead, we used informal discussions as guided by Reale
to arrive at meaningful results.
5. Apply Reflective Insights to Improve Teaching
Our final step was to apply our reflective insights to
further develop and improve our learner-driven teaching practices for courses
taught in Spring 2020. These courses were LSCI
121: Library Research Skills, taught by Regan in Fall 2019; LSCI 391: Data Curation for a Data-Driven
World, taught by Mannheimer in Spring 2020; and LSCI 291: Technology, Ethics, and Society, taught by Young and
Mannheimer in Spring 2020. In this step, the results of our reflective
assessments were used to inform revised teaching strategies, thus “closing the
loop” and improving our learner-driven teaching practice.
As a note to the reader, the process of reflective
assessment can be nonlinear and emergent, and does not always provide the
clearest through line of analysis. Our reflective texts and dialogues were
wide-ranging, and our results section below captures highlights from our
reflections and conversations as they relate to our central thesis of
developing and implementing a learner-driven pedagogy that intentionally and
effectively empowers students as trusted participants in their own learning and
assessment.
In following Reale’s (2017)
approaches outlined above, we model a practice of reflective assessment with
colleagues that can help us improve our teaching by sharing power with students
and thus enhance the learner-driven classroom. Each section below is scoped
around one pedagogical practice. We begin each subsection with a quote drawn
from our reflections, followed by a narrative summary of our shared experiences
(for a full transcript of our reflections, please see Regan, Young, and
Mannheimer, 2020).
“I understand
something that students don’t always immediately see: that I’m trying to tell a
story when I teach a course. Although these courses are often structured as a
series of exercises, I want to create a through line of knowledge that builds
over the semester—and I want learners to be involved in the creation of this
story.” —Matthew Regan
Our reflections showed that we all aim to incorporate
student participation into syllabus design, pushing back against the idea of
the professor as the expert and the authority figure. We wanted to put power
into the hands of students, encouraging them to build content for their own
syllabus, informed by the topics that most interest them (for example, choosing
readings for the course or helping to define which skills they most wish to
focus on). However, our reflections suggested that the success of this strategy
has been dependent on several factors:
·
students’ class
standing—i.e. freshman, sophomore, etc.;
·
whether the course
was required or an elective;
·
whether the course
was predominantly skills-based or theoretical; and
·
how much prior
knowledge the learners had about the topic.
For Library
Research Skills, which we have all taught, we found that most students were
lower-division undergraduates, most students enrolled in the course because it
was required for their major, and most students had limited knowledge of the
course topics. Our reflections revealed that in the context of library research
skills, the idea of a flexible, evolving syllabus caused some students
confusion and anxiety, rather than empowering them.
However, Young and Mannheimer found that when we taught
the upper-level course HONR 494:
Information Ethics and Privacy in the Age of Big Data, the learners were
more prepared with a foundational understanding not only of the topics of the
course, but also the general structure of college courses. This allowed the
students to more easily and fluently engage with selecting readings and talking
about the syllabus.
Based on our reflections on our experiences, we concluded
that co-created syllabi may best be reserved for upper-division undergraduates
or graduate students, electives that students enroll in based on interest,
predominantly theoretical courses, and courses for which students have some
prior knowledge of the subject matter.
Learner-Defined Personal
Learning Goals
“I want students to
be able to guide their own education. I want them to think of a class as their
own, active opportunity to pursue knowledge—not a passive opportunity to be
‘taught.’” —Sara Mannheimer
All of us had similar experiences when encouraging
students to identify personal learning goals in each of our courses. We often
found that the students had trouble articulating goals that were meaningful for
their growth as learners, instead falling back on very broad goals that did not
feel specific to their personal learning path. By explicitly helping students
see the connection between their existing knowledge and the learning outcomes
of the course, we can help them develop personal learning goals that are
meaningful to their lifelong learning trajectory.
One of our responsibilities as educators is to help
students understand the learning objectives of the course, and then connect
those objectives both to their existing knowledge and their goals for future
knowledge. Our reflections revealed two key insights to support learners in
developing personal learning goals.
First, all of us have conducted the learning objective
review and personal learning goal identification process early in the semester,
but through this assessment, we determined that if we wait until later in the
semester, students may be better equipped to identify meaningful learning
goals. If more time has elapsed in the semester, students have a better
understanding of the topics of the course and have begun to meld this new
knowledge with their existing knowledge. Our reflections suggest that students
may have more success building future learning goals if they start with a
firmer foundation of knowledge about the topics of the course.
Second, the assessment data showed that personal learning
goals really are personal. It follows
that we as educators should provide a safe space for students to sincerely
reflect on their goals. One strategy we used to create this safe space is to
have one-on-one meetings with each student in which we discuss learning
objectives and learning goals, but we acknowledged that this strategy does not
immediately scale up to large classes. Our data revealed that our students
needed more time and space to reflect on their own learning goals and on how
those goals related to the learning objectives of the course.
Soliciting and
Responding to Learner Feedback
“Students have opinions, fears, frustrations, and joys
that they may hold on to all semester long and then may or may not report out
in a course evaluation. These thoughts must find a space to be aired sooner and
with greater follow-through.” —Matthew
Regan
We all recognized the importance of soliciting learner
feedback and cultivating an environment where dialogue and regular, consistent
exchanges of information between student and teacher take place; where learners
are invested in course content and co-own the learning process; and in which
feedback is not punitive.
Our practices were similar in that we all created time
and space for this information exchange: via start-of-semester face-to-face
meetings, through early in-class listening sessions, or in midterm
self-evaluations. These were met with varying degrees of success. A major
obstacle arose in the form of student anxiety and uncertainty. Meeting with a
faculty member one-on-one can be intimidating; in-class listening sessions may
cause students to bottle up, perhaps because they feel put on the spot in front
of their peers. Similarly, we found that midterm evaluations, if not
anonymized, may stifle honest sharing. We grappled with understanding the best
way to engage learners and inspire them to participate and share in the process
of learning.
Our reflections showed that our systems of feedback and
response tended to flow in one direction, depending on the method in question.
Course evaluations, for example, flow anonymously from students upward to
teachers and administrators. Our learning management systems empower faculty
members to share detailed feedback with students along with a grade for a given
assignment. We found that this unidirectional feedback flow seemed to inhibit
rather than foster our values of power sharing, mutual learning, and
co-creation, and also did nothing to advance fostering intentional dialogue
between students.
Although time-intensive, our reflections suggested that
face-to-face meetings are worth pursuing because they build rapport with
students and help demystify the course. Students who have less investment in
the course (perhaps because it is required or was an elective that fit their
schedules) can be honest about this and we as faculty members can commit to
working with them to make the course a valuable addition to their academic
experience. Barriers to the success of this method include faculty and student schedule
conflicts and, as mentioned above, student discomfort with face-to-face
meetings. In our reflections, we identified small-group discussions as a
potential solution: using class time for small groups to discuss what is
working well and what could be different, then reporting on their
conversations.
Interdisciplinary
Discussions and Exercises
“Since we teach
through a library curriculum at an institution that does not offer a library
degree, the students enroll in our library classes from all over campus. This
presents challenges and opportunities for bringing different disciplinary
perspectives together around similar topics.” —Scott Young
Our assessment data suggests that a significant challenge
for us as librarian-teachers at MSU is that our course offerings do not align
with a curriculum that students are completing as they work toward a degree in
our field. Our classes are either electives that students opt into or
skills-based courses required for their majors. However, LSCI courses are not
often seen as integral to students’ overall academic experience at MSU. As
such, students who enroll in LSCI courses often come from different disciplinary
backgrounds and therefore bring varying knowledges to the course topics in the
content. This provides an opportunity to engage students and encourage them to
bring forward their developing expertise. In practice, we apply small-group
exercises and regularly reconfigure the group compositions so that students
from different disciplines can come together around a common topic with unique
perspectives. Discussions in these interdisciplinary groups can often lead to
unexpected and creative insights related to the course topics.
We determined that engagement is most evident when
students feel a personal connection to the learning material. For some
students, this might be working on a project from the context of their major
(which for many will be closely connected to their future careers). For other
students, this may be an opportunity to experiment with a personal interest or
something they are intellectually curious about.
In our reflections we observed that discipline-based
discussion and exercises also provide students with a chance to lean on and
learn from each other—whether they share a major or not. Small group work may
be intentionally developed so that students from different majors work with
each other to learn something about a discipline with which they are less
familiar. Conversely, students may work in peer groups based on their major,
academic, or personal interests to better understand the power of the scholarly
conversation and how different perspectives even within a discipline can contribute
to problem solving and knowledge building (e.g. several students in a class may
be focused on the same final project topic but be approaching it from very
different perspectives—these differences can and should be highlighted to
foster creative thinking). Regardless of the form it takes, we found that
students engaged more enthusiastically with content that related to their
discipline. We also found that when students engaged with their peers in other
disciplines, all students benefited from the variety of viewpoints. As lifelong
learners, we librarian-teachers agree that learning experiences feel most
engaging when we can bring our own interests to the table—and connect these
interests to the diverse interests of others.
“The data I see here comes through the self-evaluations
themselves, where students have shown themselves generally to be insightful,
honest, and sincere in their self-reflections. This data tells a story of trust
and self-realization.” —Scott Young
In an effort to foster the aforementioned dialogues and
counteract the traditional power dynamic of the teacher-learner relationship,
we have each implemented self-evaluation approaches for grading in each of the
courses we have taught. In addition to the qualitative feedback that we provide
throughout the semester, we offer structured prompts for students to evaluate
themselves, with rubrics for consultation and guidance. We found students to be
insightful, honest, and sincere in their self-reflections. In all of our
experiences, we observed that students tended to offer grades that were
slightly lower or exactly the same as we would have assigned. We see this as a
demonstration of trust and self-realization, with self-grading serving as a
powerful tool to help students recognize that a grade is earned through a
complex process rather than simply given by an authority figure. We found that
in taking time to discuss the self-assessment process itself, we helped
students understand the motivation and value behind active student
self-assessment. As a result, we reflected that our classes felt more relaxed,
open, and creative, without the concern of the “gradebook.”
At the same time, we acknowledged challenges with this
approach. Students sometimes struggled to let go of traditional grading
approaches. Students found it difficult to gauge their level of effort or to
measure progress when the typical markers of grades and points are absent.
Moreover, students still looked to us as the authority in evaluating
performance. Indeed, within the broader institutional context, we are the
authority; we are required to assign students a grade at the end of the
semester. We wished we could more effectively extend the values and practices a
self-evaluative approach from our own classrooms to the wider college.
Our reflective assessment—conducted in Summer 2019—gave
rise to a number of ideas for new or revised practices that support
learner-driven teaching practices. We then implemented new and revised
practices in subsequent courses. In this section, we provide descriptions of
how we applied these techniques in the classroom in Fall 2019 and Spring 2020.
In bringing assessment insights into actual practice, we “close the loop” of
the assessment lifecycle by demonstrating how our teaching practice changed as
a result of our assessment process.
In response to our reflections regarding soliciting and
responding to learner feedback, Mannheimer implemented three anonymous surveys
during her Data Curation for a Data-Driven World course in Spring 2020. The
survey asked students to anonymously identify “roses,” i.e. helpful or
interesting things about the course so far, and the elements of the course that
have worked, and “thorns,” i.e., the least clear or most frustrating parts of
the course so far, and anything that could be improved in the structure or
content of the course. She then shared the results from the “roses and thorns”
survey with the class and communicated what would be changed in response to the
feedback. For instance, the survey showed that learners wanted more clarity
about assignment instructions, due dates, and times; in response, Mannheimer
created a document that provided an at-a-glance overview of all assignments for
the semester, when each would be assigned, and when each would be due.
Regan also solicited feedback early in the semester for
his Library Research Skills course in Fall 2019. Students were provided with an
anonymous check-in survey in the third week of the semester and then again in
the sixth. This enabled Regan to keep his finger on the pulse of student affect
and to anticipate potential changes in course direction, teaching style, and
assignment clarity.
Providing
Clarity about Self-evaluation and Grading
Mannheimer reviewed the policies for self-evaluation and
grading during the first class session of Data
Curation for a Data-Driven World in Spring 2020. However, students were still
unsure about self-evaluation and grading. Therefore, she spent part of a class
period during the fourth week of the semester revisiting the grading rubric and
facilitating small-group conversations about self-evaluation. In the future,
she will also assign reading that can provide more information and therefore
help guide the discussion about self-evaluation as a grading strategy.
One-on-one Meetings with All Students
As librarians, we are keenly aware of the value in working
with students one-on-one at the point of need, as happens in typical research
consultations and reference transactions. Our reflections showed that
one-on-one meetings are also a valuable method for supporting the
learner-driven classroom. In order to strengthen relationships with students,
Regan piloted an approach whereby he met with all students across two sections
of his Fall 2019 Library Research Skills course. Each meeting took place
outside of the classroom during class time while the rest of the class was
engaged in a hands-on group activity. Each student was allotted approximately
five minutes for this check-in; meeting with all students from two sections
took approximately four weeks. The scope was made clear: “This meeting is an
opportunity for us to get to know each other on a human level and for you to
tell me anything that might help me understand you, your
learning style, your academic goals, and your ability to successfully complete
this course.”
During meetings, students revealed personality traits,
discussed competing demands for time such as jobs, families, and classes they
had to complete for their majors. Some disclosed their status as student
athletes with rigorous training and game schedules while others talked about
their status as nontraditional students for whom school was “never my thing.”
Overall, these meetings afforded Regan the opportunity to sit back and practice
deep listening.
Allowing
Students to Negotiate, Discuss, and Determine Assignment Deadlines and Dates
When introducing the three major assignments in his Fall
2019 Library Research Skills course, Regan undertook the practice of asking
students whether the assignment parameters—including the due dates and
deadlines—were fair. This required flexibility on Regan’s part. Learning about
student work outside of the class he taught was helpful to see the whole
picture of a student’s academic life: some students were in writing-intensive
courses for their major, others had work obligations or busy times that might have
interfered with their ability to submit the best possible version of the
assignment. Each assignment was discussed thoroughly, with ample class time
allotted for clarifying questions and negotiation of criteria and submission
deadlines. Students were mostly amenable to the parameters they received, but
the asking was crucial: it actively demonstrated to them that their voices
mattered and that they had a say in how and when their learning was to take
place. This was clearly a novelty for at least one student, who remarked
anonymously via course evaluation: “I loved how you would ask us how we felt
about a certain assignment being due at a certain time. I've never had a
professor ask a class about when they would like a project due. You are very
considerate towards other projects or essays that students have due around the
same time as your assignment.”
More Flexibility
with Students’ Work Products
In order to create new flexibilities for student work and
participation, Mannheimer and Young offered multiple formats for student
engagement in the online discussion forums of our Spring 2020 course Technology, Ethics, and Society. Where
previously we asked students to respond to readings and discussion prompts in
writing, we now offer three options for students to choose from:
·
A written response,
around 250 words.
·
An audio or video
response, about 2 minutes.
·
A sketch that
expresses your thoughts. This could be a drawn picture or a graphic using
whichever medium you prefer, such as an infographic software, Microsoft Paint,
or pen and paper. Once you have created your sketch, attach a caption (2 or 3
sentences) that explains or interprets the sketch.
In practice,
students responded with a variety of creative expressions that enlivened
discussions. In one course, for example, an assignment that asked for student
sketches produced the most discussion posts that semester, with students
opening their responses with comments like “I really like your drawing here,
and I think it speaks volumes,” and “I do like your graphic and thoughts here.”
To help students respond effectively to our
learner-driven methods, we realized that openness and communication is crucial
for accomplishing our goal of inclusive and participatory learning. For this
reason, we have each begun sharing readings and facilitating meta-conversations
with students related to our pedagogy itself. This helps students see their own
power in the classroom, and it also shows students that we as teachers are
acting intentionally. Being open with our approach helps students understand
the structure and motivation of learner-driven practices, which in turn helps
students perform better in a more open-ended and co-creative learning
environment.
In this article, we model an approach to reflective
assessment that aims to assess learning-driven teaching practices among a small
group of librarian colleagues. We find that reflective assessment is an
effective and insightful approach for understanding and improving
learner-driven teaching practices. Our reflective dialogues produced insights
into our past teaching practices that we then applied to improve existing
learner-driven teaching practices and to generate ideas for new practices.
First, we articulated a set of learner-driven teaching
practices that we had each implemented in previous courses. These practices
formed the basis of our reflective assessment: co-creative syllabus design,
learner-defined personal learning goals, soliciting and responding to learner
feedback, interdisciplinary discussions and exercises, and self-evaluation.
Then, following a reflective activity that produced insights related to our
teaching experiences, we produced refinements to these practices and we
generated ideas for new practices, including more frequent checking in with
students; more clarity regarding self-evaluation and grading; one-on-one
meetings with all students; allowing students to negotiate, discuss, and
determine assignment deadlines and dates; more flexibility with students’ work
products; and increased pedagogical transparency.
This process of assessment is iterative, and so we intend
to re-initiate the cycle of assessment in the future. We view the process of
reflection itself as a practice of professional bonding, mutual learning, and
continual improvement. As librarian-teachers, we may teach individually, but we
are rooted in a community of other librarians both locally and profession-wide.
By sharing our experiences via reflective assessment, we can improve our
teaching practices and also connect with each other and our wider community.
Ultimately, this paper offers a set of replicable learner-driven teaching
practices, as well as an approachable framework for conducting reflective
assessment. We encourage others to follow similar learner-driven practices and
reflective assessments in their own teaching.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the anonymous peer reviewers
and the editors of Evidence Based Library
and Information Practice—their guidance and feedback strengthened our
thinking and clarified our perspective. We also thank our students for their
inspiring participation in our shared teaching and learning practices.
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