Steven Volk, December 13, 2015

Time Magazine, May 20, 2013

Much has been written, including in this space, about what I have called a “culture of safety” that seems to have taken root on college and university campuses. As Judith Shulevitz wrote in a much-cited ­ New York Times article, “Safe spaces are an expression of the conviction, increasingly prevalent among college students, that their schools should keep them from being ‘bombarded’ by discomfiting or distressing viewpoints.” It has proven considerably easier for many in the media to ridicule students as “coddled” and “self-infantilizing” than to ponder why so many of their grievances are located in the discourse of “safety.”

I have suggested before that we shouldn’t be surprised at the rise of a “safety” narrative in a time of a recognized high-level of sexual violence on campus or at a moment when gun violence, terrorism, and police killing of blacks, among other acts of brutality, are endemic. A lot of triggers are, indeed, being pulled.

I’ve also become more aware, in conversations with students, about how social media, in its most addictive aspects, impacts their feelings of safety. Yik Yak may be the contemporary equivalent of graffiti on the bathroom wall in the 1990s (a practice that is still around, by the way), but now you don’t have to go to the bathroom to read the nastiness and threats; you can just pull out your phone, as students do in compulsive fashion, and this can increase a student’s sense of fear and isolation. Even if the vicious comments are a minority of the posts, the things people say on Yik Yak “are real thoughts,” according to Francesca Tripodi, a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Virginia who is completing a dissertation on this particular social media outlet. Students can feel more vulnerable because “[t]here are people on campus with those thoughts.” And one obvious remedy – don’t use the ap – is not a solution for those who either use it to stay “in the loop” or who, like most of us, can’t turn away from a car crash. Continue reading →

Steven Volk, December 6, 2015

The debate over the value of Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) is a long one, which I have reported on a number of times (see here and here, among others). As we move into the last week of the semester, I’d like to suggest two additional approaches to end-of-semester evaluations that can help both you and your students think about the learning that occurred in your classes. I’ll also include a “guide” I wrote in 2010 for reading your SETs when they are returned to you after grades are in.

What Helped Your Learning?

Students enter the “Natio Germanica Bononiae,“ University of Bologna (15th century). Public domain. Wikimedia

SETs are largely about how students experienced your course, and so the questions focus on issues of organization, pacing, clarity, grading, etc. As numerous articles have pointed out, Student Evaluations of Teaching don’t tell you about student learning, and they provide very little information to suggest what it is you are doing to support (or hinder) the leaning that goes on in the class. Linda Shadiow and Maryellen Weimer, writing in Faculty Focus on Nov. 23, suggest a series of questions that can help foreground student learning issues. They offer a series of fairly simple sentence stems for students to complete. For example,

• It most helped my learning of the content when…because…
• It would have helped my learning of the content if…because…
• The assignment that contributed most to my learning was…because…
• The reading that contributed the most to my learning was…because…
• The kinds of homework problems that contributed most to my learning were…because…
• The approach I took to my own learning that contributed the most for me was…because…
• The biggest obstacle for me in my learning the material was…because…
• A resource I know about that you might consider using is…because…
• I was most willing to take risks with learning new material when…because…
• During the first day, I remember thinking…because…
• What I think I will remember five years from now is…because…

Shadiow and Weimer recommend that faculty also complete the same sentences. Having (almost) completed the semester, we probably have a good idea which assignments worked from our point of view and which didn’t; what readings brought out the most in discussion, and what didn’t; what homework assignments stretched student learning and what brought basically “meh” responses. Comparing our answers to the students can be revealing (or, perhaps, horrifying!).

Continue reading →