Douglas Anderson
Self-Evaluation 2007

Teaching

other pages

overview | scholarship | service | career plan

student opinion surveys
summary | discussion

this page

significant teaching achievements
achieving objectives | effectiveness | changes

annual professional plan

A. Significant Achievements in Teaching

1. Discuss the progress you have made in achieving your short- and long-term objectives.

Short-term

To summarize my objectives from last year's self-evaluation and the progress I made toward them. Discussion follows below.

course webs

The GEN 230 course web is now three semesters old, so it is reaching a plateau of development. I am pretty sure that the stucture is sound because I have made some many of them before.

The ENG 260 course web was used for only one semester, but it was used by two sections. As usual with a new web, I see many features to change, but it served the students well in Fall 2008.

Nothing is driving me to do anything about Ricci Street. Thus, I did nothing.

limitations of computer classroom

I tried all three of the above objectives. Not many students chose to bring their own laptops.

Having students clicking from the teacher's station was effective, especially because it freed me to roam around the room more.

We stayed in the Huber classrooms. I was able to get the students to leave the computers and gather in other configurations in the room. This worked much better in H225, which is larger and has space in the center and east end that I can work with.

software in computer classrooms

I got the IT staff to download, install, and support several software applications, most notably a text editor and an image editor, both available for no monetary cost. Rather than do it all at once, I intend to ask for a couple more applications next fall, and more the following fall, too.

internationalizing

In ENG 260, I was better able to add an international component by having the students work with published reports that had international content.

In GEN 230, I made a point of using examples with a non-U.S. component, but I was not able to get any of the students to work on projects with an international component.

Spring 2007 Courses

ENG 110 - College Writing II

This year, I taught College Writing II, (formerly WRT 175, now ENG 175), for the first time in a decade. It did not go well in the sense that the students from the very first day resisted doing any writing or research and increasingly stopped coming to class. I tried to approach it individually, by finding each student and sitting down for a discussion, usually in the cafeteria. It wasn't until mid-semester that I found a common response that sent me to Banner to confirm: two-thirds of the class was on academic probation. They were taking a late afternoon spring section of a fall course, ENG 110, because they had taken ENG 100 in the fall, instead. Many had been in a learning community. Most had one foot out the door, and indeed, most of them did not return in Fall 2008.

I felt as though this was an extreme case, and I did not want to continue on my own without bringing it to a supervisor's attention. I corresponded with the learning community faculty and the academic dean about how I should proceed given the circumstances. I followed their counsel.

Based on my limited relationship with the half dozen students who did not return, each had his/her own circumstances. They were all capable of doing the learning, but it wasn't going to happen last spring at Medaille. The pressures pulling them away were external to Medaille. I don't feel as though they were being pushed out, and I don't believe that there is anything we could have done to retain them. They didn't fit.

GEN 230 - Creative Expression - 2 sections

One section was poetry and the other fiction, but part of the course was to show the unities of the arts, so I was able to blend poetry and fiction by rooting them in the human voice and in the pictures created in the reader's mind. I had anticipated that I would have some resistance to the idea of poetry and fiction because of their experiences in literature classes. Right away, I made four things clear:

GEN 230 is not a literature course.

Song lyrics, especially hip-hop, are a form of poetry. In that sense, each of them has a lot of poetry memorized. Stories are also integral parts of their lives when we look at the stories they tell each other recounting recent events in their lives.

Sports is acceptable subject matter.

Pictures and music help the words. Words can do some things that pictures and music can't.

Once they saw the ubiquity of stories and poetry and added the sports, pictures, and music to help tell their stories, their projects took life, their commitment was high, and this course was great fun to teach. As the student opinion surveys indicate, the students enjoyed it, too.

MGT 110 - Concept of Management

Realizing this this was probably the final time I would be teaching this course, I returned to what had worked successfully before. In order for the students to have a framework for absorbing the content, I asked each of them to start a company for which they would write a business plan. As we approached each of the management silos in the course -- operations, finance, HR, marketing, IT, international -- we saw how it fit into a business plan and specifically their business plans. The business plans they produced weren't very good business plans, but they weren't supposed to be. They were supposed to be a practical framework for them to fit the course content to. The business plans showed where some of them had trouble applying the activity to their business models. Overall, the students were strong on marketing and operations and weak on finance, IT, international, and HR.

MGT 298 -Managerial Communications in a Digital World

Realizing this this was probably the one and only time this course would be taught, I was pleased to find that the students came in with a high level of knowledge and skill, in excess of what I found in the MBA program.

Thus this course, similar to the MBA 504 I taught so successfully, was able to go further than any of the graduate sections had. By that, I mean that we did not have to review the basics of life online and could explore more sophisticated and recent developments.

I challenged each of the students to become much more knowledgable and skillful, and they responded enthusiastically. We had a terrific atmosphere in the class. We got a lot done, and we laughed a lot, too.

Fall 2007 Courses

ENG 260 - Business and Professional Writing - 2 sections

This year, I taught the business writing course (formerly WRT 250, now ENG 260) for the first time in a decade. Having spent the past eight years teaching communication skills to MBA students, I have a clear idea of the standards and skills expected of developing managers in Western New York corporations. In the context of the rest of Medaille's business and sport management curriculum, ENG 260 can accomplish two things, making students:

more aware of the methods and techniques of information packaging on computer networks and more practice in content and presentation standards

better able to produce and structure information, as opposed to the analog document structures that were the only mode before digital information networks

The response I got from the students was terrific. Most of them understood the need to learn content and presentation standards for information, not just documents. Many of them struggled with some of the assignments, but I felt that in all but a few cases, I was able to provide the individual attention to get the students through their stuggles. Compared to the ENG 110 section from the spring, only one student fought me, and she solved her fear of a low grade by switching to pass/fail. After she relaxed, she learned more than she expected to.

GEN 230 - Creative Expression: Literary Arts - 2 sections

I tried to make these sections identical. With a few minor adjustments, it seemed logical, we could do in one three-hour night class what we would do in three one-hour day classes. That was a misconception on my part, due to inexperience. I had never before tried to match these formats, and I won't again. It is not clear to me why I tried to make the evening class fit the day as opposed to making the day fit the evening. From the first night, it didn't work, but I didn't understand that until the third night and start to adjust the syllabus until the fourth night.

day

The day section had younger and less engaged students, compared to the evening section. It had a similar range of sophistication. The atmosphere was livelier and more upbeat. We laughed more. However, the students put off doing their projects longer.

evening

The evening section had older students and more engaged students. The range of accomplishment was about the same with both sections. In this course, I emphasize process over product, and the evening section had more students who seemed willing to engage their projects at a level of detail beyond what they would need for successful completion of the course.

2. Reflect on your recent effectiveness based on (a) your standards and expectations and (b) the feedback you've received from the students and colleagues.

Student opinion surveys

In all the sections that I taught, the students filled out opinion surveys at the end of the course. In addition, I asked for student feedback in other ways.

summary | discussion

This formative feedbacks indicates that I am an effective classroom teacher. However, I consider myself more learner-in-chief than the sage on the stage. I learn about the content of the course, and I learn about teaching.

ENG 110 College Writing II

In spite of the non-performance of more than half of the dozen students, the course was, as planned, very participatory. The difference was that I had planned for each student to have roughly a proportionate share of the attention. As it turned out, four of the students got the lion's share of the attention in class because they were the only ones writing regularly.

For those few students, the course was successful. A larger group, in last-minute flurries, was able to prove that they could write well enough that I could give each of them a passing grade even though they did not follow the writing process as I had planned it.

I feel as though I should have been alerted to the large percentage of potential problem students. I don't think that I could have retained any of those students for Medaille, but I do think I could have made several of them realize why at least getting a C would keep them from having to re-take the course when they finally did decide it was time for college.

Eng 260 Business and Professional Writing

As I wrote above, teaching this course for the first time after a decade teaching the graduate and undergraduate business curriculum, I am more aware than I was before of the context of the students' curriculum as well as the expectations of their employers. Our undergraduates, in their first jobs, will be supervised by our MBA graduates.

I have learned in great detail about the communication skills needed on the job. Yes, surface correctness (spelling, commas) is important. Structures larger than several paragraphs will be dictated by an established format or in a group. Where our students need education is in re-formatting, re-packaging content, multiple modes of content (visual information as well as words) and structuring information rather than documents.

I think I made the above points well and gave the students practice in the re-use of content, both verbal and visual. However, I did not get as far as I wanted in that area. I was not able to get them to work with style sheets. In addition, I did not get very far on helping them learn to structure information, not just documents.

GEN 230 Creative Expression

Now that I have taught this course three semesters in a row, I better understand what I can reasonably ask the students to accomplish. I am still learning, also from them, what I need to do to support the process I ask them to be engaged in. I feel as though I am most effective with students on either end: those most engaged and those least engaged. Those most engaged are, of course, fun to push and prod and challenge. Those least engaged are almost always just scared, of me, of the process, of a low grade, often all three. They are also obvious from their body language if nothing else. I think that I am effective in getting them involved in the process. This past semester, four or five students did not respond to that technique, and I "lost" them in the sense that they never did engage in the course or the process. I hope to not lose as many in the future, and I suspect that I just have to try harder to find a point of engagement.

The middle group, the quasi-engaged, is the hard one for me. I don't mean middle in the sense of one-third. I mean the students who are engaged in the process and want to make something interesting, but struggle. While there are some common struggles that I can engaged as a group, especially software and media management, the most difficult struggles are individual. Some of them are external to the course (jobs, other courses, time mangement, parties, etc.), and I can't do much about that. The ones I can work with are so individual that it is hard for me to generalize beyond this: many students just need my permission to be creative.

My concerns did not seem to be shared by all the students. The Spring 2007 Poetry section gave me a perfect score -- all nine students marked Strongly Agree on all nineteen questions.

MGT 110 Concept of Management and MGT 298 Managerial Communications in a Digital World

I think that I was effective teaching these courses. I also think that I teach these courses as effectively or more so than anyone else in the business department. Furthermore, it would be my choice to continue teaching these courses. I would welcome the chance to develop them and to make them even more effective.

3.Explain how your activities will change as a result of formative and summative feedback.

As a result of summative feedback and against my wishes, I will no longer be teaching Business courses.

In both ENG 260 and GEN 230, should I be teaching them in Fall 2008, I am responding to my reflections above by:

asking the students to do more work on each part of the project(s)

asking them to complete the work sooner

rearranging the order in which I introduce the course units

providing the students with more prescriptive step-by-step sofware instructions

paying more attention to the semi-engaged students

ENG 260 Business and Professional Writing

In addition, in ENG 260, I am going to try other ways to help the students understand:

the use and implementation of standards, specifically standards for content and style

why and how to structure information

GEN 230 Creative Expression

In addition, in GEN 230, I am going to:

ask the students to do more work, more smaller projects

provide a wider range of models

These models will especially help the semi-engaged student, especially important because of the divergent-learning nature of the course (each student is creative in his/her own way). I prefer to provide student models, and the Fall 2007 sections gave me some good ones.

B. Annual Professional Plan

 1. Establish specific objectives in the areas of teaching, service, and scholarship to achieve within the subsequent review period and beyond. Indicate how you intend to pursue these goals, and discuss the institutional support and resources, if any, necessary to meet them.

The four objectives that I started tracking last year are onging processes. I will continue to pursue them.

Developing course webs

Teaching only in Fall 2008 because of my sabbatical in the Spring, I expect to teach courses that I have taught before. I will continue to develop the online materials for the courses.

Part of my sabbatical involves learning new digital technologies. While I foresee their use in the microwebs I am making for my sabbatical projects, I am not certain wether or how I will use them in my course webs.

I'm still not sure what to do with Ricci Street. I intend to renew the domain name for another year and let the traffic come. I am not answering any email from casual users. It is interesting to see how much traffic it gets without any being directed there by Medaille faculty. Perhaps I will analyze a month's server logs to see how the traffic patterns compare to what they were when students were using it more.

Adapting to the limitations of the computer classrooms

In Fall 2008, if I am teaching courses in the computer classrooms, I will continue to encourage students to bring their laptops. However, where before I assumed the advantages of doing so would be their own reward, I am now going to provide positive incentives. I'm not sure at this writing what I will try, and I will probably discuss it with the students to help them understand what I am doing and why.

Increasing use of software in the computer classroom

Because I will be using the computer classrooms for only one of the next three semesters (sabbatical Spring 2008, leave Spring 2009), I don't expect to make much effort to increase the number of software packages that I ask the IT department to support. I would prefer the days when the students had their own laptops and they used whatever software they wanted to or I could support. The current situation inceases student / faculty dependence on hierarchical, centralized IT services that do not serve the students' or this faculty member's needs as well as a more decentralized, autonomous model would.

Internationalizing course content

Spending the spring semester living outside the U.S., I expect to increase the international component of my courses in ways that I will discover during the time abroad.

Student engagement

In addition to these four ongoing objectives, I am going to address my perception that I work better with the two extremes of students, in terms of engagement with the course.

First, I am going to try to quantify my perception.

Second, I am going to pay more attention to the middle group discussed above. I think part of my problem was a tacit agreement that if they were willing to accept a lower grade for less engagement, then I was willing to let them do so. They were learning a lot, but they weren't spending the time and effort of their more-engaged fellow students. I certainly gave them every opportunity to become more engaged, but I didn't directly and personally challenge them the way I do with the un-engaged group.

I won't be able to use a high grade to motivate them because they are already content with a lower grade. When I have individual students to work with in the fall, I will try the strategies appropriate to those individuals. Perhaps in my next self-evaluation, I will be able to generalize from that experience.

modified: January 2008
by Douglas Anderson
http://toLearn.net/portfolio/selfeval/2007/teaching.htm