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Scientific Teaching Resources and Survey Data on Writing Assignment

Thank you to everyone who attended my seminar “Scientific Teaching: Gathering data in and out of the classroom” on 5/17. I really enjoyed the discussion and comments that came up — please feel free to contact me directly if you want to discuss any aspect of teaching or gathering data on teaching practices.

To access the slides from my talk, go here.

The user friendly teaching resources I mentioned in my talk are below:

  • Santa Clara University “Digital Resources for Teaching” or “DRT” can be found here
  • University of Central Florida “Teaching and Learning Resources” can be found here, and the instructional strategies page is especially helpful where you can select the size of your class. For people that love lists (and I do), they compiled nearly 200 ideas and succinctly present a list of techniques.

I shared most of the data collected about my writing assignments in BIS102 during my talk, but both complete surveys are listed below. To see the results of each question, click on the question. The sample sizes are as follows: Quarter 1 with writing  n=88, Quarter 2 with writing  n=87, No writing class n=145. All the bar graphs and pie charts show the data as percentages.

Survey after writing assignment:

Q1 I appreciated the opportunity to write in an upper division course.

Q2 The amount of effort I put into the writing of the assignment was

Q3 The amount of effort I put into the reviewing of writing assignment was

Q4 The writing assignment allowed me to practice and/or improved my writing skills.

Q5 The writing assignment allowed me to practice and/or improve my reading skills.

Q6 Reading papers used my skills of problem detection, problem diagnosis, and suggesting solutions.

Q7 I would have preferred to be graded by the TA.

Q8 I gave low back evaluation scores if I didn’t agree with the reviewer.

Q9 I gave back evaluation scores based on the amount of effort the reviewer put into his/her comments.

Q10 I would have liked to be able to submit a second draft of my 350 word assignment after receiving peer evaluation.

Q11 I understood the way my grade was calculated.

Q12 I enjoyed reading other people’s writing/ seeing what topics they wrote about.

Q13 I would have liked to have received more instruction on how to do reviews.

Q14 I would have liked to have received more instruction on how to back evaluate.

Q15 The assignment length was

Q16 I read the rubric before I wrote my assignment.

Q17 The writing prompt was too vague.

Q18 I enjoyed being able to pick a topic to write about.

Q19 I would rather have had four reviewers/ done four reviews.

Q20 I had a hard time selecting the levels (1,3,5,7) in the review process.

Q21 I was satisfied with the peer review process.

Q22 Please add any comments here that you would like to share: note: this question was mistakenly not included in Q1 so comments are all from Q2

 

No writing assignment class survey:

Q1 I would appreciate the opportunity to write in an upper division course.

Q2 I would like to have two short (~350 words each) writing assignments that are (in total) worth 10% of my grade.

Q3 I would be okay with a writing assignment that involves getting part of your grade from your peers.

Q4 I would prefer a writing assignment that was graded by a TA.

Q5 I would like an assignment that allowed me to practice and/or improved my writing skills.

Q6 I would like an assignment that allowed me to practice and/or improve my reading skills.

Q7 I would like an assignment that used my skills of problem detection, problem diagnosis, and suggesting solutions.

Q8 I have had a written assignment in other upper division science courses.

Q9 I have had a written assignment in lower division science courses.

Q10 I would enjoy reading short (~350 word) essays from my classmates about BIS102-related topics of interest.

Q11 For a written assignment, I would enjoy being able to pick a topic that interests me within biochemistry to write about.

Q12 Please add any comments here that you would like to share about this topic and/or survey:

Written by Mona Monfared, LPSOE (MCB Dept.)

A blank Canvas© for learning and course management at UC Davis

Screen Shot 2016-08-10 at 12.28.14 PMIf you have taught or taken classes at UC Davis in the past 10 years, chances are you have relied on SmartSite in one way or another. SmartSite is an open-source software product from Sakai that has exclusively hosted UC Davis courses since 2007. During the 2016-2017 academic year, UC Davis will transition from SmartSite to Canvas by Instructure for its course management needs. The move to Canvas will directly impact all UCD faculty and students and is set to be complete by Summer 2017. After the Spring Quarter 2017, SmartSite will no longer be supported for teaching at UC Davis and will enter a legacy mode that only allows instructors to access data and materials from previous courses.

Below is general information and resources to help guide faculty as they transition to Canvas.

What is an LMS? Both SmartSite and Canvas are examples of an LMSLearning Management System. An LMS is a software application that provides the infrastructure for course management, delivery, and administration.

Why move from SmartSite? Our LMS is the most heavily relied upon tool for teaching and learning at UC Davis and for many reasons, SmartSite is no longer the most effective or reliable LMS to serve the needs of our growing campus community. SmartSite service outages have caused significant disruptions to academic progress, creating great frustration among faculty, students, and staff. The most recent example of this was a major failure that blocked access to all SmartSite hosted course materials during the height of the Spring 2016 Quarter.

 What is Canvas? Canvas by Instructure is a widely used, reliable, and adaptable open source LMS. With over 1,600 schools using Canvas, including other large research universities, Canvas services and security are well supported.

 

PROS and CONS in moving to Canvas
(+) Canvas integrates well with many third-party apps and educational technology tools
(+) Canvas is reviewed by faculty and students as dependable, rich with features, and intuitive
(+) Canvas has a clean and simple user interface
(+) There is a Canvas app, which is available on both Android and iOS devices
(+) Moving to a new LMS may require instructors to review and revise their course content, materials, and organization

(-) Faculty and students will have to spend time learning how to use and navigate Canvas
(-) Transferring course materials and content from SmartSite to Canvas may be time-consuming
(-) Canvas courses websites are not structured and organized the same as Smartsite so not all courses will easily transfer over
(-) Moving to a new LMS may require instructors to review and revise their course content, materials, and organization

 

 Advice for YOUR move to UC Davis Canvas – Learning, navigating, and using a new LMS is a daunting task. It is understandably frustrating to have to navigate to a new system when you have well-developed course content and materials on SmartSite. For those that have complex online course materials, for example an entirely online course on SmartSite, the transition may prove to be the most frustrating since moving an entire course from SmartSite to Canvas may not be possible. Given the frustrations that come with transitioning to a new LMS, this may be a great opportunity to re-evaluate your course structure, identify how to optimize your use of the new LMS and integrated educational technology tools to best serve your course needs and support student learning.

In making the move to Canvas, I would advise any instructor to first consider how they want to use the LMS as a tool for their course. Identifying whether your course will use Canvas for gradebook, content delivery, file storage, quizzes, etc. will help you think about how to structure your course site. Next, plan the structure and organization of your course layout on Canvas based on its intended use for the particular course. Canvas offers many options for how to structure a course site. For example, you can set your course home page to a course activity stream, a static home page, a module page, a calendar page, and many other options. You may want to browse examples of other Canvas course sites to decide the best layout for your course needs.

 

 Here are additional resources for transitioning to UC Davis Canvas:

 

Written by Marina Crowder (LPSOE, MCB Department)
August 10th, 2016

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