Author Archives: Christina Shane-Simpson

I fail. You fail. We all fail at some point.

I was initially drawn towards the topic of failure not only as a graduate student, but also as a relatively new undergraduate teacher that frequently encounters failure in the classroom. Halfway through the article by Carr (In Support of Failure), I had an Ah-Ha moment. The author describes how we can re-conceptualize failure to include not only the personal realm, but also to consider the sociocultural context in which the failure occurs. Students may be either “held back” or placed in “remedial” classes to compensate for their lack of understanding of course material. The personal failures of the student are punished by segregating them into another classroom, distant from his/her peer group. I agree that we should consider the sociocultural context of the failure, but we should also seek to examine whether the nature of the undergraduate classroom (specifically) can transform how students and we (as educators) understand and communicate our failures.

I recently handed back graded papers, in which most of the class scored around the C-range. Immediately after handing back the paper one of my student’s hands shot up. She wondered what the class average was. When I answered her questions with, “a C average” I could sense the release of tension in a room. Students frequently use social comparisons to determine the “degree” of their failures within the classroom. It seems that the sense of shame that Carr later discusses can be transformed into a group-shame dynamic in college that often lightens the burden of experiencing this heavy emotion. As teachers, we may give students the class grade distributions and consequently, we may be encouraging students to accept their failures in relation to their peers. Will this transformation of shame and the subsequent movement towards students’ acceptance of their failures lead to a classroom full of unmotivated/lazy students? If we are to encourage students to accept failure (as Carr suggests), this paradigm shift must permeate beyond my classroom and into an entire campus for it to be effective. I also wondered whether there were differences in “failure acceptance” across the CUNY campuses. Are some of our campuses promoting the acceptance of failure? If so, how are they doing it effectively without creating an underachieving student body?

Turning more inward, Carr also talks about giving ourselves permission to experience failure “on its own terms,” and many of the articles in the Journal of IT & P illustrate personal reflections from educators on failures they’ve had within the classroom. We’ve been taught to feel shameful of our behaviors, but why don’t we as educators discuss our failures in an effort to learn from each other? I’ve noticed that student teachers do this frequently through informal conversations in the hallways, but we don’t publicly discuss these failures. I’m not advocating for teachers to publicize all of their classroom failures, but I’d love to learn from the successes and failures of other educators. How do we get far enough past the shame associated with failure to discuss our personal classroom failures with other teachers?

Blogging: Is it Practical/Possible in Intro-Level Courses?

Identifying myself as one of those graduate instructors that fails to effectively use technology within the classroom (beyond my inconsistent, in-class computer-projection set-up), I’ve been trying to determine the appropriate tools and methods in which I can engage 170 students at 8am two days a week. This week’s readings mostly outlined how blogs can be used to increase student engagement both in and out of class, a skill that many of us (definitely including myself) will need to more fully develop if we hope to continue teaching.

In the Halavais article, he highlights how online spaces can effectively use students’ fear of embarrassment as motivators for “better work” via blogs. This is genius! By opening the blogging space to the public, students may also improve the quality of the work they post. I loved the idea behind this, but also wondered whether students might simply fail to post in fear of critique. Perhaps if students were allowed to use pseudonyms (as suggested in the article) they may feel more liberated to post their controversial opinions in a public space.

Mushon Zer-Aviv describes the blog as a central/core feature of the course. I wanted to ask the author, what this class structure would actually look like in a syllabus. I’m not sure whether the Psych Department at Hunter even be okay with an open-access blog, but this reading inspired me to explore this possibility. I also kept thinking, in regards to my mostly freshman students, how do I scaffold the blogging process? Blogging is by all means a skill, but how do you teach it and how much time does it take to teach?

While I generally enjoyed the accessibility of the readings this week, I still felt as though they didn’t thoroughly describe practical approaches to the assessment of blogs. Halavais discusses his technique for assessing blog posts via Google Reader as a way to quickly skim the posts. This sounds doable for a smaller course, but for those of us teaching 100+ students, it seems that this process of skimming could take days. This is especially true if our students have never blogged, since they’ll tend to write more. For those of you that have used blogs, how do you efficiently assess students’ posts? Have any of you used a peer grading system, and if so, was it effective in saving you time?

Christina’s Proposed Projects

Project Proposal #1: Implementation of a Summer Workshop Series for Students with Autism
Incoming freshmen college students with autism report significant stress and anxiety. However, most colleges don’t provide freshman programming specifically for this population of students. The proposed research will design, implement, and evaluate a summer training focused on classroom readiness, social skills, self-advocacy skills, and computer-mediated communication skills designed to support students with autism as they transition into college. This study will instruct future programming targeting students with autism as they meet the challenges of an increasingly complex online and offline college social environment.

Set of Personas
Unprepared Ulric: Ulric enrolled in college at CSI, but knows very little about the college experience. His high school and his strong-willed parents pushed him to take classes without providing him with the computer-skills that he’ll be required to use in his freshman year of college. Ulric was not diagnosed with autism, but displays many autistic-like characteristics.

Sheltered Sally: Sally is an incoming freshman with a lot of ambition to go to college. She’ll be the first in her family to attend a 4-year institution. Having gone through the NYC public school system as a student diagnosed with autism, Sally was given a personal aid and a strong support network from the school. Sally will be starting school in the fall of 2014 and although she’ll be connected with the Center for Student Accessibility at CSI, she is unsure how different college life will be from her experiences in high school.

Introverted Inna: Inna is an incoming 2014 freshman college student at CSI with a milder form of autism. She has numerous social difficulties in peer groups stemming from her lack of understanding about social norms and her inability to pick up on nonverbal from others. Consequently, Inna doesn’t have many friends and has always wanted to build a stronger support network. Inna is hoping that college provides her with opportunities to make new friends that share her interests. She has always wanted to use online social networks, but has been too intimidated to try them out.

Use Case Scenario
Unprepared Ulric: Ulric reluctantly enrolled in the summer transition program at his parents’ request. Although he was hesitant to engage during the first week of the workshop, in the second week Ulric is starting to feel more confident about college having learned about some of the computer-mediated skills he’ll be asked to use. Ulric is starting to understand the Blackboard learning management system, and hopes that he’ll be able to help his peers if they have questions about the system.

Sheltered Sally: Sally’s older siblings warned her about the difficulties of college life, so Sally was eager to engage in the summer workshops. Sally is learning more about the student-professor relationship, and how this relationship differs from the student-teacher relationship in high school. The workshops have also provided Sally with the skills to use an online planner to keep track of her classes and assignments in the fall.

Introverted Inna: Inna was slow to open up to the group, but has realized that she has a “knack” for some of the computer skills in the workshops. Inna is quickly gaining confidence in her interactions with her peers, and is starting to make friends through the workshops that are both on and off of the spectrum. Inna is looking forward to connecting with her new friends through social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Full-Fledged Version
Throughout the spring 2014 semester, the research team will be working on identifying focus areas and then developing a sequence of training modules for the summer programming. As a collaborative effort, the team will work with current students in Project REACH to build modules focusing on computer-mediated communication skills. The pre-existing training modules (classroom readiness, social skills, and self-advocacy skills) will all be modified based on the evaluation feedback received from the previous three semesters of the Project REACH model.

Timeline
Phase I: Recruitment: First year college students with autism will be recruited for this project from the CSI’s Center for Student Accessibility (CSA) and through informal workshops held at local high schools on Staten Island in the spring of 2014. During the recruitment phase, the research team will design and modify content areas identified from a current study the researcher is conducting at CSI.

Phase II: Workshop Design and Pre-Testing: The first round of focus groups will be held in early-July. Based on recordings from the focus groups the research team will design/modify content for each of the workshops. Workshop content areas previously identified by Project REACH and by the computer-skills study at CSI (email, Blackboard, social networking) will be used as the foundational skills that the research team will build from.

Phase III: Skills Workshops: Workshops will occur two times each week for 2-hour increments of time from mid-July through mid-August. During each of the workshops, students will be given time to demonstrate and practice their skills with their peers, their undergraduate mentors, and the workshop facilitator (the graduate student instructor).

Phase IV: Post-Testing: At the conclusion of the workshops in August, students will be asked to complete the same videotaped role-plays and standardized measures conducted before the workshops began.

Phase V: Program Evaluation: Students will engage in a final round of focus groups in late-August to discuss any barriers during the intervention, and to obtain students’ recommendations for future interventions. These focus groups will also serve as opportunities for the researchers to modify and/or develop training modules for recommendations of future programming efforts at the CSI and other colleges.

Current Skills
The researcher has a working skillset surrounding workshop instruction and has used the Project REACH training modules in a group environment. Depending on the specific areas of computer-mediated communication skills identified by the incoming cohort, the researcher may need to become more knowledgeable about the Blackboard website, specific social networking sites (Twitter, etc.), and/or other areas of potential interest for this cohort.

Stripped-Down Version
The stripped-down version of this project will include one workshop held in the summer of 2014, in which the workshop will focus on only one computer-mediated communication module – Blackboard or social networking. Up to 20 students will participate in this 2-hour workshop to learn more about the skills they’ll need to succeed in their first year of college.

Project Proposal #2: Creation of a “Teaching Hub” for Graduate Student Instructors in Psychology
Doctoral students enrolled in the CUNY campuses often teach one or more undergraduate classes in the CUNY system. However, preparing to teach a new class for the first time can be a daunting task and there are few “teaching of psychology” websites with open-access availability for teachers. The proposed project will use the GSTA website to host teaching activities for graduate student teachers.

Set of Personas
Rushed Rita: Rita is a second year graduate student that takes classes within and outside of the CUNY system, in addition to working a part-time job at a non-profit children’s organization. As part of her funding package, Rita is required to teach this upcoming fall semester. Since she’ll be teaching at Hunter (as is contracted by the Psych Department), she is unsure which class she’ll have until August. Rita knows she won’t have much time to prepare for the class and is worried about fitting it into her already busy schedule.

Clueless Connie: Connie is a graduate student transferred from a university in the Northwest. She is still becoming acquainted with the CUNY system and is trying to learn the locations of each campus. Her new advisor is pushing her to try teaching his semester, but she’s unsure how to teach, where to teach, and where to find resources for teaching.

Lazy Leonard: Leonard is an 8th year graduate student in the Psychology Department. He has put off teaching in graduate school, as he’s only interested in his research. However, due to his lack of employment and graduate student status, Leonard has been financially forced to pick up a teaching position at a community college outside of the CUNY system.

Use Case Scenario
Rushed Rita: Rita found out about the Teaching Hub from a classmate a few months before the fall semester began. She has begun to use the Hub to start putting together “course packs” for the 3 potential courses that she is likely (and qualified) to teach at Hunter. Rita feels more confident that she’ll be prepared for whatever class at Hunter gets thrown her way.

Clueless Connie: As the GSTA faculty advisor, Connie’s advisor told her about the Teaching Hub. Connie has been exploring through the teaching activities and based on the syllabi from the website, she is starting to narrow down the types of classes that she’d like to teach. Although she’s still learning about the many CUNY campuses, Connie has narrowed down a few campuses that are closer to her apartment in Queens.

Lazy Leonard: Leonard has waited until the week before the fall semester to begin preparing for the Introduction to Psychology class that he’ll be teaching at one of the community colleges. However, Leonard was given the link to the GSTA website by a friend, so he is now starting to put together materials for his course. Although Leonard has waited till the last minute, his students will have well-structured and empirically validated educational activities in their psychology class.

Full-Fledged Version
Beginning in the middle of the spring 2014 semester, the GSTA page will be updated by members of the organization. Consequently, the researcher will have access to the site during this time to begin making updates to the site. This project will be on-going project through the summer to prepare he site for a full launch in the fall of 2014. Once the site has been piloted with a subgroup of graduate student teachers, the full site will be revised to reflect feedback from the graduate students, and then the site will be launched again to the CUNY graduate student psychology community.

Timeline

Phase I: During this phase, the researcher will solicit materials from the graduate student community in the Psychology Department. Some of these materials will be collected from an online pedagogy and psychology text currently being written by students and faculty. The researcher anticipates that activities for the site will continue to come in throughout the summer.

Phase II: Most of the work done during this phase will include website development and modifications. The current state of the GSTA website is not fully functional (and not user-friendly), and as such, the researcher will be using her editing skills acquired through the IT Core II course to make revisions to the site. The following revisions are suggested:

1. Create a modern user interface with drop down menus and tabs, making the GSTA website more functional. The researcher anticipates that the following tabs will need to be added: (a) Syllabi, (b) Teaching Activities, (c) Teaching Tips/Tools – Blog Link, and (d) a list of current graduate student teachers in the psychology department.

2. Make corrections to any uploaded syllabi to maintain the confidentiality of the graduate students submitting the documents. Upload teaching syllabi and other materials to the GSTA website.

Phase III: In this phase, the researcher will pilot the website in July-August of 2014 with fellow graduate student teachers, many of which will likely come from the GSTA. This period of the summer also tends to be the time when student teachers receive their teaching assignments and are most likely to be seeking teaching resources online. After the pilot run, the researcher will request feedback from each student via email. Final revisions will be made to the site by the end of August based on the instructor feedback.

Phase IV: Beginning in the fall of 2014, the GSTA Teaching Resource Hub will be launched to the psychology graduate student instructor community. An email will be sent out through the psychology listserv that describes the website. To maintain website sustainability, including upkeep and consistent revisions, the maintenance of the site will be turned-over to a newly-formed GSTA Teaching Hub Committee.

Current Skills
I’ve heard from other students in the GSTA that the website support software is not easy to use, and has a steep learning curve. My limited background in modifying webpages will require me to learn more about the Wild Apricot site design. I plan to rely on my fellow GSTA members currently using the site, online tutorials, and probably external reading materials related to website building. As I’m beginning to understand the nuances of WordPress, I’m hoping that some of these skills will carry over to Wild Apricot as well.

Stripped-Down Version
The basic version of this project would include an online resource for a few psychology course activities with tutorials on how to use the activities in classrooms. I would exclude the syllabi as well as any other supplemental teaching material. The piloting phase will also be removed from this project, as activities are solicited, uploaded to the site, and then the psychology graduate student instructors at the Graduate Center will be given access to the site and it’s materials.

Christina’s Three Project Ideas

Supporting the Transition to College: Implementation of a Summer Workshop Series for Students with Autism
Students with autism often experience significant stress when transitioning from a supportive high school setting to the more independent college setting. While stress and anxiety have been identified as factors associated with the high student drop-out rate, no colleges have created evidence-based intervention programming to support students with autism during this transition. The proposed research will design, implement, and evaluate a summer training focused on classroom readiness, social skills, self-advocacy skills, and computer-mediated communication skills that is designed to support students with autism as they transition into college. Twenty students will be recruited to participate in this four-week workshop. A five-phase, quasi-experimental pre/post-test design employing focus groups, behavioral assessments, and standardized measures will be used to examine the program’s impact on classroom behaviors, computer-mediated communication skills, self-advocacy skills, anxiety, social support, loneliness, self-esteem, depression, and student adaptation to college life. This study will instruct future programming targeting students with autism as they meet the challenges of an increasingly complex online and offline college social environment.

Creation of a “Teaching Hub” for Graduate Student Instructors in Psychology
Doctoral students enrolled in the CUNY campuses often teach one or more undergraduate classes in the CUNY system. However, preparing to teach a new class for the first time can be a daunting task and there are few teaching of psychology websites with open-access availability for students. The Graduate Center was given the opportunity to host the Graduate Student Teaching Association (GSTA) for the next few years. This responsibility comes with an out-dated GSTA website, half-created social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook), and few in-person resources such as teaching activity guides and sample textbooks. The proposed project will take full advantage of the GSTA’s potential by transforming the nature of the online website or by creating a new website that houses teaching resources such as activities, textbook reviews, and syllabi. This website will be accessible through the CUNY system initially, but may later expand to open access of these resources.

There’s an App for That! Bringing the Experimental Psychology Lab to your Mobile Device
Similar to other introductory classes, undergraduate students enrolled in introductory psychology classes often struggle to fully understand many of the historical experiments used consistently in psychological research. In these introductory classes, students are expected to learn a multitude of researchers and theorists, in addition to memorizing the experiments the researchers conducted from within a framework of their research questions and chosen methodology. Class time is limited and students may be required to look up an experiment mentioned in class after formal class hours, or students may want to learn more about recent expansions/modifications made to the original experiment. The proposed project will design and pilot-test a mobile app that searches through YouTube videos for illustrations of appropriate psychology experiments. This app will be based on the number of “hits” received on the YouTube page illustrating a given experiment, since higher quality videos tends to receive more hits.

Christina’s Project Ideas

Here’s a couple of ideas that I’ve been playing around with:

1. Over the past two semesters I’ve been working with undergraduate students with autism at the College of Staten Island through a program called Project REACH. The program is designed to assist and support students as they transition from a fully-supportive high school environment to a more independent and socially complex college environment. Through my Second Year Research Project I was able to identify specific areas in which students were struggling. Not surprisingly, many of these problem areas surround social interactions with peers and teachers using computer-mediated communication such as structuring emails towards varying audiences, navigating Blackboard, and setting up privacy settings on Facebook. I recently submitted a small grant proposal to assist with implementation of a 4-week series of summer transitional workshops to target incoming freshmen on the spectrum. The summer program would consist of 2 rounds of focus groups (1 in the beginning, 1 in the end for assessment and evaluation), 4 weeks of formal classroom-based instruction meeting twice a week, and on-going opportunities for students to practice the skillsets they are learning. Overall, this is my first choice for the project.

2. Another nagging problem that I’ve come across in my teaching career has been the lack of resources for novice psychology instructors, especially within the CUNY system. This year the Graduate Center was awarded the “host school” position for the Graduate Student Teaching Association. We’ll be serving as a major resource for graduate students as they begin their teaching careers. Many of the CUNY campuses have support systems in place for graduate student instructors (CSI, GC, etc.), but students are unaware of these resources. I’d like to greatly improve the GSTA website by adding in extensive course content – teaching activities, articles on teaching, sample syllabi, instructions for developing teaching philosophies, etc. This site could be a resource for CUNY instructors, in addition to the surrounding world outside of CUNY.

Christina’s Brief Bio

Hi All,

I’m a third year student in the Psychology Program on the Developmental track. I’ve been involved in a few research projects surrounding social networking sites, specifically looking at how students learn about, join, and navigate sites like Facebook. I’ve also been involved with projects designed to facilitate learning through the use of online and offline gaming environments.

This is my fourth time teaching a Human Development class at Hunter for 160(ish) students. Although technology is never consistently available in my classroom, I’m particularly interested in helping students to use their out-of-class time more effectively. I enjoyed the theory from last semester, but I’m excited to learn and directly implement some of the tools that we’ll be covering this semester.