Journaling with SPARK

1. Journaling with SPARK Glenn Caffery ResEc112 Computing: Foundations to Frontiers January 2009

2. Presentation Outline • About my course and my students • Motivations for using Journal • How I use the Journal • Sample Journal Prompts • Sample Student Responses • The Good and the Bad • Conclusion

3. About the Course • 3 components of IT Fluency • Skills, Concepts, and Capabilities • 15 years ago • skills oriented—easy to teach/learn • students motivated to develop skills. • Now • concepts and capabilities—harder to teach/learn • want to change how they think—like an IT expert • students need to be convinced to invest in this.

4. About the Students—Challenges • 100+ students • 95% required to take course • 64% would not have taken class otherwise • 20% want to “just coast through the course” • Many students lack confidence with IT • How can I keep class personal, motivate students to engage, and assign challenging projects as class size goes up?

5. Pre-Course Survey Student seemed to go into this with an open mind, which pleased me.

6. Primary motivations for journal • We were creating a database system for Amherst Survival Center food pantry. I worried about managing a service learning course with 100+ students? • I wanted to know my students; it’s what I enjoy about teaching. • I wanted students to reflect more about their work and learning. • I wanted to shift responsibility for course experience to students, have them document their experiences. I would coach more. • I liked the power of knowing what each student thinks. • In a large class of students who mostly don’t consider IT a strength, I needed to be sensitive to the barriers for each student. • I wanted to save time by eliminating quizzes and homework to motivate students to do readings/class preparation.

7. How I use the Journal • SPARK journal tool (instead of individual blogs) • Private: only student and I can read • Journal prompts, some specific, some vague • I catch up with reading weekly (at worse) • I comment/reply to individual entries infrequently, but discuss the journal entries in class weekly. • 15-25% of grade (wanted students to take seriously) • Grading rubric reached through consensus

8. Grading rubric for journals • Journals 15-25% of grade • Students developed the grading criteria • Idea came from Mei-Yau Shih • Assigned 3 readings on critical thinking & reflective writing in preparation. • Used WIKI for this, which allowed me to see history and allowed students to discuss changes. • I started them with an intentionally inadequate (vague) rubric…

9. My starter grading scheme—yuck And students edited it to this…

11. Rubric worked like a charm… • Asked students to perform mid-semester self-evaluation using rubric. • Students said criteria fair and would motivate them to use the journal productively • Grades students gave themselves were appropriate • Unintended consequences involving students in this: • Students became engaged with journaling and my motivations for asking them to do it. • Students had anxieties about journaling that I wouldn’t have anticipated: • E.g., Is it okay to admit we are confused?

12. My journal: a public blog • http://blogs.umass.edu/resec112/ • Used OIT’s WordPress blog – worked great. • I thought of this and the journal as foundation of a dialog between me and each of my students. • I used the blog for encouragement, summarization, providing context, letting them know what to expect… • …and also providing journal prompts.

13. Some types of journal prompts • Read article and tell me what you understood and what confused you—be precise! • Tell me what course resources you used when working on your project and how they worked for you. • Tell me how well you understand these concepts. • E.g. database design concepts, 11 questions presented early in course. • I asked them to tell me what they planned to do to work through their confusion. • I returned to these same items later in course. • Evaluate your journal to-date based on rubric. • Tell me how your team is working out—strengths/challenges.

14. Example Prompt 1: A prompt to address a challenge I was having in class. • Specifically: • Students seemed resistant (surprisingly to me) to engage in a critical thinking exercise in preparation for our work with the Amherst Survival Center. • Generally: • I wanted students to develop their capacity to be empathetic when conducting IT needs assessment and systems design.

15. This journal prompt is the wrap-up to our preparation for our work with Amherst Survival Center.  I would like each of you to write one or two paragraphs, on a topic that can easily span many pages, so you will need to focus on that which interests you the most or is most significant to you or our work.  The choice is yours. • Please consider the many perspectives on bias that were introduced over the last few weeks: • MartínEspada’s poem, “Jorge the Church Janitor Finally Quits.” • Brookfield’s perspective on Critical Thinking. • Your Project Implicit test experience (I strongly urge you to read the project’s pages on interpreting results and FAQ pages for this test.) • Harvard economist Alberto Alesina’s suggestionthat Europeans think the poor are unfortunate and Americans think the poor are lazy. (60% of Americans vs. 26% of Europeans said the poor are lazy in the World Values Survey, according to Alesina.) • Thoughts about your recent or impending visit to the Amherst Survival Center. • Information about the Amherst Survival Center from their website or class visits by representatives. • Your thoughts on Empathy and its role in IT needs assessment and database design. • Other experiences or perspectives that you have. • Reflect on these perspectives, and write a paragraph or two in your journal that speaks to your readiness to be empathetic to the needs of this community; broaden your own sense of the community you are part of; look at your own biases, subconscious or conscious, that may affect how you interact with your community; see the role of these kinds of  non-technical “skills” in information technology; understand the opportunities and challenges presented by our service learning project with ASC; or derive meaning from this experience. • Again, I am only asking for a paragraph or two, so be thoughtful in what you choose to focus on, and make your reflection and writing meaningful. • Note: in addition to this assignment, there is a reading in a separate blog entry above, titled, “Second Database Reading.”

16. Example 1 Outcome • Because of journal entries earlier in the semester, I suspected that many students weren’t really ready for this experience. When I wrote this prompt, I was somewhat exasperated; this was my last attempt. None of this was new to students. • Responses were the most thoughtful I received all semester. Some were very personal and some academic, and all suggested that the class was ready to engage fully in this project.

17. Example Prompt 2: To encourage students to work through challenging reading. • Specifically: • This reading presents new terminology and concepts that might not become clear until the end of the unit. In the past, students gave up too easily on this article, but I think it is important to read at the time it is assigned. • Generally: • I wanted students learn how to read about IT without quitting when it gets technical. I want them to work on understanding the material, and to let me clarify what they find specifically challenging.

18. In anticipation of our class discussion on Relational Database Concepts, I’d like each of you to read the following: • Database Design Basics. Read this entire article. • In your MacDonald text, read pages 1-5 and 23-24. • Please write one paragraph in your SPARK journals about which concepts you found to be clear and understandable from the reading and which concepts confused you.  Be as precise as possible about what was confusing. • During Monday’s lecture, you will be asked to respond to PRS questions about the reading, individually and in teams that I will assign for the database part of the class.  These tests are called Readiness Assurance Tests, and they gauge how well prepared you are to learn the material that I will present.

19. Example 2 Outcome. • Many students talked about going back and re-reading parts. (In the past, I suspect students started reading and just quit.) • Most students mentioned specific concepts they grasped and concepts that they couldn’t understand. • Mostly, I liked that the students were not lazily thinking that it’s all hard, but instead put effort into identifying specifically what was hard for them. • I also value the insight I got into how different students learned this material; it makes me a more sensitive, effective teacher.

20. Example Prompt 3: To have students practice their new skills as critic first. • Specifically: • The Survival Center already had a database that was developed by someone who knew how to use the software but not important database design concepts. • I wanted the students to see the practical implications of ignoring the concepts they’ve been reading about. • I wanted students know why we were asked by the Survival Center to do this project, and have their own standards to assess their own databases later on.

21. Download the Amherst Survival Center food pantry database that I stored in SPARK (It is in the “Amherst Survival Center” folder.) and open up the file in Microsoft Access.  Look at the tables and the relationships, and make a list of all the design flaws that you can find.  Consider the 3 normalization rules that I presented in class (You can find them in my PowerPoint slides for lecture 8 that are in the SPARK folder called “Lecture materials.”) and that are described in the Database Design reading (available here).  Also consider the “Six Principles of Database Design” starting on page 79 in your reading for last week in the MacDonald text.  Write an entry in your journal listing, with a very short description, the flaws you found. I often encouraged students to keep journal entries short, since I wanted to make writing in their journals unintimidating and I wanted to discourage writing to fill space.

22. Example 3 Outcome. • Most students found several flaws, and I liked the tone of authority they had in their writing when critiquing this database, even though I knew their conceptual understanding was still shaky. • Their aggregated list of design flaws was complete, and it was a nice resource for discussion in lecture. It was also nice to return to it when giving the teams feedback on their own projects. • Compared to a quiz or homework, this journal assignment was easier for me, gave me more nuanced feedback on students working understanding of these concepts, and gave the students more confidence in their slowly emerging expertise.

23. Example Prompt 4: Worries about managing 100+ student projects. • Specifically: • The course had three units, and in one I asked each student to build a professional-quality website. While I knew I can coach a few students to this standard, I was concerned that 100+ students would be overwhelming. • I wanted students to reflect on each lab and be in charge of assessing for themselves what was clear and what was not. • Generally: • I wanted to charge students with pushing themselves harder, evaluating their own work more constructively, and becoming more independent and motivated learners.

24. Review your website online from the lab this.  As you look at the page, identify all the formatting that went into that presentation, and see if you can remember, in general terms, how each item was accomplished.  For example, the white box that contains all the content is a div we created named “wrapper” and the blue border around it we created by editing the style for that div and changing the border properties.  The spacing between lines of text we accomplished by changing the line height property of the paragraph <p> tag.  If you are not able to remember, refer back to the lecture notes for the step that accomplished that task, and see if that helps.  Ultimately, you will need to develop a level of comfort with these steps to become proficient in web design.  While that may seem like a insurmountable challenge, take comfort in knowing that if you can master what you did in that first lab in web design, you will have mastered much of what it takes to be able to develop a professional website.  Write an entry in your journal that briefly describes to me how well you were able to figure out what was done to achieve the formatting of that page, both conceptually and the steps required in Dreamweaver. Beyond these mechanics of creating a webpage, there is the issue of design.  Web pages exist to serve a need, and if you don’t design a webpage effectively to meet that need, then your ability to use Dreamweaver doesn’t get you very far.  Before Monday’s class, I want you to do three things to prepare for creating a personal webpage of your own design, and write a journal entry about what you’ve come up with: A) Think of a theme that you will use for your website (What will your website be about?  Who will be the audience? What is the point? What content will be included?). This website can be about a hobby, a job, an organization you belong to, a cause you believe in, an issue you think needs more attention, a project for another class, a service you want to provide.  Tell me about what you decided in your journal entry.  B) Find three websites that have designs you like.  In your journal entry, tell me what these sites are and specifically what you like about their designs.  C) Sketch on a piece of paper, held ….

25. Example 4 Outcome. • Originally I expected the personal websites to be practice sites, and the graded web project would be a team effort on another topic. Upon reading these journal entries, I realized that the students had wonderful ideas and great enthusiasm for their personal sites, and the project scopes were generally too big for practice, but just right for the main project. So, I made the personal sites the main project. • This journal entry was somewhat effective in getting the students to assess their learning in the first lab. I think the threat of a quiz might have been more effective, but I didn’t want to spend class or homework time on a quiz. In the past I tried to encourage students to do this assessment on their own, but I suspect few did. This was a good compromise, and it was consistent with my overall goal of helping students become more independent learners of IT.

26. Responding to Journal Entries • At first I commented on approximately 1 in 4 journal entries, so students knew I was reading them, and because I valued the conversations. • Technology challenges (severe SPARK limitations and dialup internet at home, where I do most journal reading) forced me to change; it took too long. • Now, I only comment individually on entries that cry out for a response, and… • For the rest I excerpt quotes representing important themes, and begin my lectures with a discussion of these perspectives.

27. Reading New Entries in Spark This is how I read new entries from all students, but I cannot comment on them here. Clicking the “Comments” button makes SPARK think all the entries have been read.

28. Journal excerpts • “Perhaps in class tomorrow we could slow down and go through these 11 questions … because so far I feel like I understand what you have said about databases but I get outside of class and I am lost.” • “The journal has been great for me in terms of keeping me accountable for the readings. Also the journal has helped me my own find where my areas of confusion lie. I think the journal has been a really good tool personally for me to think about the class material and have a chance to digest it.” • “… to reconsider reflection as providing a bridge between experience and theory.” • “and also do best when tested by writing essays where I can explain what I know in my own terms, as opposed to multiple choice tests.” • “There was one general concept that I believe I understand now about databases. Redundancy is the most common problem.”

29. First the bad… • Students are listed in “random” order in SPARK. • Journal entries for each student are in “random” order, too. • Cannot comment on a “new” posting without all new postings being marked as old. • Student’s name is not in comment window, so it is easy to call student by wrong name if rushed. • Impossibly slow with a dialup internet connection. • Too slow during busy times even with broadband internet. • Some students are slow to learn that journaling is not optional. • This is the least popular “learning tool” among students of all I use (after 1st semester—I didn’t ask the 2nd semester).

30. …and now the good • Students do a fine job with their entries generally. • They are more engaged in my course. • They read readings and use resources better; they do more between classes than before I had them journal ... • I know what is going on with them, individually and as a class. • It is sustainable with 100+ students (~1000 journal entries/semester). • It is a time saver for me.

31. Summary • SPARK Journal tool can be frustrating, but Instructional Media Lab folks have been wonderful! • Students need to be invested in journaling. • Prompts are important; students like when they are specific. • I love how it has transformed my course. • I like that students are writing/reflecting more. • Journaling can empower students as learners. • Reading journal entries empowers me; I’m clued in. • Use of journals saves me time; it can be efficient. • Journals nicely complement an instructor blog, especially in large classes. • Use of journals lets me promote a more expansive definition of what IT is. • Journaling allows me to teach the way I like to teach, and have more fun.

32. For more information… • Feel free to contact me with questions: caffery@resecon.umass.edu • The Instructional Media Lab is a great source of support on using SPARK. http://www.oit.umass.edu/academic/iml.html