2021 Teaching and Learning Summit Lightning Roundtables Abstracts

Check out presenter materials and session recordings!
Note: you will need to be registered to access these materials in the Canvas site.
Register here

Lightning Roundtables (Session A) - Thursday, October 21, 9:00-10:30am ET

Promoting Undergraduate Research in Information Systems

Sara Moussawi, Information Systems

This course presents a replicable model to promote undergraduate research at Carnegie Mellon University. The options that information systems students currently have are the Dietrich honor thesis and the 1:1 faculty mentoring option. The course consists of a research seminar series with varying topics. The seminar is divided into three phases: (1) the first phase aims to immerse students in the literature. (2) The second phase aims to challenge students to start thinking about their own interests. After learning to explore academic databases, students are tasked with finding papers of interest to them that will be assigned to the class for discussion. (3) The third phase requires students to identify problems worth solving. They spend the remainder of the semester navigating the literature, critiquing it, developing their own questions and study design, and crafting a proposal. Evidence to share with colleagues include assignment prompts, guidelines and rubrics. 

Engaging undergraduate students in research proposal writing

Ihab Younis, Biological Sciences (CMU-Q)

In an advanced biological sciences elective taught to undergraduate juniors and seniors, the strategy shifted from teaching content to help students acquire transferable skills, such as writing an original research proposal. This allowed biology students to think like real scientists. Mainly they learn how to identify an important unresolved question, develop a testable hypothesis, design experiments to test their hypothesis, and properly and critically evaluate potential results and pitfalls. Students are also required to orally present and defend their ideas, improving their speaking skills and how to present a science topic critically, persuasively, and creatively. One of the challenges I face in this strategy is to quickly move students from novices to experts. I overcome this with continuous in-class and one-on-one feedback. I will be sharing examples that show how this strategy not only improved transferable skills but also increased student's confidence and drive to do research.

Pair+ Programming Exercise to Encourage Collaboration in Group Work

Emma Benjaminson, Mechanical Engineering

While teaching 24-352: Dynamic Systems and Controls, a junior-level mechanical engineering course, I tried using a “pair+ programming exercise” in a 10-person virtual recitation. I found during previous activities that students were hesitant to speak in front of their peers until they had the right answer. The “pair+ programming exercise” was designed to encourage students to talk to each other more. The exercise presented teams of ~4 students with a piece of buggy code that simulated a model we had already derived by hand. Each student was assigned a role (driver, navigator, researcher) and they had to work together to correct all the bugs. I found that the students talked more to fulfill their assigned responsibilities, and because they were fixing someone else’s code. They even found some mistakes I had made accidentally! The deliverables for this activity include the code, a debugging guide and the recitation handout and solutions.

Adapting Scrum for a Collaborative Writing Course

Kira Dreher, English (CMUQ); Jeffrey Squires, English (CMUQ)

During the summer of 2021, we adapted the Scrum agile framework to a collaborative writing project-based course entitled “Publication & Community: Developing a Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Journal.” In the course, the students developed the identity, documentation, and workflow infrastructure of a new undergraduate research journal founded on CMU’s Qatar campus. We used Scrum— “an iterative, incremental framework” (Sutherland, 2021, 14) typically used in software and technology development—to swiftly produce and revise collaborative texts for the course-wide project. In this roundtable, we detail the strengths and challenges of using Scrum to define the tangible outcomes of the project with the students, coordinate and govern team activity, and complete the substantive learning/writing/revision demands in only 5 weeks. We will provide an overview of the course, sample Scrum artifacts from the class (e.g. backlog, sprint plans, scrum boards), and key takeaways for future Scrum adaptations for collaborative writing.

Pixel Datascapes: Using video games to teach about data management recommended practices

Hannah Gunderman, University Libraries

At CMU Libraries, providing education on recommended practices in data management (keeping data organized and tidy) is a key goal in our overall data services strategy for the CMU community. However, learners do not always find data management to be the most exciting concept to learn about, especially when compared to concepts in data analysis, visualization, and programming which often seem more readily useful in research. As the Data, Gaming, and Popular Culture Librarian, I created a YouTube-based webseries called Pixel Datascapes, which uses video games to teach data management concepts in a fun, engaging manner. This webseries is open to anyone and marketed heavily towards learners in the CMU community to engage with in their own data education journey, and used as reference materials in CMU Libraries data workshops. Focusing on topics such as documentation, metadata, and confidence in using data, Pixel Datascapes can help spark an interest in data management concepts among CMU learners, and open the door to providing more advanced and in-depth data management training through CMU Libraries. Participants in the Lightning Roundtable will be shown clips of the series and supplied with a handout that details the aims/goals of the webseries and summaries of each episode.

Think-Pair-Share for Group Work

Stephanie Rosenthal, Computer Science Department

One challenge with group projects is that one or two people can wind up shouldering most of this work. This is not ideal for anyone in the group - those who do most of the work may rush to finish without thinking about their answers or debugging their work thoroughly, and those who do not help are clearly missing the learning objectives for the activity. In order to encourage students to actively participate in the group assignments evenly for 15-482 Autonomous Agents, co-taught by Reid Simmons, we organized our assignments in the following way: 

1. Students think on their own to complete individual graded assignments,
2. Students come together in groups to merge their ideas and build on them, 
3. Groups share their successes and challenges with the class so that everyone can learn from each other
4. Repeat

Our students were much more actively involved in their groups when they were prepared with their individual contributions. I will share details about our assignment structure, and talk with participants about how it may be extended to other classroom environments.

Using Canvases as Interactive Frameworks for Presentations, Team-building, and Project Development

Chris Labash, Heinz

Studies on the Future of Work identify presentation skills, collaboration skills, and project management skills to be among the most essential skills for the future worker and current student. But a key question for many students is, "Where to begin?" In classes and in the wild, techniques such as storyboarding have helped create holistic views of businesses, teams, and presentation content.  Osterwalder & Pigneur developed this as an information palette, presenting it as the "Business Model Canvas" in their book, Business Model Generation. Adopted since by many others, the "canvas" approach enables users to better see and explore interrelationships, influences, and outcomes. The Team Design Canvas and the Presentation Design Canvas that I developed for my ConsultingLab, communication, and executive education courses will be discussed, and a "Canvas Creation Canvas" built upon best practices will be introduced to help interested users develop their own canvases.

Getting students to like group work

Christina Bjorndahl, Philosophy

Students often dread group work, fearing inequitable distribution of work, incompatible working styles, and mismatched skill sets.  I incorporate several strategies to mitigate these fears, and in doing so, have found that students even enjoy the group projects in my classes.  The strategies are: (1) creating groups based on student answers to surveys on work habits and skills; (2) having students explicitly engage in discussions about the dynamics of their group and strategies that they have collectively devised to address their challenges; (3) structure group projects with a balance of activities done together and activities contributed individually; (4) allow students to structure the individual components as best fits the individual skills each member brings to the project.  I share a sample survey I have used, as well as strategies and prompts I use to get students to engage with the difficult conversations about how to work together.

Data Education and Outreach from CMU Libraries to Support Cross-Disciplinary Learning

Emma Slayton, University Libraries

Over the past few years, it has become clear through the work of data-focused librarians at CMU that our students need greater support for learning data analysis and other data literacies, including data management, spatial, visualization, and coding. Similarly, we have found faculty need support in teaching these concepts, either through the provision of modular materials related to data literacy or through training in basic concepts for their own benefit. Through courses, workshops, and online instruction modules the Libraries are taking a holistic approach to data education. As the focus of the initiative is to support basic understanding, we do not replicate training provided by the departments, but provide students with the key building blocks around data they will need to succeed in their required courses. Our goal is to benefit learning by offering interdisciplinary views of data, allowing students to work with a wide range of data types and analytic approaches. As a part of this new initiative, we offer skill training needed for all corners of data use -- coding training, introduction to critical topics in data use, such as the ethics of data analysis, and effective ways to present and communicate data to the public - to inspire communities to engage in inclusive and empathetic practices.

Ask a Teaching Consultant!

The Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation

Do you have questions about the Eberly Center and how they can help with your teaching? Ever wonder what it would be like to hold an Early Course Feedback survey or focus group? Curious about conducting educational research (what to do, how to execute your study, and how to collect, analyze and disseminate the results)? Join this breakout room at any time to speak to an Eberly Center Teaching Consultant about the services, programs, and fellowships they offer to CMU instructors like you. We are eager to talk with you about how you can take advantage of these opportunities to further your own professional development and help your students learn.

Lightning Roundtables (Session B) - Friday, October 22, 9:00-10:30am ET

Less Evil Evals: incorporating self-evaluation in the classroom

Kim Beck, Art

I increasingly use self-evaluation as a tool to help students reflect on and claim their experience in the classroom. My courses ask students to evaluate their work both during in-class assignments and as out of class midterm and end of semester homework. I have asked students to describe how they plan to evaluate their work in advance, even on the first day of class; I ask them to define by their own criteria for success and to even create their own rubrics and have tried different versions of this in online and in in-person classes. This helps center a student-driven environment; especially in project-driven classes, it is a simple way to give students agency in their learning process and the opportunity to practice articulating what they hope to learn or have learned, and to identify challenges and how they faced them along the way. I will share examples of self-evaluation questions I’ve used and lessons learned. 

Teaching interpersonal communication skills through scenario-based activities

Nuria Ballesteros Soria, Modern Languages

This presentation will focus on a scenario-based activity that I used to teach interpersonal communication skills in 82-141, an elementary Spanish course. Interpersonal communication skills (e.g., switching topics, taking turns, backchanneling) are crucial for students both inside and outside the classroom. Unfortunately, college language learners do not typically have opportunities to practice these skills, which may impact their ability to navigate spoken interactions and have negative consequences for rapport-building, face-saving, etc. This scenario-based activity involved three stages: (i) a rehearsal, where students planned appropriate language for (ii) a performance, during which the scenario was executed, which was followed by (iii) a debriefing in which the instructor and other students provided feedback. I will share a sample lesson plan and pedagogical materials (e.g., pre-class work, peer feedback forms), preliminary results of an Eberly TAR project exploring this activity under different conditions, and ideas to adapt this activity to different teaching contexts.

Building Toward a Qualitative Content Analysis in a History Mini-Course

Richelle Bernazzoli, Undergraduate Research Office

In a new history mini-course, “Modern War: Geopolitical Conflict in Historical Perspective,” the challenge was to devise a final project that could be completed in a few weeks’ time and that used previous assignments as a scaffold. A central goal of the course, alongside learning political-geographic concepts and applying them to specific conflicts, was to build skills to systematically carry out qualitative analysis. The final project provided students with a simple tool for qualitative content analysis and instructions for building a small corpus, using one of their previous short assignments as a starting point. Due to the time constraints of the mini, the focus was on producing and documenting the analysis, rather than on producing a final paper. I will share the final project description, rubric, and analytical tool, along with a summary of what worked and lessons learned from the initial run of this assignment.

Leveraging Teamwork Activities to Prepare Students for Professional Careers

Raelin Sawka Musuraca, Human Computer Interaction

For many professionals, working effectively in multidisciplinary teams is as important as knowing how to execute the core functions of their given profession. Unfortunately, many courses focus on the content and do not teach teamwork skills related to team dynamics, conflict, and feedback. Therefore, for the User-Centered Research and Evaluation (UCRE) course, we developed a series of activities focused on teamwork and communication skills with the goal of improving learning outcomes for students engaged in project-based work. 

We created a series of activities for students to use during project kick-off that would allow them to form stronger teams and put in place appropriate expectations. These include an abbreviated module from the CollaborativeU OLI course focused on conflict skills, pre-mortem and post-mortem activities, and a team contract. Most of the activities are implemented at the start of the project and then, after a deliverable or two, the post-mortem is used as a retrospective of team health and the contract is revised. Templates of these materials are available to share. 

Ungrading!

Wendy Arons, Drama

Since fall of 2019 I have embraced the practice of “ungrading” in nearly all of my classes. Convinced by the arguments of Alfie Kohn, Susan Blum, Jesse Stommel, and others* that grading and rating fundamentally undermine student learning, I jettisoned all of my previous assessment tools and redesigned my classes to give students agency in setting learning goals and learning outcomes, defining course expectations and policies, and designing the projects and modalities through which they could demonstrate their learning and growth. At the end of the semester, students self-assess and grade themselves. I’ve never felt like a more effective teacher. In this lightning round I’ll share what I do, why I think it works, and offer suggestions to help you figure out how you might apply this approach to your classes. (*See Susan Blum, ed., "Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead)" WVU Press, 2021).

Normalizing Frustration in Technical Learning with the "Diary of Sorrows"

Robert Zacharias, Entertainment Technology Center

I teach physical computing; in just a few weeks, students in my class learn how to build fairly  complex electrical/software systems. These have many possible points of failure, some of which can be quite difficult to pinpoint, and beginners often struggle with tricky debugging problems. I want to help normalize feelings of frustration and confusion that are endemic to the subject, and help students see that their missteps are a critical part of the learning process. To do this, I introduced the “Diary of Sorrows,” a Canvas discussion board for students to share struggles (technical and/or emotional!) with their classmates and myself. Students have responded very positively to the forum. I will share some typical “Diary” entries, and observed pedagogical benefits—for one, it’s helped me better understand common pitfalls in early understanding. I will invite discussion on how this sort of forum can be used across different disciplinary environments.

Actively Engaging on Zoom: Breakout Rooms Combined With Multi-level Google Docs

Carla Bevins, Communications

In even my most engaging online undergraduate business Communication courses, students needed different discussion modalities beyond in-class discussions or sharing ideas in Zoom’s chat to stay connected with content and each other. To address this gap, I created a Google doc with directed questions, put students in breakout room groups to discuss the prompt, and then brought the class back together to debrief. While this was somewhat successful, a Google doc with multiple groups simultaneously sharing ideas became cumbersome and ineffective to our discussion. Pivoting, I adapted this instructional strategy to create a main Google doc that included additional Google doc links for each breakout room. As a result, I watched each group’s thought process on their own Google doc, and we discussed content from each group’s Google doc as a class. I will share how you can create and use a ‘meta-Google doc’ for your online class discussions.

Creating a Welcoming Environment in a Freshman Engineering Course

Mark Bedillion, Mechanical Engineering

Engineers work on diverse teams to design products that impact a diverse population.  This talk will discuss introducing freshmen to methods for incorporating diversity criteria early in the engineering design process.  A lecture centered around diversity issues in design was followed by activities woven throughout the course that asked students to reflect on the topic.  The class culminated in a project in which students designed a product for an underserved community.  The talk will summarize the learning materials and strategies used along with results from the students' final projects.  Placing the course materials into a DEI context improved student motivation and satisfaction.

Teaching Students to Design Accessible Presentations

Rebekah Fitzsimmons, Heinz 

When teaching professional speaking classes to students in the Heinz College, I teach students how speakers can create a more inclusive environment for their potential audiences through universal design principles by planning presentations that address accessibility. These lessons focus on actionable steps students can take when writing, designing, and delivering presentations to ensure accessibility to a wide variety of audience members with various disabilities, including visual, auditory and physical disabilities. This lightning roundtable will describe the lesson in which I highlight tools built into popular slide design programs (PowerPoint, Google Slides) that students can learn to use as well as actionable, concrete tips for enacting universal design principles in their presentations. By teaching students to anticipate common accessibility accommodations as a standard part of professional communications, this teaching strategy seeks to normalize universal design as a professional standard and ensure new professionals entering the workforce are equipped to deliver accessible presentations.

You can't fix what you can't see: how to use the Early Course Feedback tool to improve your Course Evaluations

Christopher Goranson, Heinz

Since 2018 I've been conducting Early Course Feedback (ECF) sessions in my Telling Stories with Data course.  Initially these were geared towards capturing big trends in what was working (and what wasn't) in the new course's design.  As the course evolved, these moved from in-person assessments conducted by Eberly Center staff to the administration of a survey at the midpoint of each class.  These assessments have regularly helped me catch and address issues and challenges that likely would have not emerged until the course evaluations conducted at the end of each course.   They have also allowed me to make notable changes, many of them improvements at the midpoint of each course.  Some of the changes implemented due to early course feedback included more time dedicated to in-class critiques, additional Tableau training exercises and resources, the development of a "cheat sheet" guide for the course, and a greater integration of graded sketching exercises.  This session will introduce my revised feedback loop between the students in the course and myself, and share examples from recent assessments and a copy of the survey administered in class.  Designed by the Eberly Center, this survey can be easily integrated into any course to quickly capture feedback with only a few minutes dedicated to the activity during a normal class period.

Ask a Learning Engineer!

The Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation

Have an idea for a classroom activity, but aren’t sure about which technology best matches your needs? Need a way to manage course logistics, such as grading and giving feedback, more efficiently? Want to collect student data to iterate on your course in a systematic way? Join this breakout room at any time to speak to an Eberly Learning Engineer. We can help you find a tool or set of tools that aligns with your goals, and provide you support as you select and integrate solutions effectively into your teaching.