Picture in your mind the best teacher you ever had. Remember what they sounded like, how they decorated the classroom, or how they started a lesson? Think about your experience in this complex learning scape and how it shaped your learning at that time and beyond. Why is this teacher, this memory, so profound?
Thinking back on school experiences you may remember certain individuals, may they be teachers, tutors, or other role models, that positively shaped your early education experiences. Whether it was through creative lesson plans, active learning assignments, or flipped classrooms, these educators often leave their mark on a student as mentors that bridged gaps in student learning. When we think of mentorship, it often connotes images of an experienced individual paired with a novice to train them in some specialized skill set: student and professor, trainee and advisor, Jedi and Padawan, and more. In higher education (both undergraduate and graduate school) experience and training with a faculty mentor are invaluable because they support academic self-confidence (Plecha, 2002), student success and engagement, and better learning (Teven and McCrosky, 1997) and satisfaction (Lamport, 2013). Research has shown that mentorship provides strong benefits to an individual’s academic and professional careers in the long run (Komarraju et al., 2010) and renders benefits for the institution as well with greater student retention and increased job placement rates.
Often mentor-mentee partnerships develop in formal training realms like research labs, independent study projects, or research apprenticeships, however informal interactions between faculty and students have been shown to more actively engage students in tasks, and increase motivation (Thompson, 2001; Woodside et al., 1999). This is a powerful tool, and one that could (and should!) be integrated into our online teaching practice.
In my own online classes, I use shorter assignments to scaffold larger assignments and offer students opportunities to present information in different forms. The utility of small-stakes assignments that focus on specific skill-building is found in the opportunity for personalized feedback from the faculty that helps to connect the student and instructor. As humans, we value connection with one another, and the personal connections that emerge from individualized instruction and advisement between a student and instructor engage the student more (Light, 2001) and help them to become stakeholders in their own learning. Addressing the student directly in the feedback (“Great start Sarah!”) is a handy way to start signaling that you recognize them as an individual, allows for positive and encouraging feedback for improvement, and helps to make you more approachable as an instructor.
The timing of when assignments are given and when they are due is critical for both the student and faculty. For students, assignments should be given with clear expectations and allocated enough time for student completion based on the task depth required. Put simply, more time is needed for students to complete assignments that involve writing and critical thinking compared to ones where they need only fill in blanks or select a topic for a paper. Similarly, faculty will require more time to grade more in-depth assignments compared to less in-depth ones; therefore in your class planning schedule your grading time accordingly to ensure you have ample time to grade and provide feedback to students individually. For these reasons, design assignments strategically and include in that design specific skills that students will need in future assignments so that their learning is cumulative and they have more than one opportunity to practice that skill. Using a variety of assignment types (e.g., written oral, visual) can assist with this and make the content experience more dynamic for students.
One way I implement these practices is through a “role-playing” group project where students assume a role as part of a think tank developing a community healthcare plan for an infectious disease. In the project’s early phases, the students complete a group contract that initiates communication among members, establishes individual duties, group expectations and procedures for when expectations are not met, and their means of communication, and set meeting times. The final presentation can be done either as a video panel presentation or a podcast complete with show notes on resources for their project. Some students thrive in audiovisual presentations while others can struggle with how to effectively communicate their work orally, so allowing students to design a final presentation that plays to the group members’ individual strengths helps to ease that anxiety for those that may not have had good training in public speaking. These assignments help to assist students in reducing that anxiety and gain the skills that will give them confidence in their presentation.
We want to empower students to be responsible for their work and improve time management skills and communication throughout a course. In my classes, I employ flexible due dates and submission modes to account for those times when “life” happens and the students’ ability to complete graded items becomes impeded. For instance, I provide all assignments with a 24hr “no questions asked extension” to provide students with some flexibility right from the start of the course and to signal to them that I acknowledge and understand that there are things that can happen that are out of their control, but that shouldn’t compromise their ability to succeed in my class. My goal is to provide an educational experience that supports student success and retention in the class, helps them to develop professional translatable skills, and ultimately makes students stakeholders in their own learning. Mentorship isn’t just about investing in the student’s success but also benefits an instructor by helping them improve their communication and interpersonal skills, better develop management and supervisory skills, and reinforces their own skills and knowledge. It also helps to expand our networks, get students invested in various topics to ensure the continuation and growth of various fields, and provide students with learning experiences that positively shape them and their professional development and that they look back on fondly.
Thinking back on school experiences you may remember certain individuals, may they be teachers, tutors, or other role models, that positively shaped your early education experiences. Whether it was through creative lesson plans, active learning assignments, or flipped classrooms, these educators often leave their mark on a student as mentors that bridged gaps in student learning. When we think of mentorship, it often connotes images of an experienced individual paired with a novice to train them in some specialized skill set: student and professor, trainee and advisor, Jedi and Padawan, and more. In higher education (both undergraduate and graduate school) experience and training with a faculty mentor are invaluable because they support academic self-confidence (Plecha, 2002), student success and engagement, and better learning (Teven and McCrosky, 1997) and satisfaction (Lamport, 2013). Research has shown that mentorship provides strong benefits to an individual’s academic and professional careers in the long run (Komarraju et al., 2010) and renders benefits for the institution as well with greater student retention and increased job placement rates.
Often mentor-mentee partnerships develop in formal training realms like research labs, independent study projects, or research apprenticeships, however informal interactions between faculty and students have been shown to more actively engage students in tasks, and increase motivation (Thompson, 2001; Woodside et al., 1999). This is a powerful tool, and one that could (and should!) be integrated into our online teaching practice.
Bridging the digital distance we feel in online teaching
Navigating the online teaching space can be daunting as students can often feel disconnected from their instructor, their peers, and the material itself. In these environments, creative non-traditional approaches can be used to present material and build rapport with students. Class assignments can then become opportunities for students to apply concepts and knowledge, emphasize inquiry-based learning, and collaboration with their peers.In my own online classes, I use shorter assignments to scaffold larger assignments and offer students opportunities to present information in different forms. The utility of small-stakes assignments that focus on specific skill-building is found in the opportunity for personalized feedback from the faculty that helps to connect the student and instructor. As humans, we value connection with one another, and the personal connections that emerge from individualized instruction and advisement between a student and instructor engage the student more (Light, 2001) and help them to become stakeholders in their own learning. Addressing the student directly in the feedback (“Great start Sarah!”) is a handy way to start signaling that you recognize them as an individual, allows for positive and encouraging feedback for improvement, and helps to make you more approachable as an instructor.
"The utility of small-stakes assignments that focus on specific skill-building is found in the opportunity for personalized feedback from the faculty that helps to connect the student and instructor."
For example, students in my Advanced Evolutionary Medicine course develop a “science topic pitch” where they propose a novel idea related to addressing a current health challenge. Their pitch is developed across a series of assignments that introduce them to identifying knowledge gaps, developing a research question, and then thinking about the key elements needed to complete their project (resources, methods of data collection, limitations to their study, its social and scientific significance, etc). At each of these steps, I am able to comment on their progress, retool their thinking to better address a point, and guide them into the next step without overwhelming them or assuming that they “already know” how to complete a given task. This includes providing rubrics that identify key benchmarks necessary to the assignment’s completion in addition to the personalized feedback provided throughout the document. By the end, the students develop a short-written proposal and then record an elevator speech version of the pitch that they would present to a funding board. The pairing of two different delivery modes introduces students to the process of code-switching and how to tailor the same content to different audiences. In addition, students gain experience in the process of project development and can understand the mechanics behind each step. I as an instructor get a better gauge of their improvement from assignment to assignment and can observe their professional growth across their classwork.The timing of when assignments are given and when they are due is critical for both the student and faculty. For students, assignments should be given with clear expectations and allocated enough time for student completion based on the task depth required. Put simply, more time is needed for students to complete assignments that involve writing and critical thinking compared to ones where they need only fill in blanks or select a topic for a paper. Similarly, faculty will require more time to grade more in-depth assignments compared to less in-depth ones; therefore in your class planning schedule your grading time accordingly to ensure you have ample time to grade and provide feedback to students individually. For these reasons, design assignments strategically and include in that design specific skills that students will need in future assignments so that their learning is cumulative and they have more than one opportunity to practice that skill. Using a variety of assignment types (e.g., written oral, visual) can assist with this and make the content experience more dynamic for students.
Flexible and adaptable mentorship models
Teaching and mentorship are certainly not “one-size-fits-all” and for that reason, our approaches require flexibility and adaptability depending on the students we work with and the environments we teach in. Research has shown student cultural background and gender influence a student’s perception and receptivity to different interaction styles with faculty (Komarrjaru et al., 2010), which suggests that not all approaches to interacting with students may best serve that student’s needs. For that reason, diversifying our approaches to assessing student knowledge and how we communicate our feedback can help identify what resonates with your students most. Online teaching and the digital tools afforded by the advent of VoiceThread, YellowDig, Anchor.fm, and other software allows students to build customized, multimedia presentations in digital space that are compelling, collaborative, and creative. Moreover, hands-on projects offer students a chance to gain practical experience using these technologies while engaging in group tasks that are reflective of real-life professional experiences that require effective teamwork, collaborative discussion, and problem-solving in real-time.One way I implement these practices is through a “role-playing” group project where students assume a role as part of a think tank developing a community healthcare plan for an infectious disease. In the project’s early phases, the students complete a group contract that initiates communication among members, establishes individual duties, group expectations and procedures for when expectations are not met, and their means of communication, and set meeting times. The final presentation can be done either as a video panel presentation or a podcast complete with show notes on resources for their project. Some students thrive in audiovisual presentations while others can struggle with how to effectively communicate their work orally, so allowing students to design a final presentation that plays to the group members’ individual strengths helps to ease that anxiety for those that may not have had good training in public speaking. These assignments help to assist students in reducing that anxiety and gain the skills that will give them confidence in their presentation.
We want to empower students to be responsible for their work and improve time management skills and communication throughout a course. In my classes, I employ flexible due dates and submission modes to account for those times when “life” happens and the students’ ability to complete graded items becomes impeded. For instance, I provide all assignments with a 24hr “no questions asked extension” to provide students with some flexibility right from the start of the course and to signal to them that I acknowledge and understand that there are things that can happen that are out of their control, but that shouldn’t compromise their ability to succeed in my class. My goal is to provide an educational experience that supports student success and retention in the class, helps them to develop professional translatable skills, and ultimately makes students stakeholders in their own learning. Mentorship isn’t just about investing in the student’s success but also benefits an instructor by helping them improve their communication and interpersonal skills, better develop management and supervisory skills, and reinforces their own skills and knowledge. It also helps to expand our networks, get students invested in various topics to ensure the continuation and growth of various fields, and provide students with learning experiences that positively shape them and their professional development and that they look back on fondly.
Sources:
- Komarraju, M., Musulkin, S., & Bhattacharya, G. (2010). Role of Student–Faculty Interactions in Developing College Students’ Academic Self-Concept, Motivation, and Achievement. Journal of College Student Development 51(3), 332-342. doi:10.1353/csd.0.0137.
- Lamport, M.A. (1993). Student-faculty informed interaction and the effect on college student outcomes: A review of the literature. Adolescence, 28(112), 971-990. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8266849/
- Light, R.J. (2001). Making the most of college: Students speak their minds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
- Plecha, M. (2002). The impact of motivation, student-peer, and student-faculty interaction on academic self-confidence. Annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LO. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED464149
- Teven, J.J. &McCrosky, J.C. (1997). The relationship of perceived teacher caring with student learning and teacher evaluation. Communication Education, 46, 1-9. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03634529709379069
- Thompson, M.D. (2001). Informal student-faculty interaction: Its relationship to educational gains in science and mathematics among community college students. Community College Review, 29(1), 35-38.
- Woodside, B.M., Wong, E.H., & Weist, D.J. (1999). The effect of faculty-student interaction on college students’ academic achievement and self-concept. Education, 119, 730-733.
Other sources:
- https://slate.com/business/2014/11/u-s-college-dropouts-rates-explained-in-4-charts.html
- https://hr.ucdavis.edu/departments/learning-dev/toolkits/mentoring/benefits
Post Author:
Hallie Edmonds is a current postdoctoral research scholar for the Center for Evolution and Medicine at ASU where she aids in the development, deployment, and teaching of evolutionary medicine courses. Her research interests are in biomechanics and functional anatomy, with a focus on chewing mechanics in relation to craniofacial form in primates. Dr. Edmonds also assists in development and design for the Center.
Excellent post! and perfect timing, Dr.Edmonds, thank you! It helped me articulate strategies for online learning spaces from a student's perspective.
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