Independent Work on Final Reflection and/or Grade Boosts (30-45 min)

Please take out some work for our class and get to work.

Previous lesson plans on April 28 and May 5 were helpful for thinking about the final reflection assignment.

This includes checking in with people who have reached out via email or talked to me in person about makeup work. I’m not going to chase you and I don’t want to hear from you on May 17 or 18. I want to hear from you now if you are interested in making up work. Even if I already talked with you. I want an update.

Podcast Contribution Narrative Check-in (5-10 min)

Let’s go over this assignment one more time, since it is due Wednesday. It is on Brightspace.

End of Semester Course Evaluations (15-20 min)

You get these for all of your classes, usually in an email. You can also access it here: Student Course and Faculty Evaluations – Enrollment Management (cuny.edu) (click on “Log in” in middle of page and use your Baruch username and password).

What do these actually do? How are they most valuable?

Let’s start with a wider contextual information that helps see flaws in this system of evaluation.

Here are some sources:

Bias against female instructors is large and statistically significant. Difficult to adjust for this bias.

In addition to female instructors, there is a large bias in these methods of evaluation for people of color.

Here is a great bibliography of all research on bias in student evaluation surveys: Overview of bias in student evaluations – Google Docs (approximately 200 studies showing biases in student evaluation surveys)

And here is a popular source that sums up much of this research, especially one study that attempted to create ideal conditions in which these measures still end up being flawed: Study: Student evaluations of teaching are deeply flawed (insidehighered.com)

I offer none of this to say that *YOU* specifically are biased, but, rather, there is a lot of evidence for systematic bias (much of which may be unconscious) that tends to rate White and cisgender male instructors much higher than non-White and other gendered instructors, independent of teaching performance or course design.

All this said, these evaluation surveys are still commonly used across the U.S. and at Baruch.

Imperfect as they are, they are still used to evaluate instructors by administrators (i.e., management, bosses).

Imperfect as they are, they still communicate something and can be used by job seekers (or asked to be provided by employers) when applying for jobs or promotion.

Imperfect as they are, they can still give instructors some valuable information that might confirm or complicate intuitions instructors have about how the class went (and how to adjust for next time).

So, I would say to do the following when filling out these surveys for *ALL* of your courses:

• Do not rush through them. If you want to give a lower score, for instance, be sure you have thought it through and genuinely feel that way. Think about your rating, count to 10 in your head, and then think through your rating again before giving the rating. Since these evaluations can have an effect on evaluation decisions (e.g., tenure, promotion, hiring/firing/laying off), be sure you are assigning scores you believe in and are filling it in thoughtfully. Try as best you can to take a breath and check in with yourself on where your criticism–good or bad–is coming from in terms of concrete and specific examples of the instructor’s approach to teaching and its impact on your learning.
• In open-ended portion, offer constructive criticism. If you did like something, explain what you liked. If you did not like something, explain why and do so in a way that is helpful toward revision of the course. Finally, if you do have something to offer that you did not like, try to think of something you did like, too. (this helps! it can confirm some things that are working which is just as valuable as saying something about what is not working).

Okay, so with that out of the way, let’s take about 10 minutes in class to complete the survey. I’ll need a volunteer to come grab me when the class is finished completing the survey.

More Surveys! (15-20 min)

These surveys are different. Their ONLY function is my own curiosity about my teaching and wanting to improve my teaching.

The first survey will take about two seconds. Several people were absent on the day I asked about permission to use anonymized drafts of your writing for future classes. For instance, this semester I used at least two drafts of writing from previous students to provide you with examples for the kinds of writing you did for me this semester. Please consider offering permission! You don’t have to!

But if you’d like to, let me know by clicking on this link and giving me permission. (Ziyan, Sarah, Yoon, Fati, Shirley, Ammar, Benny, Alice, Julia, Luke, and Khaz: you don’t have to fill this out again if you don’t want)

I also will survey students on specific things I’m curious about in a given semester and more general things. The first part of this survey is more general things. Then it is about specific things: the podcast assignment and AI.

Here is the link to the LAST survey we will work on today.

Santa Claus(e) (20-30 min)

Unlike Santa Claus, Santa ClausE is an atheist, so you don’t have to worry about this activity trying to push a religion on you. However, he does want to know if you have been a good student this year.

If your answer is “yes,” Santa Clause is coming to town to give you a dependent clause that uses a comma. If the answer is “no,” then you have to use a “coal-on” or “semi-coal-on” in a sentence of your writing.

Random number generator:

1. You’ve been good, you do a dependent clause with a comma
2. Not been good! A “coal-on”.
3. Not been good! A “semi-coal-on”.

Okay, so let’s start with a simple sentence. A simple sentence is what?

CT: 3

Monopoly Man: 8

Mr. Peanut: 4

Teletubbies: 4

Here is our sentence: It is complicated to define what counts as a “mascot.” [think holidays, brands]

What are dependent clauses? What are independent clauses?

Get into groups. You will be selected to draft dependent clauses or independent clauses to complete our passage.

Group 1 Sentence:

Group 2 Sentence:

Let’s look back at our sentences. How could we connect independent clauses in different ways? How could we split up sentences?

What do we want to change? Why?

Okay, go back to your writing and randomly select a paragraph. How could you add dependent clauses with a comma? Independent clauses with a colon?

Link to write sentence

Next Time (5 min)

• Podcast related grade boosts: transcriptions, episode descriptions + brief overall podcast description, cover art (TODAY by end of day)
• Final journal: review all your journals. You’ve come a long way. How have you changed as a person in the past few months? What has happened and what do you make of it as a learner? As a person in general? What can you learn from these past few months to live the life you want to live? (May 14)
• Podcast contribution narrative (May 14)
• Final reflection (May 21)
• If extra peer review for someone doing an extra revision, that needs to be done already and if not, by like today.
• All other grade boosts, you have until May 21