Roger McKechnie -(Management Dept/Organizational Behavior)- Zicklin School, Baruch/CUNY 

Baruch College (CTL Student Engagement Seminar) Session 3 Assignment

Assignment : Revised Artifact/Teaching Outcomes

Dear Team Colleagues, 

     Thank You for your time and attention in reviewing my “revised” Teaching Artifact/Activity, and the effort to connect it to identifiable teaching strategies; be they :Objective(s), Goal(s),  Learning “Outcome(s)”. An Artifact is a narrowed, clearly defined/described- “DELIVERABLE”; an unambiguous product – the result of a PROCESS. A process with observable steps conducive to building (Scaffolds), where a learner can logically assemble the pieces: the knowledge, the insights, the activities that will constitute a “leaning outcome”- a (Deliverable).   

      My Teaching Artifact – in first attempt of development was “Large” and “Actually” unwieldy.   It is intended as the core “Structure” for two Spring Semester class sections – both Hybrid – one 76 students and the other -45 students. I’ve taught at Zicklin for 15 +Years – teaching undergraduate: Conflict Mgt, Human Resources, Fundamental Management, Operations Management – an array of Independent Studies Topics and MBA Consultation Advising. Organizational Behavior is a teaching career – re-calibration – bridging careers in Psychology, Mediation with serial entrepreneur business  ventures.  

In joining O.B. and given “free reign” to “create” my version of People and Organizations, also taught by other instructors, my Artifact has been handily assisted by the choice of a “somewhat iconoclastic text” by Jone L. Pearce – Real Research for Real Managers. This text is a no-nonsense dedication, totally absent of patience for MANAGEMENT INFORMATION that is not firmly founded in RESEARCH/EVIDENCE BASED MANAGEMENT INFORMATION. Thank You. Sincerely, Roger

THE ARTIFACT

In short, the MBA Management section of 76 students; for example –  will be divided into 12 groups of 6 students. The format will examine the TRADITIONAL PROBLEM AREAS that plague Managers in the effective Management efforts regarding their people and organizations. Such focal areas as: workplace conflict, hiring and firing, diversity/discrimination, team performance, motivation, etc. 

     The Artifact, as a “Deliverable” will be student designed and maintained HANDBOOK. The Handbook will be divided into the 10 KEY PROBLEMATIC AREAS listed in the Syllabus and noted as “focal areas”. The handbook will contain (for each focal point) written and video summary narratives that will detail the strategies and conclusive solutions of (the real life and real time) the product solutions can be derived from class team involvement or any other appropriate academic source.    WORKPLACE PROBLEM(S)-unique to the given student’s career experience where that the student identifies and presents (options and corrections)  as a result of the application of MANDATORY !!!  EVIDENCE of RESEARCH/EVIDENCE BASED Solution Approaches.      

To succeed in the accomplishment of “REQUIRED” Notebook Artifact, will require the following of specific (STEPS) that will be carefully presented in the Syllabus and identified as – (Research/Evidence-Based “Mindsets”) The primary “mindset” identifies the student as a (Professional Manager), analogous to a medical practitioner, carefully observing and noting people and organization behavior and events that constitute disruptive circumstances.  A Rubric to guide the content and considerations regarding  “DIAGNOSTIC APPROACHES” will presented in class, carefully discussed and clearly observed in the course TEXTBOOK to promote individual and team interaction to assist the accurate and Research/Evidence Based student generated narrative that will be documented and entered in each student’s individual handbook. This course Instructor will periodically review and for the first 3 focal point sections assist each student in achieving course objective quality narrative HANDBOOK entries.  The remaining 7 sections will be graded as determined by the “Notebook Narrative Rubric” found in the Course Syllabus. 

My revised teaching artifact is a peer-review activity for a sync online course of ENG 2150, which combines genre, rhetoric, and research. Previously, the activity took place in Blackboard in the discussion boards, but I’m relocating it to either Bb + Discord or a blog + Discord (haven’t decided on where I’d host the class, yet). My motivation for using Discord as a tool is to deepen student engagement in modes other than writing in a discussion board, and I arrived at this decision after hearing from others who utilize discords or slacks for class; it seems as though students appreciate being able to participate beyond the limitations of Bb. (I also wonder if the use of a non-academic platform encourages participation in a way that a standard LMS doesn’t.) My only concern is asking students to incorporate additional technology into their practice, as I imagine they have other courses also involving multiple platforms.

This week, we’re working in our writing pods to move into P4. First, reread the project description in the syllabus; if you have any questions, email me or drop in during office hours to chat.

Second, in your pod’s voice channel, take turns answering the following questions. Presenters, talk through your ideas; everyone else, listen and ask any questions via text.

1. Remind everyone: what’s your topic?
2. Which approach are you taking in P4, an argumentative approach to persuade your audience of your position or an investigative approach to inform your audience? Why?
3. Which genre are you contemplating composing in? Options include news article, a blog, a podcast, or a short video such as a vlog or documentary.
4. With that genre in mind, which technological tools do you anticipate possibly using? For example, if you want to create an article like what you’d find on The New York Times or Newsweek, do you want to compose it online in a website or in a program like InDesign? I’ll share a more detailed list of options [in Bb/on the blog].

Third, pod members, after the presenter is done and has had a chance to answer any questions, take turns giving feedback based on the following points, either via voice or text.

• Comment on the presenter’s decision to be persuasive or informative: does it feel logical, given the topic and reasoning?
• Does their choice of genre seem appropriate, given the topic and above goal?
• Does their choice of technology seem realistic and manageable in terms of the time left in our class?

Last, [in Bb/on the blog], presenters, reflect on the feedback from your pod members (in a paragraph, in a list—however), considering the following:

• Does any of the feedback surprise you?
• What are your next steps?

I will incorporate Kahoot! for my weekly short quizzes and to poll students during class. For this blog post, I will focus on the short quizzes. In my in-person Social Psychology classes, students used to take short quizzes at the beginning of class whenever a new topic was introduced. The quizzes consisted of five relatively easy multiple-choice questions that were based on the textbook. The purposes of these quizzes were to encourage students to read the textbook and to take attendance. I would display each question on separate PowerPoint slides. Students recorded their responses on an answer sheet, which I collected at the end of the quiz. Students who arrived late would miss some or all the questions.

The revised version of the short quizzes will be hosted on Kahoot!. Similarly to the old version, the quizzes will consist of five multiple-choice questions, and I will display only one question at the time. The main differences are that we will review and discuss the quizzes immediately after students completed them. I hope that this immediate feedback will help students learn the material and increase engagement by fostering discussion. I actually learned about Kahoot! from a fellow seminar attendee who has used Kahoot! in their online synchronous courses.

There are still some aspects I need to work out. For the short quizzes, I need a way to track each student’s score. Kahoot! provides assessment reports, but I will likely need to figure out how to track students’ usernames. I am also unsure to what degree I want to gamify my overall course. How many polls should I include in each class? Should I make some of my polls competitive (e.g., show leaderboards at the end of the class)? Should I include other features of Kahoot!, such as word cloud? 

Below is an example of the type of multiple-choice question I will use for my short quizzes:

________ attitudes are based primarily on people’s beliefs about properties of attitude objects.

a. Affectively based 

b. Intention-based

c. Evaluatively based 

d. Cognitively based

Dear fellow seminaristianites,

I ask students to give peer feedback on short arguments submitted by their fellow students, in which they score them from 1 to 5 on four different aspects, and then explain their score and make suggestions. The rubric I developed for this describes what should be expected for each score. Typically what happens is that students mostly give each other fours and fives, with threes being reserved for the barely coherent.

In the fall, I plan to ask students to collaborate to develop their own rubric. I will ask them what sorts of things they think would be important to evaluate for a good bit of argumentative writing, and what would qualify something as below, above, or at average for each of those criteria. I would probably do this as a think/pair/share, before opening it up to a class-wide discussion in which I would write down and organize their suggestions.

The fact that students have a personal interest in what standard they will be judged by, as well as it being a low-stakes situation for sharing their ideas, should lead to a high level of participation, and I hope a greater commitment to the resulting assignments that the rubric will be applied to.

I am unlikely to have decided to try this without the example and feedback from Kyllikki Rytov in my group, who has successfully used this approach in her own classes.

The remaining issues I need to decide before implementing this are:

• How much guidance to give the students:
  • e.g.
    • Should I decree that the rubric scale will be 1-5, or let them decide?
    • Should I tell them the four characteristics/dimensions I have used before (rational persuasiveness, accuracy, writing mechanics, and originality), or let them come up with their own?
• How much time to allot to each step of this in class.
• Whether to break it up into more steps or fewer.
• How to make the instructions as clear and unintimidating and potentially fun as possible.

If anyone has advice or suggestions, I’d love to hear it!

The Artifact in Progress:

Instructions

For four weeks of the term, you will be asked to submit a short argument in which you take and defend a position regarding an issue covered in recent class readings and discussion. In the week after submitting an argument, you will also be asked to read and evaluate some of your fellow students’ arguments. Today’s task is to create the rubric for how you will score (or be scored) for these arguments.

[Give quick example of a basic rubric, e.g. “Handwriting” – 1=completely illegible, 2=can only be read with effort, 3=legible, 4=easy to read, 5=easy to read and beautiful to look at]

[Three minutes]

Take a few minutes now and think about what is needed, generally, in a good piece of argumentative writing.

Write these down.

If you have time, see if you can identify broad categories that could organize the items in your list. Draw lines, mark with colors, or put a symbol to mark things that you think belong to the same category.

[10 minutes]

Next, get together with a classmate or two and compare lists. Establish which of you will share them with the class.

See if you can identify and agree on four or five broad categories that cover the items in your lists (e.g. ‘good grammar,’ ‘correct spelling,’ ‘enjoyable to read,’ and so on might all fall under a category like “clear writing” or “good communication of ideas”).  These would be the ‘Dimensions’ in the left-hand column of the rubric. Write these down.

Discuss what you believe should count as a 1 (lowest), 2, 3, 4, and 5 (highest) for each of these dimensions on the rubric. Take notes on what you think the criteria should be for each score that could be given on the rubric. That is, if a “3” is given for a particular Dimension, what specifically does that mean, in terms of that Dimension? If you were given a 4, how should you understand it, or if you give a 2, how should the student receiving that score understand it?

[15 minutes]

Get together as a class and share your ideas. I will write down all of the suggestions, then consolidate and edit them to make the rubric you will be using for the Evaluations portion of this assignment.

Short Argument Evaluation Rubric

Dimensions	1	2	3	4	5

I have a series of low-stakes assignments in which students are asked in one week to submit a short argument on a recent course topic, and then in the next week they are asked to evaluate 3 other students’ short arguments, using the PeerMark assignment feature on Turnitin. All submissions and evaluations are anonymous (unless students deliberately put their names in the body of their work).

I have been tweaking this assignment model off and on for a few years, with mixed results, but this semester it is going very well. In their evaluations, I ask students to give the argument they are evaluating a score on various parameters and then to give constructive, helpful comments to explain their score and to help the arguer improve. I also ask them to present a counterargument.

I’ve been pleased with the effort students have been putting into these assignments this semester, but I am considering two changes in how I do this next time, and would love suggestions or comments on how best to carry them out (or for alternatives):

1. Have students create the rubric for what each score should represent (giving them a blank or pared down version to collaborate on completing).
2. Find ways to encourage follow-up or opening communication about the submissions after the initial argument/evaluation cycle. (I’m not sure how to do this without undermining or outright destroying the benefits of having everything be anonymous initially.)

Regarding 1, the evaluation questions and current rubric are below.

EVALUATION QUESTIONS (Those that require a scored response using the rubric are in bold.)

• As I understand it, the thesis is that: (fill in or cut and paste from the argument itself)

• How rationally persuasive is the author’s argument? Does it provide good evidence and reasoning to support the thesis?

Scale    Highest: very persuasive, Lowest: not persuasive

• What advice would you give for improving the rational persuasiveness of the argument? (Where, if anywhere, does the argument fail to rationally persuade? Or, if it is successful, what makes it work? Note that this is not the same as a counterargument; this is advice for how to improve the argument, versus a counterargument which gives reasons to reject the argument.)

• How accurately does the author present course material from readings or lecture? Are terms defined, philosophers’ views explained, and issues interpreted correctly?

Scale Highest: completely accurate, Lowest: mostly inaccurate

• Identify and explain any inaccuracies noted above. If you gave a 3 or less, clarify exactly what you think is wrong in the definitions or presentation of class material!

• Is the writing clear and well organized? Assess the quality of the writing itself (considering the grammar, spelling, style, and so on, rather than the content).

Scale Highest: very clear, Lowest: very unclear

• What suggestions would you make to improve the writing clarity or organization? Or, if you have no suggestions, identify what makes it successful.

• How original is the thinking shown? That is, does the author mostly repeat ideas from others, such as in the readings and class discussion, or does the author show independent thought, with new arguments or examples (or at least new twists or personalization of them)?

Scale  Highest: very original, Lowest: not at all original

• Provide the best counterargument(s) you can, which must include at least one piece of supporting evidence (NO questions, and NO mere disagreement).
• Optional: other comments you wish to share with the arguer? An overall ‘grade’ for the argument?

THE CURRENT RUBRIC: (The formatting seems to have gone a bit wonky as posted on the blog – it’s not this ugly, really!)

Argument Evaluation Rubric

	Needs Lots of Work/Poor   1	Needs Some Work   2	Average     3	Pretty good, with room for improvement   4	Excellent   5
Rational Persuasiveness	Not at all convincing; supporting evidence is absent, false, irrelevant, highly controversial, too general, or badly explained.	A little convincing; the argument needs more or better supporting evidence, the evidence needs better explanation, or the assumptions are controversial.	Adequate, with an average level of persuasiveness.	Fairly convincing, but assumptions could be made more explicit, or the evidence could be further developed in other ways.	Extremely convincing; the supporting evidence is specific, accurate, relevant, and well explained. Assumptions are either uncontroversial or supported.
Accuracy	There were many errors, misinterpretation, or false claims.	Some important points were wrongly reported or were misinterpreted.	Basically okay, but lacks detail or precision, or misleads on minor points.	Almost everything was accurate and appropriately interpreted.	Everything stated was accurate and appropriately interpreted.

Clarity and Organization	The meaning was very difficult to understand.	The meaning and/or connection between ideas were often unclear.	Relatively easy to follow, with decent grammar, etc., but should be edited to bring it above average.	The meaning was mostly clear, with some bits that could be re-written for greater clarity or logical flow.	The meaning is clear throughout, and the ideas are well-organized with good logical flow.  The writing is efficient and effective.
Originality	Arguments, examples, or ideas seem straight from the reading or class discussion.	Only minimal efforts have been made to personalize the arguments.	Average.	While perhaps a bit derivative, the author has clearly made the arguments his or her own.	Examples or ideas show innovative, independent thought.

Admittedly, I have a number of aspects of and materials from my async section of ENG 2150–research and genre–that I want to revise for next semester’s sync section. I’m going to focus on an activity that I ask students to perform as they transition from their annotated bib to the research project, itself, which currently exists as a DB in Bb, and follows is the text from that assignment:

This week, we’re working in small groups to move into P4. First, reread the project description in our syllabus (the revised syllabus has been uploaded here in Bb). If you have any questions for me, email them or drop in during office hours to talk.

Second, posting individually, answer the following:

1. Remind us: what’s your topic/situation?
2. Which approach are you taking in P4, an argumentative approach to persuade your audience of your position or an investigative approach to inform your audience about your topic? Why?
3. Which genre are you contemplating composing for P4? This could be anything from creating a news article to a personal blog to a podcast or short documentary. I once even had a student create an app. (Reminder: You have personal blog examples from [redacted] and [redacted]. I have to dig through some old folders to see if I have other genre examples and the permission to share them.) I’m not looking for technical perfection in your project, only that your attempt is logical in terms of the genre and its audience, purpose, design, and inclusion of research sources.
4. With that genre in mind, which technolog/ies do you anticipate possibly using? For example, if you want to write a news article (a timely example here: https://www.newsweek.com/family-9yearold-killed-astroworld-sues-travis-scott-1649126), do you want to compose it online in a website or in a program like InDesign? If you want to record a podcast, how do you want to record it and where could you host it? (Options here: https://discoverpods.com/best-free-podcast-hosting/)

Third, group members, reply to each others’ posts, doing the following:

• Comment on the author’s decision to be persuasive or informative: does it feel logical, given the topic and the author’s reasoning?
• Does their choice of genre seem appropriate, given the topic and above goal?
• Does their choice of tech seem realistic and manageable in terms of time left in this course?
• After you’ve done the preceding, answer this: what’s the “So what?” of the author’s described project, as you understand it? Authors, pay attention to these responses: if what you have in mind and what your group members are perceiving are drastically different, where is the confusion coming from?

One of my goals in revising this is to enhance student engagement. My students right now are tired and multitasking, and it seems like each group of 3-4 students has one or two members who simply never interact with the others. Another goal is to continue to foster community so that students have their small groups to work through ideas that we can’t really work through f2f in a classroom in small groups. To these ends, I want to switch to Discord next semester, and I also want to rename the “small groups” “writing pods.” I do have a question about when to put students into small groups: this semester, I waited a couple weeks to get a sense of students’ (online) personalities and, in conjunction with their introductions from week 1, I sorted them into groups. Now I’m wondering if I should just have randomly put them into groups from the start.

I will incorporate Kahoot! in my synchronous Social Psychology course (thank you so much Kaitlin Busse for the suggestion!). I plan on using Kahoot! in two ways. 

First, I will use it as a platform for the weekly short quizzes. In my in-person Social Psychology course, students took a short quiz when we started a new topic at the beginning of class. The short quizzes were solely based on the textbook chapters. I would hand out a piece of paper with five multiple choice questions, and students had approximately 5 minutes to complete the quiz. The purpose of the quizzes was to encourage students to read the textbook chapters and to track attendance. Students could miss three quizzes without any repercussions. When I first started teaching Social Psychology, I used PollEverywhere and students loved it. Unfortunately, there were a lot of technical issues with the website, which is why I decided to switch to paper-and-pencil tests. I hope that Kahoot! will be a good replacement. I plan to review the answers immediately after all quizzes have been submitted.

Second, I plan to use Kahoot! for polls throughout the lectures to keep students engaged. I am still trying to decide how many polls would make sense in a 2.5 hour class. 

If any of you have used Kahoot! in your courses, I would love to hear about your experiences!

MY ARTIFACT – The Blog Technique Team Analysis Activity

The course that I intend to use my artifact will be a Hybrid Class of @76 students, The class will then be divided into 12 teams of 6 students. You could refer to them as “Breakout Groups; however they will be permanent and required to meet -at least weekly -with instructor involvement (or not) and their BLOG session will be recorded. Essentially, the students will be responding to an Asynchronous Activity presented to them as a link to view and discuss in their Blog Session – to be recorded. Learning objective will be to determine understanding and comprehension of the Topic/Concept. Second will be to reflect upon how the topic is handled in their current/ or last organization of employment experience, Third, what new strategy based upon the new “Evidence-Based/Information” might/may be considered by the students as alternative options to consider for more effective/efficient function in their current or past -or for a future organization of employment.

I’m Amy Trautwein, from the Philosophy Department. I’ve taught a variety of courses at Baruch, such as Thought and Reality, Moral Problems of Life and Death, Critical Thinking and Ethics, and (the course I will be concentrating on for this seminar) Major Issues in Philosophy.

My courses usually have about 40 students in them, though I have taught jumbos with over 100 and seminars with only about a dozen.  

Major Issues usually has about 40 students enrolled in each section. Here is the course description and list of learning goals I usually include on my syllabus for the course (though I change the questions from time to time, depending on what I choose to focus on in a given semester):

“What does one do in philosophy? Philosophers look for questions, even where you may not have thought that questions could meaningfully be asked. We look for evidence for what are the most plausible answers even for questions that you may not have believed have answers at all. We all do philosophy sometimes, even if you may not have called it that.

This course will introduce a few of those philosophical questions.  We shall focus on questions regarding humans, our possible nature and our relation to the world.  Possible issues will include considering: what is human nature, if it even exists; if free will can exist and what it might be; whether reason can prove the existence of God; the nature of truth and knowledge; whether morality is just a matter of opinions, and if not, what else it might be; and what ‘minds’ are.

            In each case, the goals for you, as a student, are to:

1. gain a clear understanding of what is being asked regarding the issue;
2. grasp the positions some philosophers have developed to try to answer the question;
3. be able to identify and understand the premises and logical structure of the arguments given for those positions; and
4. evaluate these arguments and defend your evaluation with carefully reasoned arguments of your own.

A further goal is to develop your own answers to the questions.  However, answers that satisfy you might be years in the making.  For the purpose of this course, what counts is how well you grapple with the material presented.  The ultimate goal of this course is to improve your arsenal of thinking skills and broaden your approach to the world by careful examination of specific philosophical questions and answers.”

I have a peer review assignment for which students post a short argument on a recent course topic in one week, and the next week post evaluations of some of their fellow students’ arguments, which includes a mandatory counterargument against each of those arguments. My goals for these assignments is to have students think about the material more deeply, practice organizing and expressing their thoughts and defending their views, and also engage in metacognitive reflection about what makes for good arguments and clear communication. I would like to find non-grade-oriented ways to get students to feel more motivated to do the assignment for its own sake and not just as a rote exercise.

Hi! Nice meeting you! Could you introduce yourself? What department are you from? What courses are you teaching or have been teaching? What are the classes you teach like, such as format or class size? Is there anything you want to tell us about your teaching, research, or other projects? 

Hi Everyone, my name is Stefanie Gisler Larsen, and I am a 6th-year student in Baruch College’s I-O Psychology program. My research focuses on employee well-being and recovery from work.

I have been teaching since Fall 2017, and I have taught Social Psychology, I-O Psychology, and General Psychology. I first taught all my courses in-person, but switched to exclusively teaching General Psychology online asynchronous in 2019. My courses have always had 25-30 students. This Spring, I will teach Social Psychology in an online synchronous format for the first time, which will be a completely new experience for me. I feel like I will be one of the only instructors who have never taught an online synchronous course, and I hope that I will be able to learn from your experiences!

Could you talk a little bit about that course you’ll be working on during this seminar? 

I taught Social Psychology in-person from Fall 2017 until 2018, and I will teach if for the first time in an online synchronous format this Spring semester. It will also be the first time that I teach it in one block per week (2h55m).

In my in-person courses, students took weekly short quizzes and two exams. They also wrote two papers and delivered a group presentation at the end of the semester. Further, the course had many in-class activities. I plan to completely revise the course in order to make it more compatible with an online synchronous format, but I hope to still include plenty of engaging activities/assignments.

What are the listed learning goals of your course? They could be ones provided by the department, or ones that you have written for your syllabus? Please list them (pasting is fine!).

These were the learning goals for my in-person Social Psychology course, but I hope to revise them and/or add some new ones for my upcoming course:

1. Understand social psychological concepts, theories, and findings
2. Relate social psychological concepts, theories, and findings to current events, society,history, pop culture, and your everyday life
3. Develop effective skills in written communication through application papers
4. Effectively deliver a coherent presentation to the class using presentation software
5. Consider how diversity and technology influence social situations as well as the field ofsocial psychology

What class materials are you planning to develop? What goals do you have for them?

I would like to develop new in-class activities and assignments that work well in a synchronous format. I hope that students will find them interesting and engaging. I have heard from my colleagues that it can be tricky to keep students engaged in synchronous courses, especially when each lecture spans multiple hours.