Post-pandemic teaching: What we've learned

Transparency in learning and teaching (TILT) involves making explicit to students how and why they are learning course content and how and why we are calling them to do so in a particular way. Large-scale pedagogical research into TILT has found that transparent approaches to course design (especially assignments) boost students’ sense of belonging, academic confidence, and awareness of their own skill development; long-term gains have been tracked for all students, and especially for first-generation and low-income students (e.g., Winkelmas, Boye, & Tapp, 2019). While these outcomes are beneficial at any time, increasing a sense of belonging, confidence, and personal awareness among our students may be especially critical as they reintegrate into the classroom following the disruptive year they have experienced.

The TILT research also found benefits in the form of reduced faculty workload: less student procrastination, fewer last-minute requests for help, reduced grading time, and fewer questions or challenges around grading mean that TILT can help us with our own life/work balance.

Finally, while it may not be immediately apparent, at its heart, TILT is about building equitable practices in teaching that increase the chances that all students will have equitable access to learning. A TILT-related question that we find especially helpful when creating assignments and activities is: “By writing the assignment/structuring the activity in this way, who am I disadvantaging?” 

How can we make our classes more transparent?

The TILT model is non-prescriptive in how assignments or activities are presented, and simply requires that we are transparent about three elements in our assignment design, activity briefings, and so forth:

• Purpose: What knowledge will students be using and what skills will they be practicing?
• Task: What are the steps to completing the task, and where should students experience challenge?
• Criteria: What does success look like?

To find out more about TILT, please attend one of our workshops on the topic, contact us in the Center for Faculty Development (CFD), or check the main TILT website.

We know that rates of trauma in college students are notably high (American College Health Association, 2018; Auerbach et al., 2019) and that this past academic year saw a rise in rates of anxiety and depression among college students (e.g., Lee et al., 2021; Zimmerman et al., 2020). We also know that students living with trauma, anxiety, or myriad other mental wellness challenges experience unique barriers to learning. Trauma-informed (T-I) pedagogy is founded on an awareness of the trauma that has always existed in our classrooms. Its relevance is even more pronounced now that many students have experienced the trauma of living with COVID-19 and, for many, in isolation for a year or more. The principles that undergird T-I pedagogy, listed below, happen to also benefit the learning of all students.

Trauma-informed pedagogy combines multiple areas of education research into an overarching framework and includes focusing on the following basic principles:

• psychological safety
• trustworthiness and transparency
• collaboration and connection
• empowerment and choice

You will find that many of the practices that we suggest on this page align with these principles. 

Finally, we suggest approaching T-I teaching with a focus on inclusion and equity. As with Transparency in Teaching and Learning (TILT) we suggest regularly asking ourselves the question, “Who is advantaged and who is disadvantaged?” as we make decisions about our courses.  

If you would like to be in conversation about T-I pedagogy, please contact the Center for Faculty Development (CFD) and/or read  this article by Mays Imad, a leader in Trauma-Informed Pedagogy.

What do we suggest?

• We suggest that, wherever possible, we use mechanisms other than grades to encourage attendance.

Why?

Class attendance is one of the best predictors of grades (e.g., Credé, Roch, & Kieszczynska, 2010) – independent of assigning grades for attendance. Lowering grades due to absence is therefore a double penalty, rather than an incentive, and is also busy-work for faculty. Provided your program’s accreditation does not have attendance requirements, we suggest you use the research on attendance as your motivator, give students the agency to make their own decisions, and include a statement about attendance in your syllabus so that responsibilities are clear (see commentary below).

Commentary

As a potential motivator for students in our courses, assigning grades for attendance may surprisingly backfire. In higher education settings, motivation is found to be a combination of (1) seeing value in the subject area, (2) the expectation that students can succeed, and (3) a positive learning environment (Ambrose et al., 2010). Somewhat counterintuitively, then, attendance grades may stymie motivation by undermining factors (1) and (3): we may inadvertently create the impression that our subjects are not relevant or meaningful, and students may view the environment as coercive.

Assigning grades for attendance can create “presenteeism,” where students drag themselves to class even if they are sick. After multiple waves of the pandemic, the presence of students who are coughing and sneezing will create anxiety – both for us and among other students in the class – distracting everyone from class material and slowing down the course. And those sick students’ concentration levels will be sub-par, so they would be better staying home to recover more quickly and get back into the classroom to engage and to learn.

We suggest including a statement in your syllabus that when students are absent, it is their responsibility to get notes from a peer. Then after reviewing those notes, students can book an appointment with you in office hours if they have specific questions that need clarifying (see the current syllabus template for example wording).

We know that some faculty feel pressured to re-teach the class one-on-one to absent students, so a syllabus statement can make responsibilities transparent: we, as faculty, have responsibility to create opportunities for students to learn, while students have responsibility and agency to take us up on those opportunities, including seeking clarification from us where needed.

For those of us whose courses are accredited by a professional organization, there may also be exceptions for student sickness or for emergencies.

What do we suggest?

• We suggest that participation policies recognize different forms of engagement.

Why?

Pandemic teaching has highlighted for many of us that students can contribute to the quality of a class through multiple means beyond speaking up. Additionally, students’ socialization and prior learning influence the extent to which they feel able or entitled to contribute in class (Gillis, 2019).

Commentary

Expanding “participation” beyond speaking up in class can be viewed as a matter of equity: it means we aren’t inadvertently privileging students who are more extrovert, who process ideas verbally, and who speak English more fluently. A range of options present themselves.

Gillis (2019, p. 13) reframes participation as “skill-building” for her students and takes a more expansive view to include such components as “coming to class prepared, discussing course material with friends outside of class, peer editing with a partner, attending office hours, paying attention in class, and listening respectfully to peers during discussions.” She notes that each of these factors can make it easier for students to feel ready to join in during class time, too.

Further means of demonstrating participation include engagement in small-group discussions in class, raising good questions or making pertinent comments in online discussions or via backchannels (e.g., the chat function in Zoom or on Microsoft Teams; Bruff, 2021).

If you award grades for participation, we therefore suggest developing a more holistic rubric to suit your own course context, enabling students to demonstrate their engagement in class through varied means. And so that this doesn’t become a time-consuming tracking process for you, we suggest using self- and peer-evaluation.

For courses where in-class participation makes up a large part of the grade (such as performance classes or seminars), consider whether students who miss class due to illness might be able to make up for it with an alternative assignment. For example, you might ask them to produce a video, audiocast, or write-up of a relevant source or sources connected with that day’s learning. Setting out these kinds of options for students in the syllabus or in specific assignment briefings will also help reduce your workload, as well as presenting students a narrowed list of avenues that you know will be manageable for you to assess.

Recent research from South Africa has also found that if you have a number of students sharing a language other than English, allowing them to be in groups together to discuss the content in their first language helps them learn better and stay on track (Madiba & Winkelmas, 2019; students were found to be on-topic and switched to English to use the new disciplinary jargon they were learning.) Consider offering this kind of group work as an option – and be transparent with students about your pedagogical rationale for doing so.

Please also remember that the English Language Learning Center (ELLC) is open to all students who are non-native speakers of English, not just those who are classified as “international.”

What do we suggest?

• We suggest that we review our late-work policies to build in a limited amount of flexibility (provided it is manageable for us as faculty) along with guardrails to help students stay on track - and that we explain our rationales to students.

Why?

As Crocker (2021, p. 2) notes, “students are not universally empowered to reach out for assistance,” so entirely rigid late work policies may have unintended consequences that lead to uneven or inequitable outcomes for our students. For example, if our students are caregivers, they may experience unexpected disruptions to their work if a dependent falls ill or if their child’s school is closed. Equally, our students from underrepresented backgrounds may not even reach out to us when struggling because of stereotype threat (Steele, 2011; the concern that you might fulfill a negative stereotype about a social identity group you belong to).

At the same time, faculty across the country have been finding that their students aren't completing assignments at all (McMurtrie, 2022), so we may need to build in low-stakes opportunities for them to make mistakes, experience consequences, and learn new strategies.  

Commentary

For some of us, the pandemic and its aftermath have given us a fresh perspective on our students’ complex lives. Many of us relaxed previously non-negotiable policies on late work. In some cases, this has been feasible for us; in others, a steady train of late work has led to an unmanageable and inefficient use of time for us, as well as potential academic roadblocks for students if they are unable to proceed to the next assignment without feedback on their previous work.

Crocker’s (2021) own solution is to provide all students one “Life Happens Waiver,” giving them a no-questions-asked 48-hour extension.

Whatever your decisions around deadlines, we suggest that you clarify your reasoning to your students by including a statement in your syllabus about the challenges of late work. For instance, if you have a series of scaffolded assignments, where each builds on the last, then students will need timely feedback to be able to succeed on the next assignment. Similarly, if you block out protected grading time in your calendar so that you can return work swiftly, an explanation can help students see your intentions.

If students request extra time to complete assignments due to disability accommodations, it’s important to note that we are not obligated to provide accommodations that have not previously been assessed and approved by Disability Services (DS); under university policy, accommodations can’t be applied retroactively. Ideally, students will provide us with DS documentation at the start of the term; we suggest prompting students to do this both in any pre-class welcome message and also in the first class; it’s helpful, too, to remind them again when we assign the first graded homework task.

As with attendance policies, creating ways to meet students’ needs while also caring for ourselves and other students requires a combination of student agency and faculty grace, along with good two-way communication and transparency.

What do we suggest?

• We suggest that now could be a good time to review our in-class technology policies for a context-specific approach.

Why?

Research on technology use in class is mixed. Studies have shown, for instance, that technology use that is off-topic can impact neighboring students’ learning (e.g., Neiterman & Zaza, 2019), that there can be benefits to having “screen-free zones” in class (e.g., Rhinehart et al., 2021), and that using specific technologies in class can aid students’ learning (e.g., Jensen & Scharff, 2019). Students with disabilities can also feel stigmatized by being “outed” when using technology as an accommodation (Galanek et al., 2018), thereby creating barriers to inclusion.

Commentary

Pre-pandemic, many of us had firm policies about not using technology in class and keeping cell phones out of view so as to remain present for one another. Yet we have also been moving toward assigning more freely available electronic library sources for class and uploading useful information of our own to Canvas. A one-size-fits-all policy around technology looks less tenable than it may have 15 years ago.

In Distracted (2020), James M Lang recommends developing a context-specific technology policy, where we are transparent with our students about when they should be using technology (e.g., being able to refer to an online article) or shouldn’t (e.g., in a whole-class discussion for which they don’t need to be taking notes). Alternatively, we can co-construct a technology policy with students. If you choose to take this route, Lang suggests presenting a series of options to students, rather than starting from a blank sheet, and provides an example on his blog.