{"id":1884,"date":"2018-01-16T17:12:08","date_gmt":"2018-01-16T17:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/cfc\/?p=1884"},"modified":"2021-05-17T11:58:18","modified_gmt":"2021-05-17T15:58:18","slug":"improving-your-sais-looking-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/cfc\/blog\/2018\/01\/16\/improving-your-sais-looking-ahead\/","title":{"rendered":"Improving your SAIS: Looking Ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"

Improving your SAIs: Looking Ahead<\/strong><\/p>\n

The SAI\u2014student assessment instrument\u2014is integral to how we are evaluated here at Western. It needs little introduction.<\/p>\n

How can we look back on that SAI just handed to us by our chair or director, while looking ahead to a new term, with an eye toward making changes that produce stronger student ratings at the end of spring?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look at how you might address weaknesses with a look at each of the five main areas of the standard SAI course form.<\/p>\n

Organization and Clarity<\/strong>
\n\u201c<\/strong>Faculty preparation\u201d is the way towards stronger course organization and clarity.<\/p>\n

Some tips<\/u>:
\nMaximize Microsoft Outlook<\/strong>.
\nCreate a recurring \u201cbusy\u201d period in your Outlook calendar (not during your student office hour), then begin prompting your peers and colleagues to send you an appointment invite through Outlook, rather than saying \u201cyes\u201d to every informal or hallway meeting request. Then use that \u201cbusy\u201d block in Outlook to do your class prep.
\nQuit Outlook.<\/strong>
\nYes, this may seem to contradict the above, but quitting the email altogether when doing the heavy lifting such as course prep can provide the focus you need. Your brain will thank you. The emails can wait.
\nPaper, paper, LMS<\/strong>. The standard course form contains four questions that students respond to related to your organization and clarity, and each of them can be addressed with a lesson plan document that is, firstly, completed by you prior to class, and secondly, shared with students as class begins (or, if resources are tight, through an upload of said document to the course in the LMS). You can share the paper as class begins or share your screen\u2026either way, you remind students for 16 weeks, multiple times, of what your aims are, and how they will achieve them.<\/p>\n

Enthusiasm and Intellectual Stimulation.\u00a0<\/strong>I\u2019ll be honest. When I was teaching comp and lit, each term I found the consistent, regularly scheduled classes to be my Kryptonite. Don\u2019t get me wrong\u2014particular topics always found me jazzed from noon to Sunday. And students responded to those lessons in a positive way. But as midterm approached, in the second term of the academic year, I found myself mirroring their waning energy of my students.
\nSome Tips<\/u>:<\/p>\n

Time-shift your best project.\u00a0<\/strong>Lift your best project, the one you\u2019re most energized about, and reposition it when you think you\u2019ll lag.<\/p>\n

Identify a guest speaker(s).<\/strong> Ask a colleague. Consider faculty outside the department. Remember Zoom (they need not be local at all\u2026)<\/p>\n

Rapport and Respect.\u00a0<\/strong>Model this as early as possible. Discuss unusual classroom events that have happened before (and how you handled them). Talk specifically about these components of the SAI\u2014being available to students, being impartial to different views, respecting different opinions\u2014as they are all components of the evaluation they\u2019ll take at the end of the term. Discussing these things early on in the term helps them see you as a person first, and a teacher second. And most importantly\u2014it prompts further conversation.<\/p>\n

Feedback and Accessibility.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>The first statement in this part of the SAI\u2014\u201cAssessment methods accurately assess what I have learned in this course\u201d begs many questions for us as faculty. Were multiple assessment methods used? Did these methods assess what students learned? There is much to unpack here, but a CFC consultation could find a way forward. We can conduct a syllabus review for a balance of formative\/summative assessment, discuss strategies for rubric development and use, and suggest alternative forms of assessment.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Student Perceptions of Learning.\u00a0<\/strong>A single faculty practice can bring about improvement to SAI scores in this category\u2014through the way exam results and graded and discussed with students.<\/p>\n

Evaluate how you handle the entire exam process.<\/p>\n

Tips:<\/p>\n

Grade their work in class. \u00a0<\/strong>True, use of a traditional m\/c, t\/f test means they will finish at different times, which creates a strange opportunity and differentiated possibility for us.\u00a0 They don\u2019t expect us to grade work in class, but what if this barrier wasn\u2019t present? What if the exam were, well, completely different? Let go of the traditional testing mechanism. Consider an interview exam (peer to peer), a check-off exam, or an exam with the same endpoint for everyone.<\/p>\n

Return the exam the next class session.\u00a0<\/strong>Can you close the grading window? Would you be tempted to grade it more quickly if you knew that they were most motivated to know how they did\u2026and ultimately, to\u00a0retain<\/em>\u00a0what you\u2019ve taught them\u2026 is highest immediately following exam completion).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Change the conversation.\u00a0<\/strong>What does your post-exam discussion look like? Many faculty may come to post-exam review as a routine endeavor\u2014going over what was right and wrong. But this sends the wrong message\u2014that the performance is what\u2019s important, not the learning. So focus not just on right and wrong but how to arrive at the right answer\u2026the process used. You could discuss prior lectures\/labs\/experiences, or call on students to identify the process they used to recall the information.<\/p>\n

Review a group of SAIs<\/strong>. \u00a0Do you have other SAIs to compare these to? It may be helpful to review a group of SAIs to gain a broader understanding. Consider grouping them by course, or with other SAIs provided by a former institution (if you recently came to Western). Do you see a pattern? One particular weak area? When I taught English comp, I often saw that one particular area held the lowest scores\u2026consistently. This insight led me to talk with colleagues and others outside my department about how I might improve.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s to a great 2018!<\/p>\n

Terry Pollard<\/p>\n

CFC<\/p>\n

Senior Educational Developer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Improving your SAIs: Looking Ahead The SAI\u2014student assessment instrument\u2014is integral to how we are evaluated here at Western. It needs little introduction. How can we look back on that SAI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-eddev"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":16419,"url":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/cfc\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/faculty-can-register-for-video-conference-mid-semester-course-analysis\/","url_meta":{"origin":1884,"position":0},"title":"Faculty Can Register for Video-Conference Mid-Semester Course Analysis","author":"Terry Pollard","date":"August 28, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Faculty may now schedule Coulter Faculty Commons staff for a mid-semester course analysis for a fall course. 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