In a series of posts on the Teaching Professor Blog, Dr. Maryellen Weimer took on the challenge of improving college-level multiple choice tests. While multiple choice tests are a convenience for many professors, for instructors of blended and online courses they can be a necessity. The problem is, of course, that many instructors question what multiple choice tests are really testing -- student learning, or student ability to select an answer from a list of choices.

According to Dr. Weimer, not all multiple choice tests are bad tests. The real problem is crafting the right questions. According to the first post in the series, "A number of years ago, a cross-disciplinary faculty cohort reported that a third of their questions measured complex cognitive skills. An analysis showed that only 8.5% of their questions did, with the remaining testing basic comprehension and recall." Improving the quality of the questions, according to Dr. Weimer, can make multiple choice tests efficient and effective. In the second post, she provides some tips for writing good multiple choice questions, including:

During an interview with Online Classroom, professor Rosemary Cleveland and instructional designer Kim Kenward suggested some tips for providing students with feedback in their online courses. Even though their interview was targeted towards completely online courses, there were some key takeaways for instructors teaching both blended, and even completely traditional courses.

One of their tips was to "Consider various formats" for giving feedback. As Cleveland and Kenward pointed out, most students and instructors are familiar with traditional, text-based feedback -- but that doesn't mean that it's the only way. They cited a survey of their own students, in which "70 percent liked having audio feedback because they could hear the instructor's voice, which makes the message more personal."

And it's not just students who like audio feedback: oral feedback is also more efficient for instructors to produce. With the steady advance of course management systems, it also doesn't require a lot of technical expertise to easily give audio feedback. Both Blackboard and Moodle, for example, have audio recording built-in to their grading components.

When I was in sixth grade, the summer camp I attended annually stopped letting us climb the rocks.  I had always loved clambering up the boulders, feeling carefully for stable hand and foot holds; slower than many of my peers, who scrambled up without worry of falling, but always victorious when I finally stood twenty feet above the ground and gazed out over the nearby world.  But for reasons I don’t remember—perhaps a camper hurt themself, perhaps there was just concern that a camper would—one summer the counselors told us that we couldn’t climb the boulders anymore, at least not without strict adult supervision.  We still climbed occasionally after that, always with several adults stationed nearby, but it never felt the same to me.  Perhaps we were safer then, but we were also less free.

“I Spy an Ecosystem!” and Words as Barriers

Today, it seems that our current method for teaching about the environment fosters a perceived intrinsic disconnect, or distance, that humans have from our environment. The words that are used, and the ways in which we use them, make for an unstable foundation for the ongoing efforts to better understand our place in the ‘environment’. As teachers, learners, and as human thinkers, we are constantly trying to bridge connections and understanding between one another and to the world around us. Knowing is about making connections. How can we make connections to Nature and the ‘environment’ when these terms segregate all things ‘human’ from what is ‘natural’? Where do we fit into this environment? Perhaps the terminology we use to talk about ecological concerns is rooted in a way of thinking that we are trying to separate ourselves from. As Bowers says, “Many of those analogs were chosen by men who were unaware of environmental limits, and who took for granted many of the cultural assumptions of their era. Recognizing that words have a history has important implications that are seldom considered” (Bowers 48). How can we teach a love, a respect, and a sense of connection to ourselves while using the same vocabulary that was created by those who were unaware and apathetic to these same concerns? We are having a different conversation now, so maybe we need to be deliberate in our language and conscious of our meaning. 

Somebody came up and said, "You talk about your home as if it were part of your own body." And they were right, this landscape is a living, breathing part of me. I consider it something to protect, like I would my own body. That's an idea that's been passed down from generation to generation. - Judy Bonds (found here)

    Much of our ecology and ‘Ecoliteracy’ 360 began with conversations and questions about home, community, and belonging, and that makes sense, doesn’t it? I certainly thought so, until I came across Timothy Morton and his Ecological Thought, at which point I didn’t know what to think; his argument simultaneously illuminated complexities and made them more confusing. Morton argues that "Fixation on place impedes a truly ecological view" (Morton 26), a claim that I find problematic based on personal experience people I know. Morton says that in order to improve the various crises faced by our world and the human species, it is necessary for us humans to stop thinking of ourselves as apart from Nature-with-a-capital-N. What we need, he says, is ‘the ecological thought’, which he defines in many ways: "a virus that infects all other areas of thinking…It has to do with love, loss, despair…compassion…depression and psychosis…capitalism and what might exist after capitalism…race, class, and gender…society…coexistence.” (Morton 2) He goes on to even broader and more abstract descriptions of the ecological thought:

Tearing Down the Language Barrier

Every environment, whether it is in the city, your home, or the outdoors, has obstacles to tear down and work through. We are not a perfect community and in a way it is great that we will never be a utopia. Individuals gain knowledge through experience, through failing and learning how to overcome and adapt to face our biggest problems. Individuals would never progress intellectually, mentally, or emotionally if our environments were problem safe, poke free bubbles.

Every environment is unique and created differently due to geographic and economic standards. Philadelphia’s solution for better environmental education caliber might not apply to Houston’s solution due to a lot of reasons, but most importantly because of how different each population in each of the environments is. Houston and Philadelphia are two different cities in two different states miles apart from each other, not only does location play a big factor in the issue but so does the general make up of both environments. We would need to take into consideration the types of communities that build both cities, which requires stepping in, and becoming personally aware with who lives there rather than focus solemnly on the problem at hand.

After looking through all of the readings we have done so far in class I decided I wanted to focus on the readings that coverered bilingualism in public schools as well as focusing on disabilities in the public school system. The main focus for this essay is on accessibility: Accessibility for people with learning diabilities or language differences in the public school system as well as accessibility for people in nature whether it’s in natural parks or in playgrounds with man-made structures. For this essay I looked at Lapayese’s essay on bilingualism in public schools, two essays on disabilities, as well as Price’s essay which focused on the idea of access. I also wanted to tie in my own experiences with disabilities and school systems.