Practice Paradox

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What is this connection?

Practice Paradox.  Structure your course clearly. Communicate your expectations regularly.  And, then, be reasonably flexible when students come to you with concerns.

Outcomes:

After exploring resources in this module participants will be able to:

  • Identify ways to be flexible around course policies with students
  • Evaluate course syllabi for clarity of student expectations for your class
  • Discuss ways to express empathy and authentic care toward students

Let's read!

Why this connection works:

This connection has an interesting title.    Odessa's Drop Rate Improvement Program  called it  "Becoming a 'master of paradox' (i.e., maintaining a structured course while allowing for some flexibility.)"

Sally Heilstedt,  Dean of Instruction at LWTech,  frames this connection around the fact that for most students, life and school are frequently on a collision course.  

It may help to frame this as knowing when to adjust to better support student learning. Thinking about lesson planning, the ultimate goal is to facilitate learning so students can achieve the course outcomes. The structure provided should intentionally support student success related to the outcomes. Flexibility should thoughtfully support student success related to the outcomes.

Practice Paradox.

Practicing paradox provides students with empowering expectations/empowering support. Ultimately, student success is about student learning. Ask yourself:

  • Do my expectations in this course, on this assignment, etc. empower students to learn the course outcomes?
  • When issues arise in students’ lives and learning experiences, am I flexible so that students are empowered to learn the course outcomes?

Clarity

First, try to be as clear as possible about expectations, clear in terms of  grading policies,  or clear in terms of expectations for discussion board participation, or timeliness of submissions, or late work policies, and so forth.

Transparent assignment design or TILT is a great way to practice this first part of practicing paradox. The TILT framework suggests we be clear about assignments by explicating three things:  the purpose of the assignment, the tasks or steps the student should take to complete the assignment, and the criteria that we are going to use by which to evaluate them.  You can learn more about transparent assignment design on the LTC transparent assignment page, or contact Bob at the Learning and Teaching Center.

Flexibility

Second, consider how to be reasonably flexible. 

Moving instruction to online modalities is a great opportunity to try things you haven’t done before. What better time than now to try out a UDL (universal design for learning) approach to an assessment?  Consider letting students try alternate means to express their learning.  This is especially important for students who will only be able to use their phone to access your course (“Here’s what I have the capability to do for this assignment using my phone….is it ok?”  “Yes!” )   You can read more about UDL in the Explore Scholarship tab above.

Be firm, but having some flex when things go wrong. It's especially important during Covid. Be transparent  in policies - especially around making exceptions to policies, explaining why the exception is being made.

In considering flexibility, it might be useful to learn about what Ducan-Andrade (2009) refers to as students’ non-academic competing interests. Consider the following non-academic realities of community college demographics.  In reflecting on this list, it is important not to view any of these from a deficit perspective.  Rather, you might choose to reflect on where your own privilege might be similar or different from your students in regards to time, capacity, and ability to balance obligations:

  • A high percentage are low income with unmet financial need.
  • A high percentage work while attending school, and a large percentage of those work full time.
  • Community college students often work in jobs that are temporary/transitional in nature, have late night hours, and are physically exhausting.
  • Many students work multiple jobs, thus requiring them to navigate the culture and expectations of several job sites (and school) simultaneously.
  • Many students attend school on a part-time basis.
  • Students often have dependents--two, three, or more, and/or are single parents.
  • Many students are first-generation and have not enrolled in or completed any postsecondary education.
  • Community college students are often living in situational or generational poverty.

An example of building flexibility into a class is to introduce a token system (Nilson, 2016).  Students can be given three virtual tokens to use for submitting an assignment for re-grading (assuming your syllabus doesn't already provide for that), for being able to re-take a test, or for being able to turn an assignment in late without penalty.   Nilson suggests there might even be ways for students to earn tokens, and perhaps a prize at the end of class for who has the most tokens. 

Finally, practice empathy. Work to express care through being compassionate and flexible.  Students would surely tell us that now  is not the time to be rigid and difficult.

Ideas/thoughts from faculty at Highline

  • Many teachers are flexible on their late work policies.  One Highline instructor uses a system where 2 assignments over the course of the quarter can be late, no questions asked.
  • Consider dropping the lowest test or paper score.
  • Allow multiple attempts to take a quiz, either averaging the scores or recording the higher score.  Canvas allows you to set up their quizzes (Links to an external site.) that way.
  • Weight work more heavily on cumulative/summative work at the end of the quarter as opposed to weighting earlier work equally (e.g. weight later work more than earlier work.)
  • One faculty member summarizes practicing paradox as the idea of checking in with students when they aren’t coming, finding out why, and then finding ways to help accommodate them.
  • Giving the benefit of doubt has helped, especially now, that it leads to fairness and engagement.  
  • Provide extensions for assignments or projects, but indicate the student needs to surface their need in advance of the due date.
  • Think in terms of learning outcomes….can they miss a quiz, assignment, etc. and still meet the learning outcomes?

Reference:

Duncan-Andrade, J. M. R. (2009). Note to educators: Hope required when growing roses in concrete. Harvard Educational Review, 79(2), 181–94.

Nilson, L.B. (2016, January 19). Yes, Virginia, there's a better way to grade.  Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/01/19/new-ways-grade-more-effectively-essay