WEBVTT 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:10.000 an effort to stay on time, we can go ahead and proceed. 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:12.000 » ALENA MOON: Welcome back, 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:21.000 everybody. Let 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:25.000 us get into our session. Our keynote speaker is Beth 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:28.000 Schussler. She is a professor at the university of Tennessee 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:31.000 . Beth completed a BS in biology at Vanderbilt and 00:00:31.000 --> 00:00:36.000 trained as a 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:40.000 botonist at Louisiana state university. She had a cool 00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:45.000 path through formal education before starting at the tenure 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:48.000 track position. She has worked my favorite at swamp 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:49.000 nature park. » BETH SCHUSSLER, Ph.D.: 00:00:49.000 --> 00:00:53.000 Weapon. » ALENA MOON: Where you led 00:00:53.000 --> 00:00:59.000 field trips which is the coolest and found her way back 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:01.000 to a tenure track role at the university of Tennessee. And 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:06.000 their 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:08.000 perceptions of instructive supportiveness. We will hear 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:10.000 more about that. Take it away , weather. 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:14.000 » BETH SCHUSSLER, Ph.D.: Thank you for the introduction. I'm 00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:18.000 excited to be here today giving this talk. This is 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:21.000 going to be about why and how I think emotion is the hidden 00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:24.000 curriculum in our classrooms. I'm going to be supporting 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:26.000 that with research that my group has been doing on 00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:32.000 student anxiety. This is specific to introductory 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:37.000 biology classes at the university of Tennessee. So a 00:01:37.000 --> 00:01:41.000 large R1 institutions. Before I go too far. I want to 00:01:41.000 --> 00:01:45.000 acknowledge the folks that helped me on this 00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:48.000 work. EnEngland and Jennifer have been long standing 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:50.000 collaborators on the work. Recently came in and started 00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:56.000 doing the 00:01:56.000 --> 00:02:02.000 the work on instructor support . They have helped us gather 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:06.000 our heads and introduce new ideas at lab meetings. We 00:02:06.000 --> 00:02:09.000 want to thank instructors of biology classes at the 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:12.000 university of Tennessee. Without them we would have no 00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:14.000 data. Early funding for this work was provided through 00:02:14.000 --> 00:02:19.000 university of Tennessee and also through a grant from the 00:02:19.000 --> 00:02:26.000 NSF. So I want to start off by having you all think back 00:02:26.000 --> 00:02:29.000 to the very first college science course that you ever 00:02:29.000 --> 00:02:32.000 took and think about what you remember about that course. I 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:37.000 'm going to ask you to reflect and put short answers into the 00:02:37.000 --> 00:03:00.000 chat so I can kind of see what you all are thinking about. 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:03.000 Large lecture c lasses. The room is cold. Excited. 00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:07.000 Memorization. Not remembering much. What percent of you are 00:03:07.000 --> 00:03:13.000 going to fail. Right. That is always a fun one. 00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:16.000 Uncertainty. Chatting with friends during lecture. Lots 00:03:16.000 --> 00:03:21.000 of memories and lots of things that I kind of remember as 00:03:21.000 --> 00:03:23.000 well. I remember my instructor. I remember really 00:03:23.000 --> 00:03:27.000 liking my instructor and I thought he was really funny. 00:03:27.000 --> 00:03:30.000 Like that's what I remember about my experience. And I 00:03:30.000 --> 00:03:33.000 bring this up because I think that as college science 00:03:33.000 --> 00:03:36.000 instructors we always really want students to answer that 00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:39.000 question with like this intense reflection on the 00:03:39.000 --> 00:03:43.000 content. And all of the things that they remembered 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:50.000 and can spelt back in terms of what we taught them. The 00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:52.000 reality is a lot of the these effective emotions, 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:55.000 experiences are the thanks override. What we think about 00:03:55.000 --> 00:03:59.000 what we think back to our courses. And affect generally 00:03:59.000 --> 00:04:05.000 are the subjective feelings or experiences that are in 00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:07.000 response to a particular circumstance. And it involves 00:04:07.000 --> 00:04:11.000 cognition, physiology and emotions. And the sequence of 00:04:11.000 --> 00:04:13.000 these things is hilarious depending on your theoretical 00:04:13.000 --> 00:04:17.000 perspective. I don't really have a theoretical perspective 00:04:17.000 --> 00:04:22.000 on that. I'm not a psychologist. I will just be 00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:24.000 talking about emotion today. And specifically about emotion 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:28.000 in these introductory science courses that a lot of us have 00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:31.000 a lot of familiarity with. Emotion is Omni present in 00:04:31.000 --> 00:04:33.000 these classes. It is actually contagious. It can move from 00:04:33.000 --> 00:04:38.000 the instructor to student, student to student. It is 00:04:38.000 --> 00:04:41.000 just a constant presence. And it is a -- it is a reaction to 00:04:41.000 --> 00:04:44.000 the circumstances that largely we create as instructors. 00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:47.000 Right. Because as instructors we create the teaching and 00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:51.000 learning conditions in our classes. And so we're 00:04:51.000 --> 00:04:55.000 creating these emotional responses. And these emotions 00:04:55.000 --> 00:04:58.000 are powerful. They really have a lot to do with student 00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:03.000 cognition, motivation, engagement. And because of 00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:06.000 that, because of their 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:09.000 intertwinedness with things, they impact outcomes that we' 00:05:09.000 --> 00:05:12.000 re interested in as instructors. Persistence, 00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:15.000 performance, things like that. So I find this to be a really 00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:18.000 interesting dynamic, right. Because here we are as 00:05:18.000 --> 00:05:21.000 instructors in our large lecture classes. And we're 00:05:21.000 --> 00:05:25.000 very focused on the content and the thanks we want them to 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:27.000 learn in our classes. Yet there is all of this pesky 00:05:27.000 --> 00:05:30.000 emotion running around. Particularly in science. We 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:32.000 tend to want to ignore it. Because we think, well, we don 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:35.000 't really deal with emotion and science. So we're just 00:05:35.000 --> 00:05:39.000 not going to worry about the emotion going on in the 00:05:39.000 --> 00:05:45.000 classroom. And I think it is really similar to the way that 00:05:45.000 --> 00:05:49.000 kind of assessment works in the classroom. Gibson Simpson 00:05:49.000 --> 00:05:51.000 said assessment is the hidden curriculum. I remember that 00:05:51.000 --> 00:05:56.000 being profound to me. Assessment is often the thing 00:05:56.000 --> 00:05:58.000 that we don't want to get involved with. When students 00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:00.000 are 00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:03.000 focused on grades and want to know what is on the exam. 00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:08.000 They're super important to students. So their focus on 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:11.000 the assessment makes that a driving dynamic in the 00:06:11.000 --> 00:06:15.000 classroom. We shouldn't ignore assessment. It is 00:06:15.000 --> 00:06:19.000 essential to learning. Emotion is a hidden curriculum 00:06:19.000 --> 00:06:24.000 too. It is intertwined with the process and the products 00:06:24.000 --> 00:06:27.000 of learning. So if we ignore the emotion in the classroom, 00:06:27.000 --> 00:06:31.000 then we're actually ignoring one of the principal ways that 00:06:31.000 --> 00:06:34.000 we can help our students to learn. So, you know, don't 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:37.000 ignore it in the classroom. So I'm hoping today that one 00:06:37.000 --> 00:06:40.000 of the big take-homes for you is that you understand that 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:44.000 emotion is a hidden curriculum and that it is something that 00:06:44.000 --> 00:06:47.000 we should attend to. And I'm hoping to convince you of that 00:06:47.000 --> 00:06:50.000 by talking about four different things about student 00:06:50.000 --> 00:06:54.000 anxiety that we've been looking at in my lab. Number 00:06:54.000 --> 00:06:57.000 one, that student anxiety is shaped by the past. By things 00:06:57.000 --> 00:07:00.000 that actually happened to students before they come into 00:07:00.000 --> 00:07:03.000 our classes but that profoundly influence their 00:07:03.000 --> 00:07:07.000 current and future perspectives in your course, 00:07:07.000 --> 00:07:11.000 in the major. As instructors we shape these anxiety 00:07:11.000 --> 00:07:14.000 experiences of our students. That instructor support may be 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:18.000 something critical that we can use in the classroom to 00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:22.000 finally attend to affect, to really think about how do we 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:26.000 plan for emotion in our classroom so that we can help 00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:29.000 students learn and use emotion to help us do that. 00:07:29.000 --> 00:07:33.000 So I'm not going to have you write in chat this time. But 00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:37.000 I do want you to think back again to that first college 00:07:37.000 --> 00:07:41.000 science course. And think about some of the reasons why 00:07:41.000 --> 00:07:47.000 you felt the particular emotions that you felt. 00:07:47.000 --> 00:07:49.000 All right. I'll give you a second to think about it. So 00:07:49.000 --> 00:07:55.000 this is one theoretical perspective that you can take 00:07:55.000 --> 00:07:57.000 when you're studying emotion. This is an appraisal based 00:07:57.000 --> 00:08:02.000 emotion 00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:06.000 theory. Value theory of achievement emotions. These 00:08:06.000 --> 00:08:10.000 emotions are generated by student appraisal of their p 00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:14.000 erceptions and their perceived control over their ability to 00:08:14.000 --> 00:08:19.000 do well in the course. And the value that they place on 00:08:19.000 --> 00:08:21.000 doing well in the course. And so if you take those two 00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:25.000 things together, that generates the emotions that 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:28.000 students feel. So, for example, if I'm in a biology 00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:33.000 course and I have high value, I really want to do well on it 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:35.000 , but I am uncertain about my ability to do well, so I'm 00:08:35.000 --> 00:08:40.000 uncertain about my control, that typically generates the 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:43.000 emotion that we call anxiety. If I have high value in the 00:08:43.000 --> 00:08:48.000 course, but I really do not feel that I have any control 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:51.000 overdoing well in the course, then the emotion is 00:08:51.000 --> 00:08:56.000 hopelessness. Just a sad kind of emotion. Now, these two 00:08:56.000 --> 00:08:59.000 appraisals are shaped by many other things that are 00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:02.000 environmental or contextual in nature. As an example, 00:09:02.000 --> 00:09:06.000 instructor practices, the peers in the course, your 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:09.000 goals for why you're actually there or even in college. 00:09:09.000 --> 00:09:13.000 Your emotional predispositions . And your experiences that 00:09:13.000 --> 00:09:18.000 you've had in, you know, maybe science or something in the 00:09:18.000 --> 00:09:22.000 past. And these things then, these emotions that you feel 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:26.000 because of the environmental contextual variables impacting 00:09:26.000 --> 00:09:30.000 the appraisals of control and value, then these emotions are 00:09:30.000 --> 00:09:32.000 generated and those emotions then are basically filtered 00:09:32.000 --> 00:09:34.000 through your individual cognitive characteristics, 00:09:34.000 --> 00:09:42.000 your motivational characteristics to actually 00:09:42.000 --> 00:09:45.000 get to the final outcome. Now , talks about the final 00:09:45.000 --> 00:09:48.000 achievement of outcomes but there are other outcomes that 00:09:48.000 --> 00:09:53.000 we might talk. About in our lab we're interested in 00:09:53.000 --> 00:09:55.000 instructor practices and how instructor practices can 00:09:55.000 --> 00:09:59.000 impact the appraisals of control and value that 00:09:59.000 --> 00:10:03.000 students make that then can rise this anxiety, this 00:10:03.000 --> 00:10:09.000 emotion of anxiety. And what the level of anxiety s and 00:10:09.000 --> 00:10:14.000 then once students have this anxiety, we're interested how 00:10:14.000 --> 00:10:17.000 that impacts persistence in the biology major. So we need 00:10:17.000 --> 00:10:20.000 to talk about anxiety. Anxiety is one of the most 00:10:20.000 --> 00:10:25.000 prevalent emotions that students feel in our 00:10:25.000 --> 00:10:28.000 classrooms in college. And it is interesting Leo owe it is a 00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:31.000 perspective emotion. It is a worry or concern about 00:10:31.000 --> 00:10:35.000 something that might happen in the future or might not. It 00:10:35.000 --> 00:10:38.000 is classified as a negative emotion. But it is 00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:41.000 interesting because it is also placed as an activating 00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:45.000 emotion. And so there are conditions underwhich anxiety 00:10:45.000 --> 00:10:48.000 can be a good thing. If you have anxiety about an upcoming 00:10:48.000 --> 00:10:51.000 exam, that might activate you to study for the exam. And 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:55.000 then you do better on that exam than you were perhaps w 00:10:55.000 --> 00:10:58.000 orried about doing. And so there are moderately good 00:10:58.000 --> 00:11:02.000 levels of anxiety that can activate you to do well. But 00:11:02.000 --> 00:11:06.000 in general, particularly if you experience high anxiety, 00:11:06.000 --> 00:11:10.000 high anxiety can have these negative impacts on student 00:11:10.000 --> 00:11:13.000 course performance and persistence. We've been 00:11:13.000 --> 00:11:18.000 studying anxiety in our introductory biology classes 00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:21.000 at the university of Tennessee . We have two main intro 00:11:21.000 --> 00:11:26.000 courses. These are from majors. Now, they might be 00:11:26.000 --> 00:11:31.000 biology majors but may also be physics majors or geology 00:11:31.000 --> 00:11:37.000 majors or something like that. We have one course that is an 00:11:37.000 --> 00:11:43.000 ecological course we sometimes call that OEB. And the 00:11:43.000 --> 00:11:47.000 cellular molecular course. We call those CMB. They are 00:11:47.000 --> 00:11:50.000 typically taught by one instructor. Seating about 220 00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:54.000 students. That is about the max in these courses right now 00:11:54.000 --> 00:11:57.000 . All use active learning to various extents. It depends 00:11:57.000 --> 00:12:00.000 on the instructor. They use different types. Some do 00:12:00.000 --> 00:12:03.000 group work. Some do questioning and answering. 00:12:03.000 --> 00:12:06.000 Some do cold calling. Some don't. A lot use clickers. 00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:10.000 That is one of the most common things that people use. We 00:12:10.000 --> 00:12:15.000 know from our research that when these active learning 00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:17.000 practices are deployed that students feel anxiety towards 00:12:17.000 --> 00:12:21.000 them, particularly questioning and answering in front of 00:12:21.000 --> 00:12:24.000 their peers. One of the first things that we wanted to do 00:12:24.000 --> 00:12:27.000 exploring anxiety ask, great, they have anxiety but does 00:12:27.000 --> 00:12:32.000 that mean anything? Is it having any negative impacts on 00:12:32.000 --> 00:12:35.000 the students in our classes? We had to figure out ways to 00:12:35.000 --> 00:12:37.000 measure anxiety and think about the outcome variables we 00:12:37.000 --> 00:12:41.000 wanted to measure. I want to draw your attention to the 00:12:41.000 --> 00:12:45.000 bottom of the slide down here. Down at the bottom of the 00:12:45.000 --> 00:12:48.000 slide, we have at week 14 in the class we asked students 00:12:48.000 --> 00:12:51.000 whether they intend to stay in the biology major or not. 00:12:51.000 --> 00:12:54.000 That is our persistence outcome variable. And then at 00:12:54.000 --> 00:12:57.000 the end of the 00:12:57.000 --> 00:12:59.000 semester, we ask students -- we asked the instructors to 00:12:59.000 --> 00:13:02.000 give us the final grades for the students. And that is 00:13:02.000 --> 00:13:07.000 their performance in the class . So we look at persistence 00:13:07.000 --> 00:13:10.000 and performance as our outcome variables. So to measure 00:13:10.000 --> 00:13:14.000 anxiety, we have one measure that is a measure of general 00:13:14.000 --> 00:13:18.000 anxiety. It is like this overall kind of how anxious 00:13:18.000 --> 00:13:21.000 are you about the biology lecture class in general? We 00:13:21.000 --> 00:13:26.000 also ask them about their perception of the difficulty 00:13:26.000 --> 00:13:29.000 of the course. Those two are kind of tied up together in 00:13:29.000 --> 00:13:32.000 one instrument. We also ask about test anxiety. 00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:35.000 Specifically about anxiety towards assessment. Social 00:13:35.000 --> 00:13:36.000 anxiety. Specifically working in a small group. And 00:13:36.000 --> 00:13:40.000 communication anxiety, answering questions in front 00:13:40.000 --> 00:13:44.000 of your classmates which causes a lot of anxiety. We 00:13:44.000 --> 00:13:47.000 collect these data at weeks four and 14. Week 4 because 00:13:47.000 --> 00:13:50.000 it is right before the first set of exams in the class. 00:13:50.000 --> 00:13:52.000 And week 14 because it is the work before Thanksgiving and 00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:57.000 we're on semesters. That's when things are kind of 00:13:57.000 --> 00:14:00.000 winding down for us. So we looked at these things. And 00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:03.000 we were once again interested in how these might impact 00:14:03.000 --> 00:14:07.000 these response variables of performance and persistence. 00:14:07.000 --> 00:14:11.000 So I'm going to call your attention to the test anxiety 00:14:11.000 --> 00:14:14.000 and social anxiety results first. So on test anxiety and 00:14:14.000 --> 00:14:19.000 social anxiety had no relationship with either 00:14:19.000 --> 00:14:23.000 performance or persistence for the students in our class that 00:14:23.000 --> 00:14:26.000 semester. And that's a little surprising. Test anxiety 00:14:26.000 --> 00:14:30.000 typically has negative impacts on performance. We didn't 00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:35.000 find it. We didn't find it in another semester. So we don't 00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:37.000 really know why. But that is the way it seems to be here at 00:14:37.000 --> 00:14:40.000 U T. Communication anxiety actually had a slightly 00:14:40.000 --> 00:14:42.000 positive impact on performance in the class. So we think 00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:46.000 maybe if you're nervous about answering a question in front 00:14:46.000 --> 00:14:49.000 of your classmates, that might inspire you to pay closer 00:14:49.000 --> 00:14:53.000 attention just in case you are called on. And maybe that 00:14:53.000 --> 00:14:56.000 then helps you to do a little better in the class. 00:14:56.000 --> 00:14:58.000 Perception of difficulty, I don't think it is surprising 00:14:58.000 --> 00:15:02.000 to hear that perception of difficulty was negatively 00:15:02.000 --> 00:15:06.000 related to performance. And then we're going to look at 00:15:06.000 --> 00:15:10.000 general anxiety which is what we will be centered on for 00:15:10.000 --> 00:15:13.000 most of the rest this talk. Had a negative relationship 00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:16.000 with intent to persist in the major. So remember we asked 00:15:16.000 --> 00:15:21.000 that at week 14. Now, what we found was that it was the 00:15:21.000 --> 00:15:25.000 anxiety at week 4 that was related to intention to 00:15:25.000 --> 00:15:29.000 persist. And so if you felt high anxiety in this class at 00:15:29.000 --> 00:15:32.000 week 4, you were more likely at week 14 to say I don't 00:15:32.000 --> 00:15:35.000 think I will be staying in the biology m ajor. It is early 00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:39.000 anxiety that really matters, which I don't think is all 00:15:39.000 --> 00:15:43.000 that surprising. So once we knew that, we needed to know, 00:15:43.000 --> 00:15:47.000 what is it that is driving early anxiety in these classes 00:15:47.000 --> 00:15:53.000 ? What makes students anxious at week 4 or before? 00:15:53.000 --> 00:15:57.000 The way we approached this, we deployed a survey before the 00:15:57.000 --> 00:15:59.000 semester started. We call that week 0 sometimes. We 00:15:59.000 --> 00:16:03.000 asked instructors to send this to students and closed the 00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:06.000 survey before the first class meeting. Is it truly is week 00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:09.000 0. They had never ever set foot in the class before. And 00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:12.000 of course week 4 and 14. We asked them to rate their 00:16:12.000 --> 00:16:16.000 anxiety like we typically do. Then we also asked them to 00:16:16.000 --> 00:16:20.000 explain why they had that level of a nxiety. And what 00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:23.000 we did is we grouped all of the responses and came up with 00:16:23.000 --> 00:16:28.000 categories based on when these things came up in the data set 00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:31.000 . And so what we found is that at weeks 0, okay, before 00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:35.000 they ever stepped foot in the class, the two things driving 00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:38.000 anxiety is they didn't know what to expect. That is 00:16:38.000 --> 00:16:41.000 classic definition of anxiety and that it had been a long 00:16:41.000 --> 00:16:44.000 time since they had taken a biology course. In Tennessee 00:16:44.000 --> 00:16:49.000 they took biology as a freshman in high school. If 00:16:49.000 --> 00:16:53.000 they hadn't taken AP, it had been four years or more. Week 00:16:53.000 --> 00:16:56.000 4 and -- sorry. Week 0 and week 4 we found that students 00:16:56.000 --> 00:17:02.000 were anxious about the size of the class and having a bad 00:17:02.000 --> 00:17:05.000 previous biology experience. And all throughout 0 through 00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:07.000 14, this never goes away. They were always anxious about 00:17:07.000 --> 00:17:11.000 the material being hard and complex, poor instruction, 00:17:11.000 --> 00:17:14.000 being confused or struggling to understand. And then 00:17:14.000 --> 00:17:18.000 starting at week 4 but then continuing is the amount of 00:17:18.000 --> 00:17:21.000 material or the pace in the class. They felt that the 00:17:21.000 --> 00:17:25.000 class activities were unsupportive and tests and 00:17:25.000 --> 00:17:28.000 quizzes were driving their anxiety. What I did is took a 00:17:28.000 --> 00:17:31.000 look at these and grouped them into three Uber categories, if 00:17:31.000 --> 00:17:34.000 you will. The student 00:17:34.000 --> 00:17:37.000 expectations, student prior experiences and instructor 00:17:37.000 --> 00:17:40.000 practices. Because they relate to so much of their 00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:47.000 confusion and anxiety about content. 00:17:47.000 --> 00:17:51.000 We kind of put that into the model. What impact the 00:17:51.000 --> 00:17:53.000 control value appraisals? Certainly expectations, prior 00:17:53.000 --> 00:17:56.000 experiences and instructor practices. And if you think 00:17:56.000 --> 00:18:00.000 about the blue bubble as being one large lecture class, you' 00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:04.000 re going to have students of course that have a variety of 00:18:04.000 --> 00:18:07.000 different expectations. They' re going to have a variety of 00:18:07.000 --> 00:18:10.000 different past experiences. I think of these two things in 00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:16.000 particular as 00:18:16.000 --> 00:18:20.000 having this 00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:24.000 prismic effect. They break students into the groups of 00:18:24.000 --> 00:18:27.000 anxiety that we expect to see in a class. Indeed we do. If 00:18:27.000 --> 00:18:33.000 you look at anxiety and how it varies, like the distribution 00:18:33.000 --> 00:18:35.000 of anxiety. So on the X axis, 7 is high anxiety. Y axis is 00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:41.000 number of students experiencing each level of 00:18:41.000 --> 00:18:45.000 anxiety. This is three classes combined. We see a 00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:49.000 bell curve. It is skewed towards lower anxiety. We 00:18:49.000 --> 00:18:52.000 have this long trailing tail of students who have had high 00:18:52.000 --> 00:18:55.000 anxiety experience in their class. We can definitely say 00:18:55.000 --> 00:18:59.000 that it's not the same experience for students in the 00:18:59.000 --> 00:19:03.000 class in terms of the anxiety that they're feeling. And we 00:19:03.000 --> 00:19:07.000 know that has i mpacts then. Because we know that these 00:19:07.000 --> 00:19:12.000 anxiety levels can impact whether or not they're going 00:19:12.000 --> 00:19:19.000 to persist or not persist in the major. 00:19:19.000 --> 00:19:23.000 Those can be moderated by cognitive and emotional 00:19:23.000 --> 00:19:27.000 characteristics. Some may have high anxiety and persist. 00:19:27.000 --> 00:19:29.000 But by and large what we see is students with the high 00:19:29.000 --> 00:19:33.000 anxiety will not persist in the biology major. And so 00:19:33.000 --> 00:19:38.000 what this tells us is that there are a lot of things that 00:19:38.000 --> 00:19:41.000 are impacting the student experience before they ever 00:19:41.000 --> 00:19:44.000 get into our classes. That these experiences care wee 00:19:44.000 --> 00:19:52.000 them into the 00:19:52.000 --> 00:19:54.000 class. They impact how the students perceive what is 00:19:54.000 --> 00:20:00.000 happening to 00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:04.000 them. And so that's concerning. But it isn't the 00:20:04.000 --> 00:20:09.000 whole story either. The other part of it is that instructors 00:20:09.000 --> 00:20:13.000 do have a role in shaping this ultimate student outcome. And 00:20:13.000 --> 00:20:17.000 so if we think about the model and we break it down into let' 00:20:17.000 --> 00:20:19.000 s say three large lecture classes, so each of these blue 00:20:19.000 --> 00:20:23.000 bubbles is now one large lecture class, right. We know 00:20:23.000 --> 00:20:26.000 that in each of these lecture classes there's going to be 00:20:26.000 --> 00:20:31.000 students who have a variety of expectations and prior 00:20:31.000 --> 00:20:35.000 experiences. But there's no reason to assume that the 00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:38.000 distribution of those things would be wildly different from 00:20:38.000 --> 00:20:42.000 lecture class to lecture class . So then instructor 00:20:42.000 --> 00:20:44.000 practices kind of take over. We as instructors each bring 00:20:44.000 --> 00:20:47.000 our own perspectives and how we teach the class. Those are 00:20:47.000 --> 00:20:51.000 going to impact control and value appraisals and then we' 00:20:51.000 --> 00:20:56.000 re going to get anxiety in each of these classes. So 00:20:56.000 --> 00:21:00.000 what is that going to look like? What we see here is we 00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:03.000 see the outcomes of that. This is five different 00:21:03.000 --> 00:21:06.000 introductory biology lecture classes. Over on the far 00:21:06.000 --> 00:21:10.000 right are the codes for each one of them. It doesn't 00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:13.000 really matter what they are. They are just within the same 00:21:13.000 --> 00:21:18.000 semester, five different intro bioclasses. You can see that 00:21:18.000 --> 00:21:22.000 we have assessed the average class anxiety level at weeks 0 00:21:22.000 --> 00:21:28.000 , 4, and 14. And the scales should go all the way up to 7 00:21:28.000 --> 00:21:32.000 but I was trying to focus on the trajectories of emotion 00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:38.000 here. So what you might want to notice, your eye might be 00:21:38.000 --> 00:21:42.000 drawn to how different these can look. Look at the OEB2, 00:21:42.000 --> 00:21:45.000 the red line. This is not the class that you want to be in. 00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:47.000 Whatever level of anxiety that you started with, on average, 00:21:47.000 --> 00:21:52.000 it's going to go up over time. That is not typical. 00:21:52.000 --> 00:21:55.000 Typically students have higher anxiety early at week 0 and 00:21:55.000 --> 00:22:00.000 then it drops down by week 4. So you get this like release 00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:03.000 of anxiety a little bit. Not in 00:22:03.000 --> 00:22:06.000 OEB2. In honors you get a big release from your anxiety. 00:22:06.000 --> 00:22:10.000 That drop from week 0 to week 4 is pretty significant. And 00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:13.000 even though it rebounds up, which is once again typical in 00:22:13.000 --> 00:22:18.000 a lot of our 00:22:18.000 --> 00:22:20.000 classes, it never comes close to that starting anxiety level 00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:23.000 . This variation is problematic in terms of equity 00:22:23.000 --> 00:22:27.000 , right. You know, which class you're in is going to 00:22:27.000 --> 00:22:32.000 depend on your emotional anxiety experience. But on 00:22:32.000 --> 00:22:35.000 the other hand, on the good side, right, is that it 00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:39.000 basically tells us that instructors have a lot of role 00:22:39.000 --> 00:22:44.000 to play in this emotional trajectory that students 00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:49.000 experience. That in fact instructor practices can be a 00:22:49.000 --> 00:22:54.000 tool for affect regulation. That we can serve as affect 00:22:54.000 --> 00:22:57.000 regulators in our classes. And I think 00:22:57.000 --> 00:23:01.000 that Kavanaugh has a book called the spark of learning 00:23:01.000 --> 00:23:03.000 if you're interested. It is fantastic. She says 00:23:03.000 --> 00:23:06.000 intentionally crafting the impression that we make on 00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:09.000 students in order to maximize their motivation and learning 00:23:09.000 --> 00:23:12.000 is one of the profound things that we that we can do. And 00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:15.000 so, you know, when I'm teaching introductory biology, 00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:18.000 I can choose and use particular instructor 00:23:18.000 --> 00:23:22.000 practices that can actually make a difference in lowering 00:23:22.000 --> 00:23:25.000 student anxiety in my classroom. And then therefore 00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:31.000 give students a higher probability of persisting in 00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:37.000 the major. great. How do we do that? Right. That's the 00:23:37.000 --> 00:23:40.000 key. And that's the hard part . And so we've been looking 00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:45.000 at a lot of characteristics. This has taken us out of the 00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:46.000 biology education world into a scary dive sometimes into the 00:23:46.000 --> 00:23:49.000 psychology and the communication literature where 00:23:49.000 --> 00:23:53.000 we are very unfamiliar. But one of the things that we 00:23:53.000 --> 00:23:56.000 discovered that we found really fascinating was 00:23:56.000 --> 00:23:59.000 something called autonomy supportive services. This 00:23:59.000 --> 00:24:03.000 comes out of the motivation literature. It is basically a 00:24:03.000 --> 00:24:08.000 way that you as a teacher can help to support the motivation 00:24:08.000 --> 00:24:12.000 of your students by supporting their autonomy. And not like 00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:15.000 autonomy giving them all control in the classroom but 00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:20.000 their perceived ability to control the outcome for 00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:23.000 themselves in the course. You can see here that they have a 00:24:23.000 --> 00:24:26.000 negative relationship. That is in the literature. And 00:24:26.000 --> 00:24:29.000 also we ran those numbers in our classes at the university 00:24:29.000 --> 00:24:33.000 of Tennessee and found that it was true there as well. And 00:24:33.000 --> 00:24:38.000 so we got really excited about this idea that maybe, you know 00:24:38.000 --> 00:24:42.000 , instructors support, kind of -- not specifically autonomy 00:24:42.000 --> 00:24:45.000 supportive practices, but what if we could help instructors 00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:50.000 be more supportive to their students? Could this be a way 00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:53.000 to moderate anxiety in our classes? And we didn't know, 00:24:53.000 --> 00:24:58.000 right. We knew very little about what that might look 00:24:58.000 --> 00:25:02.000 like. And so we undertook a study in fall of 2019 in the 00:25:02.000 --> 00:25:05.000 before times and basically asked two questions, right. 00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:08.000 What do students think make an instructor supportive. And 00:25:08.000 --> 00:25:12.000 what is it that might distinguish instructors who 00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:17.000 are rated by their students as either higher in support or 00:25:17.000 --> 00:25:22.000 lower in support. And to do this, we studied four of our 00:25:22.000 --> 00:25:31.000 introductory biology classes. I'm going to be 00:25:31.000 --> 00:25:36.000 using these sued him ins and eye cons -- icons throughout 00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:42.000 the course. How long had they been teaching and their 00:25:42.000 --> 00:25:47.000 appointment type. Only Lee were a nonfaculty. The rest 00:25:47.000 --> 00:25:49.000 were on tenure tract. Online survey at week 4. That's when 00:25:49.000 --> 00:25:53.000 anxiety matters. We asked students about their general 00:25:53.000 --> 00:25:55.000 anxiety level. One against, 7 is high. We asked them to 00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.000 then rate the supportiveness of their instructor of the 00:25:59.000 --> 00:26:02.000 course. And to make it simple , we gave them a one to ten 00:26:02.000 --> 00:26:05.000 scale where ten was high support. And then we asked 00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:10.000 them, why did you rate your instructor supportiveness like 00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:12.000 that? So they had to give us open responses to telluses 00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:15.000 tell us why they gave that rating. I'm going to show 00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.000 here this is the distribution of anxiety in each of the four 00:26:19.000 --> 00:26:22.000 classes. I'm going to call attention to our kind of 00:26:22.000 --> 00:26:26.000 variations, right, our extremes. We've got mia on 00:26:26.000 --> 00:26:31.000 the top left in the green. Mia is a particularly low 00:26:31.000 --> 00:26:34.000 anxiety experience for a lot of students. Many of them 00:26:34.000 --> 00:26:37.000 pegged down at the one, two, three level. None of them had 00:26:37.000 --> 00:26:43.000 a 7 at all. Then we have Ken on the kind of middle right. 00:26:43.000 --> 00:26:45.000 He is in the blue line. A high anxiety instructor. For 00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:49.000 students in Ken's class they are much more likely to peg 00:26:49.000 --> 00:26:53.000 out their anxiety at 4, 5, 6 and a certain amount have 7 00:26:53.000 --> 00:26:57.000 levels of anxiety which is our highest. And I can share this 00:26:57.000 --> 00:27:01.000 here as well in terms of the average class anxiety level 00:27:01.000 --> 00:27:05.000 for each of these instructors. Once again, Ken being a high 00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:08.000 anxiety and mia being 00:27:08.000 --> 00:27:13.000 low. And then Jan and Lee are in the middle. We also asked 00:27:13.000 --> 00:27:16.000 about supportiveness. Right. So these are the class average 00:27:16.000 --> 00:27:20.000 ratings of supportiveness of each of these instructors. We 00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:23.000 can see that Ken has the lowest level of support and 00:27:23.000 --> 00:27:28.000 mia has the highest level of support which kind of works 00:27:28.000 --> 00:27:31.000 with the anxiety. And yes, there is a significant 00:27:31.000 --> 00:27:35.000 negative correlation between anxiety and support for the 00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:39.000 data set. What we really wanted to know though was, 00:27:39.000 --> 00:27:43.000 okay, Ken and Jan are these student rated lower support. 00:27:43.000 --> 00:27:47.000 Not terribly low support but lower than Lee and m ia. What 00:27:47.000 --> 00:27:52.000 is it that makes Lee and mia different to students than Ken 00:27:52.000 --> 00:27:56.000 and Jan? And to do that, we had to know what to look for. 00:27:56.000 --> 00:27:58.000 So we went into the data set where students had told us why 00:27:58.000 --> 00:28:03.000 they had rated their instructors supportiveness the 00:28:03.000 --> 00:28:05.000 way that they did. And we undertook an inductive 00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:08.000 qualitative analysis to basically come up with themes 00:28:08.000 --> 00:28:11.000 of instructors support. And we had five. Those are shown 00:28:11.000 --> 00:28:15.000 here. I'm not going to read the quotes. But I'll just go 00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:18.000 briefly through each of these. So we had a relational theme 00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:20.000 where s tudents talked about supportiveness in terms of the 00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:23.000 way that it felt to communicate with their 00:28:23.000 --> 00:28:27.000 instructor, the way that they felt or perceived that their 00:28:27.000 --> 00:28:30.000 instructor felt about them in terms of their caring or their 00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:33.000 helpfulness. So it was just this -- the warm and fuzzies. 00:28:33.000 --> 00:28:38.000 Or the not warm and fuzzies. Right. This could be positive 00:28:38.000 --> 00:28:39.000 or it could be negative. There was instrumental theme. 00:28:39.000 --> 00:28:44.000 Instrumental were extra things that the i nstructors were 00:28:44.000 --> 00:28:47.000 doing outside of class. Like offering office hours or study 00:28:47.000 --> 00:28:52.000 sessions. These were always positives. Students always 00:28:52.000 --> 00:28:54.000 liked these things. 00:28:54.000 --> 00:28:57.000 Pedagogical things that they were doing in class and things 00:28:57.000 --> 00:29:00.000 that the students were talking about indicated whether or not 00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.000 they really thought that the instructor cared about their 00:29:04.000 --> 00:29:06.000 learning. So they could be positive or they could be 00:29:06.000 --> 00:29:08.000 negative. There were personality characteristics. 00:29:08.000 --> 00:29:12.000 This is the way that the students thought the 00:29:12.000 --> 00:29:16.000 instructor was as a person. They could be positive or 00:29:16.000 --> 00:29:19.000 unfortunately negative. And then there was this ambiguous 00:29:19.000 --> 00:29:22.000 theme. Ambiguous is where they weren't sure how to rate 00:29:22.000 --> 00:29:24.000 the supportiveness of their instructor because they hadn't 00:29:24.000 --> 00:29:30.000 talked to them. It was a large class so they didn't 00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:32.000 know what to put. Here what I have done is organized those 00:29:32.000 --> 00:29:36.000 themes 00:29:36.000 --> 00:29:40.000 by rating of instructor support. On the X axis it 00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:43.000 goes up to 10 which is the highest level of instructor 00:29:43.000 --> 00:29:46.000 support. And I sorted the themes that went along with 00:29:46.000 --> 00:29:48.000 the ratings of the students provided. I want to show you 00:29:48.000 --> 00:29:53.000 the trend here, right. If you look all the way on the left 00:29:53.000 --> 00:29:56.000 at the number one low support, the things that student mostly 00:29:56.000 --> 00:30:02.000 talked about were negative 00:30:02.000 --> 00:30:06.000 pedagogical characters and relational characteristics. 00:30:06.000 --> 00:30:10.000 Let's go to the nondark side. Over to the positive high 00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:16.000 support. We see a lot of positive 00:30:16.000 --> 00:30:18.000 pedagogical characteristics. We see some instrumental and 00:30:18.000 --> 00:30:21.000 relational characteristics. That kind of told us the 00:30:21.000 --> 00:30:27.000 overall scene in terms of these themes. What we really 00:30:27.000 --> 00:30:30.000 wanted to get to, right, was what is it that makes Lee and 00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:34.000 mia different from Jan and Ken . Jan and Ken are the lower 00:30:34.000 --> 00:30:37.000 support instructors and Lee and mia are the higher support 00:30:37.000 --> 00:30:41.000 instructors. We organized the theme by what the students in 00:30:41.000 --> 00:30:43.000 their classes said about them. What I'm going to do is 00:30:43.000 --> 00:30:45.000 basically show two things that were overall different about 00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:50.000 them. If I look at the positive characteristics, 00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:55.000 right, if you see the blue bar , the blue bar is positive 00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:57.000 relational. There seems to be a pretty decent difference 00:30:57.000 --> 00:31:01.000 between Ken and Jan and Lee and mia. It seems that Lee 00:31:01.000 --> 00:31:05.000 and mia had a lot of students talking about these positive 00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:09.000 relational, they cared about us, they were there to help us 00:31:09.000 --> 00:31:12.000 . Those kinds of things shown through for Lee and mia. The 00:31:12.000 --> 00:31:16.000 other thing that was striking was on the negative side of 00:31:16.000 --> 00:31:19.000 the thing or the neutral was that Ken and Jan had a fairly 00:31:19.000 --> 00:31:24.000 high amount of negative 00:31:24.000 --> 00:31:27.000 pedagogical characters. Lee and mia had almost none. 00:31:27.000 --> 00:31:30.000 Students did talk about how it was not helping their learning 00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:34.000 . They were talking about always how fantastic it was 00:31:34.000 --> 00:31:37.000 for helping them to learn. But Ken and Jan got a lot of 00:31:37.000 --> 00:31:43.000 negative feedback about their 00:31:43.000 --> 00:31:46.000 pedagogies. This tells us something interesting. We as 00:31:46.000 --> 00:31:49.000 instructors if we want to attend to emotion in the 00:31:49.000 --> 00:31:53.000 classroom. And as a instructor if I want to drive 00:31:53.000 --> 00:31:57.000 anxiety down in my classroom, I need to attend to positive 00:31:57.000 --> 00:32:02.000 relational characteristics and make sure that I'm doing by 00:32:02.000 --> 00:32:05.000 FUTA gogy correct so I don't get these negative things and 00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:10.000 I need to plan for that. That is something that is hard 00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:14.000 because it is not something that we talk about. We're 00:32:14.000 --> 00:32:16.000 taught how to write assessments not how to gesture 00:32:16.000 --> 00:32:20.000 a ppropriately, you know, help enhance a sense of community 00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:23.000 in the classroom. But I want to say that these things are 00:32:23.000 --> 00:32:30.000 actually important words. The words that we use in the class 00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:35.000 are wildly important. The way that we move around the 00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:40.000 classroom. We can move around the classroom, gesture, make 00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:44.000 icon tact and that helps create something 00:32:44.000 --> 00:32:47.000 called immediacy. It changes the psychological distance 00:32:47.000 --> 00:32:51.000 between students and instructors. The deeds. The 00:32:51.000 --> 00:32:55.000 way that we act around our students. And our policies. 00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:59.000 Are they accommodating and let students know they can come to 00:32:59.000 --> 00:33:03.000 us if there is something go on in their lives or black and 00:33:03.000 --> 00:33:05.000 white, no, you can't take the exam. All of these are in a 00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:11.000 tool kit to help plan for emotion in the classroom. 00:33:11.000 --> 00:33:14.000 Just to go through a few examples here, I have written 00:33:14.000 --> 00:33:17.000 on the left positive emotional characteristics. These are 00:33:17.000 --> 00:33:20.000 things that students expressed that made them say that their 00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:23.000 instructors were positive 00:33:23.000 --> 00:33:29.000 relationally done. And I just want to go through things that 00:33:29.000 --> 00:33:34.000 I thought about. So maybe I want to use words, 00:33:34.000 --> 00:33:39.000 right. How would I just tell students that I want them to 00:33:39.000 --> 00:33:41.000 sick seed in the class or that I'm there to help them. Say 00:33:41.000 --> 00:33:45.000 things things out and maybe put them on a slide at the 00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:50.000 beginning of the lecture or something. I want to use 00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:52.000 nonverbal gestures and move them around the classroom for 00:33:52.000 --> 00:33:56.000 approachability for my students. I want to 00:33:56.000 --> 00:33:58.000 demonstrate h elpfulness to my students by not blowing out of 00:33:58.000 --> 00:34:01.000 the classroom at the end of the lecture and not stopping 00:34:01.000 --> 00:34:05.000 and pausing and seeing if anyone has any questions to 00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:08.000 ask me. And I need policies for extenuating circumstances. 00:34:08.000 --> 00:34:14.000 And things for like 00:34:14.000 --> 00:34:17.000 p edalogical, see if they're confused and allow them to 00:34:17.000 --> 00:34:23.000 demonstrate learning in multiple ways. 00:34:23.000 --> 00:34:25.000 If we do these things, we can build for equitable 00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:28.000 environments. Here I have anxiety on the X axis and 00:34:28.000 --> 00:34:32.000 support on the Y axis. I want to show you how different 00:34:32.000 --> 00:34:37.000 these two distributions are. If you have high support, like 00:34:37.000 --> 00:34:41.000 Lee and mia at the bottom, then what we see is that the 00:34:41.000 --> 00:34:44.000 support that these students experience is more equitable 00:34:44.000 --> 00:34:50.000 across these different anxiety levels. For Ken and Jan, what 00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:53.000 we see is that the experience is really different if you're 00:34:53.000 --> 00:34:56.000 a high anxiety versus low anxiety student. And I think 00:34:56.000 --> 00:35:01.000 that makes a big difference. We have to remember that 00:35:01.000 --> 00:35:03.000 instructor practices impact anxiety but student anxiety 00:35:03.000 --> 00:35:07.000 impacts our perception of practices. Finally I want to 00:35:07.000 --> 00:35:10.000 say that emotions can be moderated. Emotion is the 00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:14.000 hidden curriculum. But we can bring it into the light. Use 00:35:14.000 --> 00:35:17.000 words, gestures, deeds, policies to plan, to actually 00:35:17.000 --> 00:35:20.000 help the emotional experience. And students attend to these 00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:23.000 things. We know they do, right, from our data set. 00:35:23.000 --> 00:35:26.000 They are watching these things as cues. And so I think that 00:35:26.000 --> 00:35:29.000 we need to pay as much attention to them as the 00:35:29.000 --> 00:35:32.000 students are paying attention to us doing these things. And 00:35:32.000 --> 00:35:35.000 with that, I'm going to close things down and you all can 00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:40.000 ask me questions that you have . 00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:47.000 » ALENA MOON: Thank you so 00:35:47.000 --> 00:35:49.000 much. there are so many good questions for you. I did some 00:35:49.000 --> 00:35:51.000 very 00:35:51.000 --> 00:35:52.000 impromptu analysis. » BETH SCHUSSLER, Ph.D.: Nice. 00:35:52.000 --> 00:35:55.000 » ALENA MOON: And I'm going to 00:35:55.000 --> 00:35:58.000 try to ask questions that popped up multiple times. 00:35:58.000 --> 00:36:02.000 Some of the big questions surrounded relationship 00:36:02.000 --> 00:36:06.000 between student identity and anxiety and then instructor 00:36:06.000 --> 00:36:09.000 identity and anxiety. Can you touch on both of those? 00:36:09.000 --> 00:36:14.000 » BETH SCHUSSLER, Ph.D.: Yeah. Yeah. I wish I had more data 00:36:14.000 --> 00:36:17.000 on that. So, you know, A number one university of 00:36:17.000 --> 00:36:22.000 Tennessee is not known for its wild diversity. It is hard 00:36:22.000 --> 00:36:28.000 for us to sometimes 00:36:28.000 --> 00:36:31.000 d isambiguate data in that way . They asked if we thought 00:36:31.000 --> 00:36:36.000 that students perceived the male and the female -- the man 00:36:36.000 --> 00:36:40.000 and the woman instructors as different. We saw no evidence 00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:45.000 of that. We didn't see any comments that referred to 00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:48.000 anything about gender. Certainly we had a man and the 00:36:48.000 --> 00:36:52.000 woman with high support. A man and a woman with low 00:36:52.000 --> 00:36:56.000 support. So it didn't sort out that the men were rated as 00:36:56.000 --> 00:37:00.000 high support. And we -- the only thing that we have seen 00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.000 is -- and this is kind of weird because it might be 00:37:04.000 --> 00:37:08.000 politics based honestly. In 2016, we did see that gender 00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:11.000 being female impact -- impacted persistence. So they 00:37:11.000 --> 00:37:15.000 had higher anxiety and it more negatively impacted 00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:20.000 persistence and we never saw that again. I'm not so sure 00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:22.000 it wasn't a political -- I'm blaming Trump on that one. 00:37:22.000 --> 00:37:25.000 That's all I have to say. 00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:29.000 » ALENA MOON: One person posed 00:37:29.000 --> 00:37:32.000 , for example, if maybe certain active learning 00:37:32.000 --> 00:37:36.000 practices could have had differential effects for 00:37:36.000 --> 00:37:40.000 example for underrepresented students who are also facing 00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:40.000 stereo type threat. Like cold calling, for example. Did you 00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:45.000 observe. » BETH SCHUSSLER, Ph.D.: You 00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:48.000 know, I think -- so the work that Katie Cooper and Sarah 00:37:48.000 --> 00:37:52.000 brenell have done on this, they did a lot of work on 00:37:52.000 --> 00:37:55.000 student anxiety and bioclassrooms. And I feel 00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:58.000 that the work that they have done has indicated that 00:37:58.000 --> 00:38:02.000 actually it is the small group work that might be more 00:38:02.000 --> 00:38:06.000 threatening to students because that is 00:38:06.000 --> 00:38:12.000 when those matter when you have to circle up with a group 00:38:12.000 --> 00:38:16.000 of people in a large lecture class that you don't know and 00:38:16.000 --> 00:38:19.000 suddenly your identity matters . People are looking at you 00:38:19.000 --> 00:38:23.000 and you're conscious of it. Their work would indicate that 00:38:23.000 --> 00:38:26.000 group work -- clickers can be rather anonymous. Answering a 00:38:26.000 --> 00:38:29.000 question in front of a question hi large lecture 00:38:29.000 --> 00:38:31.000 usually causes them a lot of anxiety even if it is a 00:38:31.000 --> 00:38:34.000 volunteer to answer. Why are you nervous? You don't have 00:38:34.000 --> 00:38:40.000 to do it. But they feel very anxious about it. I would 00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:45.000 imagine cold calling might if it is not done equitably. I 00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:47.000 think it has the potential to be harmful depending how the 00:38:47.000 --> 00:38:54.000 struckor is doing it. 00:38:54.000 --> 00:38:56.000 » ALENA MOON: I'm just going 00:38:56.000 --> 00:39:00.000 to read Alecs' question. It is sometimes expected that 00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:06.000 women and minority faculty 00:39:06.000 --> 00:39:09.000 provide effective layer. How they position themselves in 00:39:09.000 --> 00:39:13.000 front of their classrooms? As a follow-up, is there any 00:39:13.000 --> 00:39:17.000 relationship between the gender identity race ethnicity 00:39:17.000 --> 00:39:25.000 to the level of anxiety perceived by students? 00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:29.000 » BETH SCHUSSLER, Ph.D.: I'm 00:39:29.000 --> 00:39:31.000 sorry. I should be looking at this. I probably can't find 00:39:31.000 --> 00:39:31.000 it. 00:39:31.000 --> 00:39:34.000 » ALENA MOON: I put two 00:39:34.000 --> 00:39:35.000 questions together. » BETH SCHUSSLER, Ph.D.: Okay. 00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:39.000 » ALENA MOON: Minorities and 00:39:39.000 --> 00:39:42.000 women often provide the effective labor. How is that 00:39:42.000 --> 00:39:44.000 related to the approach that the faculty are using in the 00:39:44.000 --> 00:39:45.000 classrooms and how they position themselves in their 00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:50.000 classes. » BETH SCHUSSLER, Ph.D.: Yeah. 00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:52.000 Yeah. You know, this is -- I' m going to go out on a limb 00:39:52.000 --> 00:39:57.000 because I don't have data that can specifically answer that 00:39:57.000 --> 00:40:00.000 question. But I think that in the support data, for example, 00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:02.000 when I think about an instructor like Jan, I'm very 00:40:02.000 --> 00:40:08.000 familiar with all of these instructors. I have watched 00:40:08.000 --> 00:40:10.000 them quite a bit. I think that one of the things that 00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:13.000 impedes Jan in particular is that because she is a woman, 00:40:13.000 --> 00:40:18.000 there are certain expectations that she is going to be warm 00:40:18.000 --> 00:40:20.000 and fuzzy in the classroom. That she is going to be more 00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:24.000 approachable. I don't think that is her style. Because of 00:40:24.000 --> 00:40:27.000 that, I think she s uffers in the -- in the supportive 00:40:27.000 --> 00:40:30.000 ratings because her practices are perfect. When I watch, I' 00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:33.000 m like that is perfect learning implementation and I' 00:40:33.000 --> 00:40:38.000 m always surprised at her ratings because -- and I 00:40:38.000 --> 00:40:43.000 really think it is that she isn't as warm and fuzzy as she 00:40:43.000 --> 00:40:48.000 should be. Certainly -- and I also think Lee on the flip 00:40:48.000 --> 00:40:52.000 side, Lee is, you know, he is a man, but very approachable. 00:40:52.000 --> 00:40:55.000 Very gregarious. And I think that probably does really help 00:40:55.000 --> 00:40:59.000 because it is not -- not expected that you might see 00:40:59.000 --> 00:41:04.000 that, you know, in somebody who is a man. 00:41:04.000 --> 00:41:08.000 » ALENA MOON: Okay. And I was 00:41:08.000 --> 00:41:11.000 also wanting so much of this. Can you give some examples of 00:41:11.000 --> 00:41:13.000 autonomy supportive practices? 00:41:13.000 --> 00:41:18.000 » BETH SCHUSSLER, Ph.D.: So it 's -- and I'm really having to 00:41:18.000 --> 00:41:22.000 dive back into my memory here. 00:41:22.000 --> 00:41:24.000 So autonomy supportive practices are things like you 00:41:24.000 --> 00:41:29.000 can offer choice. For example , one of the classic things 00:41:29.000 --> 00:41:33.000 that you can do as an instructor, this comes out of 00:41:33.000 --> 00:41:35.000 the k-12 teaching world. Some is hard to translate. Maybe 00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:40.000 you have assignments where students have a choice in 00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:45.000 which one of the assignments that they 00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:47.000 complete. It is also about 00:41:47.000 --> 00:41:50.000 listening to students. Being explicit when they have 00:41:50.000 --> 00:41:54.000 concerns that you're willing to listen and make adjustments 00:41:54.000 --> 00:42:00.000 to your practices so they feel that they are contributing to 00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:03.000 the class well and you are responsive to them subpoena 00:42:03.000 --> 00:42:06.000 and listening to their concerns. It is about trust. 00:42:06.000 --> 00:42:10.000 It is about centering the instructor back to a certain 00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:14.000 extent. There are a lot of relational things that go into 00:42:14.000 --> 00:42:16.000 that. Also I think some policy choices or the way that 00:42:16.000 --> 00:42:18.000 you structure your course. » ALENA MOON: So then a few 00:42:18.000 --> 00:42:24.000 people were 00:42:24.000 --> 00:42:27.000 wondering about anxiety in the COVID era. I'm wondering if 00:42:27.000 --> 00:42:30.000 you can speak to that a little bit. 00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:34.000 » BETH SCHUSSLER, Ph.D.: Yeah. So I have not done any surveys 00:42:34.000 --> 00:42:38.000 of students in the -- in the current COVID pandemic. I 00:42:38.000 --> 00:42:44.000 thought real hard about it. You know, I have -- I've been 00:42:44.000 --> 00:42:47.000 regularly collecting this data since 2015. But I didn't feel 00:42:47.000 --> 00:42:50.000 comfortable deploying the surveys when things were so 00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:55.000 chaotic and instructors were so hard pressed to do what 00:42:55.000 --> 00:42:59.000 they were doing. Students were feeling overwhelmed. So 00:42:59.000 --> 00:43:02.000 I chose not to collect any data. I haven't collected any 00:43:02.000 --> 00:43:05.000 data since we started to collect data in spring of 2020 00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:12.000 and then we just 00:43:12.000 --> 00:43:17.000 stopped. Or spring -- yeah. Yeah. I can't personally 00:43:17.000 --> 00:43:23.000 say anything. The things that I know about relational and 00:43:23.000 --> 00:43:29.000 pedalogical, how do you do it in an online square. You can' 00:43:29.000 --> 00:43:36.000 t walk around the room. You can't -- God forbid 00:43:36.000 --> 00:43:38.000 eye contact. I gesture but I feel like it is a puppet. It 00:43:38.000 --> 00:43:42.000 is not same as all. And I think our practices are 00:43:42.000 --> 00:43:47.000 different. So I think -- there is no way that it isn't 00:43:47.000 --> 00:43:49.000 impacting things. But I did ask towards the end of spring 00:43:49.000 --> 00:43:53.000 2020 about student perceptions of instructor supportiveness 00:43:53.000 --> 00:43:57.000 because the instructors wanted to know how that was going as 00:43:57.000 --> 00:44:01.000 they transitioned to online. And I was surprised students 00:44:01.000 --> 00:44:04.000 felt very supported. They felt like the instructors were 00:44:04.000 --> 00:44:07.000 really doing what they could. But I also think that was that 00:44:07.000 --> 00:44:09.000 emergency transition. And I'm not so sure that that i sn't - 00:44:09.000 --> 00:44:12.000 - wouldn't be different in this kind of, well, you've had 00:44:12.000 --> 00:44:16.000 a year now. You've planned for this. You know, why haven 00:44:16.000 --> 00:44:19.000 't you gotten this right yet. 00:44:19.000 --> 00:44:23.000 » ALENA MOON: Well, let us all 00:44:23.000 --> 00:44:26.000 just take a second to thank Beth, again, for a wonderful 00:44:26.000 --> 00:44:30.000 talk. That was really great. 00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:33.000 And I think we have a tiny break or we go straight -- oh, 00:44:33.000 --> 00:44:35.000 let me check one more time. 00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:40.000 » STEPHANIE VENDETTI: We have 00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:43.000 a tiny 15-minute break. 00:44:43.000 --> 00:44:47.000 » ALENA MOON: Okay. But 00:44:47.000 --> 00:44:50.000 really, thank you, Beth. You told such a good story. 00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:53.000 » BETH SCHUSSLER, Ph.D.: I'm happy. I meant to start my 00:44:53.000 --> 00:44:57.000 timer but I didn't know how long I had gone. 00:44:57.000 --> 00:44:58.000 » ALENA MOON: I didn't have to try. You were so perfect on 00:44:58.000 --> 00:45:00.000 time. » BETH SCHUSSLER, Ph.D.: I 00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:04.000 always run later than I practice. It is just annoys 00:45:04.000 --> 00:45:09.000 the hell out of me. [Laughter]