Nonjudgmental Rigor

with
Dr. Andrea Sanders

Chattanooga State Technical Community College

 moderated by

Skip Sparkman & Mary Nunaley
Volunteer State Community College

a Tennessee Board of Regents
Regents Online Campus Collaborative Podcast

Nunaley: I’d like to welcome Dr. Andrea Sanders, Associate Professor from Chattanooga State Technical Community College.  Andrea teaches English 2120, American Literature II, as part of the Regents Online Degree Program.  She is also a member of the RODP Curriculum Committee. And today we’re here to talk to Andrea about nonjudgmental rigor in online classes. So, Andrea, what exactly is nonjudgmental rigor?

Sanders: That’s just a term that my colleague and I coined that means a combination of rigorous classroom environment and upholding standards that you would uphold normally in your class, but at the same time making the classroom experience non-threatening, making the classroom environment one of collegiality, and creating a learning community that is safe and yet demanding. In a nutshell, that’s what it means.

Sparkman: Let me follow up with a couple of questions on that, Andrea.  One, is it achievable, and two, do you recognize when you’ve achieved it?

Sanders: I do think it’s achievable, and I don’t know whether it’s luck or something that I’ve really accomplished as a teacher.  I like to think the latter, or course; but I do feel I’ve achieved it in my classes, which I suppose is what led me to think about it.  I notice that, whereas in on-ground classes I didn’t always have control over the environment, and sometimes due to a particular mood a student might be in or events outside our control – weather, what have you – you don’t always create the environment that you want to have in your classroom.  You have students who are less motivated than others, along with students who are very serious about their work and might get distracted.  And it’s very difficult for a teacher on-the-spot to deal with issues like that, as I know you both know, whereas in the online classroom, I’ve discovered it’s been rather smooth sailing in that regard because there are certain techniques that I can use as an instructor that prepare the ground for the students’ response to me to be – the word I like to use is professional.  What I am able to do is create a professional environment in which the focus is on the content and on mutual respect and on (an old-fashioned word) politeness and courteous behavior.  And I do think that as a teacher what I can do is prepare that ground both in the way I design the course and in the way I communicate with students, particularly in quick response time and appropriate and courteous response that I am at leisure to frame because I’m usually e-mailing, and when those things occur at the beginning of class it sets the stage for the students to follow up in the same way.  And so what I have found is students very accommodating, very courteous, in performing at a very high standard in my online classes, at least to a larger degree than I had experienced before.

Sparkman: So are you looking for that kind of relationship to occur not only between the online student and you, the instructor, but between student to student within the course?

Sanders: Absolutely, that’s very well put, so that it is a learning community.  One part of this is in online teaching, more so perhaps than in the on-ground classroom, the instructor is actually more of a mediator than a, what’s the term, sage on the stage.  So it’s less audience/performer relationship than it is someone sort of sitting at the hub of the class, you know, the wizard behind the curtain pulling the ropes and the switches to make things happen, but not necessarily coming out from behind the curtain to take center stage.  And part of this nonjudgmental rigor is to create an environment where the students themselves take ownership of the class and respond to each other, as you said, and they respond respectfully, and they become learning resources for each other.  And so the instructor is a learning resource, a mediator, and at times the instructor’s duty is to intervene, and intervene early, if something does seem to be going on that shouldn’t be, perhaps students’ personalities have come into conflict, or a certain topic for an assignment may trigger an emotional response that neither you nor the other students expected because none of us know where each of the others have been and what they have experienced.  The instructor can intervene in an online class in a way that’s impossible in an on-ground situation.  I guess one of the best examples is in the Discussion Board area, which is one of the primary ways you create the learning community environment, you want to – well, several things are at play here – you want to get discussion started, and you want to offer a meaningful and open-ended question to allow the students then to come in and express themselves fully.  But at the same time you want to be making sure that if someone does begin to express themselves in a way that would be inappropriate, you can quickly fire off an e-mail - in most course management systems, when you’re on the discussion board you can send a private e-mail just at the click of a button.  You can say - and here’s where the nonjudgmental rigor comes in, the nonjudgmental part is how I respond to that student.  The student is behaving inappropriately, electronically, but it’s still behavior.

Nunaley: Right.

Sanders: I don’t want to judge that student. As was mentioned, I never know what’s going on with that student. That student may have just had a wife die, or a child be paralyzed, or you just really never know where the student’s coming from when they’re doing something that seems, you know, overtly hostile or critical, either to another student or the professor.  So, again, I think it’s important, if you’re going to exercise nonjudgmental rigor, to be very objective, stick to the facts, and give that student the benefit of the doubt.  I mean, you can simply use your imagination.  And instead of saying, if it’s an angry comment directed toward the professor, I could say, “Why does that student hate me?  Why does that student hate the class? What did I ever do?”  I mean, I go down that route and spiral down and respond likewise.  And that of course creates the snowball effect – then you have conflict and strife.  No learning takes place.  What I can do instead is use my imagination and say, “Clearly this student is having problems,” leave it at that, respond to the student by saying, “I see that this assignment has (I may not even want to use the word upset) – but I see that this assignment troubles you in some way.  Can you help me understand what it is you’re – what it is that’s going on here?  And is there any way that I can help you?”  And those two things are incredibly helpful to you as an instructor – to remember “Help me make sure I understand you,” so you’re not just saying, “I need to help you, ‘cause you need help.”  You’re saying to the student, “Help me understand what’s going on with you.”  And then the other thing is to say, “Can I help you?”  So offering help, and not offering criticism, but just saying, “Let me help you,” and that’s where learning takes place, is if you can then understand where the student is coming from, what’s going on, and not to evaluate the student’s psychiatric state or, in some senses it’s funny because that sounds like a personal involvement with the student, and it is, and yet it’s not.  It’s still maintaining a professional distance from the situation, and of course you know I’m speaking an analyst’s language when I redirect the question back to the student.  And I’m doing that on purpose, because what’s going on is that the student doesn’t understand him- or her- self, and that’s the source of the problem.

Sparkman:  I’m reminded of the scenario of the parent working with the child, and the child expressed frustration over not being able to achieve some kind of manipulative skill or something.  And the parent then looks at him and said, “Son, be patient.”  You know, in a very dictatorial sense.

Sanders: Right, right, right, right.

Sparkman:  But we have those same kinds of nonverbal qualities in our electronic communication with students, don’t we?

Sanders:  We do.  That’s an excellent point, Skip.  Whereas in the classroom, you have – and here I am throwing my hands around – I am expressing myself physically as well as verbally.  You hear the tone of my voice, you see the expression on my face, and I can say, “Skip, you failed that exam.” And you know I’m elbowing you in the side, and I’m saying, “You know we go way back, Skip, and we know you failed this exam, but you’re going to try it again, and you’re going to do better.”  And so, it’s OK.  We both feel fine about it.  We know it’s just a marker of your progress, and you’re going to go back and try again.  But imagine, Skip, getting an e-mail from me that just says, “You failed this test.”  And, you know, there’s no opening, there’s no closing, there’s no what we call politeness formula.  Another way to do that would be to say, “Dear Skip” – you know, that’s impersonal, because even though I’m saying “dear,” that’s the traditional opening formula, and as with a personal letter, I might use a comma instead of a colon – “Dear Skip comma – In reviewing your scores over the last couple of tests, I noticed that you made a 62 on one and a 58 on the other.” (He’s not doing very well) “Is there something I can do to help you study for the next exam, so that you will improve your grade?”

Sparkman:  Sure.

Sanders:  “Sincerely,” And I usually sign myself “Doctor S.” instead of “Doctor Sanders.”  It’s somewhere between the formality of “Doctor Sanders,” but it’s not quite to “Andrea.”

Sparkman:  It makes you approachable.

Sanders:  It makes me a little more approachable.  But again, that’s totally up to the instructor, and another thing I really believe firmly in is the instructor’s own style.  One part of this nonjudgmental rigor, one part of this professor persona concept that David White has talked about, is that you are not exactly yourself as you are in real life, you’re probably a better you.  But it’s still you, it’s not someone else.  If I went out and tried to be David White, I would be a failure as a teacher, because we are different in so many fundamental ways, just in our personalities, and so on and so forth.  But that would be a mistake, you know, to try to put on a mask, and I would try to be Mary in class.  I just couldn’t do that.

Nunaley:  So you need to be yourself, and let that come through, even if you’re teaching someone else’s content, if someone else developed the course.

Sanders:  Absolutely, and of course that comes through in the e-mail, and it comes through in the discussion.  I’m going to reinforce that because I think it’s so important that we, because we are the originators usually of the e-mail, we don’t realize how we come across in e-mail, because it’s a very stark medium.  It’s just letters on a page, and you have to learn the internal code of e-mail, the between-the-lines kind of code, because, and again I’m not saying to baby the students or hold their hands, but just to make sure they get the message you’re sending, you still have to do a little extra coding in terms of the politeness formula.  Some people use happy faces, which other people frown on.  But if you’re saying something like, “You failed the test.  Can I help you do better next time?”  If I put a smiley face on there, the student knows I’m not criticizing the student as a person.  And there are other ways, again.

Nunaley:  Depending on where you put that smiley face.  “You failed this test – smiley face.” They may interpret it as, “What do you think you’re doing?”

Sanders:  “Hah, hah!”  Exactly.

Nunaley:  Right.  Going back to the point about e-mail, do you think that, as more and more students are text-messaging and instant messaging and developing their own shorthand, that politeness is losing its place, or that students don’t exactly know what a polite e-mail looks like?

Sanders:  You know, that’s a great question, and that’s a whole segment we should do someday, because there are just a lot of issues involved.  For one thing, we are all of a completely different generation, and we don’t know the rules.  Just to put it bluntly, we don’t know their rules, so I know they have politeness formulas within their set of rules, but those are all done with the two thumbs, right?  And you is not y-o-u, you is U, and I’m sure that it’s considered extremely polite to write those little, terse, tiny messages.  And so, that would translate to us older generation folks as a blunt, rude response, or, oftentimes we think of it as an illiterate response, whereas the person may be perfectly capable of writing standard written English, but they don’t understand that that’s what they should be using in that e-mail environment because they are so used to e-mailing their friends.  But you can cover that by making it very clear at the beginning of class, and particularly I think in an English class you should, and probably any other class as well.  But, again, you can set it up with professionalism, because your students would need to know that in a professional e-mailing environment, people do tend to stick to more of the standards of written English.  And again, it all goes back to communication.  And, you know, the two things I would stress the most about nonjudgmental rigor would be course design and then would be communication – those are the two big, important factors.  And when you design your course, it should be – I have this term that I like, transparent design.  Your course should be transparent in design, meaning that communication should be effortless on the front end.  And what I’m talking about here is not the communication you do in e-mails and discussion, but the communication that your course itself does – it speaks for itself in a way, because you’ve already put all the material in an online course on the front end.  How far can your students get without needing to e-mail you?  That’s the test of a transparent course design.

Sparkman:  You talking about the navigability of it, the intuitiveness of the course.

Sanders:  Yes, exactly.  Exactly.

Sparkman:  It struck me a moment ago while you were talking about some of the nonjudgmental rigor, especially in e-mail communication.  We have recognized, I think fairly obviously in online education, of the ability for students to have time to reflect on the work they’re doing, to have time to review and you have the opportunities for evaluation and re-submittal, and all of this. But one of the great advantages that is so often not quite as possible in the face-to-face communication, face-to-face classroom, is you have the opportunity to reflect for a while before you give that student the response to that failing exam.

Sanders:  Yes.  That’s right.

Sparkman:  I mean, you walk in the classroom and you hand everybody their test papers back, and then you see the expression on their face, and you’re trying to be stoic about it.  But in the online environment, you going to have the opportunity to reflect about how you’re going to – Talk about that communication.

Sanders:  Oh, I think that’s an excellent point, Skip.  The ability to reflect on both ends in invaluable, and the ability to correct.  Reflection can help immensely, if you do get an e-mail from a student that you – you’re initial reaction is, “You should have known that already.  You should have done that already.  You should have whatever.”  Already, you’re judging.  You’re saying, “Why are you bothering me with this?  Now, it’s all laid out, for example, in course module number one.  Everything you have to do.”  And then you e-mail me and say, “What am I supposed to do for assignment number one?”  So you’re immediate response is gut-level, right?

Nunaley:  Right.

Sanders:  So, online is great because I can fire off a really mean e-mail to that student, but then I can stop and say – I can think through my consequences.  What will happen?  You all know what will happen.

Nunaley: Right.

Sanders:  If I fire that off, I get one right back, and then it snowballs, and we have a big mess.  If I just stop and think it through, and remain objective and professional, I write back and ideally the first thing I do is specifically answer the student’s actual question.  A lot of times when we e-mail reflexively, we’re not really answering the question.  Sometimes we never do get to the answer to the question; we’re so busy saying, “Why are you acting this way?”  So, if you can just stick to the pragmatic approach of, “You will find the assignment – or the content for assignment number one – in module number one on page thirteen.”  I wouldn’t, actually, as a side note, actually tell them what the assignment is; I would direct them to where it is in the course.

Nunaley:  Right.

Sanders:  Because that helps them learn it, and it helps them not ask you about the next one when that comes around.  But sometimes I’ve had to revise e-mails to students three or four times before I hit that nice tone of professionalism, again staying with my standards, if the student is asking you where an assignment is the day before a five-page paper is due, that student may not pass that assignment.  I won’t fudge on that if, due to their negligence, they have missed the assignment.  But on the other hand, I will give them all the help I can before the assignment is due, and not worry too much about the who’s right, who’s wrong.  And that’s worked very well, as we said at the beginning, to create that positive learning environment for me and for my students.

Nunaley:  Sounds very good.

Sparkman:  Andrea, we’ve talked about both the e-mail and the discussion board, and those are two key communication tools, and I think they’re very likely to be heavily used in the practice of nonjudgmental rigor.  But there can be nonjudgmental rigor – and especially a nonjudgmental approach to presentation of material – within the course content itself, within the content modules and within the actual workings of the course, can’t there?

Sanders:  Sure, there can be.  And, boy, now I’m trying to think of an example.

Sparkman:  Well, let me cite this one. I have had instructors and have worked with colleagues who can use irony and can use situational descriptions in class, and can be very vivid in those descriptions, but it takes their physical presence there, and it takes their nonverbal skills to really communicate the irony of what they’re trying to present, and that may not come across as well in the online course.

Sanders:  That’s a good point.

Sparkman:  In a text version, especially.

Sanders:  And that just brings a whole lot of things to mind, Skip, one of which is it is very instructive for the online instructor to go and be an online student before they teach because it really brings home what you’ve just said.  There will be times when you just have a big question mark over your head; you really don’t understand what the instructor was getting at.  It might be something like that where irony was intended, or something that’s not communicated through words alone, but something the instructor is used to performing in class or having some kind of non-textual communication.  That’s a really good point.  So I guess in a general way the practice of nonjudgmental rigor in the content of the class would be, again, that transparency.  And another thing that I was just jotting down as you were talking because I think it’s so important to this whole scenario – it may be on top of the list, I’m not sure – transparency of course design, and communication, and then sense of humor is what I’m thinking.

Nunaley:  Without a doubt.

Sanders:  If you can have a sense of humor, or at least keep a light touch, that will go into course design – Chemistry is not a barrel of laughs, I don’t imagine – I don’t teach it.  But, I know that you can do things to lighten the mood.  I’ve seen a wonderful online Chemistry course.  It’s got images; it’s got real, live experiments that you do in your own home.  Oh, I know what the other key word is – interactivity.

Sparkman:  Yeah.

Sanders:  Interactivity.  And you can certainly build that into your course.  And that creates a dynamic, active learning environment, instead of, again, one where the instructor is just talking and the students are just soaking it up.

Nunaley:  So, the nonjudgmental rigor, too, you want the students to be able to learn and explore, feel safe?

Sanders:  Yes.

Nunaley:  Feel safe asking questions of you?

Sanders:  Absolutely.

Nunaley:  Feel safe posting things to the discussion board?  And if there is a problem, you really want to focus on the behavior of the specific problem and not the person.

Sanders:  Exactly.

Nunaley:  Especially in those classes where you’ve had a troublesome student in a traditional classroom, and now they’re in your online class, and you’ve got some preconceived notions about them, managing them well.  What are some other differences you see between electronic communication and face-to-face, things that don’t come across well, things that work well, you know, any challenges you see to maintain this nonjudgmental rigor when the student can’t see what you’re saying and can’t read your body language?

Sanders:  Well, we’ve covered a lot about that when we talked about the e-mailing and the importance of being very clear in what you’re going to say.  I think, again, the real danger spots, and I don’t always get these right myself – I wouldn’t pretend to have gotten there – are when you are in a hurry and you want to dash something off, or when you want - a student has a real genuine question and you don’t have time to answer it.  So there are some skills that an online instructor can put to work there that are really helpful.  And one is, if you don’t have the time that you need to really, genuinely respond – because a student will, if you send a terse or inadequate reply, the student will read that as, “That instructor doesn’t care about me.”  And certainly that’s not the way you intended it, but it makes sense to read it that way. So what you can do is quickly say, “I will get back to you later.  I’m sorry; I have to dash off right now.”  Any student will understand that; they also have busy lives.  And then you use that feature – Mark-as-Unread – and mark-as-unread the original e-mail, so that you won’t forget to come back to it, so that the next time, when you do have time, you can address it.

Nunaley:  Now, do you think that’s better than just leaving that e-mail?

Sanders:  Oh, yes.  If you open that e-mail and you don’t answer it, by the time you come back to your class, you will have forgotten it.  At least I would.

Nunaley:  And then the student feels that you don’t care about them.

Sanders:  Ignored.

Nunaley:  Or you’ve ignored them and their problem and they’re not important.

Sanders:  And I know we’ve mentioned this already, but the response time is critical.  And I know David has mentioned his study of students at his campus and their primary concern is communication and response time.  If a student – and I’ve actually had students tell me this – in some online classes they’ll say, “I had an assignment due on Saturday.  On Monday, I asked my professor a question about that assignment, but I didn’t get a reply until Saturday afternoon.  And so consequently, I wasn’t able to work on the assignment with the instructor’s help.  Basically, the instructor was not present in the classroom.  So I think it’s critical for us as instructors to hold ourselves to the same standard we would hold our students to, and that is to be present, very present in the classroom by checking in frequently.

Nunaley:  Makes a lot of sense.

Sparkman:  Discuss the value of colleague review of your content in terms of nonjudgmental rigor.

Sanders:  Great idea!  I’ve never thought about that, either.  Well, when I think about getting reviewed, what I want is for someone to do what we’ve talked about, and that is to go in as a student, see how far they can get.  If they sit down at a computer and open up the course and they’re just stymied, they really don’t know what to click on next, and they have to just sort of start randomly clicking, that’s not a very good class.  I would appreciate it if a peer would do that for me and would sit down and review the course, and that’s where you get the feel for it, I think, before you even exchange an e-mail with the instructor, you can get a feel for the kind of instructor you have there, and we all have different styles, and it’s not better or worse.  It’s just different.  Some of us will be rigidly organized, you know, and everything will be all in a, well, you know, you think of linear thinkers.  Some of us are like that; some of us are kind-of randoms, and you’ll know you start here, and from here I can go here, here, or here. Then when I get here –

Nunaley:  Right.

Sanders:  Some of us will take that kind of abstract approach to the course.  Both work, but both reveal a completely different kind of professor.  And as you both know, the linear thinking student will have a lot more trouble understanding – so I guess what that really says, and I should clarify this, we should always strive to meet the needs of either kind of student, so we shouldn’t go way out on a limb either way.  But, and I’m not sure I completely answered your question, but I think nonjudgmental rigor is to create a class environment where I am, first of all from the outset, very clearly aware of what’s expected of me and what I should have learned when I get out of the class.  That’s of primary importance.  And then the other part is to create that environment – I liked you word – safe environment there where I can explore and learn about the topic without worrying about what the instructor might be – I mean, I know this sounds a little bit touchy-feely, but I think as students they do worry what we think about them.

Nunaley:  Yes, they do.

Sparkman:  Sure

Sanders:  I think that that becomes an anxiety for them that doesn’t have to be there.  If you take the stress and anxiety out of the learning environment, they are free to explore and play around a little bit, and have a good time, have a good learning experience.

Nunaley:  Well, especially for the new online student who’s also having to master the technology, the safer can make it,

Sanders:  That’s right.

Nunaley:  And the structure that’s there so they know what to do will make them feel a little less hesitant.

Sanders:  And, you know, my colleagues at Chattanooga State and I talk about how wonderful that is when they start taking care of each other, and they almost put you out of a job.  Because you’ve got the experienced online students who are helping the inexperienced online students; and you’re just kind of watching.  I love that part, you know, where it really take off and they know each other.  And, of course, they have another whole world behind the scenes, because they can e-mail each other as well, and they build their community that way..

Sparkman:  Is it sometimes nonjudgmental in the online course to allow yourself as the instructor to stand back, not respond immediately, and I don’t mean to be irresponsive to the student, but to stand back just long enough to allow helpmates from the class to come to the aid of that student?

Sanders:  Oh, yes, I think so.

Sparkman:  Each of them learn that way.

Sanders:  I’ll bet you’re stating that from experience, too, Skip, because it is so very true, and again it goes back to not wanting to be in the middle of everything, as the instructor, it’s a student-centered approach, ideally.  And so you do hold back a little bit, you lurk, as they say, and wait to see, as you say not in an irresponsible way – if someone’s floundering, you need to come to their aid – but if you can wait a little while and let them help each other, I think it does go a long way toward creating an environment.  And they will, and they do, and it’s wonderful to see.  And I think one way they take ownership of the class and the content of the class in a way that they might not otherwise.

Sparkman:  You’ve mentioned in your workshops, Andrea, that professionalism means celebrating success, sharing disappointments.  Expand on that.

Sanders:  Yes, that goes into the idea of creating a positive learning environment.  And I think that anyone who’s worked in any kind of corporation or volunteer community project or anything where you’re working with a group of people, it’s extremely important to celebrate events in the lives of the people that you work with.  And the opposite is true as well.  If devastating things happen, you can’t go around and pretend it didn’t happen.  It’s important to acknowledge it and offer support.  And so I think that’s true in the online environment as well, and so some of the things we’ve done in my classes – and I know other online instructors do this as well – if someone has a baby, for example, it’s really fun to set up just a little baby site, and one time I had three people – no, it was two people had babies, but one was a set of twins, so we had three babies born in the course of our semester.  So we put up the baby pictures, and of course everybody appropriately oohed and aahed over the babies, and said, “Congratulations,” and, “They’re beautiful,” and we let – I forgotten his name – but we let this student have a little extra time on his papers, no harm done, and he was a very happy father, and then it was one of the women in my class who had the twins that semester.  We’ve also had students in our classes who’ve been deployed, and have had to go and fight for our country, and when that happens, we’ve actually had the spouses of these students who had to take an Incomplete and go off come in and give us their address at their military base, and students have sent mail to them at the base to show their support.  And another example that comes to mind, just this semester, we had a student come into my class who was a survivor of Rita – is that the right name?  The hurricane?

Nunaley:  Which one?  Katrina?

Sanders:  Katrina!  Where did I get Rita?

Nunaley:  That was the other hurricane.

Sanders:  Was it?  OK. She was a Katrina survivor, and had to leave her home and leave school, and so she did get enrolled in our class.  And then, again, we acknowledged her presence.  Everyone said, “Hi, how are you?  Great to have you.” And she had many offers of help in catching up, and we were all – well, she was from Louisiana and she took as her special project Kate Chopin, whose book The Awakening takes place in Louisiana, on the Gulf, and in that culture.  And of course, that sort of thing obviously does not add to the content per se of your class, but it does enrich the community that you’re building in your class.  And there are many, many, many side benefits to doing that.

Sparkman:  You know, I’ve heard all these examples you’ve talked about throughout our discussion today, and the word that keeps coming to my sense is empathy.  To empathize with our students, to recognize that they are humans, they have some of the same issues day-in and day-out that we have, and the ability to professionally recognize that, I think, means a lot to them.

Sanders:  I think that’s hitting the nail on the head is what I meant to say.  And I can put that a little differently, and that is to simply enjoy your students.  To enjoy your students and what they do.  It doesn’t mean you don’t hold them to as high a standard.  You do.  But while you’re holding them to that standard, you’re enjoying them at the same time.

Sparkman:  Thanks so much for joining us today.

Sanders:  Thank you for inviting me.

Sparkman:  Doctor Andrea Sanders, who is an Associate Professor of English at Chattanooga State Community College, has joined us today.  This is Mary Nunaley to my immediate right, an Assistant Professor at Volunteer State Community College.  I am Skip Sparkman at Vol State, also.  This has been a collaborative effort of Volunteer State Community College, of Chattanooga State Community College, of Walters State Community College, and of the Regents Online Degree Program.  Thanks for joining us.