Teaching, Learning, and Writing! Oh, My!

I've been carrying around a set of papers for a few weeks now intending to blog about them eventually. Well, this morning I managed to spill coffee on them, and if that's not a sure sign that today's the day to actually do it and get them out of my bag I don't know what is.

This summer I attended the UW Teaching and Learning Symposium. By far the best breakout session I went to was Writing Across and Beyond the University: Innovative Writing Assignments that Foster Deep Learning in All Disciplines. I also participated in the first in a series of Writing Across the Curriculum workshops on Teaching with Writing in SBE and STEM Courses; part 1 was about Designing Writing Assignments to Help Students Learn. The main organizer of both these excellent sessions was Brad Hughes, Director of the UW Writing Center. Major props to him for consistently running efficient, engaging, informative workshops. 


Much of this entry is adapted from resources developed by Brad and others at the Writing Center. Check out their site for more innovative ideas and resources. I learned way too much to fit into one post and I don't want writing to become the main topic of my blog, so I'll stick to mostly bullet points for now. I'd be more than happy to flesh anything out in the comments if people have specific questions or interests, though!


Getting students to write is one of the best ways to promote learning in any class. (Yes, this applies to everything from engineering to music, not "just" English courses.) An abridged list of reasons why writing is effective, from writing "experts" and the brainstorming session of other brilliant grad students/ TAs/ professors/ instructors at the workshop:

• It requires deeper knowledge than multiple choice questions or other forms of assessment.
• It involves organizing and synthesizing knowledge.
• It demands explicitness.
• There's more chance for feedback (if done well...).
• It engages students with the material over a prolonged period of time.
• It slows down your thought process and concentrates your attention.
• It's hard!
• It can teach methodological practices of the discipline along with the content.
• It helps improve other forms of communication (speaking, writing) too.
• It allows for reflection and metacognition.
• It can force a new perspective.
• It can give you a chance to try on a new intellectual identity.
• It provides variety compared to other standard assignments.
• It's an active form of learning.
• It can help you discover what you don't know.

So you've decided writing is important and you want to incorporate it into your course. Now what? One of the most important things I learned from these sessions is the true diversity of writing assignment possibilities. We don't have to be bound by the standard few options! Lit review and lab report just not cutting it for your class? Here's a sampling of what else is out there:

• freewriting
• discussion points
• journal/ learning log
• microtheme
• summary/ precis/ brief
• literature review
• book/ article review
• argument/ position paper
• experimental/ lab report
• proposal/ prospectus for research
• annotated bibliography
• theory paper
• parody
• blog
• problem-based writing
• letter to the author
• course dictionary
• Wikipedia entry
• your own creative idea!

Another crucial lesson is to develop writing assignments mindfully. This will make the experience more pleasant and fruitful for everyone. A few key questions to consider:

• What is the pedagogical goal? 
• Is the assignment Writing to Learn or Writing in the Discipline? 
• What is the writer's role, who is the audience to be addressed, and what is the central task? 
• What are likely difficulties students will face and how will you address them? 
• How will the assignment be integrated into the classroom? 
• On what criteria will you evaluate the final products? 
• How will you make these criteria transparent (e.g., using a detailed rubric)?

So in sum: I want to attend every Writing Center workshop ever (part 2 of the Writing Across the Curriculum series is coming up soon!), student writing is an effective technique to promote learning in any class, there are many kinds of writing assignments possible (get creative!), and it's important to think about the assignment carefully before sending it out to your students. Happy writing!

Where have I been? Or, science outreach's place in science.

It's been a few weeks since my first post. Oops. Between home internet and computer problems, political and birthday celebrations, medical stuff, wedding planning, attempting to get in shape... you get the idea.

Oh, and, you know, doing my science. Despite popular perception, universities don't just lie dormant over the summer. In some ways, academics are actually more busy during these "breaks" because we're trying to fit in the many activities that are near-impossible during the school year. As just a sampling, I'm currently writing four manuscripts, training to code videos, getting an undergrad's project up and running, preparing for prelims, and writing a grant.

So when I read Scicurious's blog post on outreach and how "something's got to give," I found myself cheering along. She is just oh-so-right-on! Seriously, go read the post (many of the comments are also very worthy). I'll wait...

And for those of you who didn't click through, here's the part that grabbed me the most:

Outreach is not what we're paid for. Outreach is not what we're awarded things for...And in the scientific world of getting grants, of publish or perish, well, that doesn't fly. If you seem overly interested in outreach (or even in college teaching in some fields), you are not just odd. Your priorities are out of whack. No one ever got a faculty position based on outreach. I have seen colleagues get dinged in promotion meetings for too much time spent doing outreach. The unspoken implication is clear: if you're doing outreach, you must not be doing science.

You don't have to be a psychology graduate student to realize that people respond to incentives. Scientists--people, after all--generally aren't incentivized to do outreach (though the situation is different at liberal arts institutions) so outreach generally doesn't happen. As Kate Clancy points out (based on Katie PhD's comment on Sci's post), this becomes a chicken and egg problem: "we need people to step forward and do outreach, but we also need to make it worth their while...which will only be recognized and understood when more people do outreach." The issue is deeply structural, down to things that seem unrelated at first blush, like how universities are funded and how many grad students are admitted each year.

So most academics don't gain visible, quantifiable, tangible, external rewards for doing outreach about their research. I think that should change. But one thing that's absolutely crucial to keep in mind is that outreach comes with its own intrinsic rewards! Commenter Suzie on Sci's post put it perfectly: "outreach is a profile raising activity, why does no-one ever mention that?... the personal and career-related benefits are more than worth it." Two specific examples of the less-visible-but-still-valuable benefits science outreach can provide: building relationships with peers and senior faculty alike, and building a reputation as a good communicator.

I might not blog as regularly as I'd like to, and I might only get to explain visual illusions to elementary school kids twice per semester, and I almost certainly won't get any meaningful kind of payment or promotion from these activities. But I will continue to make time for them when I can. I'm gaining valuable skills, developing a network, and I enjoy communicating new findings and general excitement for the scientific process! When we feel down on the lack of external rewards for outreach, we should try to remember the many intrinsic benefits it provides as well.

Reflections on IMFAR 2012

Last week I traveled to Toronto for the International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR). I had an awesome time. There was so much I wanted to share that I just had to start a blog about it. So here goes! I start with more personal commentary, move into things about conferences and science in general, then finish with some of the specific scientific results I learned while there.

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The night I got into Toronto I met up with an old friend for dinner. She recently switched career paths and is about to finish her graduate program and start an internship. She is so passionate about her work that I left her company entirely inspired. It is amazing to know people who are blissfully doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing. I was reminded why I am in grad school as well-- to pursue awesome science. Sometimes that motivation gets lost in the day to day crap you have to put up with, so it's important to step back to that bigger picture from time to time.

Rather than spending so much money on a hotel close to the conference site, I stayed in a dorm on the University of Toronto campus. The atmosphere reminded me of how enthusiastic and hardcore I was as an undergraduate, and was again an inspiration to tackle the conference head on. It also afforded me the opportunity to walk through Chinatown every day. You know it's authentic when some of the signs don't even bother having nominal English translations on them and you spend the morning commute dodging little old ladies buying groceries at the street market. I can attest for the deliciousness of the veggie dumplings and hot and sour soup.

I also got a lot better at exercising my networking skills this year at IMFAR than at previous conferences. Trust me, I still have a long way to go. This is an entirely accurate representation of me awkwardly trying to mingle with big wigs. (PS-- That tumblr is the best tumblr.) But at least this time I was trying harder! And sometimes even succeeding. I even struck up a potential future collaboration! 

I gotta say, though, my favorite part of the first night's reception wasn't the mingling but the musical entertainment. There was the Maplewood Drum Band, a keyboarder (with whom the audience sang along to the chorus of J Bieb's "Baby"), and a guitarist/ singer (with whom the audience sang along to the chorus of "Hallelujah"). All of the performers were filled with such infectious joy! I was so happy to get many high fives from them afterwards. 

For the first time I also took full advantage of social media at a conference. Of course I couldn't be at all of the simultaneous talks, but I could bet that someone was live tweeting it! There were so many people contributing to #imfar2012 and #imfar, but the ones I got the most value from included @Aspieadvocate, @AutismRealityNB, @AutismScienceFd, @Autism_Women, @CorinaBecker, @DrBrocktagon, @ejwillingham, @GreenOdonata, @GuyHorev, @jennyalice, @johnrobison, @marjorie_m, @mosaicofminds, @Peter_Autisme, @shannonrosa, and @thinkingautism. I also loved getting to meet some of my online friends in real life-- tweeps now peeps, as @DrBrocktagon put it. I tweeted about my posters, and one of the visitors even said "I think I finally understand the point of Twitter." Indeed. 

I think one of the biggest challenges of this conference was science communication. After taking a professional communication course last fall, I'm pretty much ruined for watching standard talks or looking at standard posters now. I have such higher expectations than I used to. In brief: Don't bury your hook. Use visuals (graphs, pictures, and especially videos). Don't read us your slides. And use fewer words. For goodness sake, fewer words! I mean it, take out the words. No one's reading them.

Another challenge more unique to IMFAR was the diversity of the audience. In addition to the usual crowd of scientists/ researchers, post docs, and students, there were also various "stakeholders," as the programmers officially referred to them. These included autistic adults, family members, teachers, therapists, and others in the autism community. I think that's awesome. But it did cause some palpable friction. Stakeholders were often upset that scientists weren't communicating their message clearly in comprehensible terms. Scientists were sometimes frustrated that their conference was being "invaded" by non-scientists and they were now expected to communicate with a broader audience than they're used to. I have no perfect solution here, but I do think it's an important consideration for the conference planners to take into account next year. My only idea is to have a pre-conference session open to stakeholders to learn vocabulary and background concepts that could help them better understand the data being presented over the next few days...

Now for the two biggest frustrations of my trip. I was unwittingly pulled into some autism language wars. I respectfully use the term autistic, but I don't take strong offense at those who use person-first language instead (e.g., "person with autism"). If appropriate to the setting, I might gently broach the subject, but unless it's pertinent to the topic under discussion, I tend not to. (I recently read a blog post that perfectly expressed this point, but I can't remember where it was or find it now. Can anyone help me out? Edit: this.) One of the people who visited my poster did not, apparently, follow the same rule. Here's how the "conversation" went down:

-Me: "...autistic individuals..."

-Her: "You mean individuals with autism."

-Me: "Sorry, I respectfully disagree. Getting back to my data..."

-Her: "Well, many of our parents would be furious with that language."

-Me: "Yes I know, but it's also true that many autistic individuals are..."

-Her: "No." *Storms off* 

Well then. So much for learning anything from one another.

I was also privileged enough to experience science sexism for the first time (consciously, anyhow). A visitor at my poster and I discovered that we knew a colleague in common. His first comment was that she is "one of the few woman academics who knows what lipstick is," which he followed up with further remarks on her style and hair. Instead of talking about her massive contributions to the field, she was objectified into clothes and lipstick. All other women academics were also indirectly denigrated as frumpy fuggos. I was so taken aback that I didn't know what to say and just half heartily laughed along. I regret that now. We need to keep standing up to and challenging this pervasive mentality. Ugh.

OK I've been alluding to them long enough, let's talk directly about my posters! They both went well. I got lots of great feedback and encouragement to go on and formally publish the work. (In addition to the scientific comments, I also got some compliments on my design. Two cheers again for the professional communication course!) One had a lot more traffic than the other, though. As a rough index, at poster 1, 63 handouts were taken, and at poster 2, only 47 handouts were taken. Several non-exclusive hypotheses: timing (day 1 vs. day 2, other talks going on), location (middle vs. back of the room), and topic (prenatal influences vs. sensory symptoms). Who knows.

The biggest highlights for me data-wise were the multiple sessions on the upcoming DSM-5 criteria for autism. I learned about so much in three packed days of posters and talks, but there's just not room and time to talk about it all. If I get any specific requests or questions, I could write some follow up posts, though! But for now, DSM-5 stuff only. 

The main message from Dr. Susan Swedo (the head of the DSM-5 ASD committee) was, and I quote, "Chill out. DSM-5 is not that different from DSM-IV." She also reiterated the important point that DSM-IV isn't a gold standard of diagnosis, and if it were, they wouldn't have been asked to fix it. Keep that in mind. 

Major change 1: Instead of Autistic Disorder, Asperger's Disorder, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified as in DSM-IV, DSM-5 combines these into one Autism Spectrum Disorder category. This is justified because, clinically, "High Functioning Autism," Asperger's, and PDD-NOS are not actually differentiated. Clinicians understand and use the labels differently and inconsistently, so there isn't much of a point to them from a scientific viewpoint. 

Major change 2: Instead of a triad, DSM-5 only has two categories of symptoms: social communication skills and restrictive/ repetitive behavior. This makes sense because the prior categories of social skills and communication skills were never really separable in the first place. All factor analyses indicate a two factor structure, not three.

It is true that some people will no longer meet criteria for an ASD under DSM-5 who would have met some sort of PDD under DSM-IV. Unlike the scare articles in the popular media lately, however, data from the field trials indicate that this will likely be a small portion of individuals. Additionally, nearly all of these individuals would meet criteria for the newly created Social Communication Disorder. Furthermore, some individuals who would have been missed under DSM-IV now do qualify for an ASD under DSM-5!

Finally, the data from the initial field trials show that clinicians are able to diagnose ASD with a fair degree of reliability-- better than most other disorders in the DSM, in fact. In all, I'm satisfied with the upcoming changes in how autism will be diagnosed in DSM-5. The changes are backed by data and the hysteria seems to be misplaced.

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And so ends my first foray into the world of blogging. It took way longer to write than I care to admit. I hope someone somewhere got something out of it! Please comment with your reactions, questions, and suggestions. I don't really have a plan in terms of how often I'll post or what the subject matter will always be. I suspect that will evolve for a while before I eventually settle into a pattern... Sit back and enjoy, and share with your friends!