NaTasha Schiller (Wingate University) presented at the Lilly Conference on an ongoing study with Eileen Camfield and Kirkwood Land. Schiller and Land have infused high impact practices into their courses, including large introductory biology at Wingate. They also added writing assignments intended to activate students’ growth mindsets, critical thinking, and learning skills. They described in the asynchronous presentation how they used writing prompts and open-ended questions, such as lecture and exam wrappers and peer review. Writing impacted self efficacy. They then used the prompt: “please describe your strengths and weaknesses as a biology student, using examples from your past experiences in biology classes (or elsewhere) to support your self-perception”. Narratives were administered pre, mid, and post course and evaluated for themes and using a rubric created by Camfield 2016, modified to include negative values on scale). The study was disrupted by the pandemic, but Schiller and Land quickly did two narrative interventions immediately post emergency remote instruction to learn about their students. Interestingly, while self-efficacy average values plummeted post remote instruction at Wingate and Pacific (Land), the narratives/themes helped instructors improve course support. Average self-efficacy scores climbed post course. The presenters discussed the powerful information about students obtained with the prompts. The effect of instructors and their adaptations to build a sense of agency is thought to then help student self-efficacy. Sense of belonging, resilience, and engagement contribute to agency, and the presenters believe student self-efficacy is mediated by building a sense of agency. This is intriguing as it suggests instructors can impact student self-efficacy by learning about their students, and modifying instruction accordingly. Empathy, as mentioned by Camfield, likely played a part too. I’m now even more motivated to include writing prompts and lecture wrappers in the courses I teach. While thematic coding and evaluating based on a rubric may be beyond the scope of a typical semester, simply learning about the students and being empathetic as we improve the learning experience may help shape agency and self-efficacy.
