Episode 18

Instructor Talk Continues: Students Hear What You Say….And They Remember with Drs. Ovid and Rice

>> Steven Robinow: This is Teaching for Student Success. I'm Steven Robinow. Today, we are going to dive deeper into our understanding of instructor talk, that non-content language that you use with your students during class time. In episode two, Kimberly Tanner discussed a 2015 paper co-authored by Seidel, Reggie, Schinske, and Burrus, in which they undertook a systematic investigation of the non-content language used by instructors. They use these data to develop a framework for instructor talk that may eventually help us understand the impacts of faculty language on student motivation, student participation, student behavior in class, and ultimately on student success. Tanner and colleagues coded and categorized what faculty said, and faculty determined whether those comments were likely to positively impact student attitudes or negatively impact student attitudes. In this episode, we'll hear from the other side. We will discuss what students hear and think and, maybe most importantly, we'll hear what students remember. I'm excited to have with me today Doctors Dax Ovid and Mallory Rice to discuss their 2021 CBE Life Sciences paper entitled, Investigating Student Perceptions of Instructor Talk: Alignment with Researchers' Categorizations and Analysis of Remembered Language, co-authored with Joshua Vargas Luna, Karen Tabayoyong, Parinaz Lajevardi, and Kimberly Tanner. Dax Ovid is completing their post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Kimberly Tanner in the Science Education Partnership and Assessment Laboratory at San Francisco State University and will soon be beginning their appointment as an assistant professor in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. Mallory Rice recently left SEPAL and is now an assistant professor at the San Marcos campus of the California State University, located in Northern San Diego County. Welcome, Dax and Mallory. Thank you for joining us on Teaching for Student Success.

>> Dax Ovid: Thank you so much for having us. We're excited to be here.

>> Mallory Rice: Yeah, we appreciate the opportunity to share our work and to expand on this non-content instructor language with you.

>> Steven Robinow: Thank you. I'm excited. First, congratulations to you both on your recent appointments. That's very exciting, and it's a lot of hard work. You have to celebrate that, right? Celebrate those great moments, and all during Covid. We'll talk about that offline. That had to be an interesting challenge. So let's start with a brief summary. As you set out to do this project, what was and what was not known regarding instructor talk? And I'm just going to ask you to start with that.

>> Mallory Rice: Sure. So when this project started, we knew that instructors were saying things that weren't related to content. This is Shannon Seidel et al and Colin Harrison et al with Kimberly Tanner that had recorded instances of this non-content instructor language. They created categories and they codified how much of what kinds of certain language instructors are using. And after they've systematically analyzed this, it left the question open whether or not students even remember this. Also, in that process, they created two different kinds of frameworks. They created a positively phrased instructor talk framework and a negatively phrased instructor talk framework. And these were informed by education research theories; however, are these different categories in alignment with how students perceive examples of this non-content instructor language? Do they think positively phrased promotes a positive learning environment, and do they think negatively phrased promotes a negative learning environment? So that was the frameworks as they existed, the instructor talk that's been researched, and then whether or not students perceive it and remember it was what our study set out to address.

>> Steven Robinow: Okay, great. Mallory, let's just rotate here. So you described, Dax, what you intended to accomplish. You know, what do students hear, how do they interpret it, and how does that align with the faculty, what the faculty hear and think, and then what do the students remember? So those are two things we're going to talk about. It's going to be super exciting. So let's start with the experimental design. Let's talk about how you collected the data. Mallory, you want to take that?

>> Mallory Rice: Yeah, so we approached this with two different studies. In the first study, we invited students to choose up to three example instructor talk quotes that have been previously recorded in biology classrooms as promoting a positive learning environment. So students were invited to choose up to three examples that created a positive learning environment, and then they were also invited to then choose three examples of recorded instructor talk quotes that promoted a negative learning environment.

>> Steven Robinow: Let me just make sure I understand. So they were given a set of 20 quotes, not coded in any way, right? They were just given 20 quotes.

>> Mallory Rice: Yeah. On pieces of paper that they then shuffled through and selected.

>> Steven Robinow: Okay. And they picked the three that they thought were the most positive, and then they picked the three that they thought were the most negative.

>> Mallory Rice: Yeah. Right.

>> Steven Robinow: Okay. Thank you. Go ahead.

>> Mallory Rice: And then part of study one, we also did an evaluation activity where we had a checkbox for them for each of those 20 sample quotes. They can mark them as either, you know, promoting a positive learning environment or a negative learning environment or maybe they're unsure. So that was study one. And then in study two, they were invited to write up to three examples of instructor talk language that they remembered from their biology classrooms as promoting a positive learning environment and then another three that they remember as promoting a negative learning environment.

>> Steven Robinow: Okay. And we'll separate these out. But just generally, the general thing was you brought students into a lab. You gave them a set of 20 statements. They picked the top three and the bottom three for at the top three of each category, most positive, most negative. And then they ranked all of them, whether they thought they were positive or negative or whether they couldn't tell. Okay. So let's go into study one. Let's just get right into study one, which is really the question about how the students' interpretations, what they hear and how they interpret it, how that matches with what faculty said because, in paper one, it's what the faculty said. In the earlier paper by Tanner, it's what faculty. What did you find out? Well, Dax. Let's keep rotating.

>> Dax Ovid: The big takeaway was that, overall, for the most part, students aligned with researchers in their interpretation of whether they thought the quotes promoted a positive learning environment or negative learning environment. And to sum it all up, we took like the checklist activity and we added up, okay, did students say this was negative, did they say they were unsure, or did they say that they felt this promoted a positive learning environment. And we assigned variables to that negative one, zero, positive one, and took the sum of those quotes and grouped them based on whether they identified these 10 negatively phrased instructor talk quotes as promoting a negative learning environment or if they categorized the 10 positively phrased instructor talk quotes. And so, by looking at those two groupings at the sum of all of those quotes, we found that there was a significant difference in how students overall were interpreting these quotes; however, there are a lot of nuances of language, right? So maybe Mallory, if you want to expand on some of the differences that we saw based on the different quotes we had.

>> Mallory Rice: Yeah, so for example, Dax is speaking to the nuances of language. There was one quote that was pre-framing classroom activities. So just the instructor giving some direction of what the students are about to experience in class and the rationale. And so, at the end of that quote, you know, it was something to the effect of the volume is starting to die down. They were working in groups. So what I'm going to do is I'm now going to pick on someone. And students in the rationales they shared were really uncomfortable having random call in the classroom. I mean, that is backed up by some other research that I'm currently doing that makes students feel really excluded. And so, it was just that part of a really large quote that made students feel uncomfortable and why they categorized that as a really negative learning environment.

>> Steven Robinow: And as I recall in the paper, there was a particular reaction to the word "pick," being picked on. Even had they chosen a different word, selected, chosen. There's lots of ways to frame that. But that word "pick" seemed to really hit a nerve based on student reactions.

>> Mallory Rice: Yeah, that really hit a nerve. Other options for language, you know, we're going to ask for a few volunteers to share. Maybe decide someone in group before we come back as a class. Give students some more agency.

>> Steven Robinow: Right. So interesting how one word in a sentence just could potentially, although not tested here, but could potentially just change the way students see this whole thing. Really interesting. The good news is that they mostly agreed, right?

>> Mallory Rice: Right. For the most part, they did agree. Yeah.

>> Mallory Rice: Yeah. The top three and the bottom three were all in agreement. Well, even then, not 100%.

>> Dax Ovid: Yeah. For the top three, one thing that we could say as a big takeaway from what students chose as their top three, positive and negative, is that the thing that most students consistently chose as I see this as promoting a positive learning environment was related to building the instructor-student relationship. And similarly, with the negatively phrased, students consistently chose an example quote as promoting a negative learning environment that was about dismantling the instructor-student relationship. And these are two different categories of the positively phrased, negatively phrased instructor talk frameworks. So there's something about this I-you language that students really grabbed onto and seemed to have a consistent interpretation around.

>> Steven Robinow: And I think that's fascinating. I'm glad you brought that up, that on both sides of the coin positive and negative, impacting the relationship that faculty have with students was the leader by far on both sides. Nothing came close in terms of the students recognizing that as positive or negative. The next highest thing was far down the list numerically, you know, right? So that's fascinating. And I have to say, so now I'm going to make a plug. This is a plug for my episode with Harriet Schwartz, which is episode five on Relational Cultural Theory. You have to talk about your relationship. You have to talk and think about your relationship with students because that, more than anything, turns out to be the motivating factor for students to how they see you and, therefore, the class, right?

>> Dax Ovid: Exactly.

>> Steven Robinow: Fascinating. That's amazing. I mean, that one result I thought just was fantastic. One thing we've failed to talk about, how many students were in this survey. How many? What's our n?

>> Mallory Rice: There were 90 participants in the study.

>> Steven Robinow: So the top categories are building relationships or destroying relationships. That's number one for positive and negative. What do you learn from the few that are become ambiguous? We talked a little bit about one, about using the word, you know, I'm going to pick on students and how that word can be problematic. What other ones stood out as interesting to think about and why students don't see it the same way as faculty?

>> Dax Ovid: So this actually relates to your interview with Joshua Eyler, looking at how students interpret what instructors say about grades. We found that -- And this is in the second study, so I'm not sure if you want to wait until we talk about that.

>> Steven Robinow: All right. Well, let's go to study two. Would you like to walk us through? Again, remind us of the experimental design here, what was done and what did you find?

>> Dax Ovid: All right. So for study two, after students had seen some examples of instances of instructor talk that was previously recorded, we asked them to then list three examples from specific undergraduate biology courses that they've taken of language that their instructor used that they felt promoted a positive learning environment. And we asked them to explain why. And we also asked them to provide three examples of what they felt promoted a negative learning environment. And we asked them to explain why. This was part of the qualitative work that happened with our study and why having 90 participants, we ended up with hundreds of these student memories of instructor language that we had to then go through and figure out how can we categorize these. Can we even use the same frameworks as what was developed from previously recorded instructor talk and figure out what are some of the themes that are coming up and what students remember?

>> Steven Robinow: So again, we have 90 students. They're recording. They're writing down up to three remembrances of things faculty said in classroom that they would consider instructor talk. Some students wrote only one. Some students wrote two. Some students wrote three.

>> Dax Ovid: Correct.

>> Steven Robinow: So how many responses did you get? And at the end, after you coded them and categorized them, how many did you end up with?

>> Mallory Rice: Right. So I believe we had over 200 instances of student memories for promoting a positive learning environment in just under 200 for remembered language that promoted a negative learning environment.

>> Steven Robinow: So pretty balanced, what students remember, both good and bad.

>> Dax Ovid: I suppose the big takeaway was that we see, again, that the majority, the vast majority of the students remembered examples that were in that category of building the instructor-student relationship or dismantling the instructor-student relationship. What they seemed to remember, what students were writing down are things that consistently relate to the instructor-student relationship. And one benefit of just asking students to choose three is that we're asking students to choose what are their most salient memories, what are the things that may have made a lasting impression.

>> Steven Robinow: Yeah. Again, super interesting. Okay. So what else would you like to tell us about these data?

>> Mallory Rice: That students really are remembering what you say in your classroom and how it made them feel and that, as instructors, we should all be really intentional and reflective about the language that we're using in our class and rethink, you know, how can we maybe reframe some of what we would like to say to still create that positive environment.

>> Steven Robinow: Dax, you want to comment on that also? This is huge. This is really big. So that on both sides of this study, it's all about these relationships.

>> Dax Ovid: I think when we're teaching, we put a lot of focus on what is on our slides, what content do we want to get across, what do we want students to remember for the test. And in those day-to-day preparations, I think that non-content language often gets set aside. And so, what would teaching look like in a world where we're thinking about student success when we're thinking about what are the things we can say to promote diversity in science and be very intentional about that? What are the things we can say to encourage students who didn't do well on their exam to come and get feedback and to express a commitment to learning for the long term, rather than focusing on the grade? What do we say when even a student walks into class late? And how do we welcome that student and recognize that we don't know what students are experiencing in their day-to-day lives and cultivate a classroom environment of empathy, respect through our non-content language? And it might be that, as we're preparing our content, as we're preparing our slides, we're also thinking about what kinds of instructor talk am I going to intentionally integrate in this class so that students are reminded of the values that we want to exhibit through our teaching.

>> Steven Robinow: How does a faculty member start to understand what they sound like in a course so that they can reflect on those little words like pick versus anything else?

>> Mallory Rice: Right. A lot of us have been teaching during the pandemic and might have Zoom recordings of our teachings. So I would say start there. Listen to the first 20, 30 minutes of class when you're teaching and how do you start class, how are you ending class. I think that Covid and teaching during Covid provides a really unique opportunity where faculty maybe didn't previously record themselves teaching can be really reflective of the language they're using in their classroom. And so, I've listened to some of my recordings from last semester, and that's informed my teaching this semester. And so, just trying to keep that process of growth happening is what I would suggest. But starting with those Zoom recordings.

>> Steven Robinow: That's a good idea. Dax, thoughts there?

>> Dax Ovid: I always feel nervous, but I do it anyway, to ask my students for feedback as well. What am I doing that's supporting your success in this class and what can I do better? And I think it's very vulnerable for an instructor to do that to show students that you see that you have growth edges and you're asking them to point them out to you. But I trust students are aware of what they need to feel supported in their success and their ability to report on that. And I might not exactly ask them what do you remember I said that wasn't related to content. But from what they write, I can get a sense of what's standing out to them. And it tends to be related to that non-content language.

>> Steven Robinow: So the things they talk about do relate to non-content language versus content. Like you're going too fast. It's more like I'm intimidated to talk to you. I don't know how to reach out to you. I don't know.

>> Dax Ovid: Exactly. An example that comes to mind, I regularly say in my class, so what questions do you have instead of so does anyone have questions. And I make that choice because it assumes that someone has a question somewhere instead of making people feel like it's an option to not have a question, and so I'm going to take the easy way out on this. And when I ask for feedback, students write Dax is great at responding to questions. So it's one of those things where I know that I've used a lot of language around that and have been intentional in that, and students respond accordingly.

>> Steven Robinow: Interesting. Nice. Anything else, Mallory?

>> Mallory Rice: Yeah. I think I can't echo enough Dax's suggestion for feedback. I get anonymous feedback from students at the end of every class and then regularly throughout the class. And it shows how insightful they are and what they pick up on. Like, I talk a lot about mental health and wellness and self-care in my classes because it's important to me and I want them to know that there is not a stigma about mental health and wellness. And I've had a lot of students share that they appreciate that I'm mentioning this in class because very few STEM instructors really do. And so, just being really purposeful of language and not just when it comes to like teaching, but thinking about, you know, what are we sharing with our students about our stories. I think there's a lot of strength in storytelling your journey for students to see themselves, hopefully, represented in an aspect of that. That's been really huge for my students too this semester. My first time really being vulnerable and sharing my story as a first-gen low-income student. I've had many come up because I've mentioned that. And they're like I am too. Can you please help me accomplish this?

>> Steven Robinow: Nice. So they can identify with you.

>> Mallory Rice: Right.

>> Steven Robinow: And you said you get anonymous feedback after every lecture. How do you collect that or how do students provide that to you?

>> Mallory Rice: Yeah. So our university, I'm very fortunate that we have a partnership with Poll Everywhere. And so, with Poll Everywhere, it's kind of like iClicker, but it's free for students. It's an app they can download or they can text in answers. And there's quite a few options. And there's an open-text response. So I have a short survey at the end of each class that they fill out anonymously. And so, that just goes online, and I can download that feedback at the end of class.

>> Steven Robinow: And that's through your course management system or something.

>> Mallory Rice: Yeah. It's separate. It's its own app. I know other folks use index cards at the end of each class and pass them out for students to give feedback. I've pivoted to Poll Everywhere for a few reasons. And I think it's a bit easier too when I have a hybrid course. Students maybe exposed to Covid at home can still participate.

>> Steven Robinow: Sure. And you get responses after every class. And how large are your classes?

>> Mallory Rice: That class, Intro to Bio, that I'm teaching now is 60 students. And I get about 80% participation every single class.

>> Steven Robinow: Every single class.

>> Mallory Rice: Every class.

>> Steven Robinow: Eighty percent of your students write something.

>> Mallory Rice: Yes.

>> Steven Robinow: Wow. I think it's because I follow up on it. So if there's something they're confused on or want to see, the next class, that's what we start with. And so, I think there's no point in asking students for their voice unless you're going to do something with it. But I think that I demonstrate that I do something with their insights and address it. And so, that keeps that relationship going where they're open to giving feedback.

>> Steven Robinow: So did it start out slow during the semester or semester quarter when you first started that? Did they like, oh, what is this and then suddenly it's like, oh, she actually is listening? So I'll participate. Did they buy in?

>> Mallory Rice: I didn't have any trouble with buy-in, to be honest.

>> Steven Robinow: Right off the bat.

>> Mallory Rice: Right off the bat, they were totally up for it. I think some folks might be worried about like student resistance, but I have never experienced that in my class. And I think it's because I'm intentionally using instructor talk. Like, please fill this out. I look at it at the end of each class. It's really helpful for me for thinking about review sessions and what we focus on in class and where points of confusion might be or how to restructure things moving forward. So again, that instructor language being really intentional about what I'm saying and how I'm going to use that data I think might help get some buy-in.

>> Steven Robinow: And I think your intro really talks about student resistance and how different faculty get different reactions because of likely the instructor talk that's used. So students either buy in or they don't. So let's come back to this idea of the non-aligned, the misaligned quotes that might be informative. So let's come back to that now. There's this quote that faculty see that they think students are going to react negatively to and students overwhelmingly react positively too. So let's talk about that.

>> Dax Ovid: I figured I would start off by reading the quote that we're talking about.

>> Steven Robinow: Sure.

>> Dax Ovid: So the class average was 61% on the exam. And there was a specific question you all didn't do well on. So I will curve it and just give you points for it. So this was an example of a quote that an instructor said in their class that was previously recorded, and students counted that as something that they felt promoted a positive learning environment. Further, we saw that there were some students that, when they asked for three examples of what do they remember that they felt promoted a positive learning environment, wrote down quotes about grades. And what is interesting about that is in the instructor talk frameworks developed by researchers, focusing on the grade is considered negatively phrased instructor talk. However, students are enculturated to value grades and to see an instructor being transparent about grades as a positive attribute. And so, I think when we're thinking about this discrepancy between what we say we should do as instructors, which is promote learning for the long term, and what students see in their day-to-day experience, which is they're asking for my GPA when I'm applying for jobs and for med school and for other professional schools, and grades are valued by society at large, that if we continue to use language that reinforces that, then we're not doing anything to shift that culture. And so, I think it's important to think about what students see value in is reinforced by what culture sees value in and how can we intentionally challenge that by, I think Joshua Eyler gave really great examples, like inviting students to come to office hours and look at what they got incorrect. So they can learn from that experience and focusing on that learning aspect and the feedback aspect, rather than the evaluation aspect of grades.

>> Steven Robinow: Yeah. I think that's a really important issue to think about, right, is the shift from grades to learning and that what you're seeing is that the students are seeing grades as positive because that's how they've been trained.

>> Dax Ovid: Exactly.

>> Steven Robinow: For a long time. And that certainly detracts from the motivation that we really want them to have, which is learn, and how to make that shift, like you said. I mean, the answers aren't here, but there are clues that are surprising, right? Yeah, you think you talk about grades, though. Your students aren't going to like that.

>> Dax Ovid: Yeah. And it's I think something that a lot of instructors do is they look at exam grades. And I remember being an undergrad and seeing up on the projector screen here's the distribution of grades on the last exam and a big five-minute spiel about how different questions got answered and in a way that I think reinforced grades as the desired outcome here and not, you know, what are some of the points of confusion that people were still struggling with. Let's work through that. Let's learn together. It's always, from my experience, been centered on grades as an outcome in a way that I wasn't surprised when I saw some students felt that that instructor talk was positive.

>> Steven Robinow: So I wonder if you went to a different institution, such as Evergreen State, it seems like you've thought about this, and asked them similar questions. So Evergreen State doesn't have grades. They have evaluations, written evaluations, and assessments but not grades. And I wonder if you went to that culture and talked to juniors and seniors about questions of grading, whether they would see them as positive or negative because they've now -- You interviewed juniors and seniors. So those at Evergreen State would have been broken of the habit by then; otherwise, they wouldn't have stuck around, right? They would have been broken of the habit. They would see grades as not the motivating factor for learning, and maybe they'd answer these questions differently.

>> Dax Ovid: That sounds like a great future study.

>> Mallory Rice: Yeah, it does.

>> Steven Robinow: Okay. So let's talk about the limitations of this research.

>> Mallory Rice: Yeah. Certainly a limitation. This was done at a single institution. I think a positive of the institution that was chosen for the study is that it is far more diverse than most universities across the United States. And so, I think while our sample size might be 90, that we captured a lot of voices that tend to get historically left out of scientific studies. And so, I think that that would be some of the strengths of choosing the institution we did.

>> Dax Ovid: Could I add a couple points on the limitations/strengths, and that might lead to future directions? I think another unique feature of this particular institution is over 80% of faculty have participated in over a hundred hours of professional development and scientific teaching. And I don't think there are a lot of departments that can boast that. I think it's really impressive and speaks to the commitment that this particular set of faculty have to promoting equity and inclusion in their classroom and learning what they can to promote that. And this is a study that looks at what do students who are juniors and seniors remember from their experiences taking courses with this faculty. And this is juniors and seniors who've made it through their introductory courses, where we do see at a lot of institutions that students disproportionately leave STEM majors at higher rates than non-STEM majors, especially students of color, LGBTQIA plus students, disabled students. And so, how can we understand the experiences of students who are coming from groups that have been marginalized from STEM? What do they remember? What do they experience? A study that asks juniors and seniors won't quite get at that. So I do see opportunities in future work to explore that and asking perhaps introductory courses students to reflect on what they remember, if anything, as well as from instructors who might not have as much professional development in scientific teaching.

>> Steven Robinow: Nice. Okay. Now, that you both are moving on to independent positions, what are your initial plans regarding your research? Mallory, let's start with you.

>> Mallory Rice: Sure. Yeah. I'm very excited that my research lab has been up and going this semester. We've got three student-driven projects based on their own experiences in the class to try and make some informed shifts in pedagogical practices. So, for example, one of my students is leading an investigation about how instructors both teach and handle paraphrasing and plagiarism, to come up with some best recommendations to support students in learning how to write scientifically. And so, we're really excited to get that interview study going this summer, along with some other studies looking at student perceptions of various exam types and perceived learning, especially during the pivot to online and coming back in person.

>> Steven Robinow: Let's talk about that next. Dax, what about you?

>> Dax Ovid: For my post-doc, I'm wrapping up a study on scientist spotlights with Jeff Schinske and Kimberly Tanner. And this is an assignment that's used to teach science content and invite students to reflect through writing on their perceptions of the types of people that do science after learning about counter-stereotypical scientists. So this is one thing that I'm really excited about and bringing into my future work. I think scientist spotlights are an opportunity for us to think critically about who is represented in our curriculum and how do we challenge persisting scientist stereotypes that are exclusionary in nature in a way that invites students to see people like themselves in science and also to respect people from diverse backgrounds who have had extraordinary accomplishments despite the barriers through discrimination and prejudice. And I hope that assignments like these shift the culture to promote inclusion and to be very intentional about supporting the success of scientists of color, LGBTQIA plus scientists, scientists who were first in their family to go to college and perhaps immigrated here from another country, or disabled. And the list goes on of the many different types of people that do science today that deserve recognition in our curriculum.

>> Steven Robinow: That's exciting. And I assume that the universities you're going to, I mean, they hired you, and they know what you do.

>> Dax Ovid: Yeah.

>> Steven Robinow: So they are movers. They are movers in this area, right? I mean, they're on board. They're on board with this. So that's incredible.

>> Dax Ovid: I'm really excited about working at the University of Georgia Athens because they're developing a new major for physiology and pharmacology for undergraduates through the College of Veterinary Medicine. So this is a new opportunity to really think about supporting upper-division undergraduate students who are pre-health, pre-med, pre-vet and thinking about these important issues in their work.

>> Steven Robinow: Nice. And what's the diversity at University of Georgia?

>> Dax Ovid: It's a predominantly white institution. And I think that that's something that they've been doing a lot of their own reflecting on and thinking about supporting, whether it's transfer students from local two-year colleges or supporting first-generation college-going students. I think they, like many universities, have struggled to support equitable student success in biology. And so, that's something that I hope to contribute to through this research.

>> Steven Robinow: Right. That's great. And Mallory, what about San Marcos? I think it's a Hispanic-serving institution, is that correct?

>> Mallory Rice: Correct. Yeah. We are a Hispanic-serving institution, and our demographics are fairly similar and comparable to San Francisco State. Seventy percent students of color in the College of STEM, 54% first generation, almost half on federal financial aid.

>> Steven Robinow: So a very diverse set of students there who are going to benefit from you.

>> Mallory Rice: Yeah. Right. Diverse set of students. But also, I am consistently blown away at the commitment that our college has to supporting those students and seeing them through and achieving the chancellor's 2025 graduation initiative to reduce equity gaps in graduation and retention. I mean, coming to a department that is fully trained in safe zone training and talking about anti-racist pedagogy is incredibly refreshing. And I am very excited to be collaborating with these folks.

>> Steven Robinow: That's exciting. That's wonderful to hear. And it's a relatively new campus. It's about 30, just a little over 30 years old.

>> Mallory Rice: Yeah, 32 or 33 I think.

>> Steven Robinow: Yeah, 32, 33, 88, 89, sort of something like that. Yeah. That great. So that's awesome. This paper, I think people should look at. They should read. The instructor talk is so important. And what I love about this paper is just getting -- You know, it's great to know what the faculty hear and think. But what's really important is to know what students hear, how they interpret that, and then this what they remember is so interesting and so important, right? Years later, what do they remember? They remember those strong negative and those strong positive feelings. And to know that those issues are all about relationships really make it very clear what faculty need to work on if they want to help students succeed. That's the key. Developing that is another question. And there's lots of tools out there and lots of ways. It's that caring for the students that really needs to shine through. It's wonderful.

>> Dax Ovid: Absolutely.

>> Steven Robinow: Yeah.

>> Dax Ovid: May I add to that?

>> Steven Robinow: Sure. Please.

>> Dax Ovid: For the busy people out there, of which there are many who will not have time to read a whole paper, I would recommend to center student voices focusing on table eight and table ten, where we have listed examples of student memories of instructor talk. So if you're really just looking for what do students remember, what can I start to say in my classroom, or what should I stop saying in my classroom and to just get some ideas at least in this research context of what stood out to students, then you don't have to read the whole paper, even though you're welcome to, but table eight and ten offer a summary of student memories that I find to be really helpful to reference while I'm teaching.

>> Steven Robinow: I wonder if we can put a link to those tables on my website.

>> Dax Ovid: Sure.

>> Steven Robinow: I'll make them. We will put a link to that straight to the tables. I'll figure out how to do that. We'll link to tables eight and ten. And I'm going to throw in figure seven because I love it.

>> Dax Ovid: Nice. I'm glad you have a favorite figure.

>> Steven Robinow: There might be a couple. No, it's great. Yeah, it's great. I love it. So you both have chosen to go into biology education research. You're both trained as PhD-trained scientists who have left the bench and have decided and made a career choice. So I want to know about that. I want to know if there was a transformational moment for you, for each of you, that really stands out for why you do what you do. Mallory, you're thinking. So while you think, I'm going to let Dax talk. She looks ready. Pardon me. Pardon me. I'm going to let Dax go first because they appear ready to go.

>> Dax Ovid: Thanks, Steve. My transformational moment or series of moments was through my involvement with the Biology Scholars program at UC, Berkeley. And it's a community that serves majority first-generation college-going students and people from groups that have been historically excluded from the sciences. It's a community that I got a lot of insider tips on how to study for courses and how to prepare, how to interact with instructors. And I remember thinking why do I need to learn all of this stuff through these side channels. Why aren't we thinking about shifting this culture to be more inclusive? One of the things I remember a student saying is when you're studying for a course, you're studying for the instructor. You're not studying the material. And I remember thinking that, you know, there's got to be a better way to teach and learn biology, and was thrilled to discover the Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research and that there was a growing field in this and CBE LSE Journal, which is where our paper was published, and to just read and read and read the incredible individuals who have done decades and decades of research in biology education, how to promote more inclusive learning environments using evidence and applying that research methodology that we so value and laboratory research to our classrooms. And that's something that I got really excited about and continue to engage with through grad school and have the privilege of continuing in my postdoctoral and professional work.

>> Steven Robinow: That's very cool. Mallory, what about you? Do you have a transformational moment?

>> Mallory Rice: I do have a transformational moment, but that was built up by a series of cumulative events. I have always wanted to teach. I've been teaching since I was 12, informally or formally. And I just love being in a classroom and love interacting with students. And so, during my PhD work in marine biology, I did all that I could, both with outreach and in the classroom, to get as much experience in professional training as possible. And then I learned that there was this teaching conference in Minneapolis in July, right, the SABER Conference. And I went, paid for it on a credit card as a grad student, out of pocket, to go just be with biology folks who also care about learning and teaching biology and are reflective about it, just thinking that I might learn some more professional development and become a better educator. I had no idea that there was an entire field. And I think being at a conference where folks were just having these common conversations of what serves students. How do we center students? How do we best educate them and bring them along safely through the major? And, you know, you go to other conferences and the Q&A just gets really nasty I think at a lot of other scientific conferences in other fields. And at SABER, it's a 180. It's this collaborative, collegial, supportive decision about how can we best support students. And I think being in that environment shifted my entire career trajectory to go more in this direction. And I'm very grateful I did.

>> Steven Robinow: That's amazing. That's great. So we'll put a link to SABER up as well. What I did want to say was that, of course, this isn't just for biology. While your study and while all this work was with biology students, these issues are very likely to transition to students of all courses, all types. I mean, it hasn't been done. So I can't quite say that. But how is that not true? Maybe you can say this. How do you feel about this, right? Maybe you can say this because what they're talking about in these courses is we're talking about non-content instructor talk. That would be the same issue in all courses, any course you studied, whether it was a large history course or a small English course. How do you feel about that? How do you feel about that issue of transitioning about, you know, putting everybody under this umbrella that these data are universal for classrooms?

>> Dax Ovid: I would say that it is probably not universal. I think that there may be some courses where there is no non-content instructor language. Well, the other consideration that we have is that there may be some courses where instructors aren't using any non-content instructor language. They may just walk in and read from a script for an hour. And how does that affect students? I think there's a lot of open questions about how non-content language gets used and also how it might not get used and the impacts that have on a student learning environment.

>> Steven Robinow: But the initial paper on instructor talk was not a single instructor. It was many instructors across many institution types. While it was all within introductory biology, it was many institutions, many institution types where there was the option for instructors to come in and read a script, but they never did. So yes, we don't know. It could be out of -- Sure, you could go into a law course and all they do is start out reading from the book or something, right?

>> Dax Ovid: That's a possibility. And another thing to keep in mind is with that work, I think almost all of the instructors had gone through the Scientific Teaching Institute, meaning that they had some investment in teaching well. And I would conjecture that there are professors who don't have that as a priority, and that is reflected in their non-content instructor language.

>> Steven Robinow: Yeah.

>> Dax Ovid: One thing, though, that's really exciting, it's a paper that just got published today.

>> Steven Robinow: Okay.

>> Dax Ovid: Kate Gelinas is the lead author, and it's on instructor talk and graduate teaching assistants. And these are people with a range of no pedagogical training to some pedagogical training, some teaching experience, some without. And we see that those without pedagogical training or teaching experience use less non-content instructor talk. So it was still a very low-end value. It's one of those initial studies that's going to, I think, open doors for more work down the road. But it's something for us to keep in mind when we're doing pedagogical training and when we're thinking about who uses and who doesn't use instructor talk.

>> Steven Robinow: I guess it's been so long since I've taken a course, I don't know what faculty do in courses anymore. It's hard for me to imagine being in a course and not having non-content talk. But you're right. Maybe it happens. Will you both ever move out of biology and ask those questions?

>> Mallory Rice: I think so. A lot of my research is actually not focused in biology specifically, but it's all of STEM, to try and capture those experiences across disciplines. I think that's a big direction that the field is going, is thinking instead of siloed departments, right? Because our students have degrees that require them to take courses across departments and fields. And so, I'm really interested in their experiences across their degree program, rather than just within a certain discipline.

>> Steven Robinow: Cool. Cool. Dax, any final comments?

>> Dax Ovid: I love interdisciplinary work. I'm so game for that. And one of the things I'm doing, as I get started in my new position, is to connect with people from different colleges and departments. And I think you learn a lot from those kinds of collaborations. So I hope that there are people who would be interested in exploring this in their context.

>> Steven Robinow: But you run into the same problem, right? The people that are going to want to play in the sandbox already buy into some level, right? So how do you get the data from those instructors, and there are plenty of them, who don't buy any of this who have been teaching for whatever period of time they've been teaching and they know they're excellent lectures? And, you know, by some measure, they might be excellent lectures, whether they're students learn or not or learn well or what that does to equity issues, who knows? Well, we do know. It's not good. How do you get into classrooms of faculty that are reticent to participate? Can you even do that? Is there any way to do that? Can you get into those classes where you actually might suspect that it's, you know, non-content talk would be zero?

>> Mallory Rice: I think that you can. I previously launched a survey where we sent it to students. So rather than asking faculty members' permission, we sent this survey to all of the students in a department. And that's one way to go about it. And I think that opens doors for students to have their voices heard that may otherwise not be heard.

>> Steven Robinow: So that's interesting. So you can hear students' perspectives on courses, but you can't code the talk that the instructor gave, I mean, right? You can't record the instructor.

>> Dax Ovid: I think what you're touching on is a bigger issue than even non-content instructor language, and it's something that the biology education community is grappling with. And that's why it's really exciting. I think it's a fruitful area for work. And in the next year, I'm planning in collaboration with Michelle Wooten and Kimberly Tanner an interview study where we would like to talk to those faculty members and learn from them about where that reticence comes from and what are some possible ways that we can work with that in our work.

>> Steven Robinow: Okay. So people are thinking about this question and how to gain access to collect some data so that you can answer these questions about what other faculty are doing in these places. That's super interesting. That's very cool. All right. Look at the time. I want to thank both of you for your time today. This was really wonderful. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I love the paper. I think this is so important. You're right. The whole point of the podcast is so that people don't really have to read the paper because they know that people are busy and don't really have time. You know, we want them to look, but we want to provide maybe a differently accessible way that people can learn something and go back to the classroom and be a little different. And so, people can. I mean, just go in your classroom tomorrow and before you say that thing, give it a little thought. Yeah. So interesting. Anyway, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

>> Dax Ovid: Thank you.

>> Mallory Rice: Thanks so much for having us. It's been great.

>> Dax Ovid: Really has.

>> Steven Robinow: For more information about Doctors Rice and Ovid, their research and favorite books and papers, please go to our website teachingforstudentsuccess.org. Thank you for spending time with us today. Please share our podcast and website with your friends, colleagues, and administrators. We love hearing from our listeners. Please contact us through our website. If an episode has impacted your teaching, please send us a note, and let us know what you have done in your classroom and how it has impacted your students. Teaching for Student Success is a production of Teaching for Student Success Media. Let's end this podcast as I always do with some music of Julius H. Some of Julius's music can be found on Pixabay.

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