DEEP Workshop: Motivating One Student, Scaring Another: Stress, Identity, and Learner Productivity

Event Type

Conference/Workshop

Sponsor

Grainger Engineering Developing Equity-Minded Engineering Practioners (DEEP) Center

Date

Sep 19, 2024   11:00 am - 12:30 pm  

Speaker

Dr. Luther Tychonievich, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Registration

Please register for the Zoom link.

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Originating Calendar

Developing Equity-Minded Engineering Practitioners Center (DEEP)

Thursday, September 19, 2024 | 11:00 am - 12:30 pm  CT  | 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm ET

Workshops are open to faculty, staff, postdocs, and students! 

Abstract

The first part of this presentation will discuss learning and stress. Learning results from repeated application of attention to educational materials. One way of focusing student attention is by adding stress: deadlines, grades, and other factors can make students worried about what might happen if they do not attend to their studies. But excess stress can impede a student's ability to learn, and not all students have the same level of background stress in their life nor take the same amount of stress from the same instructor-provided stimuli. How does stress effect learning? How does stress vary between students? How is this related to student identity, culture, and disability?

The second part of this presentation will discuss various practices instructors can use to better manage student stress and its impacts on student performance. No one practice is the perfect choice for all instructors and courses, so we will share several. In particular, we will discuss (1) short-term stress reduction, (2) helping students feel welcome and safe, (3) multiple-chance assessments and alternative grading, (4) universal design for learning; time permitting, we may also discuss (5) removing selective triggers, (6) explicit protocols and expectations, and (7) removing the need for stressful actions. Participants will come away with several specific changes they can make to their course and teaching to keep from over-stressing the students with the highest background stress and stress susceptibility.

DEEP Workshop Facilitator

Luther Tychonievich is a Teaching Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign. He began at Illinois in August 2022; prior to that he spent 9 years as teaching faculty at the University of Virginia. His primary academic activity is education: education of students, teaching assistants, faculty, and computer science educators at every level. He has taught across the CS curriculum (computer organization, data structures, discrete mathematics, graphics, programming, software development, theory of computation) as well a about equity and inclusion (active recruiting, inclusive pedagogy, stereotype threat) and education (assessment, tutoring and teaching methods).  Luther earned his Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Virginia, M.S. and B.S. degrees in computer science from Brigham Young University, and A.A. and A.S. degrees from Lakeland Community College. As a community college alumnus, he is an advocate for community colleges generally and the community college to university pipeline.