With the avalanche of content we want to read, bookmark, and never get back to, Kim Marshall’s Memo, along with Jenn David-Lang’s The Main Idea, are godsends. Since 2003, the weekly Marshall Memo scans over 60 publications to curate the best and most insightful articles on teaching and learning, including pieces from the ACUE community. Since 2007, David-Lang has published monthly summaries of books on a range of education topics. As “designated readers” for busy educators, particularly in K12, they share a simple goal: to highlight articles and books that will have the greatest potential to improve teaching, leadership, and learning.

Now, Marshall and David-Lang have teamed up to comb through more than 16 years of 8,000 article summaries from the Marshall Memo archive. Their new book, The Best of the Marshall Memo, Book One: Ideas and Action Steps to Energize Leadership, Teaching, and Learning, identifies the most thought-provoking and helpful article summaries and includes professional learning suggestions. We asked them to recommend a few of their favorite articles most relevant to higher education. They came back with the “must reads” of the “must reads”:

Mazur’s “Instructional Shift”

Dan Berrett’s 2016 article in the Chronicle on Harvard professor Eric Mazur is one of our favorites. Early in his career Mazur got excellent student ratings: his lectures were clear and well received. His students excelled at solving complex problems that could be solved by memorizing and using formulas. However, when he tested them on their basic understanding of Newtonian physics and their ability to apply that understanding, he was shocked to see that more than half did poorly. Mazur realized he’d been effective at teaching his students to memorize formulas, but they lacked a deeper understanding of underlying scientific principles. He started to experiment with forgoing the full-class lecture and saw tremendous results.

Dan beautifully documents the instructional shift: Mazur now gives brief lectures, poses carefully framed questions, and uses student-response technology. If more than 30 percent of students answer incorrectly, he has them confer with each other. He listens and circulates and guides. This type of “peer instruction” led to dramatic improvements on the exam—with students’ scores doubling and tripling in subsequent years.

“The Making of a Teaching Evangelist” By Dan Berrett in The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 10, 2016

“Backward Design”—for Assessment

Timothy Quinn’s piece in the 2011/2012 winter issue of the Phi Delta Kappan is another classic. Quinn notes that many students focus solely on the grade they receive on an assignment. He believes this is fueled, in part, by the pressure felt in high school to receive high marks. But we know that grades tell students very little about their learning, and it’s a lost opportunity when we don’t help students dig beneath the grade to determine what they understood and where they need to improve. Not to mention, it’s discouraging for instructors who put hours into grading assignments and providing comments that never get internalized.

Quinn suggests developing a rubric for each assignment that outlines skills that students are expected to demonstrate and content they’re expected to master. Further, he recommends grading each element of the rubric, rather than just one overall grade. Doing so provides students with more specific information about what they did well and what they need to improve. A second, clever idea he shared was a sort of backward design for assessment: students graded themselves based on the instructor’s comments. This practice is a great way for students to reflect on their work.

“A Crash Course in Giving Grades” by Timothy Quinn in Phi Delta Kappan, December 2011/January 2012

Workplace Feedback for the Classroom

Marcus Buckingham from the ADP Research Institute and Ashley Goodall from Cisco Systems took a close look at how employees are supervised and evaluated, in the pages of the Harvard Business Review. Their review found that, sometimes, only simple, technical feedback is needed for a person to perform well. But with higher-order tasks, many managers’ well-intentioned approach to giving feedback is ineffective. “On that,” wrote Buckingham and Goodall, “the research is clear: Telling people what we think of their performance doesn’t help them thrive and excel and telling people how we think they should improve actually hinders learning.” Why? That feedback can be distorted or biased, and the research from brain science shows that most learning doesn’t come from pointing out gaps but from building on strengths. Marcus and Ashley shared several suggestions to help improve our feedback. Although focused on the workplace, we immediately saw the connection to the classroom.

“The Feedback Fallacy” by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall in Harvard Business Review, March/April 2019

Class Planning Like a Good Essay

Finally, in a 2015 article in Edutopia, English instructor Brian Sztabnik argued that lesson planning should follow the time-honored maxims of good writing: start with the end in mind, plan effective beginnings and endings, and grab students’ attention. “If we fail to engage students at the start, we may never get them back. If we don’t know the end result, we risk moving haphazardly from one activity to the next,” wrote Sztabnik. The piece includes “launch” activities that he’s found effective—video clips, good news, and writing prompts—and ways to have a “strong close” to a class by asking students to capture what they’ve learned in a tweet-length summary or asking them to fill out exit tickets to collect lesson feedback.

“The 8 Minutes That Matter Most” by Brian Sztabnik in Edutopia, January 5, 2015

***

Kim Marshall was a teacher, central office administrator, and principal in the Boston Public Schools for thirty-two years. Since 2002, he has led workshops and courses, coached school leaders, and consulted with schools and districts. Starting in 2003, he has produced the weekly Marshall Memo. Marshall is the author of many articles and books, including Rethinking Teacher Supervision and Evaluation (Jossey-Bass, second edition, 2013).

Jenn David-Lang has worked in the field of education for more than twenty-five years as a teacher, administrator, and consultant. Currently, she runs The Main Idea, an annual subscription service that provides monthly summaries of compelling books and professional learning ideas to school leaders throughout the world. In addition, David-Lang offers a wide range of consultation, including designing and providing workshops for leaders and teachers, coaching leaders, and conducting school evaluations.

When Executive Order 1110 required the end of remedial math across the California State University (CSU) system by Fall 2018, Cal State LA sprang into action. Through an inclusive, collaborative redesign process that included campus and community stakeholders, a consensus on goals was reached: to increase completion of quantitative reasoning courses and eliminate the completion gap.

Across the CSU system, remedial math wasn’t meeting students’ needs. It represented “a deficit model,” according to Loren Blanchard, the system’s executive vice chancellor for academic and student affairs. “[The remediation system] must be reformed if we really hope to achieve our equity and completion goals,” he said.

The team at Cal State LA led the way, designing and implementing a comprehensive plan. They started with an overhaul of the math curriculum. Three math pathways were established: a course in “Quantitative Reasoning in Today’s World,” a second called “Statistics Pathway,” and a third, “STEM Pathway.” All three courses have common syllabi and assessments. Materials were normed and made more student-centered. Multi-section courses have coordinators, and students have access to co-requisite “just-in-time support.”

Academic coaches are providing students with extra support around time management, planning and goal setting, access to university resources, and study tips. An early warning system based on attendance, assignments, and participation data allows instructors to intervene in real time. Additionally, Cal State LA’s Early Start Program uses these same strategies with incoming students who require additional math support. These students take a course the summer before their freshman year with the goal of being better prepared for course work before they start, thereby improving their chances of completing their degree.

And, just as important, the redesign has the administration’s full support. Any roadblocks were cleared away for curriculum review and approval, enrollment needs, and staffing levels.

But what Cal State LA believes distinguishes its efforts is their investment in their math faculty. Nearly sixty received extensive support from their nationally-recognized Center for Effective Teaching and Learning in partnership with ACUE. Under expert facilitation, cohorts of faculty, learned about implementing 12 of the core teaching competencies defined in ACUE’s independently-validated Effective Practice Framework. Nearly half of all participants went on to earn their full certificate in effective college instruction endorsed by the American Council on Education.

Cal State LA reports that faculty acquired a “common language” for describing quality learning in their math classes. Or as Sharona Krinsky, a math instructor and ACUE facilitator, noted, “I’m getting stopped in the halls by colleagues and approached in the tutorial center. It’s one of the coolest things that has happened. I’m seeing a higher level of engagement between the faculty, instead of us all being in our own worlds. There is a commonality of engagement that had been completely lacking.”

The proof is in the early student results: mid-course survey responses show that students have observed their teachers providing more regular feedback, assigning more meaningful work, and keeping class well organized and well paces, among other evidence-based teaching practices.

And academic results? They’re big. Early Start students passed their summer math courses at a rate between 90-95%, with 12% of the freshman class completing their GE math requirement before beginning their first year. The percentage of first-year students who completed their math requirement increased by 25% every year between 2016 and 2018. Whereas 1,808, or 47% of students completed their course in 2016, this figure rose to 2,837, or 76%, in 2018. Notably, in this area of first-year math completion, the overall achievement gap between Pell-eligible and non-Pell-eligible students was eliminated from a high of 6%.

“We’re determined to keep that statistic 0%—and completely eliminate the achievement gap in all areas, and to keep pushing the rates of quality completion to even higher levels,” said Michelle Hawley, associate vice president and dean of undergraduate studies. “It’s what we’re here to do and who we are.”

This story was prepared with Cal State LA and adapted from a presentation delivered at the AASCU 2019 Summer Academic Affairs meeting by Michelle Hawley, associate vice president and dean, undergraduate studies, Pamela Scott-Johnson, dean, natural and social sciences, and Owynn Lancaster, instructional designer, Center for Effective Teaching and Learning.

“Whether you’ve just finished your graduate work, whether you’ve been teaching for thirty years, whether you’ve been teaching for five years, there’s always an opportunity to strengthen your instruction,” said Kelly Lester, director of the Center for Faculty Development at the University of Southern Mississippi. Through USM’s new Faculty Development Institute, Lester and her colleagues are providing that opportunity. They’ve developed a blended and three-semester approach for USM faculty to earn their ACUE credential, with striking results.

The Institute brings faculty together in multi-disciplinary cohorts to discuss how they are implementing ACUE-recommended practices in the classroom.

“The Institute’s really been a way to create community and a powerful experience for faculty,” said Amy Miller, vice provost for academic affairs and a developer of the Institute.

Jennifer Regan, an associate teaching professor of cell and molecular biology, noted that the experience helped her connect with faculty from other disciplines she might not interact with. “I learned so much from people outside of my discipline and learned how to use similar techniques in a classroom that I didn’t think would be effective,” she said. She also shared that she was nervous, but the support from others in the Institute encouraged her to just try the new practices, and that failure is okay.   

Lester noted that challenges are, in fact, to be expected. “Faculty develop a huge toolbox of techniques to pull from to try in their classes,” she said. “And we talk a lot about sometimes when you try that, it might be messy. But that’s all part of the process.”

Jeremy Deans, an assistant professor of geology found the experience challenging and rewarding. “It’s been very reflective,” he said. “Each module really forces you to think about how you teach and how you approach your teaching.” 

Marek Steedman, associate professor of political science, agrees, noting that while teaching is what they are doing most of the time, they don’t always have time to reflect. “I think that time to focus really on how you are teaching, what’s working, and what’s not working, is the real benefit,” he said.

To date, 91% of Institute faculty have earned their ACUE credential and are designated USM Teaching Scholars. 

“It’s a way to recognize faculty,” said Cindy Blackwell, associate director of the Center for Faculty Development. “It says to our stakeholders ‘We care about good teaching.’ That’s why we’re here as a university. That is our purpose.” 

Lindsay Wright, an assistant professor of child and family sciences, feels that support. “I personally value working somewhere that values us as teachers,” she said. “I consider myself here for the students. I’m now able to have a very large student support role, and I think it’s great.”

This story was originally published by USM and has been adapted for print.

ACUE sat down with Judith Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) to discuss the launch of their “National Quality Dialogue.” This effort includes reaching out to colleagues and faculty organizations to explore, reassess, and understand what quality in higher education looks like today and in the future. In this Q&A, Eaton shares her vision for the impact of this dialogue and elaborates on the role accreditation efforts plays in strengthening quality. 

CHEA recently launched a major national conversation about quality in higher education. What insights are you hoping to learn and advance?

Our “National Quality Dialogue” is focusing on the future of academic quality in higher education. As part of this effort, we’ll be reaching out to academic colleagues and faculty organizations via Dialogue meetings, interviews and publications. We want to explore how the concept of quality may be changing, what tools we’ll all need for quality in the future, and how we build greater public confidence in our quality. While the longstanding commitments to education for intellectual development, career readiness, and civic engagement remain central to quality, we’re all aware of emerging challenges to current norms about social justice, equity, and free speech. It’s time to take a fresh look at quality in light of both the challenges and our longstanding commitments.

What do you see as the role of faculty, effective teaching, and pedagogical preparation in accrediting efforts to strengthen quality? 

Accreditation cannot be successful in strengthening quality without faculty. Our educators are at the heart of accreditation’s commitments. A periodic accreditation review examines quality by looking at the many dimensions of college, university, or program operation—but this must be in light of their effectiveness in furthering student success. All accreditation inquiry must converge on student achievement. Faculty play—or should play—a huge role in assuring that the accreditation lens is and remains appropriately focused on students by informing and influencing accreditation activities such as the institutional self-study, the site visit and, most important, the formulation and application of accreditation standards. We need a strong faculty voice in accreditation to both frame the work of accreditation and to remind us, on an ongoing basis, that student success is our reason for being.

What are the standards by which regional accreditors measure teaching quality and faculty development? How can these standards be strengthened to ensure a greater focus is on student learning outcomes? 

Accreditors have robust standards that address faculty qualifications, scholarship, and research. The standards typically reaffirm faculty members’ primary responsibility for advancing academic purposes and the importance of academic freedom. The standards also protect faculty by calling for well-defined responsibilities, evaluation, professional development, and adequate compensation. At the same time, a number of standards provide an opportunity to further the focus on student outcomes. These are the standards that call for ongoing, robust examination of quality and evidence of student achievement, commitment to opportunity for innovation, and the leadership role of faculty in development of curricula and academic standards. The most appropriate way to further strengthen the focus on student learning outcomes is for faculty, as already mentioned, to more fully engage with accreditation to expand this emphasis throughout the accreditation review process. 

What can institutions do to ensure that their faculty members are more engaged in the accreditation process? What can faculty do? 

The typical response of many faculty to becoming involved in accreditation is that it is an administrative, bureaucratic effort that has little to do with teaching, learning, and academic quality—and thus a waste of time. I understand this, but it need not be so. Accreditation needs faculty to sustain teaching and learning as central this effort. Faculty can play an active role in the accreditation self-study, on a self-study committee, and in writing the report. A number of accreditation standards for which evidence needs to be supplied address the faculty role: curriculum, academic standards, and academic support. Faculty should fully engage the site-visit team when it comes to campus and meet with team members. Institutions can help by making release time available, providing stipends, or finding other means to aid faculty in having the time to engage accreditation and to reward that engagement. 

You’ve recently written about the “challenge of the unknowns” facing U.S. accrediting organizations as federal lawmakers consider different legislative changes that you say will “have a profound impact on accreditation.” What are some changes that could produce a stronger and more effective accreditation enterprise? What parts of accreditation should be preserved or protected? 

The primary concern of lawmakers is accountability from accreditation, namely our responsibility to assure that institutions and programs receiving federal money are operating at an acceptable level of performance—meaning that students are graduating in sufficient numbers and obtaining jobs with good earnings. There is little talk among federal officials about the longstanding strengths of accreditation, all of which revolve around faculty. I would tell faculty that fighting for the strengths of accreditation is the same as fighting for their intellectual independence and academic leadership. Accreditation’s strengths are advocacy for a fundamental reliance on peer review, formative evaluation, and quality improvement. They include advocacy for academic freedom and the central commitment to mission. Faculty authority and leadership in the classroom, in research, and in the community cannot be preserved in the face of atrophying commitment to peer review, formative evaluation, mission, and academic freedom. Unless faculty work with us to maintain these strengths, accreditation in the future may look more like an accountability undertaking and less like the quality improvement effort it is intended to be.

One last question. We suspect a lot of ACUE-credentialed faculty members would love to be part of CHEA’s National Quality Dialogue. Can we host a session?

You bet!

What to read next: The Fractal Educator by Natasha Jankowski and Ken O’Donnell

Looking back at my undergraduate education, I now fondly remember a physiological psychology course. It met early, at what felt like 5:30 a.m. Although I needed several cans of Mountain Dew to wake up and get there, I never considered missing a class. It wasn’t that the professor had a strict attendance policy, or the caffeine high, or that I was an exceptionally disciplined student (I wasn’t). It was the professor’s engagement. 

Every morning, Dr. Ed Yeterian would have the time of his life. He would discuss brain areas, their locations, and their functions with obvious and unbridled excitement. I never considered missing class because his engagement in his material was contagious. I wanted to learn more because he genuinely wanted to teach it. His engagement fueled my engagement, and I did far better in the class than I might have otherwise. 

The Trickle-Down Engagement Model

Inspired by the experience with Dr. Yeterian, my graduate students and I wondered about the effects of teacher engagement. The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) focuses on ways to increase student engagement. We reasoned that if teachers were thoroughly and genuinely engaged in their content, then their engagement would trickle down, with students empathizing with that engagement and consequently being more engaged themselves. We also predicted that this process would positively impact student learning and manifest in various learning assessments. 

My graduate students and I developed a research program to test empirically the predictions of our Trickle Down Engagement Model, with findings that supported our predictions. We found consistently that as students perceive their teachers to be more engaged in the content they teach, students themselves report being more engaged in that content. Further, as a professor’s level of engagement increases, so does student performance across a variety of learning assessments including quizzes and exams. 

Ways to Be More Engaged in Your Teaching

Teaching is only one of my responsibilities, but I find it—and work to make it—the most enjoyable. Focusing on your own engagement may sound selfish. However, when instructors focus on our own intrinsic motivation for the teaching experience, the data show that it will not only be better for us; it’s better for our students, too. 

Our research also identified ways to be more engaged in your teaching that can be easily incorporated in any class. Some of our favorites include:

• Consider and promote the value of the material. Share with your students your reasons for why you decided to include particular content in your syllabus. Or if the course was developed by a curriculum designer, why your field considers the material important. Let them know that scholars have spent their careers uncovering the knowledge you’ll be discussing. Help your students consider the context of that information in the curriculum, your field, and the world.

• Use “cue statements” to indicate your own engagement. Your engagement should be palpable if it’s to trickle down to students. Throughout your discussions, use “cue statements” to explain why you believe the material is “interesting,” “important,” “relevant,” “valuable,” and “engaging.”

• Be authentic. This process doesn’t work if you are not genuinely engaged in your content and in teaching it. If you don’t know why a section of your course content is engaging, perhaps speak with a colleague who does. Find the reason why—and if you can’t, you may want to reconsider why it’s assigned.

• Embrace teaching as an oasis. Our classes—in rooms or online—can be amazing places. The rest of the world—university politics and budget issues, the seemingly unfair demands of peer reviewers, one’s cranky children—all have to wait while we teach and learn with our students. This time is an opportunity to share the ideas we love and inspire others to love the exploration too. I thank my students, on a regular basis, for this opportunity.

Engage!

As college instructors, we have the best job in the world. We get to share with our students the aspects of our fields that captivated our own attention as students. I walk into class excited to teach every day. I get to share not only the information, but also my love for it and for teaching it. I get to focus on enjoying my teaching experience. Consistent with our Trickle Down Engagement Model, my students also engage more and perform better. By focusing on my own engagement, I am able to create both a more enjoyable experience for myself and a more transformative experience for my students, just like Dr. Yeterian did for me as his face lit up while discussing the frontal lobe on those early mornings long ago. 

Donald A. Saucier, Ph.D., is a professor of psychological sciences and University Distinguished Teaching Scholar at Kansas State University. Dr. Saucier is featured in ACUE’s module “Promoting a Civil Learning Environment.” His social psychological research examines the factors that contribute to expressions of antisocial and prosocial behavior, and he is interested in the processes behind faculty and student engagement in teaching and learning. He also shares skills and techniques in his “Engage the Sage” videos.

We’re delighted to share the results of two new studies that find improved outcomes among students taught by ACUE-credentialed faculty members at two leading public research universities:

• At Rutgers University-Newark, students were significantly more likely to earn A, B, or C grades in courses taught by ACUE-credentialed faculty than in comparison classes

• At the University of Nevada, Reno, students gave stronger marks on course evaluations—that improved over time—for ACUE-credentialed faculty, and earned higher grades than comparison course sections

These two studies measured outcomes from 106 ACUE-credentialed faculty members and 19,338 impacted students (non-unique) in a longitudinal comparison. They join ACUE’s large body of independently-validated research showing similar—and positive—student impact.

“We are very encouraged by these initial, quantitative observations. They tangibly show that students respond positively to the pedagogy employed by faculty who have taken the ACUE course,” said Kevin Carman, executive vice president and provost at University of Nevada, Reno. “It is also good news for faculty as they pursue their goal of promotion and tenure. On a broader scale, I see this is an important step in advancing our ongoing commitment to a culture of student success that is facilitated by excellence in teaching.”

The findings from RU-Newark—the most diverse university in the country–show how effective instruction promotes greater equity. Another recent study at Texas Woman’s University found a course completion gap eliminated between Black/African American and other students.

“A particular strength of these newest findings is the sustained impact over time,” said Meghan Snow, ACUE’s executive director of research. “Overall, we’re finding positive outcomes in R1s and community colleges and private liberal arts institutions, in urban and rural setting nationwide.”

By Harry Brighouse

For four years I read more syllabi than any one person ever should. With colleagues on our university’s Curriculum Committee, we vetted all new course proposals, which had to include a syllabus specifying how students would be graded. The wide variety of approaches to student participation was striking.

Most syllabi encouraged, but did not formally grade, participation. In some, participation constituted as much as 50% of the grade. A good number measured it as attendance by exacting a price for more than a specified number of absences. But few clearly detailed what counted as quality participation and how the faculty member would monitor it.

Unfamiliar with the practice, I started asking faculty why they graded participation and what they counted. The standard response was that you have to grade it, “otherwise students won’t talk.”

I was skeptical. Whereas we can provide students with a reasonable understanding of what is required when writing an essay, taking a test, setting up an experiment, or making a presentation, participation is vaguer. But let’s assume that participation is, as colleagues tended to say, speaking in class—an action that is, in principle, readily observable and gradable. A number of problems arise.

The first problem is obvious: It’s not just talking, but talking productively, that we care about. Saying things that are interesting and useful to the conversation is a sign of good participation; saying things that are off-topic is a sign of bad participation. If we’re going to grade students’ talking, we should focus on quality, not quantity.

Students need to know this. But once they do, some feel pressure to impress you with correct or pat comments. In setting expectations, it’s hard to overstate that quality includes getting things wrong—for good reason. As a recent graduate wrote to me, “One thing I’m especially grateful for: I’m more willing to risk getting things wrong in discussion and writing than I used to be because you made it clear in class that making mistakes is part of engaging rigorously with philosophy and not something to fear. That seems obvious now, but it wasn’t always.”

The second is the “zero sum” problem. By comparison, when writing an essay, one student does not diminish the opportunity available to another student to write her essay. But class time is finite. One student talking, however well, reduces the time available to others. We can mitigate this some by continuing conversations online. But the unintended consequence remains: If it’s a competition for “air time,” talkative students pursuing a strong participation grade necessarily limit their classmates’ opportunities to get the good grade too.

Third are the “interaction effects.” Whereas the quality of one student’s essay does not affect the quality of another student’s submission, conversations are interactive and unpredictable. A well-intentioned conversational gambit could still provoke low-quality responses. Good moderation can only mitigate, not eliminate, the effects. If you doubt that, think about the worst 25% of department meetings you attended last year.

Finally, the quality of discussion is in very large part a function of the skill of the teacher. Even well-prepared and skilled students can participate badly if we’ve not cultivated our own ability to manage discussion well—to give students the right guidance for preparation, respectfully deflect irrelevancies, ask the right questions, get students to engage with one another, induce shy speakers, and prevent the verbose from dominating. The last is especially important: If we don’t manage dominant talkers, the rest cannot participate.

Given these shortcomings, grading participation on who talks and who doesn’t reminds me of William Bruce Cameron’s comment (often misattributed to Albert Einstein) that “not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

What else should “count”? Students participate by flicking through their text to find the relevant passage and point it out to a neighbor, by listening intently to their peers, by indicating through their body language that an idea is worth considering, or by noticing that someone else wants to say something and drawing them into the conversation.

I want my students to be doing all of these things—participation as engagement—and I try to consistently make my expectations clear. This includes what they should do and should try to avoid—so they don’t think that only talking, and any kind of talking, counts. Various strategies can encourage these broader forms of participation: getting to know your students, having them learn one another’s names, cold calling, and above all, carefully formulating discussion prompts and purposefully moderating the ensuing conversations.

When you and your students understand exactly what counts as high-quality participation and you’re honing your skills to enable all students to participate well, most of the above problems can be neutralized.

But one challenge remains, and it gives me pause on the validity of grading participation. Again by comparison, I grade papers and exams one at a time and when I can focus on each one without distraction. I do not attempt to grade papers while also ensuring that my students are learning through a discussion that I am moderating. Even if I were excellent at running a high-quality discussion among a small group of students—and I’ve got room for improvement—I don’t think I have the mental ability to simultaneously grade their involvement in a fair and standard manner.

The human limitations on us all mean I’ve got to become a more acute observer of all the other and rich forms of participation outside of discussion. By letting my students know I’m looking for these things too—graded or ungraded—they’re likely to do them more often.