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This week, we are featuring Micaela Flores, Outreach and Retention Specialist, within the College of Veterinary Medicine at MSU. Micaela was recognized via iteach.msu.edu's Thank and Educator Initiative! We encourage MSU community members to nominate high-impact Spartan educators (via our Thank an Educator initiative) regularly!
Read more about Micaela perspectives below. #iteachmsu's questions are bolded below, followed by their responses! 

You were recognized via the Thank an Educator Initiative. In one word, what does being an educator mean to you?  
Responsive
Share with me what this word/quality looks like in your practice?
My role is divided between undergraduate advising and youth outreach programming for traditionally underserved students. When I advise students, I am not only focused on imparting the knowledge and information they need to complete a task or prepare for an opportunity, I focus on where the student is in terms of their familiarity with the systems, departments, or tasks they need to navigate. I listen to their concerns and take my time to understand the things that are important to them and I make sure they leave with a thorough understanding of where they are and what they need to do next. Similarly, when coordinating youth programs, I assess the audience or participants' needs, their existing knowledge and skill levels as well as the needs and desires of the agency requesting the collaboration in effort to create programs and events responsive to the groups’ unique needs.
Have your ideas on this changed over time? if so how?
If I was asked what the role of an educator was as a recent college graduate and high school college adviser, I would have responded with something along the lines of, educators impart knowledge and share information relevant to their educational role. I now understand the importance of meeting students where they are and tailoring my approach or method to fit the needs of the students’ I work with. A one size fits all approach does not work when one’s goal is to provide equitable programs and services.
Tell me more about your educational “setting.” This can include, but not limited to departmental affiliations, community connections, co-instructors, and students. (Aka, where do you work?)
I am a member of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Office of Admissions, Student Life, and Inclusivity. My work is entirely grant funded through the State of Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity King-Chavez-Parks Initiative for students from underserved backgrounds both financially and academically. I provide academic advising for undergraduate pre-veterinary and veterinary-nursing students as they work towards application and admission to the Veterinary Nursing and Doctor of Veterinary Medicine programs. I also work with youth from our target locations which include Detroit, and Lansing. I have also partnered with groups from Flint and Grand Rapids.CVM, MSU & Community connections:

MSU GEAR UP
MSU GATE Guppy
MSU Latinx Student Success Committee
MSU Assessment and Metrics Working Group
MSU Pre-College Committee
MSU CANR, Pathfinders, AIMS and AIMS-B
MSU Admissions, Dia de La Familia, African American Family Day
MSU CVM Enrichment Summer Program
MSU Office of Cultural and Academic Transitions
MSU Collaborative Learning Center
MSU Student Groups – ASMSU, MSU Preveterinary Club, Delta Tau Lambda Sorority Incorporated.
MSU Dia de La Mujer Conference
MSU New Student Orientation
Michigan Humane (former Michigan Humane Society)
Capital Area College Access Network – CapCan Launch Your Dream Conference
Detroit International Academy for Young Women
Clinton County RESA Career Expo
Flint Area and Capital Area Michigan Career Quest Fairs
Michigan Veterinary Conference
The Fledge – Lansing
Detroit Horsepower

What is a challenge you experience in your educator role?
Time is the biggest challenge. When I began practicing inclusive and responsive pedagogical methods, the amount of time I spent in advising appointments increased significantly. I regularly went over my 30 minute time slots. Now that I am familiar with responsive strategies, appointments are not as long. While time is a challenge it is important to embrace new practices and allow time to learn and adjust.
Any particular “solutions” or “best practices” you’ve found that help you support student success at the university despite/in the face of this? 
As an educator, it is important for me to know my students feel heard and leave with a comprehensive understanding of what was discussed. I have found the technology we have at our fingertips can be leveraged to provide facilitation strategies inclusive of all learners. For example, I always share my screen or seat my students in an area where they can see what I am doing or looking for, I follow up with an email summarizing our discussion, and/or I invite the student to follow up with me via email or by scheduling another appointment with me if we run out of time.
What are practices you utilize that help you feel successful as an educator?
In addition to the best practices listed above, I have created event planning templates to ensure I do not miss or forget critical information. I like to set reminders on my calendar to follow up with students who may be struggling academically as well as reading ESAE reports and following up with students to either congratulate them for their progress or intervene if they are not doing well. This enables me to practice proactive and intrusive advising strategies.
I feel most successful as an educator when I receive positive feedback or sentiments of gratitude from my students, when I see a student who was placed on probation return to good academic standing, or when a student I have advised, supervised, and/or written a letter of recommendation for is admitted to veterinary school.
What topics or ideas about teaching and learning would you like to see discussed on the iteach.msu.edu platform? Why do you think this conversation is needed at msu?
I would like to see more information relevant to equitable practices to improve the ways in which we teach diverse students in our courses as well as ways to enhance the programs and services we offer. Practicing culturally inclusive or responsive pedagogy seems difficult on the surface or when the concepts are new, but there are simple changes we can embrace that make a world of difference to our students. I would like to learn more from educators who are also doing this work.
What are you looking forward to (or excited to be a part of) next semester?
Next semester, I will continue to make progress towards the Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education, M.A. program which is where I have picked up inclusive and responsive strategies for teaching and learning. I am excited to continue to learn and improve my educational practice to help my students succeed in higher education.

Don't forget to celebrate individuals you see making a difference in teaching, learning, or student success at MSU with #iteachmsu's Thank an Educator initiative. You might just see them appear in the next feature! 

Formative assessments can provide crucial data to help instructors evaluate pedagogical effectiveness and address students' learning needs. The shift to online instruction and learning in the past year emphasized the need for innovative ways to administer assessments that support student learning and success. Faculty often use multiple-choice (MC) assessments due to ease of use, time and other resource constraints. While grading these assessments can be quick, the closed-ended nature of the questions often does not align with real scientific practices and can limit the instructor's ability to evaluate the heterogeneity of student thinking. Students often have mixed understanding that include scientific and non-scientific ideas. Open-ended or Constructed Response (CR) assessment questions, which allow students to construct scientific explanations in their own words, have the potential to reveal student thinking in a way MC questions do not. The results of such assessments can help instructors make decisions about effective pedagogical content and approaches. We present a case study of how results from administration of a CR question via a free-to-use constructed response classifier (CRC) assessment tool led to changes in classroom instruction. The question was used in an introductory biology course and focuses on genetic information flow. Results from the CRC assessment tool revealed unexpected information about student thinking, including naïve ideas. For example, a significant fraction of students initially demonstrated mixed understanding of the process of DNA replication. We will highlight how these results influenced change in pedagogy and content, and as a result improved student understanding.To access a PDF of the "Automated analyses of written responses reveal student thinking in STEM" poster, click here.Description of the Poster 
Automated analyses of written responses reveal student thinking in STEM 
Jenifer N. Saldanha, Juli D. Uhl, Mark Urban-Lurain, Kevin Haudek 
Automated Analysis of Constructed Response (AACR) research group 
CREATE for STEM Institute, Michigan State University 
Email: jenifers@msu.edu 
Website: beyondmultiplechoice.org  
QR code (for website):  
 
Key highlights: 

Constructed Response (CR) questions allow students to explain scientific concepts in their own words and reveal student thinking better than multiple choice questions. 


The Constructed Response Classifier (CRC) Tool (free to use: beyondmultiplechoice.org) can be used to assess student learning gains 

In an introductory biology classroom: 

Analyses by the CRC tool revealed gaps in student understanding and non-normative ideas. 
The instructor incorporated short term pedagogical changes and recorded some positive outcomes on a summative assessment. 
Additional pedagogical changes incorporated the next semester led to even more positive outcomes related to student learning (this semester included the pivot to online instruction). 

The results from this case study highlight the effectiveness of using data from the CRC tool to address student thinking and develop targeted instructional efforts to guide students towards a better understanding of complex biological concepts.   
Constructed Response Questions as Formative Assessments 

Formative assessments allow instructors to explore nuances of student thinking and evaluate student performance.  
Student understanding often includes scientific and non-scientific ideas [1,2].  


Constructed Response (CR) questions allow students to explain scientific concepts in their own words and reveal student thinking better than multiple choice questions [3,4]. 

Constructed Response Classifier (CRC) tool 

A formative assessment tool that automatically predicts ratings of student explanations.  
This Constructed Response Classifier (CRC) tool generates a report that includes: 


categorization of student ideas from writing related to conceptual understanding. 
web diagrams depicting the frequency and co-occurrence rates of the most used ideas and relevant terms. 

CRC Questions in the Introductory Biology Classroom :  
A Case study 
Students were taught about DNA replication and the central dogma of Biology. 
Question was administered as online homework, completion credit provided. Responses collected were analyzed by the CRC tool. 
CRC question: 
The following DNA sequence occurs near the middle of the coding region of a gene.  DNA   5'  A A T G A A T G G* G A G C C T G A A G G A  3'     
There is a G to A base change at the position marked with an asterisk. Consequently, a codon normally encoding an amino acid becomes a stop codon.  How will this alteration influence DNA replication? 

Part 1 of the CRC question used to detect student confusion between the central dogma processes.  
Related to the Vision & Change core concept 3 “Information Flow, Exchange, and Storage" [5], adapted from the Genetics Concept Assessment [6,7]. 

Insight on Instructional Efficacy from CRC Tool 
Table 1: Report score summary revealed that only a small fraction of students provided correct responses post instruction. (N = 48 students). 




Student responses 


Spring 2019 




Incorrect 


45% 




Incomplete/Irrelevant 


32% 




Correct 


23% 




 
Sample incorrect responses:  
Though both incorrect, the first response below demonstrates understanding of a type of mutation and the second one uses the context of gene expression. 

“This is a nonsense mutation and will end the DNA replication process prematurely leaving a shorter DNA strand” (spellchecked) 


“It will stop the DNA replication… This mutation will cause a gene to not be expressed” 

CRC report provided: 

Response score summaries 
Web diagrams of important terms 
Term usage and association maps 

The instructor Identified scientific and non-scientific ideas in student thinking  
This led to: 
Short term pedagogical changes, same semester  

During end of semester material review, incorporated: 


Small group discussions about the central dogma.  
Discussions about differences between DNA replication, and transcription and translation. 


Worksheets with questions on transcribing and translating sequences. 

Figure one: 
The figure depicts an improvement in student performance observed in the final summative assessment.  
Percentage of students who scored more than 95% on a related question: 
In the unit exam = 71% 
Final summative exam = 79% 
Pedagogical Changes Incorporated in the Subsequent Semester 
CR questions: 

Explain the central dogma. 


List similarities and differences between the processes involved. 
Facilitated small group discussions for students to explain their responses. 

 
Worksheets and homework:  
Transcribe and translate DNA sequences, including ones with deletions/additions.  
Students encouraged to create their own sequences for practice.  
Revisited DNA replication via clicker questions and discussions, while students were learning about transcription and translation. 
Table 2: 68% of students in the new cohort provided correct responses to the CRC question post instruction. (N = 47 students). 




Student Responses 


Spring 2020 




Incorrect 


19% 




Incomplete/Irrelevant 


13% 




Correct 


68% 




Conclusions 
The results from this case study highlight the effectiveness of using data from the CRC tool to address student thinking and develop targeted instructional efforts to guide students towards a better understanding of complex biological concepts.   
Future Directions 

Use the analytic rubric feature in the CRC tool to obtain further insight into normative and non-normative student thinking. 
Use the clicker-based case study available at CourseSource about the processes in the central dogma [8]. 


Incorporate additional CRC tool questions in each course unit. 

Questions currently available in a variety of disciplines: 
Biology, Biochemistry, Chemistry, Physiology, and Statistics 
Visit our website beyondmultiplechoice.org and sign up for a free account 
References: 

Ha, M., Nehm, R. H., Urban-Lurain, M., & Merrill, J. E. (2011).  CBE—Life Sciences Education, 10(4), 379-393. 


Sripathi, K. N., Moscarella, R. A., et al., (2019). CBE—Life Sciences Education, 18(3), ar37. 


Hubbard, J. K., Potts, M. A., & Couch, B. A. (2017). CBE—Life Sciences Education, 16(2), ar26. 


Birenbaum, M., & Tatsuoka, K. K. (1987). Applied Psychological Measurement, 11(4), 385-395. 


 "Vision and change in undergraduate biology education: a call to action." American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, DC (2011). 


Smith, M. K., Wood, W. B., & Knight, J. K. (2008). CBE—Life Sciences Education, 7(4), 422-430. 


Prevost, L. B., Smith, M. K., & Knight, J. K. (2016). CBE—Life Sciences Education, 15(4), ar65. 


Pelletreau, K. N., Andrews, T., Armstrong, N., et al., (2016). CourseSource. 

Acknowledgments.  
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (DUE grant 1323162). Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the supporting agencies.