Neurodivergent Students and Active Learning with Mariel Pfeifer

Today on the podcast I talk with Mariel Pfeifer, assistant professor of biology. Mariel started at Ole Miss just about a year ago as part of a cluster hire of three STEM faculty who are on the tenure track at UM doing disciplinary based education research. I was excited to hear Mariel was coming to the university because I was already familiar with her work. Back in the spring of 2023, I lead a faculty learning community on the topic of active learning in large enrollment STEM courses, and we read her study on the experiences of neurodivergent students in active learning STEM classes. 

As Mariel points out in our conversation, a lot of the traditional accommodations we use for students with learning disabilities assume that a college course is full of lectures and exams, but that’s not as true for STEM courses as it once was. Mariel shares lots of insight into the student experience in these courses and has practical advice for instructors interested in helping more students succeed. 

Episode Resources

·       Mariel Pfeifer’s lab website, https://www.pfeiferlab.com/

·       "What I Wish My Instructor Knew,” Mariel’s paper on students with ADHD and specific learning disabilities in active learning STEM courses, https://www.lifescied.org/doi/10.1187/cbe.21-12-0329

·       “Structured Reading Groups,” Derek’s November 2022 blog post about group roles, https://derekbruff.org/?p=3934 

·       “Teaching Students with ADHD with Cathryn Friel,” Intentional Teaching episode 16, https://intentionalteaching.buzzsprout.com/2069949/13140564-teaching-students-with-adhd-with-cathryn-friel 

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Transcript

Derek Bruff: 0:00

... welcome to Intentional Teaching, a podcast aimed at educators to help them develop foundational teaching skills and explore new ideas and teaching. I'm your host, Derek Bruff. I hope this podcast helps you be more intentional in how you teach and in how you develop as a teacher over time. As I record this, it's been just over a month since I left my position at the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Mississippi. I'll miss being a part of that center and the good work that Josh Eyler and his team are doing there. One thing I'll take away from my time at UM is a whole new set of colleagues, not just the CETL folks, but also the faculty and other instructors I met across campus during my time there. Today on the podcast, I'm glad to share a conversation with one of those colleagues. Mariel Pfeifer Assistant Professor of Biology. Mariel started at Ole Miss just about a year ago as part of a cluster hire of STEM faculty who were on the tenure track at UM doing disciplinary based education research. I was excited to hear Mariel was coming to the university because I was already familiar with her work. Back in the spring of 2023, I led a faculty learning community at Ole Miss on the topic of active learning and large enrollment STEM courses, and we read her study on the experiences of Neurodivergent students in active learning STEM classes. As Mariel points out in our conversation, a lot of the traditional accommodations we use for students with learning disabilities assume that a college course is full of lectures and exams. But that's not nearly as true for STEM courses as it once was. Mariel shares lots of insight into the student experience in these courses and has practical advice for instructors interested in helping more students succeed. Well, thank you, Mariel, for being on the podcast today. I'm excited to talk to you and to learn more about your work. Thanks for being here.

Mariel Pfeifer: 1:53

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here today.

Derek Bruff: 1:57

Good. Let me start with my usual opening question, which is this Can you tell us about a time when you realized you wanted to be an educator?

Mariel Pfeifer: 2:06

Yeah. So, you know, I was reflecting on this question, and I think that I've always kind of wanted to be an educator. So there wasn't really this hard realization. It's something I've always wanted to do. I was a kind of kid who played school for fun. So what has changed for me over the years has been what I wanted to teach and how I wanted to teach it. And I think it was kind of later in my career after I had graduated from my undergrad degree that I realized I wanted to be a professor. And so that led me to apply to graduate school and be on the track to where I am now.

Derek Bruff: 2:47

All right. Say a little bit more about that, because I think that's that part of your career trajectory is as important to where you are now. And it's pretty interesting.

Mariel Pfeifer: 2:55

Yeah, for sure. So in college, I was a triple major in microbiology, biology and secondary education, and I knew that I wanted to be a teacher and I thought I wanted to teach high school. So I tried that for a short amount of time and I realized that wasn't where I wanted to have a career. But I knew that I really loved to teach, especially at the undergraduate level. And so kind of through the mentors that I had. I learned that discipline based education research is an option that people can do. And I realized, oh, like I love science and I love teaching and education. And there's a whole career that you can have where you can learn science. You can still teach science, but you can do education research. And that has been what I get excited about and what I love to do. And I've been able to bring a lot of my interests into the work that I do, which I think is for me is really good.

Derek Bruff: 3:56

That's great. And I like hearing you say that one can have a career doing that because I don't I don't know that I heard that message 15 or 20 years ago when I started in higher ed.

Mariel Pfeifer: 4:05

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I, I don't think I knew and it's been I've had a lot of like stops along the way and kind of it's been a meandering journey. But I'm pretty excited to be here today.

Derek Bruff: 4:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I was excited to learn that you were coming to the University of Mississippi because I was already familiar with your work. At least your 2022 paper on the experiences of students with ADHD in active learning classrooms. Yeah, let's talk about that. That paper. Like what motivated that that project? And how did you go about pursuing your research questions there?

Mariel Pfeifer: 4:45

Yeah, So I guess this kind of goes back to my meandering journey. So for a while I was really interested in disability services and I worked all through undergrad in a disability services office. And after I had graduated and tried teaching for a minute, then I explored, you know, being in a DSO as a career interest. And I worked there for a number of years before graduate school and when I worked as a coordinator. And I also helped administer our office's extended time exam accommodations schedule. I realized how little was really known about the experiences of STEM students with disabilities is across the board. And I could see that, you know, when I talked to instructors, they were really interested in learning how to better support students who are using accommodations, but they didn't really know how. And at the time, you know, like I could lean into some of the things that I knew working from students and with my own experiences. But I would say there wasn't really a strong research base for those recommendations. And I saw I saw a real need, and that's why I wanted to go to graduate school. And so to do that type of work, to learn more about students experiences and to start generating some empirical evidence for instructors to use in their teaching. So that's really where the motivation for that study came through. And I think I was really lucky to land at the university of Georgia, where I got to work with Dr. Julie Stanton as my advisor, and she said Yes, and she's one of the first people who ever said yes to my research idea and just helped me kind of shepherd me through this process. And so, you know, she helped me design the study that we did together and form partnerships with some of the DSO offices, which I think was really important for doing this work.

Derek Bruff: 6:47

Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So what? So you did some qualitative research, right? So. So walk us through kind of how you went about doing that, and then we'll talk about some of your findings.

Mariel Pfeifer: 6:59

Yeah, absolutely. So, yes, this was a qualitative research study, and the reason we wanted to use that type of design was because of how I'm going to say exploratory. This work is, but right. There's not like a survey we could really go out and give to get some of these data. And so what we did is we really leaned into some of the previous work that had been done around active learning. And so we used some existing research to help inform like what could be possible active learning strategies that students could experience in their courses. And so during the interviews, we asked students, you know, we gave them cards with all of these different active learning practices, and we asked them, Hey, like in your STEM courses, what are the practices that you've encountered? And so they could name some specific practices and they could also tell us more like what from their own perspective, counted as active learning. And then we would just ask them to walk us through their experiences with that particular practice. And we got a lot of data. And for a while, you know, as this I did the study as a graduate student, I was like, How are we going to make sense of all these data? And it took me a long time to think about that. And so we just really leaned into students experiences and helping us make sense of all of the things that we learned.

Derek Bruff: 8:28

Now, the students in your study, it's right there in the title. These are STEM majors with ADHD and specific learning disabilities.

Mariel Pfeifer: 8:37

Mm hmm.

Derek Bruff: 8:37

So I think I know what ADHD is, but what what did you mean by specific learning disabilities?

Mariel Pfeifer: 8:43

Yeah. So by that we meant students with like with conditions that in the DSM five are called like dyslexia were formally called dyslexia dysgraphia and dyscalculia.

Derek Bruff: 8:55

Okay.

Mariel Pfeifer: 8:56

Yep. And so in our study.

Derek Bruff: 8:58

So I know what those three things are, but I bet not all of our listeners do.

Mariel Pfeifer: 9:02

Oh yeah. Good point. Dyslexia is a specific learning disability in reading dysgraphia is a specific learning disability in writing, and dyscalculia is a specific learning disability in math. And those disabilities and ADHD often co-occur. And so for our study we were really interested in students experiences as folks with invisible disabilities, both navigating self advocacy. So we have some data about self advocacy in that paper, but also their experiences in active learning.

Derek Bruff: 9:39

Okay. Yeah, and I guess we would put all of those under the umbrella of neuro divergence. Now using kind of the current language for this. And it occurs to me that if, if I think about the kind of accommodations as I was that were suggested to me as an instructor years ago, they did kind of assume that I was going to be lecturing in class and giving a lot of exams. Right. I mean, like there's note taking and then there's extra time. And those were kind of the two big accommodations. But STEM courses don't look like that all the time anymore. There's a lot more active learning given all the research on the effectiveness of active learning. And so I can I can see why there's there would be a lack of research on on students with these more invisible disabilities. Yeah.

Mariel Pfeifer: 10:32

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that's where we really wanted to know students own experiences as a starting point so that we could do more studies and also generate some recommendations for instructors.

Derek Bruff: 10:46

Yeah. So let's talk about some of your findings. What what were what were some of the opportunities and the challenges that these students encountered in active learning STEM courses?

Mariel Pfeifer: 10:55

Yeah. So I think, you know, a lot of what we found in terms of why students liked active learning was kind of already known in the literature. So they talked about how active learning could help them, you know, identify what they understood or did not understood, understand about the content they're learning in class so it can help promote their metacognition, which is, you know, part of what we know makes active learning. Effective students also appreciated that, you know, an active learning classrooms, they don't have to listen to a lecture the whole time. And so there's opportunities to pause and process and to engage with their peers to help them learn.

Derek Bruff: 11:36

So and how might that be particularly useful for Neurodivergent students?

Mariel Pfeifer: 11:41

You know, when we are using some active learning, we're also using some principles of universal design for learning, which we know can help a lot of different folks in the room. So if you have differing processing speeds, right, it can slow things down. So you have a chance to process what the instructor is saying and apply that content yourself. And it also is giving you multiple I guess it's giving you multiple modes of engagement, right? So it's not just listening. You might be able to write or talk or even draw out some of your ideas which can support Neurodivergent students. We organize. Like there's a lot of different types of practices, and so we grouped them. And so some of the more, I would say, kind of obvious active learning practices that students talked about were like clicker questions, group work. And we also talked our participants talked about flipped courses as well.

Derek Bruff: 12:36

Okay.

Mariel Pfeifer: 12:37

And so for each of those types of active learning participants explained reasons why it worked for them and reasons why it did not work for them. And so what we were most interested in, and we think instructors might be most interested in too, are the reasons why it didn't work for our students. And so, like, for example, we found for clicker questions that just the way that instructor is implementing those clicker questions can really affect students perceptions of learning. So we have this one quote that I love that's like kind of etched into my brain. It's about when instructors might show, you know, ask the class an open response type question and you're going to get, you know, maybe 100 people texting in response. And one of our participants said, you know, when that instructor shows me all of those responses, we call it like the flood of free response questions that in their brain they're just noticing all of the different formatting errors or differences. in all those responses like, yes, So.

Derek Bruff: 13:48

The varying capitalization, the misspellings. Right. I've I've experienced this too, right. Where you have a bunch of free response responses and yeah, it's it's you can see that you'll see this in word clouds even where it's the same word, but it's it's capitalized differently or spelled differently. And it actually shows up multiple times. So so that student, it was hard for them to kind of look at other aspects of that of that set of responses. They were focused on, on those kind of surface features, I guess.

Mariel Pfeifer: 14:19

Yeah, Yeah. That's a good way to explain it. Focusing on the surface features and they explained like, you know, for them that 5 minutes or whatever that the instructor is explaining what's happening with those responses, the content, that's not really what they're paying attention to. So that is a pretty easy fix right? For instructors, maybe think about not showing those responses or trying to curate those responses a little bit more before showing them to the class. And that could be one way that you could optimize some of that learning for students in your course.

Derek Bruff: 14:54

So instead of showing them the giant wall of responses to either not show it and just talk about what's in the responses or I know some of the systems will allow you to kind of pick one of the responses and make it larger so that you could kind of focus on that one response at a time.

Mariel Pfeifer: 15:11

Yeah, absolutely. And I think there are some settings in different response system so that people wouldn't have to see all of those responses coming in at the same time. So yeah, that was one example related to like clicker questions. The other thing that people talked our participants talked about in our study was really valuing the instructors explanation of why a particular clicker question answer is correct or not correct. And I feel like I, you know this better than I do, but right, like part of peer instruction, which is what clicker questions are also referred to as within the literature, is really structuring how the instructor responds to students ideas. And what we're finding in our work in this paper and ongoing. Right, Like not all instructors are implementing that practice the way that the designers of that practice have wanted people to do it right. So we found for sure that when instructors just kind of like, all right, the answer is A and just move on, the students are missing why it's A right and so that time they don't feel supported in their learning.

Derek Bruff: 16:26

So I'll often when I'm explaining this this practice to instructors I'll say you know you run this multiple choice question. You see that 85% of your students get it, get the right answer, right? So that's a good sign. But you still want to spend a little time with that question because one 15% of your students didn't pick the right answer. And some of those 85% probably guessed their way to the right answer. And so you still want to take a moment to talk about the right answer and why it is the right answer. And so is that the kind of explanation that you're talking about that would be really important for many students?

Mariel Pfeifer: 17:05

Yes, exactly. And if you look at our paper, one of our themes was instructor explains thinking. And that is what students are really wanting and what is valuable about going to class for them, right?

Derek Bruff: 17:20

Yes, Right. And, you know, and it's an interesting dance because I think in a traditional lecture, the instructor is kind of explaining they're thinking for 50 or 90 minutes solid, and that's too much, too much of that. But to have this interactive piece, but then to have a moment where the instructor says, and here's what we need to pull out of this, here's the idea, here's the reasoning, here's the concept that we're dealing with. That summary moment is very important, even if it's fairly brief.

Mariel Pfeifer: 17:47

Yes. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And I think it's, you know, as developing as an instructor myself, I try to remember that because I think when you're thinking about entering into active learning as an instructor, you're like, okay, I need them to get I need them to do things. But it's also important that debriefing exactly like you're saying, and summarizing those key takeaways that you want students to take with them, you know, from the activity that they've just engaged in.

Derek Bruff: 18:16

What about group work? Because that's a very common component of active learning. What are some of the what did your participants say about in terms of both the advantages but also the challenges with group work?

Mariel Pfeifer: 18:29

For sure. A group work came up a lot in our in our interviews and I think when, you know, group work was effective, like students appreciated the chance to interact and explain their ideas to their peers and to hear their peers explanation of particular topics. But one thing we were really interested in was the role of like assigning student group roles during group work, because that is considered, from my standpoint, like one of the better like inclusive practices that you can use as an instructor when using group work, right? You want everyone in the group to have a role and to understand what they're responsible for. And our participants talked about how being assigned a particular role in their group can actually really hinder their experiences in the classroom. So, for example, one of our participants who has an SLD in reading and so specific learning, disability in reading explained that when they are assigned being the reader or the writer in the group for them that is kind of a horrible situation, right? It can really intensify some of the pressure that they're feeling in the group and they felt that their learning would be much better supported if they could have a different type of role in the group. And so that's one of the recommendations that we offer to instructors is, yes, have have the group roles that's important, but also be flexible and give people outs so that they wouldn't have to be in that role for all the reasons that I just mentioned.

Derek Bruff: 20:07

Yeah. You know, and one thing I've been wondering about group roles for a while now is that I think when I started in Higher Ed and I heard people talk about group roles, they were very about they were focused more on group processes. So there's a reader, there's a note taker, there's a timekeeper, there's a, you know, someone who's going to present at the end to the whole class, right? It was. But then I ran into some sociologists who were looking at more of the cognitive processes that you're wanting students to engage in. And so they would have students who were the question asker the devil's advocate, the creative connector, or making a connection between whatever they're talking about and other things in the course or outside of the course. And I felt like those cognitive roles seemed more authentic in a way, and I wonder if that would be a kind of a better direction to go in terms of those cognitive processes are the are the ones that I want all of my students to practice, right? Regardless of who's taking notes or who's keeping time. Right.

Mariel Pfeifer: 21:10

Yeah, I think that's really intriguing because, you know, putting my discipline based education researcher hat on here, I don't know of many studies that are looking at that direction. I think there are some that are getting off the ground and looking at those types of like teamwork dynamics in groups more explicitly. But I'm really intrigued by that idea. And I think it also has to do with maybe the type of task that students are you're asking your students to engage in, because I could imagine, you know, the creative connector, right? That might not always be relevant to. Sure the things that you want them to do. But I'm intrigued.

Derek Bruff: 21:51

So roles is one way to structure that group conversation. Are there other structures or aspects of the group conversation where these students said this was helpful or this was less helpful?

Mariel Pfeifer: 22:04

Yeah. So in terms of the group dynamics within our study, there were some other aspects. So definitely like timing came up like within the group work and some students perceived that if the actual interaction between students wasn't incentivized in the course. Right. Like some students are just going to power through or go really fast through the activity. And maybe not all of the students in the group are going to be there with them. And so that I think, is a concern that instructors should be aware of and to think about how they can incentivize if that's the goal. If you want students to actually work together, how are you going to incentivize that so that people are completing the tasks along the same timelines and things like that? And so it could go back to some of those cognitive roles that you were mentioning. That could be another way to go about that.

Derek Bruff: 23:02

Yeah, there's a term in the group dynamic literature about called Interdependence, where you're trying to create group activities where everyone has a role to play and the group can't really function or complete the project without everyone contributing in a meaningful way. Yeah. And so, you know, sometimes, sometimes you accomplish that by giving a really challenging project where one person doesn't have enough time or resources to finish it. And so now you're depending on others. But sometimes that just results in kind of a divide and conquer and you're not actually kind of leveraging group learning in that case.

Mariel Pfeifer: 23:39

The other thing that I think about in terms of group work and Neurodivergent students is giving people options for multiple modalities to engage in the work. So some people write they might not think and process while talking to other people do. And so right, giving people the opportunity to like sit with a question and write out some ideas to get started I think can be helpful. And again, I guess that goes back to how you're designing the task and maybe some of those interdependent pieces, right? So some someone is responsible for this aspect and someone is responsible for that aspect. We have to work together to complete it.

Derek Bruff: 24:21

Yeah. Or to say, you know, maybe you need to come up with lots of examples of some particular concepts, right? And so giving everyone a chance to do that independently before you start to put those examples together and look for similarities or differences or something.

Mariel Pfeifer: 24:35

Yeah. And I think the other kind of aspect, I don't know if this is interdependence, but in some of the ongoing research we're doing now with Neurodivergent students in group work, we hear folks talk about them really valuing the chance to do deep dives into ideas with their peers. But not all peers are like ready for those like in-depth types of conversations. And so I think kind of balancing those aspects too, like giving people the chance to do deep dives into aspects that are really interesting to them. And so maybe bringing in some options for student autonomy, right? Like here are three different things that you're going to have to do in the group. Maybe choose the one that's most interesting to you, and that might be a way to facilitate better group work experiences for everyone.

Derek Bruff: 25:22

Yeah, Yeah. So let me put my old man hat on for a minute. So let's suppose hypothetically that I got into active learning instruction 15 or 20 years ago and I figured out some things that really work for me in, you know, maybe a math class or something. And, and, and maybe I've kind of coasted for a while, right? I figured out my strategies and they seemed to work. And, you know, they're research based, but maybe the research came out two decades ago. What are some what are some tweaks that I might want to think about making to my active learning instruction, given what you've been finding in your in your research?

Mariel Pfeifer: 26:04

Hmm.

Derek Bruff: 26:05

Hypothetically, of course.

Mariel Pfeifer: 26:06

Hypothetically. Hypothetically. So yeah. I think can you give me a little bit more context, maybe your particular strategy that you want a little bit maybe you're wondering about?

Derek Bruff: 26:19

Well, we haven't talked about the flipped classroom yet, so if I think about, like, how I want students to come to class prepared so that we can make the most of our time together, what are some some thoughtful ways to approach that here in 2024?

Mariel Pfeifer: 26:34

Yeah. Okay. Thank you for giving me a little bit more here to think about to help scaffold my my response. Okay. So I think one thing that I found really interesting in our data was how important, like just organizing materials are for students. And as someone who maybe struggles a little bit with my own organization, right, the way that an instructor has organized something might not be intuitive for students. And so just making maybe even giving students the opportunity to give you feedback and how your materials are structured or organized could be really helpful and a small way to help students out a little bit more and get them more ready to engage, or at least when they open up the course shell right. It's not confusing for them to find what they need and to in our in our data, participants are really like do videos over extensive readings and as instructors are giving readings, having some highlights or some things that they should be paying attention to while going through the reading is really valuable. And I think a lot of folks who use flipped classrooms a lot tend to do that already. So that might not be like cutting edge tweaks you can make right now. But things are in our data. Students really valued. So how those materials are organized and as well as making it clear what students should be getting from those materials and why the instructor has maybe organized them in the way that they've organized them too are all helpful bits of information for students.

Derek Bruff: 28:12

Well, and I'm thinking about so I never was one to use videos. When I flip my classroom, I would lean in to a well-chosen textbook and have students look at particular parts of that before class. But even then, that's just one modality, right? And so I guess thinking about how could I, you know, would it be helpful for me to take a page from my textbook and read it out loud into my microphone and make that audio file available to students as an option instead of reading just the straight text?

Mariel Pfeifer: 28:42

Yeah, for sure. Or even I think for me what I've been thinking about as I'm choosing my own textbook and things like that is making sure, okay, is there an audio version of the textbook that students could listen to to get this information?

Derek Bruff: 28:56

Is that a thing now? Are those available?

Mariel Pfeifer: 28:58

I think so. Well, the one I've chosen that looks like an e-book, so they do have the audio version for people to listen to. So but I don't know about math. I don't know. Yeah, no, that would be harder.

Derek Bruff: 29:10

Let's talk a little bit about trust. So I know this is you've also looked at kind of students and how they disclose different disabilities. And I'm wondering how can we help our students trust us enough to be forthcoming with information that we can use to to help teach them better?

Mariel Pfeifer: 29:32

There's a lot to unpack here. So part of it is letting students know that you, as an instructor are open and supportive of students using accommodations in your course. That is not a message that STEM students are hearing from their peers. And so I think even small statements like at the start of your course can really go a long way to make students feel comfortable. I think talking about the value in having different ways of thinking and having your people's brains function in different ways is important, right? Because a lot of STEM students have an impression that, you know, if you answer the question the fastest, that's the best. Right? But that's not actually how it works. You know, like and if you think about how science is created and how we go about research, right? Like sometimes you need to think about ideas and concepts in a lot of depth. And it might not be there might not be a quick answer. And so I think talking about some of those ideas is valuable. And of course, if you feel comfortable and you yourself identify as using accommodations or being neurodivergent, I think disclosing that to your students is also really valuable because a lot of folks talk about how, you know, they think that probably instructors or doctors have are neurodivergent, but they don't know a very many that are. And so I think making that those statements clear to your students, if you feel comfortable, can go a long way. It's also about right right. Like being a good steward of information. And when people do disclose like don't inadvertently out people in the classroom like that's bad don't do that really shuts people down. Yes So yeah those are some of the ideas about trust.

Derek Bruff: 31:33

Yeah, that makes sense. And I think to the extent that you can have a plan in place so that when a student does disclose, you can say here's, you know, here's what we can do. And even to share examples of those accommodations before students disclose, because I think sometimes it's it's one thing to say, I'm happy to work with you, but if you can also say and here's some ways I've worked with students in the past, that that develops a lot of confidence that that this instructor can actually kind of meet whatever my needs are.

Mariel Pfeifer: 32:10

Yeah, absolutely. And that's something that students in our study asked for. They asked for kind of like a roadmap for how an instructor wants or will go about implementing accommodations in their course. And this is kind of maybe a little bit behind the scenes if you've never worked closely with the Disability Resource Center before. But different instructors, right, might choose, for example, for all their students to go and take extended time exams at the Disability Resource Center itself, or the instructor might choose to implement that accommodation like in their office or things like that. And so having some guidance on how you as an instructor are going to go about implementing some of those common accommodations is helpful. Helpful for students. If you think about one student, right, they have different instructors. And if all these different instructors are doing different processes for accommodations, it's a lot to manage and remember. And so I think having some guidance in place is helpful. Another thing that I've seen students or instructors do that students like is if you are having a student who's taking an exam offsite at the DRC Disability Resource Center, having a way to check in with the student to ask if they have any questions on the exam, right, That goes a long way in saying like, Hey, I have like I see you as an instructor and I want you to have the same access to me as students taking the exam in the classroom. Have. And so I think students appreciate that. If you if you can do that and have the bandwidth to do that.

Derek Bruff: 33:47

Yeah. Now, let me ask about another particular practice circling back to the kind of the peer instruction. So often I would post a multiple choice question. I would have students think about it for a couple of minutes, pick an answer, vote. We'll look at the bar graph. If there's not consensus, well then I'll say, you know, pair up with someone and talk it out. We'll do a second vote and kind of see what's changed. That's a pretty rapid process, right? I'm trying as an instructor to balance the fact that students need processing time. The fact that I've got 50 or 100 students whose processing time is very different. And so, I mean, I'm glad that I have the polling system to let me know how many of my students have answered at any given moment. And so I can kind of let that flex a little bit if they're taking longer with this question. But but there's always this kind of at some point we have to move on. I have to close the polling. I have to move to the next phase of the activity. And I feel like there's always a tension around students who might have needed more time. And I'm wondering if you if you heard that in your interviews, but then also if you have advice for an instructor and how to how to kind of manage some of those tensions, because I think it's a hard place. A hard place to be.

Mariel Pfeifer: 34:58

Yeah, I agree. It is challenging to balance. So a couple thoughts come to my mind. I think, first of all, if you are grading those responses or if they're counting for credit, I think it's really important to give people the opportunity T to turn those and those answers in at a later time, potentially if they needed additional time to formulate a response. And so having some structures in place to help with that process is important. I also think and no one talked about this, but that's an idea that I have. So I'll, I will caveat that, but I would say that, you know, it might be worthwhile, like if you can record your class and then people could go back and listen to those particular times if they wanted to have a little bit more. You know, that can give people the time to maybe hear what the instructor was saying while they were still processing. Because I know for myself that would be very helpful to have that as a resource, which one concern I always have when I present this work is that the take away is not to do active learning and that's not what we want and that's not what our results shows. So most of the time, right when active learning has been implemented as intended by the developers of that practice, students in our study reported having positive experiences. It was when instructors were really kind of go in pretty far off of the recommended practices that we noticed students really having problems. And I don't want to minimize those problems at all because for some students, right, like if it was really poorly designed or really poorly implemented, they might have to drop that class or withdraw. So it is it's serious. And we want instructors to do the best that we can. They can, but that might look like asking for help from colleagues rather than putting students through that type of situation.

Derek Bruff: 36:57

Gotcha. But the takeaway is not give up on active learning.

Mariel Pfeifer: 37:00

Yes, that is not the takeaway.

Derek Bruff: 37:03

It's to do it thoughtfully and well.

Mariel Pfeifer: 37:05

Yes, Yes.

Derek Bruff: 37:08

Well, what's next for you? What are what are some of the projects that you and your team are working on now?

Mariel Pfeifer: 37:12

Yeah. So I think I kind of alluded to in some of my comments. We're working with chemistry, education researcher Steven Podowitz Thomas on looking at student Neurodivergent students disclosure experiences during group work. So I kind of think of it as we're zooming in on group work as a specific active learning practices and trying to understand a little bit more about the conditions that students feel necessitate them disclosing they're neurodivergent or not, and how students go about disclosing to their peers. So we're excited about that project and hopefully, I don't know, we're very much in the bowels of qualitative analysis right now with that. So I don't really know where we're going, but some exciting data that should be available at some point in the future. Yeah.

Derek Bruff: 38:04

And thank you so much for being on the podcast. Mariel It was great talking with you.

Mariel Pfeifer: 38:08

Yeah, it was really good. Thank you so much.

Derek Bruff: 38:11

That was Mariel Pfeifer, assistant professor of biology at the University of Mississippi. Thanks to Mariel for taking the time to talk with me about her work. If you'd like to read her paper about students with ADHD in active learning classes, see the show notes for a link. And if you appreciated Mariel's work and haven't listened to my episode with Cathryn Friel back in episode 16 of the podcast, you should check that episode out. Cathryn's project involves students with ADHD, but in online courses, instead of active learning classrooms. I'd love to hear your thoughts on my conversation with Mariel. In the show notes, you'll find a link to send me a text message with your thoughts, and you can always email me at derek@derekbruff. org. Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the Online and Professional Education Association. In the show notes, you'll find a link to the UPCEa website where you can find out about their research. Networking Opportunities and professional development offerings. This episode of Intentional Teaching was produced and edited by me, Derek Bruff. See the show notes for links to my website. The intentional teaching newsletter and my Patreon where you can help support the.