By Hannah Sabo & Taylor Stronksy
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writers
The Problem
During COVID-19, most students and professors have had to adapt to a completely online learning environment. It hasn’t been a smooth transition.
Students, in many cases, have struggled with the transition to taking classes over a computer from their home and being isolated from their friends. A recent study published in Innovative Higher Education found that many students experienced psychological distress during the early phase of the pandemic. Roughly two-thirds had a moderate level of stress, and another one-fourth of students fell into a severe stress category. Only 12 percent of students had a low level of stress.
Students also reported feeling unmotivated and less likely to perform as well as they did when classes were in person. Sara Alexander, a graduate student at Towson University, has been struggling with time management.
After more than a year of classes on Zoom and other online platforms, many students began dreading logging in to class, and engagement decreased in a lot of cases.
“Online learning was a struggle for me because of not having that human-to-human interaction,” said Kareem Press, a Towson student. “Being an MCOM major, especially, it’s hard to communicate with factors like feedback, audio errors and not seeing everyone’s face.”
Stacy Spaulding, an associate professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson, has had to adjust to teaching online. She teaches courses such as feature writing and is used to in-person interactions. She admits being tired of seeing nothing but black boxes on Zoom when students don’t turn their cameras on for class. Some students have withdrawn from her course. Getting students to be engaged in the class can be challenging.
Spaulding tries hard to interact with students and ask questions often.
“Usually, I wait about 15 seconds for students to reply to a question I propose to the class,” she said. “After that, I think it’s clear whether anyone is going to participate or not.”
The Solution
Several years before COVID-19 sent everyone online, Spaulding began using a token system that she’s continued to use since classes have gone online. This system encourages students to come to class and stay engaged with course material, and enables them to earn rewards that allow them to take ownership over their work. And it means she doesn’t have to constantly remind students to come to class.
Spaulding learned about this system through the book Specifications Grading: Restoring Rigor, Motivating Students, and Saving Faculty Time by Linda B. Nilson. The idea is to reward students for attending class, and by doing so, provide a second chance to submit an assignment.
When students attend classes, it’s marked down, and three classes attended equals one token earned. When students fill out a three-question form regarding their experience with the course so far, they can then redeem a token. Spaulding asks simple questions like what have you liked about the course this semester, or what issues have you had?
A token can be redeemed at any point in the semester to re-submit a late or failed assignment — at no penalty to the student’s grade. Graduate student Mariah Davis said she likes this system.
Spaulding said the system doesn’t just benefit students — it gives her a break as a professor, too. This way, she doesn’t feel the need to police student attendance because they are not penalized for absences. If a student comes to class, they are given credit that goes toward their token, and if they don’t, there is less of an opportunity to obtain a token. She also gives a token at the beginning of the semester — a “starter token.” How to get that starter token differs depending on the class she’s teaching. A student may also get the chance at a “bonus token.” This token may be earned by doing things like showing up to a Zoom panel discussion. When a student needs to make up work, they don’t have to negotiate with her if their situation is worthy enough to be able to do so. The student either does or doesn’t have a token to redeem.
Insights
When students are rewarded as opposed to penalized for their attendance, they are more likely to feel in control of their learning, Spaulding said. This incentivizes class attendance and gives students the assurance that they can revise or redo work if they come to class regularly. Students can earn the opportunity to work at their own pace.
Spaulding said students feel reassured about their abilities and puts more power in their hands to raise their grade. She’s learned that students have to take ownership over their work and want to be engaged.
If a professor was looking to implement this token system, he or she would need to rewrite the grading system to allow the fallback of being able to utilize the tokens to be eligible for a re-grade on an assignment.
Evidence of Effectiveness
Davis and Towson students Sara Alexander say they like this system and have benefitted from it. When they’re faced with other assignments in other classes, such as Davis with her master’s thesis, and need to focus on other tasks, they can miss class from time to time without being penalized. When they need a chance to correct an assignment that they did not perform the best on, the token system gives them this chance.
“Students usually like the token system, and for the ones who come to class and keep up with the coursework, it generally benefits them by giving them something to fall back on if they need to miss class for a personal emergency that might not be qualified under the university’s excused absences policy,” Spaulding said. “It also gives them a chance to revise and resubmit an assignment that they might not have scored too well on. Overall, students tend to express a more overall satisfaction with the course with the token system in place. Some students view the system as a free pass not to attend class, and those students usually fall behind despite the system being available to them.”
Limitations
Like most systems, this one has its downsides. Some students take advantage of knowing they are not penalized for not showing up for the online lecture, therefore they neglect attending at all. When this happens, usually students fall behind in their work as they do not have the attendances to utilize the token system. When students have passed up the offer that Spaulding proposes to both motivate and help students, there is little excuse for the missed or failed assignments students might have when they simply have not shown up for class.