Episode 153 Fostering Student Engagement & Reflection in Spanish Language Learning Part 1

Welcome to Digication Scholars Conversations. I'm your host, Kelly Driscoll. In this episode, you'll hear part one of my conversation with Matthew Street, Senior Lecturer in Spanish at the University of Virginia. More links and information about today's conversation can be found on Digication's Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Full episodes of Digication Scholars Conversations can be found on YouTube or your favorite podcast app. Welcome to Digication Scholars Conversations.

I'm your host, Kelly Driscoll.

And today I am so pleased to introduce Matthew Street, a senior lecturer at the University of Virginia. Welcome Matthew. Thanks Kelly. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here and talk about ePortfolios with you today. Yeah, I'm excited to have you here too. So I wanted to just kind of let you know, I love it when there's these kind of connections with things. So I actually grew up in, uh, Stanton, Virginia, just on the other side of the mountain. And, um, I have so many.

Teachers in my family. And one of them was my dear grandmother, who was actually a Spanish teacher at Waynesboro high school for many, many years. And, um, yeah, and I've just been so excited to speak to you. Um, I did want to let you know that as I was kind of preparing for a call today, I saw a beautiful, um, quote from a student that was talking about what a wonderful teacher you are. And that, um, you emphasize creating with the language rather than memorization.

And I just love that at Digication we're so much about project based learning and, um, You know, students really developing their identity alongside their work and I just thought that that was just a wonderful description of you as a teacher and got me even more excited to, to talk to you today.

Um, I know you've been very active with ePortfolios and using Digication in a number of different ways, both for yourself personally and in the classroom and As well as part of your research, um, and your students are developing their own kind of ePortfolios, documenting what they're learning in your courses. So we have lots to chat about today. And, um, I thought I'd kick things off just with you telling our listeners a little bit about.

Your journey and how you became a senior lecturer in Spanish at UVA. Yeah. Well, thanks. And thanks for this opportunity. Yeah. My, my journey wasn't quite as linear as other people's journey. And when I was 18 years old, if you would have told me I would be sitting here now, I would have never believed you.

Um, I grew up in the South, deep South of Louisiana, near Baton Rouge, and College really wasn't something that I was in going to do, you know, so I started college right out of high school, but it didn't really work out. So I took some time off and started doing some construction work. There's a lot of construction workers in my family. And I quickly saw there's a lot of Spanish being used on these various carpentry crews.

And so I started just trying to pick it up, just trying to speak, just trying to speak and over the, over the development of a couple of years, I got pretty good with it and I was very passionate about it. And so I decided to re enroll in college. And that was a, a. An excellent idea to have that break. So I was kind of a non traditional student and I majored in Spanish at the University of Louisiana, Monroe, and did exceptionally well there.

And then applied for graduate school and went to the University of South Carolina where, um, I was just a wonderful program, a very pedagogical and applied linguistic sort of angle that, that they have opportunities to, to learn about there. So I, took those opportunities and then, um, I didn't, I was applying for jobs, but I was going to go back to work at the University of Louisiana, Monroe. And one of the conditions was to be a, uh, an ESL teacher as well. So to be certified.

So when I graduated college, I went to Costa Rica. To do a, an ESL training class for six weeks. And it was there that I interviewed for the university of Virginia. And I only had like one polo shirt and no pants, you know, just shorts. I'm on a Skype call with them. And I didn't know anything about the university of Virginia growing up in the, in the South and SEC country. Um, and so two days later they get, they offered me a job. And when I came back home.

My wife was reminding me that it's only an hour, six hours away. So we drove from South Carolina to Virginia and, and then, and then, you know, that's where, this is where I've been ever since I'm on my 11th year here. And so it's just kind of a great, a great story of, you know, figuring out what you want to do.

So it's okay if you don't know what you're going to do, you don't have to follow the path that everyone else follows in order to end up doing something at the end that you're really passionate about and that you like. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for, for sharing that story. And, you know, I'm, I'm a big fan of that kind of approach to, to life. Also, if someone had told me that I'd be sitting here doing what I am today, when I was 18, I wouldn't have believed them either.

Um, and it's something that I definitely talk, I have five children and it's something that we talk a lot about around the table and driving around town, you know, you just kind of follow your gut and things will generally work out for you. And, um, I appreciate hearing your story and I'm sure it's one that you share with your.

Students too, um, many of them that come into your courses, uh, I'm imagining, you know, just in what I've learned about you so far, probably maybe expecting something a little different when they first come in the door.

Um, so tell me a little bit about the, the courses that you currently teach and, um, maybe some of the, the approaches that you have to get students in, engaged in, in learning a foreign language. Yeah, sure. So my, my main course in the academic year is the Accelerated Beginning Spanish, and I'm the course coordinator for that. So it's kind of, it's kind of my baby, you know, I work with, with our program director to develop the, all of the materials and, and those sorts of things.

But, but it's a flip classroom. So this, so that, that automatically hits the students with something new. They're usually used to being taught at in high school and not expected to do much work other than just sit there and listen and fill out some, some papers.

And so when they get to the class on the first day and it's all Spanish and I'm, you know, don't let them use cell phones or any sort of technology in the classroom, unless, you know, we're, we're doing that sort of thing that day and just encourage them to, to start creating with the language, like you mentioned, like you mentioned earlier, you know, I want the students to, to be comfortable.

So I also work with Active Learning spaces, Collaborative Learning spaces where there's no front or back to the classroom and it's all interactive stuff. So I always have the students sit across from each other. And this last semester I prohibited phones even before class. And I, at first, um, the students were kind of bummed out about it, but I put kind of icebreaker questions up and wanted them to get to know each other in English.

And I basically told them, if, if you don't do this before class, then we're going to spend class time doing it. And so our class is an accelerated class. so every minute counts. So two of the three sections really got it right away. I didn't even need the, the, the, the questions after a couple of weeks.

The 9am class, you know, it took a little bit more prodding, but they were, they were into it too, and that was their comment at the end of the semester, that that was one of the things that helped them feel more comfortable getting uncomfortable.

And, and working with the, working in those confines of the class, I've kind of shifted instead of teaching specific individual rules that coincide with whatever chapter, I'm encouraging students to develop more of a conceptual understanding of the concepts as we go and have how they link to each other and so they can chunk these elements in their brain and in their file system, retrieve them a little bit easier and and then so some of the practice with that

is when we get to different topics have the students explain what this topic is, what do we need to look out for, what are some of the exceptions, how does it relate to English and we do all of this in English so there's a So there's a lot of Spanish spoken in the class, but I think there's definitely a need, especially for the beginning levels, to also spend some time talking about English, talking about language pragmatically in English is the easiest way to do that.

So what are some of the kind of, um, icebreakers that you use to help them start to become, you know, just comfortable. So... at first, it's just like, hey! Want to find out information about your partner. And I'm going to ask you about it. So, where are they? If it's the beginning of the semester, where are they from? What are they, what are their hobbies? What do they like to do?

But as we're getting deeper into the semester, I sometimes put some questions that may make students get a little bit more vulnerable, like Tell, tell us about a challenge that you had to overcome, something that was hard and how did you do it? And what do you remember about something that you look forward to to get you through? And so some of these questions really help form the community in the class where they're comfortable. It's almost like a little therapy session, I guess.

They get just comfortable talking with each other and also working with different people. I move the students around regularly in the class. Yeah. Yeah, that's great.

And so when you, um, joined the, the faculty at UVA, were, was Digication something that was already being used in the foreign language courses, or is that something that you really helped to integrate? Yeah, so there was not being used. So this was 11 years ago, right? So, um, I think it was, I think we've been using Portfolio for about eight, Eight or nine years. And so it was after my first or second year that we were tasked with creating a portfolio for our individual classes.

And the coordinators were tasked with this and we had pretty much creative license to do this. So I spent the summer thinking about what I would want my students to do from a project based standpoint, to be able to use the language with minimal scaffolding to create sort of things that, that would. That would demonstrate their learning, their speaking, listening, and reading, um, learning. And so, so I created, you know, a portfolio that we used WordPress at the time.

I didn't, we didn't even know, I didn't even know about Digication then. And, you know, we use WordPress for a year or two, and then we switched to Digication, which was much more, um, intuitive and, And, and helpful. And I'm even one of the ones that really liked the backend assignment features of, of Digication and all of that. The problem with that was kind of our faculty.

We have a big faculty, you know, and so the buy in with the faculty and the technology aspect was a bit of a, a bit of a downer for some of them. So. So, you know, we ended up just kind of sticking to using the Portfolio only, but if it were up to me, I would be using those assignments and all of that stuff. Cause then you can see when people turned in things and all of that, and there's rubrics and those sorts of things.

Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if you've had a chance to, um, See the new Kora features that we've been rolling out for Kora courses, but the, I know that integration with the learning management system was really key for some of the faculty. And there's a lot more options now to kind of ease into using some of those course features that you enjoyed, even for those that may not, um, be familiar as much with that, that side of Digication.

So we'll have a chance to, yeah, share, share more of that too. Yeah, I'm supposed to be used. I was supposed to be using that in the summer with my summer class. So hopefully I'll be working with that soon. And the summer class that we created is a, is an. As free Spanish refresher class to get students to test into a higher Spanish. So we created our own materials, but we used Digication exclusively on that program for writing, revisions, speaking, and commenting.

And it's amazing because the students can literally see their progress over the six week period. Period where they're primarily working on their own. Mm-Hmm. and, you know, asynchronously exchanging with their partners, um, along the semester. But the Portfolio in that realm, I've shared some fantastic portfolios with some of the team here about how much progress students have made over just studying on their own with the content that we made for them.

Yes, and it's so clear for them when they're able to see, you know, the kind of progress that they have from the, those early classes to where they are at the end, you know, in terms of their writing and their speaking abilities, right? Um, so for some of our listeners that may not be as familiar with, um.

You know, what an ePortfolio is or how students in a foreign language class may be using a platform like that. Could you talk a little bit about maybe what kind of prompts or projects that they're doing? What kind of tools that they're using as part of, um, kind of documenting that learning? Right. So yeah, so the ePortfolio, you know, as you guys know, the Digication is, is a High-Impact Practice that was denoted by the AAC&U years ago.

And a High-Impact Practice is a, is a very respected practice. It shows that this is something that actually really helps, right? Like capstone classes aren't the same level as ePortfolio use, right? So it's very important to, to, to, to kind of put it in context right there because the Portfolio, it makes the learning visible, right? The students can see what they're learning and they can engage in a virtual community in real time. They can see examples of work.

They can get resources from other students. To either guide the direction of their own work or as study resources that I use in various concept map sorts of activities. So, and the metacognitive part that's so easy on the Portfolio cannot be left out either, because when students have the ability and are coached on how to reflect on their learning and identify where they're actually learning, that's when students really see the value of devoting time and effort into the class.

In many of these activities that we, that we do would be done without any ePortfolio, but I think the effect of the student, as the student's perspective would be, um, less evident of their progress. the Portfolio shows them, you made a video for me in week one where you could barely speak for 20 seconds. At week 16, you spoke for three minutes with a very open ended prompt, incorporating many structures, and basically you went over the time.

So like, that's, that's, that is What's possible on an ePortfolio. So some of the projects that we do on portfolios are beginning reflections, end reflections, and we also do individual assignment reflections.

We also do project based learning, right, where at, you know, certain points in the semester or aligning with particular units from the curriculum that we're using, we'll provide students with an open-ended prompt where they need to, you know, uh, interpret some information, maybe from a calendar and then compare it and answer some questions and then create their own calendar and explain what they do in a given week.

So you have some scaffolding to get them identifying some structures that they need to use. And then they can create with it, right? And we also use it for revision revisions, right? Where I love the inline commenting feature. So students, you know, right? And you, you make some, you make some suggestions and then, then they can post the other one under that. And you, you know, You can correct that and they can add more and it just kind of keeps going.

So the reflective things that we also use it for big summative assessments, like end of semester projects that are like multi step, multi modal things where unlike a PowerPoint or unlike a Word document, you know, you can have. You can get all of the samples that you need for a language class or writing samples, speaking samples.

And then we include multimedia use, which is so important, not just, just in everyday life, um, those sorts of aspects and, uh, and the concept map stuff, which is what I really liked that the students, that the students do, um, where they, they. Since we teach an accelerated class, it's two classes in one semester, so many concepts.

After the second exam, which students usually score way less than they thought they were going to, we give them an opportunity to take the structures that will be on the third test and formulate some sort of a graphic, like an infographic. And we give them creative..., we show them some examples, but we give them creative license to do it however they want. And then those become study resources for other people. And this last semester, I even saw students using them in class without prompt.

Like they would pull up or print out a concept map and bring it to class. And so, so these sorts of things, I think, make the ePortfolio invaluable. And just an amazing tool that I think any language program is better off because of it. Oh, well, thank you so much for describing that.

And I was curious as you were talking, you know, you were speaking a little bit about how Within Digication, you're able to get evidence, you know, all of the different types of evidence that you're looking for, um, for your course. And is it, and something that's a bit different than PowerPoint, um, where maybe before a tool like Digication was available, would have been a space for the students to create kind of a Slide presentation of, of what they had done.

Um, are they sometimes using Digication now as more of that kind of. creation space. So are they recording directly into their ePortfolio, whether it's video or audio, or is it something where they're kind of capturing it and then, and then loading things in? No, our students in the Spanish class per the assignments are recording right into Digication because that's the easiest way, right? Like just open up your phone or your tablet or your computer, hit record, record it.

If you don't like it, record it again, and then upload. Some students will create, if it's, if it's, if it's some sort of a video that requires editing, some students will create that somewhere else and then put it on the Portfolio.

But for most of the, like the, um, The, the monologue videos that we do at the, the presentational speaking things at the beginning and the end of the semester, they just record that right on, on, on Digication with, and we give them prompts like, you know, don't read, we should see errors in this. If it's too perfect, you know, you're going to have to do it again.

You know, those sorts of, those sorts of things, which, you know, if it's re if it's cast in enough ways in the class, students really get it, you know, and they, They, if they trust that they can, they can give you their true work without any use of Chat GPT or translators, and you're going to fairly assess them and they trust you on this journey. That's, that's been the most, um, you get the best results from students that way. Yeah, Yeah, absolutely.

Um, so you mentioned one of the other features that you like to use is that kind of in line commenting. Um, so it's known as the, the conversations feature and the platform for listeners that may be interested in, in where that is found. Could you talk a little bit about Maybe what your process is as students are developing these throughout the course, you know, what kind of frequency are you going in and looking at their work and providing feedback and are they responding to you there?

Are they going through and making edits? Could you describe a little bit about what that is? Yeah, I'll talk about it in two, two different ways because we use it a bit differently. So in the, in the summer class, right? So again, it's a free non credit class. So students, they, the only caret that they have to finish is that we give them guaranteed placement in a Spanish class if they commit. And so we give them prompt feedback on their writings and we, we, we do revisions on their writing.

So, so they do like three modules. So they write something, we, we give them suggestions and then they edit it and add a new paragraph. And then we, Edit the first paragraph again, and the second paragraph the first time, and then they add a third paragraph, and we do that one more time. So, but we do that very quickly because our, the, the online learning specialist we talked to said one thing that that prevents attrition in these, these free classes is a delayed feedback.

So we're real prompt with that. However, during the semester, when the, the projects are, are more spaced out, then, then the students will do the work and then the feedback will come, you know, in, in a reasonable time, like within a few days. Within a few days or a week, but stuff for things like the final project.

Yeah, I'm going in and really looking at the, at the, the language and giving them a ton of suggestions, and then they just go in and most different ones have different processes, but they just address the issues and delete the comment and just keep going, going on about, about their work.

Nice. And I even comment on their reflections as well, you know, cause I think they, they, you know, I'll, cause it's another way to workshop how to write reflections, which is good for students to learn how to do, you know, and I'll maybe encourage students to expand a little more or highlight what this is a very insightful point, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And that was actually my next question.

Cause you mentioned when the students were coming to your course, You know, in order to really take advantage of that High-Impact Practice around developing a Portfolio is this kind of coaching around reflection.

And I'm imagining many of the students that are coming into your courses, that this is something that they may not be familiar with, you know, again, once again, this kind of active learning that you're not just standing in front of the classroom, telling them, What they should be doing, right. They're kind of figuring things out for themselves and working with other students. Um, so as part of this kind of coaching or reflection, how do you embed that into, um, teaching a new language?

You know, is it something that you're kind of scaffolding directly? Within the pages that they're forming, are you using specific prompts or templates with the students? Is it something that you, you know, talk about with them when they're in class? You know, it sounds like you do give them feedback on it as they're developing it, but how do they even get to that? First stage of starting to reflect on what they're doing.

Yeah. So we, we use the instruction feature on Digication, you know, the instruction slide to give them all of their prompts, no matter what the content, what the, what the, the project would be. So for the reflection one, so we have questions and we have tips of course, but we also, in the Accelerated Beginning Spanish class, we do, we do these reflection workshops, right? And so a workshop is like toward the. Toward the end of the semester, we only do it once.

Um, but so the students share, they do these little mini presentations in English about their learning for the semester. And so students are writing, I have students write things on the board, and then I, if a student says something that's particularly insightful or profound, I'll I, I then re-... Rephrase that in terms of like reflective, reflective pedagogy or second language acquisition theory that they touch on in their own ways.

And then so at the end, I'm like, you guys should take pictures of these bullet points that your classmates wrote, because these are the sorts of things that you're going to want to, you're going to want to, your teachers are going to want to see in all your reflections. And so I feel like, It would be great to do that more frequently in, in all classes, um, but again, we have the accelerated class. So, you know, that's how we're doing it for right now.

Yeah. Yeah. But that's such a great idea just to kind of have this workshop kind of space where, you know, you're not just giving them feedback on their own reflections, but they're able to see some of their, their classmates right there and your immediate response to those. And what a great idea just to kind of take a picture so they can have it with them. So if they're ever having, you know, one of those. Blank page.

What am I going to say moments that they can refer back to that and kind of frame their thinking based on those examples. Yeah. Cause they, they all have very similar, similar experiences. Right. And so one of the features is like a callback, right? So the first person obviously can't call back, but the, after the first person speaks. Then the other person can get up like, just like Kelly said, I also feel this, but you know, and then, so it kind of prompts more discussion.

And then by the end it works the same way when they start writing. Yeah. Yeah. Do you ever have, uh, just out of curiosity, do you ever have students go in and use the conversations feature to give feedback on each other's work within their portfolios? Not without being prompted. No. Okay. Yeah. I mean, they do comment on each other's work, you know, but it's part of the assignment. It's part of some of the assignments.

Yeah. I haven't seen a student just go, um, maybe they have, and I don't monitor the comments that closely, but yeah, I know we make them comment on other students work, but yeah. Yeah. So how do you prompt them to do that? Are there a certain number of other students that they need to look at? Are there projects that you feel like lend themselves more to having that kind of yeah, we just part of part of the actual the assignment right? It's the reflection and commenting part before you reflect.

Go view 3 of your your partner's projects and comment on some aspect of their project. And we do the first half of the semester, we do this commenting in English because it's going to generate the more sincere and genuine answers. And then toward the end, we switch to Spanish when the students have a little bit more ability to create with the language and, you know, and say, say some, some things that make sense that don't need a lot of correction. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's great.

Um, so I know, you know, in learning a little bit about you, I mean, it just sounds like you're involved in so many things that is for the institution. So, and I learned some of this and looking at your own personal portfolios, um, but that you're involved or were involved in a Spanish theater group and, um, have also been. It sounds like working in, let me see if I made a note of what it was called. One of the other, um, oh, the Sigma Delta Pi, um, faculty advisor.

So, would you mind sharing some of those things? Because you're just so deeply rooted and really celebrating. Spanish culture and Spanish language and literature. I'd love to hear more about that too. Yeah, so these, these posters here are some of the plays that we've done, um, here. The Spanish Theater Group has been existing with UVA. They celebrated 40 years, uh, 2019, right? So those are 40th 40th year to do plays. And of course I came 11 years ago. So I just jumped right in.

My, one of my mentors here, Fernando Opere is the one that started the Spanish theater play. So I do a lot of the behind the scenes tech stuff with that. And then the Spanish honor society, Sigma Delta Pi is just a national Spanish honor society. And, you know, it's geared to position students to be more active, right? To, to look for opportunities in the community. And, you know, some of these things can lead to scholarships and awards and stuff.

So my job there is to kind of gently push students towards things and encourage them to organize on their own. And sometimes that requires me to do a little bit more organizing than them, or at least get them headed that way. And, um. Yeah, so that's, that's been a pretty active group and I've also been working with the honor fraternity Sigma, Sigma Phi Epsilon, which is, which is, I'm a faculty fellow for them.

And 1 of the things that I hope we can get to talk about is the professional portfolios that I've been working on in the Spanish classrooms and also outside of the Spanish classrooms. But Sigma Phi Epsilon is a, is an honor fraternity that's been around for, I guess, about 100 years or so. And, and so I, because of a student took my class and created a professional portfolio in my class, asked me if I would be the faculty fellow for them, um, to help them.

To help them to, to be able to market themselves. And none of these are Spanish majors. They're all like engineering, computer science and math, uh, math majors and accounting and very analytical types of super responsible young men. And so working with them on, you know, creating professional portfolios to expand their digital ecosystems, providing templates and feedback has been, it's been really rewarding to see those, that sort of work come together. Oh, that's wonderful.

I didn't even realize that there was a bridge there with the, those students. So did they initially get inspired because they were part of one of your Spanish language courses and then saw that this was something that they could really use to develop kind of their professional persona and. Yes. So, yeah, their, their current president was in my class when I piloted the professional portfolio option.

Which is something that you, I don't, not sure if you remember, but a couple of years ago, well, the University of Virginia participated in the AAC&U Institute on ePortfolios. And I know Digication was a big contributor to that whole Institute. And so my. We all had little projects. And so my project was to develop a professional portfolio template rubric guidelines. And, um, because of that amazing institute, I got to meet with Helen Chin on Zoom for like one, like two hour call.

And so I got a lot of feedback from her and ideas and just, you know, engaging with, uh, my, my students. Previous mentor that's retired now, Yitna Firdyiwek, you know, he was a real big fan of what I was doing with professional portfolios. And, and so then we created a rubric and a template. And so this, this student was in that, that class that did the first round of professional portfolios.

And has since continued to use his, as you know, and Digication on the back end, you can see when students access their portfolios. So, you know, there's several students that have continued to use their professional portfolios and get, get scholarships and, and awards and send them for internships and every student that has created one and has used it has been successful. And I mean, I know it's not exactly the Portfolio, but it definitely does help set.

Someone apart from an as equally qualified person. If you have something that really shows what you're all about and what you've been learning, yeah, and the sort of thinker you're involved, you're evolving to be.

Here's a preview of what's coming up next in part two of my conversation with Matthew Street, Senior Lecturer in Spanish at the University of Virginia. From an accessibility standpoint, it makes sense from the cost aspect and also from an equity standpoint for, um, the coverage of different minority groups and, and equality aspects all around.