Monthly Archives: November 2021

Culture of Coaching Blog Series Post #2: Connections between Design Thinking and Coaching

Dr. Katie Caprino, Assistant Professor of Education and Teaching & Learning Design Fellow
You can contact Dr. Caprino at caprinok@etown.edu. 

Honestly, I had not heard of design thinking before I arrived at Elizabethtown College. I was introduced to the idea at a design challenge workshop during one of my first few years at the College. I must admit my team did not have the “winning” design, but the experience led me to think about design thinking and incorporate it into my work in a multitude of ways. I introduced the concept in my creativity methods course and did a SCARP project in which a student researcher and I thought about how design thinking functioned in contemporary picture books.

But as I was completing my instructional coaching endorsement, I began to find connections between design thinking and coaching.  I shared my ideas with a literacy colleague Dr. Christine Walsh at Slippery Rock University, and we had some intriguing conversations. In this blog post, I’ll share the results of these conversations and ways design thinking elements can help us as we think about a culture of coaching at Elizabethtown College.

Empathize. When designing, empathy is the starting point. Knowing the users for whom you are creating is key. The same is true with coaching. As we think about engaging in coaching relationships, we must build relationships with those we coach and those who coach us. Have a cup of coffee. Take a walk. Chat about your work at the College but also about yourselves as humans. Share hobbies, interests, and favorite restaurants. These relationships are central to coaching partnerships, which may flip (i.e., the coachee may become a coach in another cycle), and are a key component of what makes our campus community special.

Define. A problem-solving framework, design thinking looks to define the problem. We can think more broadly about this in terms of coaching on our campus. We can certainly work with our coach or coachee to articulate an area of growth in a myriad areas (e.g., advising, teaching, scholarship, conference presentations, work-life understandings, etc.), but we can also think about how to help one another intensify a strength or more deeply engage with an area of strength. Sometimes this is an area that is identifiable right from the beginning of the coaching cycle; other times an observation of teaching practice or analysis of other artifacts (e.g., conference proposals) may be helpful.

Ideate. This is the brainstorming component of design thinking. In this step, many ideas are thrown out and tossed around. This is The Sticky Note Part. The coach may bring in resources (e.g., teaching articles, videos, or book chapters; sample conference proposals; or a list of a few strategies). Time is then spent discussing the ideas and an area of focus is decided upon. It is important not to overwhelm the coachee with too many ideas. A narrow focus is key here. 

Prototype. This is where the models are created and analyzed in design thinking. When applying this step of design thinking to coaching, you can think about coming up with the plan for addressing the narrow focus from the last step. Here, you may plan for how the coachee will implement one of the agreed-upon strategies in their classroom. Sometimes, the coach may come to the coachee’s classroom and demonstrate a lesson strategy. If a coachee is receiving assistance on submitting to conferences, here is where the draft of the proposal may be composed and reviewed.

Test. This is where the test drive happens. The coachee may teach the lesson with the new strategy or submit a conference proposal for the first time. This is the step where all of the defining, ideating, and prototyping pays off.

Will it always be perfect? Of course not! Design thinking and coaching are recursive practices. Although demonstrated here in a linear process, there may be some messiness. You will, for example, focus on empathy throughout – not just at the beginning. And you may have to return to the defining stage as you move throughout your coaching-coachee relationship. And that is okay. You’re designing!

Stay tuned for the next post in the Culture of Coaching Blog Series: Questions to Post When Coaching.

A special thank you to my literacy colleague Dr. Christine Walsh at Slippery Rock University for engaging in meaningful conversations and writing with me about the connections between design thinking and coaching. 

Culture of Coaching Blog Series Post #1: What is Coaching? 

Dr. Katie Caprino, Assistant Professor of Education & Teaching & Learning Design Fellow
You can contact Katie at caprinok@etown.edu.

One of the recent projects out of our Design Fellows Program is about creating a culture of coaching on campus. Whereas the project focuses on facilitating a faculty coaching program and there are already plans to pilot the program with new faculty members, the opportunities for coaching on our campus can extend beyond faculty coaching. For instance, in what ways can coaching be used when advising students? How can coaching be used to help campus community members advance in their careers? How can we help our students learn about coaching so they can embody it in their future professional roles?

Knowing more about what coaching is and is not may be a good place for us to start. Aguilar suggests “a coach helps build the capacity of others by facilitating their learning” (p. 19).

According to Aguilar in The Art of Coaching, coaching is not a way to ensure a particular program is enacted, it is not a way to fix people, it is not a way to provide therapy, and it is not consulting (p. 19).

The Center for Corporate and Professional Development at Kent State University suggested ways in which coaches differ from mentors. Mentoring-mentee relationships may be for a long period of time. The mentee sets the agenda and often asks the mentor questions. There are shifting and changing outcomes (Kent State University, 2021).

The coach-coachee relationship is a bit different. Often, it is a short-term relationship in which a coach with a specific expertise is partnered with a coachee. These partners co-construct the agenda to best meet the coachee’s specific and measurable performance goal. The coach asks specific questions, and the coachee makes decisions about next steps (Kent State University, 2021).

You may seek out a coach for a specific reason. Perhaps a colleague has a lot of conference experience, and you want to know more about how to submit conference proposals. Perhaps you want to enhance the way you incorporate asynchronous elements into your face-to-face classes, and you have heard that a colleague is an expert in this area.

Or maybe you have expertise in a particular area and you want to be a coach. You might have a unique pedagogical approach that you want to share with your colleagues. You may be able to create a warm, nurturing classroom environment, and you want to share how you do it.

The opportunities for a culture of coaching are limitless.

We would love to hear more about what you think about a culture of coaching here at Etown, and stay tuned for the next blog in the series: Coaching through a Design Thinking Lens.

References

Agular, E. (2013). The art of coaching. San Francisco: Wiley.

Kent State University. (2021). Know the difference between coaching and mentoring. Retrieved from https://www.kent.edu/yourtrainingpartner/know-difference-between-coaching-and-mentoring

Want to See Better Writing from Your Students? Try This!

Tara Moore, Director of the First Year Writing Program, mooret@etown.edu

You expect students to bring their best writing game to your coursework, but they might need a compelling nudge.

Students sometimes fail to transfer the great writing skills from EN100 to your classes.  Back in EN100 your students learned process writing skills—that just means writing in stages.

Process writing gives students time to rethink their approach to every aspect of an essay.  Believe me, you want them to think through that paper more than once!  You’ll see better results if you can arrange your class so that students have to start work far in advance of the deadline.

Your upper-level students also learned research skills, including citation styles and how to use the handbook required for all EN100 and FYS sections.

Do missing words, wonky paragraphs, and terribly vague intro paragraphs make you question your existence during long bouts of grading?  If so, your students need encouragement to put more energy into revisions.  The EN100 program taught flexible revisions strategies. If you remind students to use these, you should see better writing.

Want to see better writing in your classes? Try these steps:

Assign Drafts

Require submissions of early stages of writing. Provide feedback on drafts if you can. If you can’t add another evaluation like that to your workload, try assigning drafts anyway. You can award points for a submission and then tell students to turn their attention to revision.

Peer review assignments tend to improve submission outcomes.  You can require students to conduct the peer review as homework, or they can do it in class.  Peer reviews work best if students trade essays ahead of time and spend class time talking through how to improve the drafts.  Give them targeted items to review for the most useful results.

Require students to incorporate the feedback you gave them on prior submissions.  You can do this by including a “summarize the feedback you received” assignment in Canvas. Make the assignment worth points.  The sad truth is that students need enticement to read your feedback.

Clarify Expectations

Exhausted by the work of deciphering fuzzy arguments? Tell student to write for lazy readers. Yes, we’re paid to read to the end of the essay, but students won’t always have that luxury.  Most readers resent hazy arguments and winding sentences. Students need to do the work of connecting all the dots in their document—that way the reader doesn’t have to.

It can help to talk about your response to a piece of writing as a reader.  Try this: “As a reader, I had to read the first paragraph three times to understand the purpose there.”  That’s a more understandable comment then the next-to-useless marginal note of “awkward!”

We know faculty want to see mechanically flawless writing. Research shows that an over-emphasis on mechanics disproportionally affects students from underrepresented backgrounds.  Be thoughtful about how you project your authority over a student’s writing.

All Etown students have access to grammar technology.  Tell students you expect them to use Editor or Spellcheck in Word.  Encourage—or require—reading the essay aloud before submitting it.  When you do see mechanical errors, consider how much grammar feedback that particular student can hear in that moment. One grammar tip at a time is probably plenty.

Most importantly, remind students to apply what they learned in EN100 to your course projects.  Tell them that writing-in-stages, responsible source use, and revision skills matter to you. They learned it already, but they need to hear it reinforced from you before they can master these skills.

Want tips about how to add a few simple, time-tested writing activities to improve the writing you grade?  Be in touch!