Tomorrow's Professor Blog

Folks:

The posting below looks at the role of service learning in the academic environment. It is from Chapter Five:, Service-Learning and the Problem of Depth, by Jim Ostrow in Public Work and the Academy: An Academic Administrator’s Guide to Civic Engagement and Service-Learning; Editors, Mark Langseth Minnesota Campus Compact and William M. Plater, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Ankler Publishing Company, Inc. 176 Ballville Road P.O. Box 249 Bolton, MA 01740-0249 [www.ankerpub.com]. ISBN 1-882982-73-8 Copyright © 2004 by Anker Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved, Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Merging Teaching and Research

Tomorrow’s Teaching and Learning

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SERVICE-LEARNING FOR DEPTH IN A FLUID WORLD

Jim Ostrow

My purpose above has been to lay the primary educational context within which my interest in and advocacy for service-learning is situated. It may seem odd that I have not yet focused on issues more typically considered in discussions of service-learning-such as advancing habits of social responsibility and citizenship, or rendering higher education relevant to local and global social problems. There is no doubt that the social-developmental and direct social benefits of service-learning are fundamental to understanding its significance in higher education-indeed, for rendering higher education relevant to the advancement of fairness, justice, and citizenship in a democracy, as suggested by Battistoni (2002); Eyler and Giles (1999); Jacoby and Associates (1996); Kenny, Simon, Kiley-Brabeck, and Lerner (2001); Zlotkowski (1998); and others in this volume. My intention is to strengthen rather than diminish the importance of these issues in higher education by establishing t!
heir inseparability from the problem of academic depth. I also believe coupling these social-developmental and societal issues with the problem of depth has strategic benefits for the promotion of service-learning to faculty.

Service-learning can be central to achieving great academic depth by extending the relevance of subject matter beyond the classroom and expectations of performance within it. The key term here is “relevance.” I do not mean to denigrate the classroom as a learning environment, but subject matter must matter as more than satisfying conditions specific to the classroom if it is to engage concentration and endure in a person’s perspective. Dewey (1916) argues against the reduction of subject matter to a “record of knowledge, independent of its place as an outcome of inquiry and a resource in further inquiry” (p. 187). This means the value of subject matter must stretch beyond the calls of the classroom and beyond the perceived temporal confines of a course. The very existence of the classroom and its various learning requirements and measurements must, to a certain degree, become transparent in students’ experience. An analogy is found in hi-fi audio. The degree to which m!
usic is heard purely as music has an inverse relationship to the degree to which the stereo equipment, and even the walls around the equipment, are visible in experience. Similarly, the degree to which subject matter exists in its original form as a field of inquiry and discovery is related inversely to the opacity of the classroom apparatus and the measurements students receive within it. Learning with depth is founded in principle, then, on its extension beyond the classroom.

Community service-learning projects are perfect vehicles for such an extension, rendering the educational apparatus transparent in favor of the discovering processes inherent in academic subjects. It is true that establishing the value and relevance of subject matter beyond the classroom is possible through other types of pedagogical methods as well. The difference with service-learning is the possibility of developing an active concern for the social problems of the day, as well as an enduring, habitual sense of effective positive change in the world, within the context of exercising an academic imagination. This distinction, it seems to me, gets to the heart of what academic leaders can advocate for their institutions-service-learning as an opportunity to perpetuate the value of academic subject matter for understanding and for improving the human environment.

In 1927, Dewey wrote that many Americans suffer from the social pathology of a “riotous glorification of things ‘as they are,’” arising out of a fear of facing with creative reason a whirlwind-changing world, a pathology that “works powerfully against effective inquiry into social institutions and conditions” (p. 170). A test- or grade-driven, take-it-in, prove-you-know-it, and-move-on-to-something-else approach to subject matter is a key education building block for this pathology. When knowledge is framed as something one receives, holds, and then releases, the message to students is that all knowledge is preexisting. The world needing to be known is as it is, and no more. We thereby train a populace that could not be more ill-equipped for an active responsiveness to a fluid, constantly changing world.

Projects involving students in direct service to others or the improvement of communities, combines with rigorous processes of reflection, can be effective in generating students’ sense of the power of disciplinary and interdisciplinary ideas and methods. Through this process, they can combat the pervasive, if unwitting, presupposition in contemporary education of a static, unchanging world. Eyler and Giles’s (1999) study of the educative outcomes of service-learning is a good resource for making the argument for depth of contact with subject matter through service-learning. The authors make the crucial distinction between education understood as “acquiring factual information and demonstrating it on final exams [and the] deeper understanding and application” (p. 63) that occurs through service-learning. There are no grounds for claiming that service-learning has any advantage over didactic instruction in learning as measured by test results or course grades, but there i!
s plenty of evidence to suggest that students are more richly involved in subject matter as an active process of discovery through service-learning.

[Students] had a deeper, more complex understanding of the issues and felt more confident using what they were learning. Service made the subject matter come to life and put them inside the subject matter rather than outside, as abstract, disinterested observers. (Eyler & Giles, 1999, p. 70)

Another important point made by Eyler and Giles is the lasting power of subject matter, realized through the service-learning student’s disposition to understand and solve real problems:

The student who is trying to solve a real problem with real consequences sees the need to look up one more case, to understand just how a similar policy failed elsewhere, to learn a new technique for dealing with a child’s reading problem. Genuine problems provide the most powerful need to know and are thus motivating for many students. (p. 91)

These dispositions are not acquired through service alone, but through academically charged reflection induced through instructor intervention. Take the following example of anger and frustration expressed by one of my past sociology students serving dinner in a local church food program:

I heard one of the children say, “Mom, where are we going to sleep tonight?” The mother’s voice was quiet, but as I walked I strained to hear her response, “We’ll find somewhere, we always do.” I clenched my grip around the apple carton. I became so angry, I felt like throwing the box on the floorŠI wanted to invite all of these people back to [the college] and give them a place to stay. I wanted to do so much but in reality all I could do was pass out apples, and try to get to know and understand them. I was starting to understand.

While not in itself informed by sociological investigation and analysis, this written grasp of an emotionally intense moment provides the platform for investigating the meaning of this situation and employing the tools of sociology toward social change. The student’s insight into the limits of volunteerism as a response to the problem of homelessness is perfect grounds for seeking to comprehend homelessness and its causes. It is also grounds for inquiry into the experience of homelessness and existing social attitudes. The student now perceives homeless individuals as being underserved, disadvantaged, as opposed to being necessarily lazy, or in some other way flawed in their character. What, then, leads to the latter opinions of the homeless, and what do these views mean for homeless persons in their everyday lives? There is, in short, more for the student to do than pass out apples: Sociology provides the vehicle for broader and deeper understanding, inquiries that might lead to solutions.

Folks:

The posting below gives a brief summary of transformative learning theory, an important educational development of the last decade. It is from CHAPTER 4: Evidence of the Transformational Dimensions of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Faculty Development Through the Eyes of SoTL Scholars, by Connie M. Schroeder, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, in To Improve the Academy, Resources for Faculty, Instructional, and Organizational Development, Sandra Chadwick-Blossey, editor, Rollins College and Douglas Reimondo Robertson, associate editor, Eastern Kentucky University.

Copyright © 2005 by Anker Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved. ISBN 1-882982-76-2
Anker Publishing Company, Inc. P.O. Box 249 Bolton, MA 01740-0249 USA [www.ankerpub.com].

Regards,

Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Service-Learning for Depth in a Fluid World

Tomorrow’s Teaching and Learning

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TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING THEORY

Transformative learning was introduced by Mezirow (1997) as a change process that transforms frames of reference (Imel, 1998). His theory defines frames of reference as “the structures of assumptions through which we understand our experiences. They selectively shape and delimit expectations, perceptions, cognition, and feelings” (Mezirow, 1997, p. 5). According to this view, “actions and behaviors will be changed based on the changed perspective (Cranton, 1994, p. 730).

Several key elements of the transformational learning process are cited frequently in the literature. Initially, a disorienting dilemma, or “an activating even that typically exposes a discrepancy between what a person has always assumed to be true and what has just been experienced, heard or read” (Cranton, 2002, p. 66) and may contribute to a readiness for change (Taylor, 2000). Cranton (2002) describes this as a “catalyst for transformation” (p. 66). It could be a single event or a series of events that occur over a much longer period as in “an accretion of transformation in points of view” (Mezirow, 1997, p. 7). For example, engaging in problem solving may challenge and expose discrepancies (Mezirow, 1997; Taylor, 2000).

The literature highlights the central importance of cultivating a process of critical reflection with certain key elements (Mezirow, 1991; Sokol & Cranton, 1998). “Critical reflection is the means by which we work through beliefs and assumptions, assessing their validity in the light of new experiences or knowledge, considering their sources, and examining underlying premises” (Cranton, 2002, p. 65). Cranton (1994) explains, “Transformative learning theory leads us to view learning as a process of becoming aware of one’s assumptions and revising these assumptions” (p. 730). Cranton (1994) simply states, “If basic assumptions are not challenged, change will not take place” (p. 739), and elaborates that we are more likely to have sets of assumptions that guide teaching practices. Sokol and Cranton (1998) further explain, “As transformative learners, they question their perspectives, open up new ways of looking at their practice, revise their views, and act based on new per!
spectives” (p. 14). Mezirow (1997) cautions, “learners need practice in recognizing frames of reference and using their imaginations to redefine problems from a different perspective” (p. 10). Several authors point out the necessity of making the time necessary for critical reflection (Pohland & Bova, 2000).

In addition to critical reflection that challenges assumptions, transformative learning calls for a trusting, social context for the dialogue referred to as reflective discourse (Mezirow, 2000) or critical discourse (Grabove, 1997). Cranton (1994) argues that the most promising transformative learning potential in faculty development work is long-term work with others, including “a group of faculty genuinely interested in teaching” (p. 735). Taylor (2000) found that the key ingredient most common in the process of transformational learning was the context of relationships. Imel (1998) concurs with the importance to establishing a community among learners.

Several sources emphasize individual agency; learners having their own design (Taylor, 2000); autonomous thinking; and control and choice (Grabove, 1997; Mezirow, 1997). Mezirow (1997) suggests that the educator serve as a facilitator or provocateur, in order to foster the self-direction and control needed for transformative learning. The role of the educator or faculty developer in transformative learning processes changes from that of a directive expert by shifting power, responsibility, and decision-making to the faculty (Cranton, 1994). Robertson (1997) writes extensively on the importance of creating a helper relationship. According to Baumgartner (2001), action on the new perspective, as in “living the new perspective” (p. 17), is critical for transformative learning to occur.

As opposed to the elements critical for the process of transformative learning, the outcomes indicative of transformation may include Cranton’s (1992) framework of three types of change: change in assumptions, change in perspective, and change in behavior. Boyd (1989) claims an outcome of transformative learning includes a change in self.

Mezirow’s theory and ideas have been expanded upon by several theorists in order to address his emphasis on the rational and linear aspects of transformation (Boyd, 1991; Grabove, 1997; Robertson, 1997). Baumgartner (2001) argues that “transformational learning is a complex process involving thoughts and feelings (p. 18), and compares Dirkx’s (1998) extra-rational emphasis in which transformation involves soul-based learning that is not constrained by rational and cognitive learning. Grabove (1997) further emphasizes the potential for integration of self and other, renewal and rebirth as themes indicative of the nonrational dimensions of transformative learning. She suggests the transformative learner “moves in and out of the cognitive and the intuitive, of the rational and the imaginative, of the subjective and the objective, of the personal and the social” (Gabrove, 1997, p. 95).

We might ask ourselves as faculty development professionals, do we offer programs that incorporate the processes that enable deeper understanding, discovery, or transformative change? Are we aiming for increasing knowledge and skills as primary program outcomes, but falling short of creating opportunities in which faculty can critically reflect, reconceptualize, and engage in soul learning? Wouldn’t it make sense to imagine that at some point, in some faculty members’ careers, they will seek deeper understanding and affective as well as cognitive transformation? Are we considering how, and are we willing to offer a palette of opportunities that include a broader array of learning and development? Though time and budgetary resources are stretched, must we provide only the most popular programs, and not venture into opportunities that may promise a different kind of development? Certainly not all faculty at all points in their careers would have the interest or time to in!
vest in transformative change programs and, given time constraints, may prefer brief exposure to new techniques in order to improve their teaching. But the question facing faculty developers is not necessarily how to appeal to the masses, but rather, how to offer a diverse array of opportunities for improving teaching and learning that meet the needs of faculty at a variety of levels of involvement and development. What type of programs produce this type of transformation, and how would we determine evidence of transformation?

This empirical analysis of a SoTL, program examines the experience of SoTL from the scholars’ perspectives, in light of the theoretical literature on the process and outcomes of transformation. Looking at evidence of transformative learning through SoTL may help us to consider investing in programs soundly linked to individual change and which may better prepare faculty to advance sustained departmental and structural changes in teaching and learning that have not been able to occur in higher education (Lazerson, Wagener, & Shumanis, 2000). Perhaps we have been selling learning and change short by investing in quick fixes in our faculty development efforts. In order to transform not only teaching and learning, but institutions and their structures, have we considered the value of transforming individuals, or individuals transforming themselves?

References

Baumgartner, L.M. (2001). An update on transformational learning. In S.B. Merriam (Ed.), New directions for adult and continuing education: No. 89. The new update on adult learning theory (pp. 15-24). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Boyd, R.D. (1989). Facilitating personal transformation in small groups, Part I. Small Group Behavior, 20(4), 459-474.
Boyd, R.D. (1991). Personal transformation in small groups: A Jungian perspective. London, England: Routledge.
Cranton, P. (1992). Working with adult learners. Toronto, Ontario: Wall & Emerson.
Cranton, P. (1994, November/December). Self-directed and transformative instructional development. Journal of Higher Education, 65(6), 726-744.
Cranton, P. (2002, Spring). Teaching for transformation. In J.M. Ross-Gordon (Ed.), New directions for adult and continuing education: No. 93. Contemporary viewpoints on teaching adults effectively (pp. 63-71). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Dirkx, J.M. (1998). Tranformative learning theory in the practice of adult education: An overview. PAACE Journal of Lifelong Learning, 7, 1-14.
Grabove, V. (1997, Summer). The many facets of transformative learning theory and practice. In P. Cranton (Ed.), New directions for adult and continuing education: No. 74. Transformative learning in action: Insights from practice (pp. 89-95). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Imel, S. (1998). Transformative learning in adulthood. Washington, D.C.: Office of Educational Research and Improvement. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED42326). Retrieved April 29, 2004, from http://www.cete.org/acve/docgen. asp?tbl=digest&ID=53
Lazerson, M., Wagener, U., & Shumanic, N. (2000, May/June). Teaching and learning in higher education, 1980-2000. Change, 56(3), 300-319.
Mezirow, J. (1991). Transformative dimensions in adult learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Mezirow, J. (1997, Summer). Transformative learning: Theory to practice. In P. Cranton (Ed.), New directions for adult and continuing education: No. 74. Transformative learning in action: Insights from practice (pp. 5-12). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Mezirow, J. (2000). Learning to think like an adult: Core concepts of transformation theory. In J. Mezirow & Associates (Eds.), Learning as transformation: Critical perspectives on a theory in progress (pp. 3-34). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Pohland, P., & Bova, B. (2000). Professional development as transformational learning. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 3(2), 137-150.
Robertson, D.L. (1997). Transformative learning and transition theory: Toward developing the ability to facilitate insight. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 8(1), 105-125.
Sokol, A., & Cranton, P. (1998, Spring). Transforming, not training. Adult Learning, 9(3), 14-17.
Taylor, E.W. (2000). Analyzing research on transformative learning theory. In J. Mezirow & Associates (Eds.), Learning as transformation: Critical perspectives on a theory in progress (pp. 29-310). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Folks:

The posting below looks at an innovative program at the University of Utah designed to help engineering students communicate more effectively. It is from the October, 2004 issues of ASEE Prism, Volume 14, Number 2. . Copyright © 2004 ASEE, all rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Transformative Learning Theory

Tomorrow’s Teaching and Learning

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ON CAMPUS LEADERSHIP LOUD AND CLEAR

By Robert Gardner

A COMMUNICATIONS SKILLS CENTER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH IS PRIMING ENGINEERING UNDERGRADUATES TO BECOME LEADERS IN THE WORKPLACE.

Most engineering schools have programs in place to help students improve their communications skills. Unfortunately, many of these programs require additional classes in an already packed curriculum and do not engage students until their senior year, when they are on the verge of graduation. The Center for Engineering Leadership at the University of Utah is unique in that it engages students in their freshman year. “We work with engineering faculty,” Director April Kedrowicz says, “in students’ core classes-[of which there is] one required course at every level, freshman through senior-and develop their writing, speaking, and team skills.”

The “we” is a staff of twelve humanities graduate student “consultants” who help students with oral presentation, writing skills, and the dynamics of working as a team. “They do a lot of behind the scenes work,” Kedrowicz says. This behind-the-scenes work includes meeting with teaching assistants and faculty members to better integrate communication skills instruction into the curriculum. They also lecture in the engineering classes on “presentation techniques, persuasion, and the dynamics of teamwork.”

The center prepares students with communications and teamwork skills needed to lead, but also makes them aware of ethical issues. This is especially important in engineering, a field with the potential to seriously impact public safety. The center offers a general education elective in applied ethics that is taught by a philosophy professor and features professional engineers from companies such as Dupont, Bard Access, and QuartzDyne as guest lecturers. Although the course is not required, “students are strongly encouraged to take it by their advisers,” Kedrowicz says.

The program’s origins date back seven years to when mechanical engineering professor Robert Roemer approached Ann Darling and Maureen Mathison of Utah’s department of communication. Roemer was looking for help for his engineering students, who were having difficulty presenting professional documents and making presentations. Kedrowicz, as a communications Ph.D. candidate, worked helping engineering students in the system this triumvirate set up. Last year, the Center for Engineering leadership was set up with a $1.1 million, five-year grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, established in honor of Hewlett Packard Company co-founder William Hewlett and his wife.

The center currently works with five of the seven engineering departments at Utah: mechanical, chemical, civil engineering, bioengineering, and electrical and computer. Kedrowicz says student reaction to the program has generally been positive, though she admits freshman and sophomores tend not to see the relevance of communication skills as they study electrical circuits, trusses, or organic molecules. “But by their junior year,” Kedrowicz says, “they have begun to see why these skills are important.”

Robert Gardner is Associate Editor of Prism Magazine.

Folks:

The posting below, by Pat Hutchings, vice president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching looks at how give students more guidance in their evaluations of faculty teaching. It is #13 in the monthly series called Carnegie Foundation Perspectives. These short commentaries exploring various educational issues are produced by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching . The Foundation invites your response at: CarnegiePresident@carnegiefoundation.org. Reprinted with permission

Regards,

Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: On Campus: Leadership Loud and Clear

Tomorrow’s Teaching and Learning

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BUILDING PEDAGOGICAL INTELLIGENCE

By Pat Hutchings
January, 2005

It’s hard to find a campus today that doesn’t collect student evaluations of teaching. Not everyone, it’s true, puts full stock in the results, but it’s hard to argue with the idea that students have important perspectives to contribute. On the other hand, it strikes me that listening to students is a good idea that doesn’t go far enough. With student ratings of teaching almost ubiquitous, why not take the process up a notch by giving students some guidance about what to look for?

Some years back, I heard about a promising step in this direction that has stuck with me ever since. In the late 1970s, Carleton College implemented something called the Student Observer Program. Any Carleton faculty member could (and still can) ask for a student observer to sit in on her or his classes, usually for the entire term. Students not only receive training about what to look for in an effective classroom, they also have a powerful opportunity to reflect on the process of teaching and learning. And we know that learners who are self-conscious about that process tend to be more successful.

A different approach has emerged at Western Washington University (WWU). Wanting to involve students in a campus initiative on the scholarship of teaching and learning, WWU developed a course in which students study the learning process and the conditions under which learning-their own, that is-is most likely to occur. Some 200 students have now taken the course (which has evolved over the several quarters it has been offered), becoming, as a consequence, much more active contributors to campus discussion about how to improve the educational experience.

Some may worry that giving students a bigger voice adds fuel to the fire of consumerism. Students may know what they want, the argument goes, but faculty members know what they need, and have, after all, a responsibility to maintain the integrity of the educational process. But that’s just the point. Part of a faculty’s responsibility should be to let students in on the tricks and truths of the learning trade. Thanks to several decades of educational innovation and research, much more is now known about how learning occurs and what works in the classroom. It’s time to start sharing that knowledge with students. Doing so-as at Carleton and Western Washington-would make students better contributors to the improvement of teaching by raising the quality of the feedback they can offer.

More important, having a voice in matters pedagogical would make students better learners. It’s easy for those of us in “the business” to forget that getting educated isn’t easy. Just jumping through the hoops is not enough. Students need to be able to make connections between what is learned in very different, and typically unconnected, settings. And to do this they need to be able to step back and see what their efforts add up to, to take stock both of what they have learned and what it will take to get to a next level of understanding. In a word, they need to be agents of their own learning.

As a faculty member for many years, I saw first hand how difficult it is for students to reflect on and assess their own experiences as learners, to get past the idea of learning as something that happens to them (or not), to see their education as something they can create and control. But when teachers continue to create opportunities for such self-assessment, students get better at identifying and seeking out what they need to advance their knowledge and abilities. In short, we can help students get smarter about what it takes to get smarter.

The notion of multiple intelligences has had wide play for more than a decade. Howard Gardner postulates a whole set of them: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, body-kinesthetic, and personal intelligences. Daniel Goleman has popularized the idea of an emotional intelligence. The word “intelligence” invites some misunderstandings since it seems to suggest traits that are inherited and static. But the idea that multiple capacities and dispositions are both possible and, indeed, necessary to function effectively in the world is a right one, and I would propose that we need yet another as well. Let us call it a “pedagogical intelligence”-an understanding about how learning happens, and a disposition and capacity to shape one’s own learning. Whatever the term, it is something that is increasingly needed today as the world becomes more complicated, as boundaries of all kinds shift, and as change becomes a constant expectation.

This is not to suggest that Econ 101 or 19th Century American Lit be turned into occasions to obsess about the learning process. But the disposition to be thoughtful about one’s own learning, to be an active agent of learning, to find and even to design experiences in which learning is advanced-these are goals that should be central to undergraduate education. And the good news is that once students get a taste for these goals, there’s no going back. “I had a class where we studied how we learn,” says Erik Skogsberg, a student in the course at Western Washington University. “It flipped a switch, and once it’s flipped it can’t be turned off.”

There is more than one way to induce a disposition to be reflective about how learning occurs. A great place to start-one just begging to be used more effectively-is with the questions students are asked to address on course evaluation forms. A handful of provocative questions, and the discussions that can be had around them, just might be the beginning of a “pedagogical intelligence” that deepens learning through college and beyond.

For information on the Carleton College Student Observer Program, see: http://webapps.acs.carleton.edu/campus/ltc/

For information about student involvement in the scholarship of teaching and learning at Western Washington University, see: http://www.wwu.edu/depts/tla/

For information on Carnegie’s Integrative Learning Project, see: http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/IntegrativeLearning/

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Carnegie Perspectives is a series of commentaries that explore different ways to think about educational issues. These pieces are presented with the hope that they contribute to the conversation. You can respond directly to the author at CarnegiePresident@carnegiefoundation.org or you can join a public discussion at Carnegie Conversations.

Join the Carnegie Perspectives email list by sending an email to CarnegiePresident@carnegiefoundation.org with “Subscribe” as the subject line.

Folks:

The posting below looks at an innovative way to challenge the best students in a class without leaving those at the low end behind. It is from an article by Dawn Levy about award winning computer science professor Eric Roberts’ work with student contests. It appeared in the December 3, 2004 issue of the Stanford Report. http://news-service.stanford.edu/ Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: The Research Productive Department

Tomorrow’s Teaching and Learning

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CONTESTS MOTIVATE TOP STUDENTS IN LARGE CLASSES

Eric Roberts tackles neglected issue of motivating elite students through recognition, camaraderie, teaching opportunities.

Roberts provides ample opportunities for his students to earn extra-credit through contests that usually entice about 10 percent of a given class to enter. Work is judged for categories including “best algorithm” and “best aesthetics.” Past winners have programmed adventure games and created computer animations.

Eric Roberts is the principal architect of what was for many years the largest course at Stanford-Computer Science 106A, an introductory programming class with an enrollment that waxes and wanes with the NASDAQ. In a fat year, 1,000 students may enroll, with more than 400 students in a single class. How professors can encourage top scholars in large classes was the topic of Roberts’ “Award-Winning Teachers on Teaching” talk Nov. 18 in Building 460.

“How do you manage in a large course not completely snowing the people on the low end of the scale or boring silly the people on the high end of the scale?” asked Roberts, the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn University Fellow in Undergraduate Education.

Only 6 percent of Roberts’ introductory students end up majoring in computer science. Many major in other engineering disciplines, and almost 20 percent major in social sciences or humanities. “It’s a wide spectrum, and I wanted to encourage those people to be in that class,” Roberts said. “It was one of the signature aspects of the Stanford curriculum that we tried to keep an introductory computer science sequence that really did have broad appeal.”

Success in such classes means supporting students every step of the way so they can do well, Roberts said. It also means setting a high bar. “One of the difficulties in a large class is if you decide that you’re going to curve it rigidly, you’ve forced it into a mode where many people are going to be unhappy,” he said. Roberts favors a grading system that rewards those who meet clearly delineated objectives-no matter how many students meet those objectives. “If everybody does enough work to get an A, then everybody will in fact get an A.”

That’s a big incentive to do well. Further, superlative work in Roberts’ classes has earned A+ and even A++ marks. (The latter designates work that “exceeds all expectations,” according to a jury of section leaders, teaching assistants and the professor.)

Top students also have the opportunity to gain teaching experience after the class ends. Owing to economic necessity and a dearth of graduate students willing to assist teaching introductory computer courses, the teaching assistants (TAs) in such courses at most universities are undergraduates.

“We decided at Stanford to make a virtue of necessity and really train those students to be wonderful as teachers,” Roberts said. Undergraduate TAs also provide “stepping stone role models” that help increase the number of underrepresented minorities in computer science.

Programming is one of the most varied intellectual activities in terms of productivity and ability, Roberts said. “The difference between this person who’s sort of good and that person who’s really great is extraordinary.”

A 1968 study of working programmers showed 20 to 1 variations in productivity-how much code a person could generate-among individuals with the same levels of education and experience. The best programmers also tended to be the fastest and to have the fewest bugs. “You see the same [enormous variability] in classrooms,” Roberts said.

Move over, Ed McMahon⤩

Roberts said he can’t gear the class to top students without risking losing those on the bottom. Instead, he leverages the features of large classes to encourage excellence. And that means-drumroll, please-lots of contests that provide extra credit. Students can enter three contests per quarter in his CS 106 A and B classes. Only large classes have enough students to make contests feasible, as only about 10 percent of the class usually enters. A large class may have 40 to 60 entrants. Winners rise from the obscurity of a large class.

Judged by an army of section leaders, programs can win for such categories as “best algorithm” or “best aesthetics.” Some contests have explored the limited world of Karel the robot, who can turn left but not right, forcing students to program three left turns to make a right when Karel runs a maze. One winning program calculated the weakest and strongest countries in a game of Risk to determine who could attack whom. Another winner created an animation of IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer beating chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. Yet another winner created an adventure game using text-based commands to have players find magic wands and potions.

Prizes provide recognition (certificates for first-place, runner-up and honorable mention contestants, and classroom presentations of winning entries), camaraderie (a group dinner for winners at Roberts’ house the following quarter), perks (offers of letters of recommendation from Roberts) and glory (an automatic 100 percent score on the final exam for the first-prize winner of any contest).

The contests have opened up new worlds for some students. When a former English major in Roberts’ Computer Science 105 course won a contest, she became so fired up that she got an undergraduate degree in symbolic systems and a master’s degree in computer science. She went on to become employee number nine at Google.

Roberts’ teaching awards include the Bing Fellow Award for Excellence in Teaching (1993), the Perin Award for Undergraduate Engineering Education (1995), the Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award (1998), the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn University Fellowship in Undergraduate Education (2002), the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education Award (2003) and the Laurance and Naomi Carpenter Hoagland Prize (2004).

The Center for Teaching and Learning sponsors the “Award-Winning Teachers on Teaching” lecture series. Deborah Gordon, a professor of biological sciences, will deliver the next talk Jan. 20 at noon in the Hartley Conference Center of the Mitchell Earth Sciences Building.

Folks:

The posting below is an editorial on Just in Time Teaching (JiTT) by James Rhem, executive editor of the National Teaching and Learning Forum. It is number and is #26 in a series of selected excerpts from the National Teaching and Learning Forum newsletter reproduced here as part of our “Shared Mission Partnership.” NT&LF has a wealth of information on all aspects of teaching and learning. . If you are not already a subscriber I urge you to consider becoming one. You can check it out at [http://www.ntlf.com/] The on-line edition of the Forum–like the printed version – offers subscribers insight from colleagues eager to share new ways of helping students reach the highest levels of learning. National Teaching and Learning Forum Newsletter, Volume 14, Number 1 © Copyright 1996-2005. Published by James Rhem & Associates, Inc. (ISSN 1057-2880) All rights reserved worldwide. Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Contests motivate top students in large courses

Tomorrow’s Teaching and Learning

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JUST IN TIME TEACHING

James Rhem

A quick and dirty description of “Just In Time Teaching” (JiTT) compares it to putting the “Study Questions” once found at the end of textbook chapters up on the Web. But there’s a lot more to it. For one thing, the affect generated by JiTT differs markedly from that associated with a student pondering study questions alone in the dorm. The questions and exercises posted for students on the Web before each class meeting become the grist for that class meeting, not a quiz per se or a tidying up of understanding before getting on with the dispensing of another huge chunk of content. In this pedagogy, student questions, student understanding (and misunderstanding), student learning become the focus of instruction, and dialogue replaces lecture.

Mechanics

The mechanics of JiTT appear overtly simple: professors post a number of queries (commonly called “warm ups”) on a course web site prior to each class meeting. Students must log on and post replies to these by a certain deadline (usually a few hours before class). Professors review the student replies before class and make the understanding, partial understandings and complete misunderstandings the focus of the class meeting. Indeed, the concepts being explored and the students grappling with understanding replace traditional lectures in JiTT, according to Scott Simkins, professor of economics at North Carolina A&T and an enthusiast of the pedagogy.

Simkins and colleagues from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) presented stories of how they are using this approach successfully in a number of disciplines at the inaugural meeting of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Bloomington, Indiana last October. Currently, under sponsorship from an NSF grant, Simkins is examining a number of pedagogical approaches previously funded by NSF to see which have worked well and which have transfer potential to multiple disciplines. Physics, a discipline currently famous for vigorous pedagogical innovation and success, is the original home of JiTT. Originally developed by Gregor Novak at IU, it has quickly attracted a band of enthusiastic practitioners who have coauthored a book on the subject with Novak: Just-In-Time Teaching : Blending Active Learning with Web Technology (Prentice Hall, 1999).

So aside from using the Web, how does JiTT differ from simply having students read study questions and bring their own questions to class? Practitioners would say the whole latent premise of the question is misleading. For one thing, as Marshall McLuhan wrote in Understanding Media (1964), “the medium is the message.” The immediacy, the “in timeness,” the sense of personal control associated with the Web matter a great deal. They convey a message of involvement and interaction rather than a message of questioning an authority. The equality of involvement sets the stage for a far different class meeting than the serial, oral confessions of what individual students did not understand, which responding to study questions might do.

“This approach lets us get into students minds,” says Simkins, “it helps make their thinking visible.” “It changes the character of the classroom,” he continues. “The comments we are responding to are ‘their stuff,’ not my stuff from lectures or stuff from the book; so there’s a different kind of involvement and a different level of involvement.”

As class meetings shift from being presentation and discussion of blocks of material and into an ongoing learning dialogue, everything becomes more fluid. That unsettles some professors. “Professors sometimes are not as confident about working on their feet or working without a net so to speak,” says Simkins. But those who make the leap find a quality of “buy in” from students that transforms their teaching. Says Simkins: “They see you as focusing on ‘them,’ on their needs; they don’t see you as just presenting information. You’re caring about them, not just presenting information.”

The deep focus on student learning so changes students feelings about the class that they report it motivates them to go further, ask questions, look things up that they wouldn’t have before. And yet, as with so many felt differences, the improvement currently eludes psychometric testing. As Simkins writes: “Regress analysis of pseudo-control/treatment group exam results, controlling for demographic and academic differences among students, suggest that there is a small, measurable, positive effect on cognitive learning with JiTT-based pedagogy.”

That hasn’t deterred instructors at some 80 institutions from adopting the approach and setting up a website to share information about it – at www.jitt.org.

Warm Ups

Eventually, that website will post a wide range of “warm ups” from various disciplines, “warm ups” like those developed by Kathy Marrs, a professor of biology at IUPUI who presented with Simkins in Bloomington. “Subject mastery is always the primary concern of JiTT,” says Marrs. Thus, “a well-constructed Warm Up assignment asks students to address open-end questions at the conceptual level and in writing.” These exercises, she emphasizes, are not quizzes.

Marrs gives these examples of good ways to begin an effective Warm Up:

“What is the difference between . . . ?”
“Why do you think . . . ?”
“What happens if . . . ?”
“Do you think that . . . ?”
“Estimate how many . . . ?”
“In your own words explain . . . ?”

The big advantage of this sort of exercise over a quiz, says Marrs, is that while a quiz encourages students to do assigned reading, it doesn’t necessarily get them thinking about the material beyond the level of memorization as these questions do.

Warm Ups can take on big general questions or very pointed specific ones. For example, a question Marrs asked that might be posed in many fields is:

“What is the difference between a theory and a belief? You may want to look these terms up before answering. Be as specific as you can, and give an example of each.”

But a more pointed question (and some student answers) better convey the way in which JiTT exercises enliven class meetings:

“Which gender is doing more meiosis RIGHT NOW in class – the males or the females? Or do men and women undergo meiosis at pretty much equal rates? What type of cell is the end product of meiosis in men? What type of cell is the end product of meiosis in women? How many chromosomes do these cells have compared to our other body cells?”

Student replies included:

* “If I read my notes and didn’t get confused I think it is the guys who are doing more meiosis, but I’m not definitely sure why. The sperm cell is the end result for the male and the egg for the female. There are half as many chromosomes for these cells, 23 instead of 46.”

* “Both genders are undergoing meiosis at pretty much equal rates. The end result for men is a sperm cell and the women is an egg cell. Both of these cells have 23 chromosomes each and not 46 like other cells that go through mitosis.”

* “Men and women do undergo meiosis at equal rates, but RIGHT NOW the ‘female(s)’ are doing more meiosis, this means you Dr. Marrs because you have a little one growing in ‘the oven’!!! The end product of meiosis in men is the sperm, and the end product in women is the egg. These cells have 23 chromosomes each.”

Typically Marrs and other JiTT teachers display a range of student responses anonymously to start discussion. Partially correct responses are particularly useful as “classroom discussion fodder,” says Marrs. Any teacher who’s faced the difficulty of dislodging incorrect prior knowledge welcomes the opportunity JiTT affords of correcting misconceptions while new concepts are still fresh in students’ minds. And partially correct responses make that easier. It’s not as though students have gotten the concept all wrong; their understanding just needs a little adjustment. Again, the egalitarian ethos effected by filing Web responses and having these hold the spotlight in class casts students as active learners right from the start. They come to class with an investment in understanding.

Marrs and Simkins agree that the JiTT approach creates a “positive learning cycle” with students at its center and they see few barriers to using the approach in many disciplines. Updated “study questions”? Well, kinda, sorta . . .

For more information on JiTT see:

* Gregor Novak, Andrew Gavrin, Wolfgang Christian, Evelyn Patterson, Just-In-Time Teaching : Blending Active Learning with Web Technology (Prentice Hall Series in Educational Innovation, 1999)