Tomorrow's Professor Blog

Folks:

The posting below looks at some ways to help students ask and answer their own questions about a particular topic.  It is by Nancy McClure  of Fairmont State College , Fairmont, West Virgina., and is from POD-IDEA Center Notes on Instruction series. POD is the Professional and Organizational Development Network [http://www.podnetwork.org/] and the IDEA Center is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to serve colleges and universities committed to improving learning, teaching, and leadership performance. [http://www.theideacenter.org/] ©2005. The IDEA Center. Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis

reis@stanford.edu

UP NEXT:  Shadowed by the Past: Outmoded Soviet-era practices still hamper teaching  and innovation in Eastern Europe

Tomorrow’s Teaching and Learning

________________________________

Finding Ways to Help Students Answer Their Own Questions

IDEA Item #2:

Background

Teachers who find ways to help their students answer their own questions are teachers who are helping their students become more metacognitive–or knowledgeable about and in control of their cognitive resources. Research on metacognition has focused on what students know about their thinking processes, what students do when trying to solve problems, and the development and use of compensatory strategies (1). The ability to reflect on one’s cognitive processes and to be aware of one’s activities while reading, listening, or solving problems has important implications for the student’s effectiveness as an active, planful learner. As an expert learner yourself, you automatically monitor your understanding and adjust by filtering irrelevant information and pursuing additional information as needed.

One strategy you use is to ask questions; as the expert learner, you know the kinds of questions to ask to get the information you need. Students’ question generation is a comprehension- monitoring device and helps them focus on content and main ideas. In addition, student questioning at higher cognitive levels is a necessary component of problem solving (2). Thus, in your role as an expert learner, teaching students to answer their own questions by asking the right questions is vital. Note that item #2 is correlated with eleven of the other “instructor method” items at .70 or higher.  The strongest relationships are with item #1 (displayed personal interest in students), item #4 (demonstrated the importance of the subject), item #6 (made clear how topics fit), item #10 (explained clearly), item #13 (introduced stimulating ideas), and item #15 (inspired students to set and achieve goals).

Helping students answer their own questions is also related to eight of the IDEA learning objectives items at levels higher than .60. Look for similarities in ratings on these items to assess your success in helping your students to develop metacognitive and problem-solving skills.

Helpful Hints

To help students answer their own questions, you need to first teach students to ask the right kinds of questions for the right purposes. Show students that questions can be structured around the types of information sought. For example, Bloom’s Taxonomy (3) of the cognitive domain provides a categorization of thought processes from least to most complex; a good framework for posing questions at increasingly higher levels of understanding. Providing students with question stems (4) will help them with this process. Another categorization of questions (5) describes questions as input (requiring recall of facts or derivations from sensory data); processing (requiring the drawing of relationships among data); or output (requiring students to hypothesize, speculate, create, generalize, evaluate). Once students understand that they need to identify what it is they want to know, they can then select the appropriate questions to ask.

Because generating their own questions will be new to most students, they will need encouragement. You can help students feel comfortable asking questions if you create an environment in which inquiry is not only accepted but fostered. By modeling the questioning process and scaffolding student discourse you can mold students’ actions, interactions, and thought processes (6). One way to begin would be to have students write questions prior to studying a new topic, performing a new task, or taking part in a new activity. Ask them to use the question stems to write a question at each level of thought. Use the students’ questions to quide investigations, activities, or discussions. During these, have students think about particular questions and seek answers through their interactions with the teacher and other students. Afterwards, have students reflect upon the questions they asked to determine if the questions helped them learn. At this time, too, have students write new questions based on their prior questions and the teaching/learning activities.

A third way to help students answer their own questions is to use teaching techniques that promote active learning (7). These are often inquiry-based methods and include, but are not limited to, the case-study approach, debates, role- playing activities, simulations, and problem-solving activities. Through participation in these and other active-learning activities, students learn to assume responsibility for their learning by identifying issues, asking questions, seeking information, and developing answers or creative solutions.

As the preceding hints indicate, finding ways to help students answer their own questions means becoming the type of teacher who structures the teaching/learning process to facilitate students’ assuming a more active role in their learning. Students who learn to ask the right questions will get answers that satisfy them.

Assessment Issues

To assess students’ ability to answer their own questions, you need to consider several aspects of the teaching/learning experience. First, you and the students must be clear on the objective of the learning activity. In addition, the teaching strategy you use will contribute to your choice of assessment technique. You and the students should also agree that learning to ask and answer their own questions is an ongoing and formative process. Because you are helping students become more metacognitive, you should have students engage in self-assessment. Make sure that students are learning to ask questions within the context of the content. Use checklists, learning logs, and dialogue journals to track students’ acquisition of self-assessment and questioning skills (8). For maximum benefit, couple these with other assessments of students’ learning to demonstrate the relationships of their questions to acquisition of new knowledge and skills. When students see that asking and answering their own questions is directly connected to more and better learning, their motivation and persistence will increase.

References and Resources

(1) Baker, L., & Brown, A. L. (1984). Metacognitive skills and reading. In P. D. Pearson (ed.) Handbook of Reading Research. New York: Longman.

(2) Zoller, U. (1987). The fostering of question- asking capability: A meaningful aspect of problem-solving in chemistry. Journal of Chemical Education, 64, 510-512.

(3) Bloom, B. S., Engelhart, J. B., Furst, E. J., Hill, W. H., & Krathwohl, D. R. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goal (Handbook 1: cognitive domain). New York: Longmans Green.

(4) Fowler, B. (1996). Bloom’s taxonomy and critical thinking. Longview Community College: Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum Project. Retrieved June 29, 2004, from http://www.kcmetro.cc.mo.us/longview/ctac/blooms.htm

(5) Pizzini, E. L., & Shepardson, D. P. (1991). Student questioning in the presence of the teacher during problem solving in science. School Science and Mathematics, 91, 348-352.

(6) Chin, C., Brown, D. E., & Bruce, B. C. (2002). Student-generated questions: A meaningful aspect of learning in science. International Journal of Science Education, 24(5), 521-549.

(7) Myers, C., & Jones, T. B. (1993). Promoting active learning: Strategies for the college classroom. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

(8) North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. (1997). Critical issue: Ensuring equity with alternative assessment. Retrieved June 29, 2004, from http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/methods/assment/as800.htm

IDEA Paper No. 31: Answering and Asking Questions, Cashin IDEA Paper No. 39: Establishing Rapport: Personal Interaction and Learning, Fleming IDEA Paper No. 34: Focusing On Active, Meaningful Learning, Stalheim-Smith

©2005 The IDEA Center This document may be reproduced for educational/training activities.

Reproduction for publication or sale may be done only with prior written permission of The IDEA Center.

This document may be reproduced for educational/training activities. Reproduction for publication or sale may be done only with prior written permission of The IDEA Center.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

NOTE: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor Mailing List by going to:

https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor

Folks:

A lot has, and is, being written about on-line learning.  The posting below gives some useful and practical suggestions on how to manage on-line synchronous learning across time zones and cultures.   It is from Chapter 4, Practical Considerations in Online Learning, in the book, Building Online Learning Communities: Effective Strategies for the Virtual Classroom, second edition of Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace, by Rena M. Palloff and Keith Pratt. Published by Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint, 989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741 [www.josseybass.com].  Copyright © 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis

reis@stanford.edu

UP NEXT: Presidential Transitions: It’s Not the Position, It’s the Transition  – Review

Tomorrow’s Teaching and Learning

——————————————- 1,743 words —————————————–

Practical Considerations in Online Learning

In the previous two chapters, we discussed some human issues that arise as we form an online learning community. We also noted that online learning communities do not just happen but need to be created with good planning and forethought. Consequently, there are some practical considerations that must be taken into account if the class is to be successful. Included in these are time, size, cost, and security. Another consideration is the software used for the class, which we discuss in Chapter Five. The success or failure of an online endeavor depends on getting these practical considerations right.

ABOUT TIME

Concerns about time relate primarily to the amount of time required for participation on the part of both students and faculty. In this section, we discuss several of the concerns related to time: asynchronous and synchronous environments, time offline versus online, time constraints, and time management.

Asynchronous and Synchronous Environments

Online classes can be conducted either synchronously (real-time virtual classrooms or chat) or asynchronously, meaning that postings are staggered. Our preference, based on our experiences with online teaching, is for the asynchronous environment. It is the creation of community in that environment to which all of our previous discussion relates. The asynchronous environment allows participants to log on to the class or discussion at any time, think about what is being discussed, and post their own responses when they wish. However, recent advances in synchronous technology, as well as increasing skill with its use, are helping us see the benefits of this form of technology in community building and the delivery of an online class.

The challenge of conducting a synchronous meeting or class session is to coordinate time with a dispersed group and to facilitate it such a way that all “voices” are heard. Although many groups ask for the ability to have synchronous discussion (chat capability), we find that skill is needed on the part of the facilitator for productive discussion or participation or it will disintegrate into simple one-line contributions of minimal depth and wander off topic. It can replicate the face-to-face classroom in that the participant who is the fastest typist will probably contribute the greatest amount to the discussion, thus becoming the “loudest voice” in the group. In addition, contributions may end up out of sync; a participant may respond to a comment made several lines earlier but be unable to post that response immediately due to the number of people posting or the speed of the connection to the discussion. Some newer forms of technology, such as virtual classroom technology, have helped mitigate some of these concerns. Finkelstein (2006) notes that to make synchronous interaction and the use of virtual classrooms effective, an agreement must be struck between the instructor and participating learners. The instructor, in arranging the synchronous session, has determined that this is the optimal means by which to engage with learners in exploring content, in essence making the commitment not to waste learner time. Learners agree to minimize the distractions around them as they work synchronously and to use the time meaningfully.

If the group is internationally distributed, time differences become critical, as does the impact of culture on communication. Careful determination must be made of whose time zone will be used to conduct synchronous sessions. If students are located simultaneously in Europe, across the United States, and in Asia, as we have experienced in some of our classes, the challenge to hold synchronous sessions increases. Often the students themselves will resist using chat to communicate with one another in these circumstances and will remind their peers that time zone issues are a concern when the possibility of holding a chat session is raised.

Synchronous communication has become popular with those who need to conduct meetings with distributed work teams through technologies such as WebEx. Again, however, time zone concerns are crucial. We were asked to consult to a human resources staff person for a large multinational company that used a distributed team format. The manager of an internationally distributed team within the company was baffled when a Japanese member resigned. Upon investigation, she discovered that the team member was required to drive for two hours in the middle of the night in order to get to the office to participate in a synchronous team meeting. However, because it was not appropriate for him to complain to a superior, given his cultural background, he felt that his only option was to resign. Conversely, we worked with an agri-business firm located in the central part of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. In this case, the use of synchronous technology for training was useful because all participants were in the same time zone, thus creating ease of access and minimal inconvenience. As online distance learning programs attract an increasingly international market, educators will need to consider the impact of time and cultural differences on the conducting of courses.

The managers of an educational program being conducted completely online told us recently that they were resisting the addition of chat capability for their students because of concerns about time. Because the students in the program were globally distributed, theirs was a logistics concern. How would they b able to conduct a class meeting synchronously, given that their students were all over the world? On whose time schedule would these meetings be conducted? Would the schedule be determined by the instructor? The students? Whose time zone would win out? Although these may seem like small, petty issues to some, they become critical when an instructor or a participant is asked to get up in the middle of the night to participate in a class discussion. Certainly, this would reduce the quality of participation and thus erode a developing sense of community in the group. These are certainly not insurmountable concerns -rotation of times for meetings or multiple meetings might help overcome these challenges -but the point is that they need to be considered carefully.

Another concern in synchronous communication is the ease with which members can become confused and overloaded if guidelines for participation are not established at the start. As discussion occurs in real time, members may not be able to keep with the pace established. In an attempt to deal with this problem, many virtual classroom applications for synchronous communication include ways to signal for recognition -much like raising a hand in the face-to-face classroom. Although this helps create order out of possible chaos, it does not help stem a sense of overload as the discussion proceeds. Consequently, the facilitator should stop periodically and check to see whether there are questions from silent members or to break up the flow a bit. Finkelstein (2006) likens the role of the facilitator-instructor to a host at a successful dinner party. A good host prepares for his or her guests to arrive, welcomes them, assesses their mood and needs, helps them feel included in the conversation, and facilitates connection and conversation between them. Given that the synchronous virtual classroom most approaches what goes on face-to-face, he notes that it is easy to fall into an “autopilot” mode when working synchronously and forget that the learners are even present.

We do not mean to condemn synchronous communication, however. It clearly can be a dynamic and challenging setting in which to meet and can be especially useful in facilitating brainstorming and whiteboarding sessions. (Whiteboarding is writing or drawing on a shared screen.) A recent example of effective use of synchronous media has been Delgado Community College’s Summer Institute. Devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Delgado, located in New Orleans, has had to turn to the use of online classes in order to continue to serve its student body. The number of online courses being delivered by the institution has grown dramatically since the storm, and faculty have been anxious to receive training to improve course development and delivery. Prior to the storm, Delgado held a two-week, on-campus institute focused on the use of technology in the classroom. However, with staff, faculty, and students dispersed and with the new focus on online delivery, a decision was made to hold a one-week institute online. The response by faculty to this idea was extremely positive, and a one-week course that contained asynchronous discussion assignments for participants along with live webcasts and synchronous chat sessions was delivered. A week of real-time, synchronous sessions would have been extremely exhausting for all participants, but the combination of asynchronous and synchronous delivery created variety, as well as time for participating faculty to catch their breath.

As the Delgado example conveys, the key is to choose the appropriate synchronous media in an online course and to pay particular attention to good facilitation skills to make it effective and worth the time and effort it takes to arrange it. Designing a one-week institute clearly takes a great deal of time and effort. However, there are simple ways to include synchronous media in an online course. One of us uses chat regularly to hold online office hours or to set up a question and answer session for students. Chat can be a useful adjunctive tool in a predominantly asynchronous online class, but for it to be successful, the number of students participating should be small, the concerns and time zones of all participants must be considered, and guidelines for equal participation must be established in advance.

In asynchronous classes, members have the luxury of time. Posting can occur at the convenience of the participants, allowing them time to read, process, and respond. However, because participants can take their time, asynchronous classes need to take place over a much longer period, which should be factored into the planning. What might have been a weekend workshop may have to be stretched over one or two weeks to allow for full participation. The amount to be discussed in one week during a semester course may need to be pared down to manageable size in order for all participants to have an opportunity to read and respond. This is not to say that due dates and guidelines should not be established; we routinely set due dates for discussion postings in order to help students manage their time. Having the luxury of time does not mean letting things slide.

I really enjoy being able to do my work whenever I want to. Along with the flexibility it also gives me a sense of responsibility. Jason

Folks:

The posting below gives a somewhat different take on preparing non-traditional students for academic success.  It is by Julian Hermida, LL.B., LL.M., DCL, Ph.D., assistant professor and chair, Teaching and Learning Committee and Department of Law and Politics, Algoma University, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada http://www.julianhermida.com She can be reached at: <Julian.Hermida@algomau.ca>

Regards,

Rick Reis

reis@stanford.edu

UP NEXT: Practical Considerations in Online Learning

Tomorrow’s Teaching and Learning

——————————————- 1,180 words —————————————-

Inclusive Teaching Strategies to Promote Non-Traditional Student Success

Introduction

It is a recurring complaint among university teachers that most of today’s students come underprepared to university (Gabriel, 2008; Côté & Allahar, 2007). The majority of these students are non-traditional, particularly mature, aboriginal, international, recent immigrant, first-generation, and visible minorities. North American universities and individual faculty members have been taking measures to help non-traditional students improve their skills and performance. Most of these initiatives are remedial in nature, i.e., they aim at equipping non-traditional students with the academic skills and knowledge of mainstream students and teachers (Tinto, 2008). Not surprisingly, these actions have proved inadequate to empower most minority students to succeed, as these measures neglect to acknowledge and incorporate the diverse values, beliefs, and skills that non-traditional students bring to the classroom.

Diverse worldviews

Non-traditional students are not underprepared.  Their preparation responds to a different way of seeing themselves and understanding the world that derives from their own cultures and traditions. This different way of seeing the world has repercussions in most academic areas. They influence the way students think, express themselves, interact in the classroom, and think in the disciplines. For example, many non-traditional students tend to see things in a subjective, inward-looking fashion (Haigh, 2009). Other students from non-Western societies are holistic in their thoughts. They tend to emphasize and value how things are interconnected. They tend to give contextual and emotional information. Some even show a tendency to digress when writing (Fox, 1994).

Inclusive teaching

So, instead of pushing non-traditional students to adopt North American mainstream academic skills, disciplinary perspectives, and thought processes, we should open our classroom doors to teaching disciplinary content and academic skills from a wide array of diverse traditions so that every single -mainstream and minority- student will feel included. This will prepare both mainstream and minority students to succeed as interculturally knowledgeable citizens in a globalized world (Schuerholz-Lehr, 2007).

Strategies for inclusive teaching

* Place student learning of diverse knowledge modes, and ways of generating, organizing, and expressing thought at the forefront of the curriculum. Include this within the course intended learning outcomes. And make explicit to your students that they will learn to approach the discipline and to generate, organize, and express thought from multiple traditions.

* Align your course so that the assessment and teaching and learning activities match your intended learning outcomes (Biggs, 2007).

* Change the preconception that non-Western ideas are exotic. Introduce non-Western knowledge modes, academic skills, and disciplinary content as something normal.

* Help your students see the intrinsic value of acquiring diverse, non-traditional ways of seeing the world. Include a wide array of non-Western and non-traditional worldviews and values, even if you do not have students from a certain culture. For example, even if you do not have aboriginal students, teach your students how to transmit knowledge through stories as is done in aboriginal communities (Charter, 1996).

* Show your students how useful it is to be prepared to live and work in different cultures.

* Teach multiple ways of writing instead of restricting writing to North American academic styles. For example, teach your students how to organize thoughts and express ideas as is done in Chinese culture. Ask a Chinese graduate student who acquired his or her undergraduate education in China to show you how Chinese scholars write academic papers, or invite that student to your class to talk to your students. Then, ask your students to write a short paper in English following an academic Chinese structure and organization.

* Vary pedagogical methods, i.e., teach as is taught in other cultures and traditions. For example, resort to story-telling, organize circles, potlucks in -or ideally outside- the classroom to acknowledge aboriginal traditions. Or base part of your pedagogy on notions of Dharma, which emphasize personal introspection, self-awareness, self-realization, and self-improvement (Haigh, 2009).

* Include texts in foreign languages that some of your students speak as alternative or supplementary to texts in English. Even if you do not read in a foreign language, as disciplinary expert, you are probably familiar with the text and the author, or you probably read an English translation. Most foreign language journals bring an abstract in English. So, it is not very difficult to know the content of an article in your discipline even if you do not speak that language. Invite the students that read those articles to comment them in class. Unilingual speakers will see the value of reading the discipline in other languages.

* Invite guests from non mainstream traditions, such as an aboriginal elder, a visible minority professional, or a foreign religious leader. They can discuss topics related to your course, and your students can gain insight into their worldviews.

* Organize student presentations where students discuss a problem from their own tradition. A variation of this activity is to ask students to present a topic from a tradition that is different from their own.

* Discuss disciplinary content that interests diverse groups of students. For example, recent immigrant students want to see issues related to immigration, assimilation, and heritage discussed in class. If you teach US literature you can include Chicano authors’ short stories dealing with problems faced by Latino immigrant families, such as stories by Francisco Jimenez. If you teach Contracts, you can include the notion and formation of contracts found in legal traditions outside North America.

* Mature students have very rich life experiences. Make room for them to share their experiences with the rest of the class.

* Assess whether students can generate, organize, and express thought in a multitude of diverse ways. Assessment is the component in the aligned teaching system that most greatly influences the approach students take to learning (Gibbs, 1999). So, if your assessment actually evaluates whether and how well students have mastered a wide array of knowledge modes, diverse academic skills, and non-traditional disciplinary perspectives, students will be likely to achieve your intended learning outcomes (Biggs, 2003).

* Design assessment tasks that are representative of different cultures and traditions. Do not restrict your assessment tasks to exams, multiple choice tests, research papers, and group presentations. Adopt assessment tools used in other cultures, such as informal dialogues, holistic evaluation of student performance throughout the course, or self-evaluation. Another alternative is to ask your students to gather evidence that is customary in their traditions to show how well they have achieved the intended learning outcomes.

Conclusions

When students and teachers came to university from the same privileged social backgrounds, they shared similar values and principles. So, there was no difference of perspective between teachers and students. The lack of success of individual students was interpreted as individual failures, generally explained in terms of lack of application and effort on the part of those students. Since today, non-traditional students make up a large percentage of North American classrooms, what was once an explanation in terms of individual students, today is a generalization about underpreparedness.

Inclusive teaching acknowledges and incorporates diverse knowledge modes, thought processes, and expressive styles into the classroom. It prepares both mainstream and minority students to succeed as interculturally knowledgeable citizens in today’s globalized world.

References

* Biggs, J. (2003). Teaching for Quality Learning at University. Buckingham: Open University Press, Second edition.

* Charter, A. (1996). Integrating Traditional Aboriginal Teaching and Learning Approaches in Post-Secondary Settings, ERIC document ED403091.

* Gabriel, K. (2008). Teaching Unprepared Students: Strategies for Promoting Success and Retention in Higher Education. Stylus Publishing.

* Côté & Allahar, (2007). Ivory Tower Blues: A University System in Crisis. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

* Gibbs, G. (1999),  “Using Assessment Strategically to Change the Way Students Learn”, chapter 4 in S. Brown and A. Glasner (eds) (1999), Assessment Matters in Higher Education, Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press, Buckingham, UK.

* Fox, H. (1994). Listening to the world: Cultural issues in academic writing, Urbana, IL: NCTE.

* Haigh, M. (2009). Fostering Cross-Cultural Empathy with Non-Western Curricular Structures, Journal of Studies in International Education, Vol. 13 No.2. p. 271.

* Schuerholz-Lehr, S. (2007). Teaching for Global Literacy in Higher Education: How Prepared Are the Educators? Journal of Studies in International Education, Vol. 11 No. 2, 2007, p.180.

* Tinto, V. (2008). Moving Beyond Access: College Success for Low-Income, First Generation Students. The Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, Washington DC.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

NOTE: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor Mailing List by going to:

https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor

Folks:

The posting below looks at how to apply analytical thinking to applications in the real world.   It is #45 in the monthly series called Carnegie Foundation Perspectives and is by Senior Scholars Anne Colby and William M. Sullivan. The Foundation invites your response at: CarnegiePresident@carnegiefoundation.org. © 2009 The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 51 Vista Lane, Stanford, CA 94305 Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis

reis@stanford.edu

UP NEXT: Managing Tight Budgets

Tomorrow’s Teaching and Learning

Strengthening the Foundations of Students’ Excellence, Integrity and Social Contribution

In this month’s Carnegie Perspectives, Senior Scholars Anne Colby and William M. Sullivan write that colleges should aim to teach students how to use knowledge and criticism not only as ends in themselves, but as means toward responsible engagement with the life of their times. This essay is adapted from an article with the same title that appeared in the winter 2009 issue of Liberal Education, published by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Both come from the Carnegie/Jossey-Bass book, A New Agenda for Higher Education: Shaping a Life of the Mind for Practice.

———————————-

College education is a highly formative experience. It proves eventful and life-shaping for students of any age. College provides a uniquely powerful moment in which students rethink their lives, expand their intellectual and cultural horizons, and focus on future goals, often in new ways. Yet, we suspect that when they reflect on their time in higher education, many graduates feel a gnawing sense that something important was missing, that the overall educational experience could have been more helpful in enabling them to come to grips with their lives.

In their catalogues and advertising, universities and colleges frequently speak of preparing their graduates to live discerning and responsible lives. This is especially true of institutions that lay claim to a heritage of liberal education. But few institutions of higher learning devote significant curricular attention to questions of purpose, vocation or personal meaning. Why is this so? We believe that this neglect of direction, meaning and other aspects of personal responsibility as serious educational goals is the unintended consequence of too narrow a pursuit of higher education’s most cherished value: analytical thinking.

Analytical thinking involves making sense of particular events in terms of general concepts and then manipulating those concepts according to general rules or principles. Analytical thinking involves framing the particularity of actual experience in terms of categories at a higher level of abstraction. This is “rigorous” thinking that is central to modern societies. It enables scientific explanation and theory-building, and their powerful application in technological innovation. These skills play an important part in making democratic as well as academic or intellectual life possible. Analytical thinking is a necessary skill for modern living, and most entering students need considerable help to gain the essential intellectual skills analytical thinking entails.

Our quarrel, then, is not with analytical thinking itself but rather with the tendency in the academy to treat analytical thinking, along with mastery of substantive content, as sufficient goals for higher education. When this happens, the over-emphasis on analytical thinking creates an academic culture that reveres analytical rigor as the only important consideration, disconnecting rigorous thinking from sources of human meaning and value. This threatens to create a culture of argument that is so skeptical and detached that it can become unmoored from the human purposes that rationality and rigor are meant to serve. Analytical thinking teaches students how to argue all sides of an issue, but pursued by itself, it often leaves them with the sense that the ultimate choice of where to come down is arbitrary. One result is that humanities disciplines, in particular, come to be regarded by students as trading in mere “opinion” as opposed to rigorously demonstrated “facts”-which appear the only kind of knowledge worth having.

This is not a new problem. At the source of Western rationality, Plato already was warning about the nihilistic potential of acquiring skills of critical argument that are not well grounded by a moral compass. Plato has Socrates humorously compare such unmoored, fledgling dialecticians to young hounds who discover they can tear to bits any argument, making the weaker and worse case seem like the stronger and better one. (Many academics, perhaps, can recognize in this description more than a few young and not-so-young hounds they have encountered.)

Analytical thinking is an incomplete educational agenda in part because it disconnects rationality from purpose, and academic understanding from practical understanding or judgment. In order to prepare for decision and action in the world, students need to develop not only facility with concepts and critical analysis but also judgment about real situations in all their particularity, ambiguity, uncertainty and complexity. They need to develop practical reasoning.

Despite the challenge this near-exclusive emphasis on analytical reasoning poses, we believe that higher education can be reshaped so that it better serves the cultivation of students’ sense of purpose and responsibility, even as it continues to strengthen the rigor of their thinking. Once recognized, the thinness of the way critical thinking is currently presented to students can be corrected. In fact, resources for such correction and enrichment are already present in many parts of the university, although they may not be recognized as such.

In the Carnegie Foundation’s studies of undergraduate preparation in fields such as engineering, nursing and business, we have discovered that when professions confront the problem of shaping students to be competent and responsible future practitioners of their fields, they inevitably have to invent ways of teaching practical reasoning to guide and direct analytical capacities. Some even find ways to connect these teaching practices with concerns about meaning and purpose in the arts and sciences disciplines, thus bridging the notorious divide between “pure” and “applied” learning.

Plato might be surprised by this finding, but we suspect he would also be pleased. Like Moliere’s character who suddenly discovers that he has been speaking prose all his life, a more focused attention to how and where practical reasoning is being taught may bring today’s academy to rediscover in some of its peripheries ways to bring essential but too often neglected purposes of higher education back to the center of attention.

Folks:

The posting below looks at common teaching mistakes we need to avoid.  it is by Richard M. Felder, North Carolina State University and Rebecca Brent, Education Designs, Inc. See also Felder’s: RESOURCES IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING EDUCATION at: http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/

Regards,

Rick Reis

reis@stanford.edu

UP NEXT: Tenure’s Value … to Society

The Ten Worst Teaching Mistakes

Like most faculty members, we began our academic careers with zero prior instruction on college teaching and quickly made almost every possible blunder. We’ve also been peer reviewers and mentors to colleagues, and that experience on top of our own early stumbling has given us a good sense of the most common mistakes college teachers make. In this column and one to follow we present our top ten list, in roughly increasing order of badness. Doing some of the things on the list may occasionally be justified, so we’re not telling you to avoid all of them at all costs. We are suggesting that you avoid making a habit of any of them.

Mistake #10. When you ask a question in class, immediately call for volunteers.

You know what happens when you do that.  Most of the students avoid eye contact, and either you get a response from one of the two or three who always volunteer or you answer your own question. Few students even bother to think about the question, since they know that eventually someone else will provide the answer.

We have a suggestion for a better way to handle questioning, but it’s the same one we’ll have for Mistake #9 so let’s hold off on it for a moment.

Mistake #9. Call on students cold.

You stop in mid-lecture and point your finger abruptly: “Joe, what’s the next step?”  Some students are comfortable under that kind of pressure, but many could have trouble thinking of their own name. If you frequently call on students without giving them time to think (”cold-calling”), the ones who are intimidated by it won’t be following your lecture as much as praying that you don’t land on them. Even worse, as soon as you call on someone, the others breathe a sigh of relief and stop thinking.

A better approach to questioning in class is active learning.1 Ask the question and give the students a short time to come up with an answer, working either individually or in small groups. Stop them when the time is up and call on a few to report what they came up with. Then, if you haven’t gotten the complete response you’re looking for, call for volunteers. The students will have time to think about the question, and-unlike what happens when you always jump directly to volunteers (Mistake #10)-most will try to come up with a response because they don’t want to look bad if you call on them. With active learning you’ll also avoid the intimidation of cold-calling (Mistake #9) and you’ll get more and better answers to your questions. Most importantly, real learning will take place in class, something that doesn’t happen much in traditional lectures.2

Mistake #8. Turn classes into PowerPoint shows.

It has become common for instructors to put their lecture notes into PowerPoint and to spend their class time mainly droning through the slides. Classes like that are generally a waste of time for everyone.3 If the students don’t have paper copies of the slides, there’s no way they can keep up. If they have the copies, they can read the slides faster than the instructor can lecture through them, the classes are exercises in boredom, the students have little incentive to show up, and many don’t.

Turning classes into extended slide shows is a specific example of:

Mistake #7. Fail to provide variety in instruction.

Nonstop lecturing produces very little learning,2 but if good instructors never lectured they could not motivate students by occasionally sharing their experience and wisdom. Pure PowerPoint shows are ineffective, but so are lectures with no visual content-schematics, diagrams, animations, photos, video clips, etc.-for which PowerPoint is ideal. Individual student assignments alone would not teach students the critical skills of teamwork, leadership, and conflict management they will need to succeed as professionals, but team assignments alone would not promote the equally important trait of independent learning. Effective instruction mixes things up: boardwork, multimedia, storytelling, discussion, activities, individual assignments, and group work (being careful to avoid Mistake #6). The more variety you build in, the more effective the class is likely to be.

Mistake #6. Have students work in groups with no individual accountability.

All students and instructors who have ever been involved with group work know the potential downside. One or two students do the work, the others coast along understanding little of what their more responsible teammates did, everyone gets the same grade, resentments and conflicts build, and the students learn nothing about high-performance teamwork and how to achieve it.

The way to make group work work is cooperative learning, an exhaustively researched instructional method that effectively promotes development of both cognitive and interpersonal skills. One of the defining features of this method is individual accountability-holding each team member accountable for the entire project and not just the part that he or she may have focused on. References on cooperative learning offer suggestions for achieving individual accountability, including giving individual exams covering the full range of knowledge and skills required to complete the project and assigning individual grades based in part on how well the students met their responsibilities to their team.4,5

Mistake #5. Fail to establish relevance.

Students learn best when they clearly perceive the relevance of course content to their interests and career goals. The “trust me” approach to education (”You may have no idea now why you need to know this stuff but trust me, in a few years you’ll see how important it is!”) doesn’t inspire students with a burning desire to learn, and those who do learn tend to be motivated only by grades.

To provide better motivation, begin the course by describing how the content relates to important technological and social problems and to whatever you know of the students’ experience, interests, and career goals, and do the same thing when you introduce each new topic. (If there are no such connections, why is the course being taught?) Consider applying inductive methods such as guided inquiry and problem-based learning, which use real-world problems to provide context for all course material.6 You can anticipate some student resistance to those methods, since they force students to take unaccustomed responsibility for their own learning, but there are effective ways to defuse resistance, 7; and the methods lead to enough additional learning to justify whatever additional effort it may take to implement them.

Mistake #4. Give tests that are too long.

Engineering professors routinely give exams that are too long for most of their students. The exams may include problems that involve a lot of time-consuming mathematical analysis and/or calculations, or problems with unfamiliar twists that may take a long time to figure out, or just too many problems. The few students who work fast enough to finish may make careless mistakes but can still do well thanks to partial credit, while those who never get to some problems or who can’t quickly figure out the tricks get failing grades. After several such experiences, many students switch to other curricula, one factor among several that cause engineering enrollments to decrease by 40% or more in the first two years of the curriculum. When concerns are raised about the impact of this attrition on the engineering pipeline, the instructors argue that the dropouts are all incompetent or lazy and unqualified to be engineers.

The instructors are wrong. Studies that have attempted to correlate grades of graduates with subsequent career success (as measured by promotions, salary increases, and employer evaluations) have found that the correlations are negligible 8; students who drop out of engineering have the same academic profile as those who stay 9; and no one has ever demonstrated that students who can solve a quantitative problem in 20 minutes will do any better as engineers than students who need 35 minutes. In fact, students who are careful and methodical but slow may be better engineers than students who are quick but careless. Consider which type you would rather have designing the bridges you drive across or the planes you fly in.

If you want to evaluate your students’ potential to be successful professionals, test their mastery of the knowledge and skills you are teaching, not their problem-solving speed. After you make up a test and think it’s perfect, take it and time yourself, and make sure you give the students at least three times longer to take it than you needed (since you made it up, you don’t have to stop and think about it)-and if a test is particularly challenging or involves a lot of derivations or calculations, the ratio should be four or five to one for the test to be fair.10

Mistake #3: Get stuck in a rut

Some instructors teach a course two or three times, feel satisfied with their lecture notes and PowerPoint slides and assignments, and don’t change a thing for the rest of their careers except maybe to update a couple of references. Such courses often become mechanical for the instructors, boring for the students, and after a while, hopelessly antiquated.

Things are always happening that provide incentives and opportunities for improving courses. New developments in course subject areas are presented in research journals; changes in the global economy call on programs to equip their graduates with new skills; improved teaching techniques are described in conference presentations and papers; and new instructional resources are made available in digital libraries such as SMETE (www.smete.org), Merlot (www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm), and the MIT Open Courseware site (http://ocw.mit.edu).

This is not to say that you have to make major revisions in your course every time you give it-you probably don’t have time to do that, and there’s no reason to. Rather, just keep your eyes open for possible improvements you might make in the time available to you. Go to some education sessions at professional conferences; read articles in educational journals in your discipline; visit one or two of those digital libraries to see what tutorials, demonstrations, and simulations they’ve got for your course; and commit to making one or two changes in the course whenever you teach it. If you do that, the course won’t get stale, and neither will you.

Mistake #2. Teach without clear learning objectives

The traditional approach to teaching is to design lectures and assignments that cover topics listed in the syllabus, give exams on those topics, and move on. The first time most instructors think seriously about what they want students to do with the course material is when they write the exams, by which time it may be too late to provide sufficient practice in the skills required to solve the exam problems. It is pointless-and arguably unethical-to test students on skills you haven’t really taught.

A key to making courses coherent and tests fair is to write learning objectives-explicit statements of what students should be able to do if they have learned what the instructor wants them to learn-and to use the objectives as the basis for designing lessons, assignments, and exams.11 The objectives should all specify observable actions (e.g., define, explain, calculate, solve, model, critique, and design), avoiding vague and unobservable terms like know, learn, understand, and appreciate. Besides using the objectives to design your instruction, consider sharing them with the students as study guides for exams. The clearer you are about your expectations (especially high-level ones that involve deep analysis and conceptual understanding, critical thinking, and creative thinking), the more likely the students will be to meet them, and nothing clarifies expectations like good learning objectives.

Mistake #1. Disrespect students.

How much students learn in a course depends to a great extent on the instructor’s attitude. Two different instructors could teach the same material to the same group of students using the same methods, give identical exams, and get dramatically different results. Under one teacher, the students might get good grades and give high ratings to the course and instructor; under the other teacher, the grades could be low, the ratings could be abysmal, and if the course is a gateway to the curriculum, many of the students might not be there next semester. The difference between the students’ performance in the two classes could easily stem from the instructors’ attitudes. If Instructor A conveys respect for the students and a sense that he/she cares about their learning and Instructor B appears indifferent and/or disrespectful, the differences in exam grades and ratings should come as no surprise.

Even if you genuinely respect and care about your students, you can unintentionally give them the opposite sense. Here are several ways to do it: (1) Make sarcastic remarks in class about their skills, intelligence, and work ethics; (2) disparage their questions or their responses to your questions; (3) give the impression that you are in front of them because it’s your job, not because you like the subject and enjoy teaching it; (4) frequently come to class unprepared, run overtime, and cancel classes; (5) don’t show up for office hours, or show up but act annoyed when students come in with questions. If you’ve slipped into any of those practices, try to drop them. If you give students a sense that you don’t respect them, the class will probably be a bad experience for everyone no matter what else you do, while if you clearly convey respect and caring, it will cover a multitude of pedagogical sins you might commit.

References

1. R.M. Felder and R. Brent, “Learning by Doing,” Chem. Engr. Education, 37(4), 282-283 (2003), <www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Columns/Active.pdf>.

2. M. Prince, “Does Active Learning Work? A Review of the Research,” J. Engr. Education, 93(3), 223-231 (2004), <www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Papers/Prince_AL.pdf>.

3. R.M. Felder and R. Brent, “Death by PowerPoint,” Chem. Engr. Education, 39(1), 28-29 (2005), <www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Columns/PowerPoint.pdf>.

4. R.M. Felder and R. Brent, “Cooperative Learning,” in P.A. Mabrouk, ed., Active Learning: Models from the Analytical Sciences, ACS Symposium Series 970, Chapter 4. Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 2007, <www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Papers/CLChapter.pdf>.

5. CATME (Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness), <www.catme.org>.

6. M.J. Prince and R.M. Felder, “Inductive Teaching and Learning Methods: Definitions, Comparisons, and Research Bases,” J. Engr. Education, 95(2), 123-138 (2006), <www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Papers/InductiveTeaching.pdf>.

7. R.M. Felder, “Sermons for Grumpy Campers,” Chem. Engr. Education, 41(3), 183-184 (2007), <www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Columns/Sermons.pdf>.

8. P.A. Cohen, “College Grades and Adult Achievement: A Research Synthesis,” Res. in Higher Ed., 20(3), 281-293 (1984); G.E. Samson, M.E. Graue, T. Weinstein, & H.J. Walberg, “Academic and Occupational Performance: A Quantitative Synthesis,” Am. Educ. Res. Journal, 2 21(2), 311-321 (1984).

9. E. Seymour & N.M. Hewitt, Talking about Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave the Sciences, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997.

10. R.M. Felder, “Designing Tests to Maximize Learning,” J. Prof. Issues in Engr. Education and Practice, 128(1), 1-3 (2002).

<http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Papers/TestingTips.htm>.

11. R.M. Felder & R. Brent, “Objectively Speaking,” Chem. Engr. Education, 31(3), 178-179 (1997), <http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Columns/Objectives.html>.