Tomorrow's Professor Blog

Folks:

The posting below looks at the challenges of teaching English language learners..  It is #46 in the monthly series called Carnegie Foundation Perspectives [http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/perspectives] and is an interview with Professor of Education at Stanford University, Stanford, California. 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:  Demystifying Dissertation Writing

Tomorrow’s Teaching and Learning

A Different Way to Think About Teaching English Language Learners

Guadalupe Valdes [2] is a senior partner in the Carnegie Network, advising the Foundation in its new work, especially on issues around students who are English language learners. She has written that “as American educators we have a choice, we can isolate English-language learners in our educational institutions or we can choose to develop the full intellectual potential of all our citizens and future citizens.”

As Carnegie begins its work on increasing the success of developmental mathematics students in community colleges, understanding the characteristics of the students is an important component. The Foundation recruited Valdes, who is one of the most eminent experts on Spanish-English bilingualism in the United States, to shed light on the teaching and learning challenges with this segment of the student population. She is currently the Bonnie Katz Tenenbaum Professor of Education at Stanford University.

Valdes was interviewed by Carnegie Communications Director Gay Clyburn.

Clyburn: You are collecting information for us on “non-English-background” students in community colleges. Why?

Valdes: It is a population of students that we can’t overlook. I want to make the point that there is no typical ELL student. I’m using the term “non-English-background students.” These are:

* U.S.-born students who grew up in homes where a non-English language was spoken

* Foreign-born students who grew up in the U.S., who were educated in this country, and who also

grew up in homes where a non-English language was spoken

* Newly arrived immigrant students who were schooled in other countries

* International students

This category of students includes students of many ethnic backgrounds with various linguistic backgrounds and proficiencies, making it difficult to design courses or programs for any one student. These are students who speak only English (although members of their family may speak a non-English language), students who speak English and their home language, and students who are in the process of learning English.

Clyburn: This sounds complicated.

Valdes: Linguistic proficiencies are very complicated. Some students who are monolingual in English may speak heavily accented English. This often results in their being characterized as English-language learners. Some students who speak both English and their home language may still exhibit some limitations in listening, speaking, reading and writing English. Other students are clearly English language learners who are in the process of acquiring the language.

Clyburn: Do these students represent a large percentage of the community college student population?

Valdes: They do. The American Association of Community Colleges reports that minority students constitute 30 percent of community college enrollments nationally, with Latino students representing the fastest-growing racial/ethnic population. Think about these statistics alongside the fact that community colleges serve almost half the nation’s undergraduates. These are gateway institutions. And the completion statistics are tragic. In a 1988-2000 sample of students who entered higher education through a community college with the expectation of completing a B.A., only 15 percent of Hispanics (compared to 26 percent of whites and 9 percent of blacks) had completed the degree by the year 2000.

Clyburn: What is the scope of the mathematics and language project you’re doing for Carnegie?

Valdes: I’m examining the ways in which language proficiency is related to mathematics achievement. I’m initially looking at the literature and I am collecting data from three California community colleges. I hope that this information will provide a snapshot of non-English-background students and the broader challenges they face in community colleges.

Clyburn: Are you finding that there is a lot of information available.

Valdes: Not really. Most of the work on math and language has not focused on community college students and has not disentangled language proficiency from ethnicity, socioeconomic status, use of non-standard dialects and other social and cultural variables.

Clyburn: So, what’s missing? What do we need to think about as we look at teaching developmental math in community colleges to non-English learners?

Valdes: We need to be aware of the role of language limitations in the study of mathematics. We need to look at instructional delivery systems, both face-to-face and online. We need to look at text materials, classroom activities and assessment systems. Little information has been collected on students’ language characteristics and on the relationship between these characteristics and their success and/or failure in particular academic departments and courses.

Clyburn: How are you getting at this information in your study?

Valdes: We’re talking to administrators, faculty and students. We’re asking administrators to talk to us about their perception of Latino students, policies that might impact the students and factors that might affect student success. We’re asking instructors to tell us about the classes they teach, about Latino students and their performance in their classes, factors that account for that performance, the language proficiencies of Latino students, and particular topics that they consider “language laden.” And we’re talking to students about their experiences in studying math and in a typical math class, their performance in math classes, their use of support services, their experience with assessments and the placement process, the language background, and the impact of their language proficiencies on the learning of mathematics.

Clyburn: What are you finding?

Valdes: We’ll know more when the study is completed, but initially we’re finding that administrators and faculty have little awareness about how ESL policies and developmental math policies might interact. Two colleges have multi-level ESL course sequences required before students can enroll in the regular English multi-level developmental sequences. That’s asking students to do a lot of work before they can even take a college credit-level course. We’re also finding that administrators, faculty and students have different explanations for students’ low achievement in developmental math-none of them related to instruction. And not surprisingly, students express doubt and concerns about their English. Word problems in mathematics are especially challenging for ESL students.

Clyburn: Based on what you know now, what needs to happen to reverse the statistics, to ensure success in mathematics classes for non-English background students in community colleges? What do we need to do differently?

Valdes: There are no easy answers to this problem. And there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. The first thing we have to do is to have more accurate information about students’ backgrounds, both educational and linguistic. We need to press for the use of better assessment and placement procedures. We also need to press for more communication between academic departments (e.g. mathematics departments) and faculty and staff who are knowledgeable about language development. We need to be particularly sensitive to the ways in which computer mediated materials might interact with the reading and writing abilities of English language learners.

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Folks:

The posting below looks at the educational use Twitter in the classroom and is from the October, 2009 issue of ASEE Prism and is by  by David Zax is a freelance writer specializing in science..  http://www.asee.org/prism/. © Copyright 2009 American Society for Engineering Education 1818 N Street, N.W., Suite 600 Washington, DC 20036-2479 Web: www.asee.org Telephone: (202) 331-3500.  All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis

reis@stanford.edu

UP NEXT: Hiring Right – Sample Interview Questions

Tomorrow’s Teaching and Learning

Learning in 140 – Character Bites

Twitter can improve teacher-student communication, in and out of class.

In most respects, Prof. Natasha Neogi’s aerospace engineering class is like any other. It’s a large, hour-long lecture-style course at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. But at the halfway mark, Neogi’s class takes on a new twist. She invites her students to log on to Twitter – the “micro-blogging” service that limits messages to 140 characters – and write in with questions. Neogi sifts through the “tweets,” in Twitter-speak, addressing the most common sticking point at the end of class.

Once widely dismissed as an instrument of vanity, Twitter is now showing up in serious places. Its citizen-journalistic role after last June’s Iranian election was much celebrated; in May, a NASA astronaut became the first to tweet from space (”From orbit: Launch was awesome!!”). Bit by bit, Twitter is finding a role in education.

Of course, plenty of professors – engineering and otherwise – have long been using Twitter. They tweet about interesting links they’ve come across; they complain about their flight delays; they keep us updated on their cats. But there are also professors who, like Neogi, have begun to bring Twitter into the lecture hall or seminar room. And not simply to write, “I’m teaching a class right now.” Rather, they’ve moved beyond the tweet-as-status model to harness the organizational, aggregating, and social possibilities of the technology, recognizing it as a potent educational tool.

In the spring of 2008, well before Twitter acquired its current prominence, Scott McDonald and Cole Camplese of Pennsylvania State University at University Park co-taught a course called “Disruptive Technologies in Teaching and Learning.” They decided to experiment with the relatively new social networking tool, instructing class members to carry on a Twitter conversation – “essentially asking students to pass notes during class,” as the Chronicle of Higher Education put it. Soon, the professors found the Twitter feed had emerged as a rich “back channel” where students discussed what interested them or puzzled them. The professors, meanwhile, kept an eye on the feed, getting a read of what concepts needed further explication.

Gordon Snyder, who directs the National Center for Information and Communications Technologies at Springfield Technical Community College in Massachusetts, has also experimented with the back channel. He assigned his class a “hashtag”, Twitter-parlance for label to include in your tweets to make them easily searchable (they begin with the hash mark #). Students could thereby keep tabs on their neighbor’s notes and thoughts and even revisit them using Twitter’s search engine after class.

He also has found Twitter useful for getting a read on a room. Professors are familiar with the inscrutable sight of a lecture hall full of mute students. Are they listening? Understanding? Many professors have adopted “clickers,” polling devices used to quiz students on a topic recently covered or to gauge students’ opinions when venturing into politically sensitive subject matter. Snyder, whose center is funded by the National Science Foundation, considers Twitter a “modern and much more effective” clicker.

Of course, skepticism in academia remains the norm (”You mean as part of a class? Instead of students just wasting time?” a Massachusetts Institute of Technology official responded when asked for her take on Twitter). But Twitter evangelists have ready answers for skeptics. Does it erase a necessary distance between professor and student, eroding professional authority? That depends on your view, says McDonald: If you think, “‘Well, I’m the teacher, and people just need to listen to what I have to say’… then Twitter is not useful for you.” Does Twitter distract students? “I see it as a way to keep students engaged,” says Snyder. Besides, some argue, students often are already using these technologies in class; professors are simply co-opting a tool that would otherwise serve as a distraction. “If you can’t beat ‘em, might as well join ‘em,” sums up Kathy Schmidt, director of the Faculty Innovation Center for the College of Engineering at the University of Texas – Austin.

Still, Schmidt is the first to acknowledge that “sometimes turning our classroom into an experiment, per se, is risky business.” Professors should carefully consider what Twitter contributes before bringing it in, she says: “The pedagogy has to drive the reason for using the technology.”

Danger of ‘Parallel Discussions’

Punya Mishra, associate professor of educational psychology and technology at Michigan State University, notes that – despite his title – there is “no such thing as an educational technology.” Rather, “there are various technologies, and instructors need to repurpose them for their own needs.” Last year, Mishra tried integrating a micro-blogging service similar to Twitter into a graduate seminar, but “I felt two parallel discussions were going on, but they didn’t pull together productively at the end.” He spent the week considering what went wrong and then designated a block of time near the end of class for students to catch up on the contents of the micro-blogging feed. Afterward, the class reconvened to continue a newly enriched discussion. With this bit of thoughtful tinkering, micro-blogging proved useful.

Mishra followed that experiment with a more ambitious one: using Twitter to join students from different continents. MSU is located in Lansing, Mich., but also offers a master’s degree for students in Plymouth, England. Mishra’s online “distance” course has content similar to the one in Michigan, so his local class and its British counterpart have recently been Twittering using a shared hashtag. He praises Twitter for “this ability to connect people… The sense of community can be very useful and powerful.”

But just because Twitter has found success in some classrooms doesn’t mean it’s right for all engineering educators. After all, most of the experiments have thus far been led by professors of educational technology or social media itself – hardly a neutral or representative sample.

One common concern is that Twitter currently isn’t equipped to deal with engineering’s lingua franca: mathematics. “It’s hard to type funny symbols in Twitter,” says Michael Webber, a UT Austin engineering professor. Though an advocate for new classroom technologies, he doesn’t foresee using Twitter in courses heavy in equations and scientific formulas. “There’s something organic about a concept flowing from your brain to your hand to the board, and from the board to their hand and their brain,” he says. “Something about that process seems very valuable.”

Should engineering educators shun Twitter as a teaching tool, there are still other uses. MIT’s Nextlab, for one, has become a model of innovative Twitter use. By coupling micro-messaging with mapping technology, Nextlab has enabled Indian villagers to warn one other about floods and helped citizens of Caracas, Venezuela, to document crimes, locate them on a map, and share that information immediately with others.

If such innovative applications fail to interest engineers, Webber suggests that Twitter’s social networking still might come in handy. For some tech-savvy but shy engineers, Webber notes wryly, it’s “easier to get a date through e-mail or Twitter rather than normal mechanisms that humanity has developed over millennia.”

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Folks:

The posting below reminds us of the impact a good mentoring program can have on first-time college students. It is by Jennifer Epstein and is from the September 29, 2009 issue of INSIDE HIGHER ED, an excellent – and free – online source for news, opinion and jobs for all of higher education.  You can subscribe by going to: http://insidehighered.com/.  Also for a free daily update from Inside Higher  Ed, e-mail [scott.jaschik@insidehighered.com]. Copyright © 2009 Inside Higher Ed Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis

reis@stanford.edu

UP NEXT: When Should Intolerance Replace Tolerance?

Tomorrow’s Teaching and Learning

Mentoring, Texas-Style

Before Justin Jefferson got to college, the only kinds of doctors he or his parents had ever heard of were physicians and preachers. Not many researchers and teachers with doctorates live amid the gunshots of east San Antonio’s housing projects, the only world that he and his parents — both manual laborers — knew.

He arrived at the University of Texas at Austin a biology major, hoping to fulfill pre-med requirements, go on to medical school and become a physician, working toward a career goal his family could understand and respect. It was also the only career trajectory he knew of that would allow him to pursue his love of the natural sciences.

But, in the fall of 2007, during his sophomore year, Jefferson noticed a flier for the Pre-Graduate School Internship, a program created in 2004 to help undergraduates figure out their academic and career goals by pairing them with graduate students or faculty members. Though he didn’t really know what the program was, he signed up anyway and was paired with Deena Walker, a neuroscience graduate student in UT’s College of Pharmacy.

When they met, Walker says, Jefferson “didn’t think there was anything he could do with an interest in science other than becoming a medical doctor.” Now, though, after two years of working in Walker’s lab, studying how the brain controls reproductive physiology, “he really likes research and is seriously considering a career that includes research in some way,” she says.

Richard A. Cherwitz, founder and director of the Intellectual Entrepreneurship Consortium [http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/03/09/cherwitz1%20 ] that runs the program, says Jefferson’s experience isn’t uncommon. “Students come to us not knowing the options available to them. They may know a few options like med school or law school, but they are often unfamiliar with research and the academy.”

Cherwitz is working to raise $50 million to establish an endowment for the consortium as part of UT’s $2 billion capital campaign. Though the program received about $165,000 in funding in 2007, it’s getting just $90,000 this year from UT’s undergraduate colleges and the office of the vice president for diversity and community engagement. He uses that money to pay a graduate student to support him in administering the internship program and to provide stipends for a quarter of the program’s mentors.

Enrollment in the program, which students can use to earn one, two or three credit hours per semester, is open to all undergraduates. More than 700 students have gone through the program over the last five years, and another 140 are enrolled this fall.

Half of students who complete the program and graduate from UT go on to graduate school, which was just what Cherwitz hoped for. Former associate dean of UT’s graduate school, he says he hoped to “increase the applicant pool to grad programs by developing initiatives for undergraduates.”

Though it was never his expressed intention to attract underrepresented minorities or first generation college students specifically, Cherwitz says “it’s really not a surprise” that, from semester to semester, about 50 percent of the students who enroll in the internship program fit those categories. “They don’t know the rules of the game, the politics of the academy,” he says. “It gives them ways to integrate what they’re thinking about in terms of academics, careers and serving their communities, all with the help of someone who has gone through the same kinds of experiences.”

Gregory J. Vincent, vice president for diversity and community engagement, says he thinks the internship program’s “emphasis on giving back to communities, of figuring out ways to make your work matter, is what attracts first generation students and underrepresented minorities.”

He adds: “It’s hard to know whether if we had designed a diversity initiative it would work as well as this program has. This is getting hundreds of students to graduate school who might not have gone. There aren’t many programs out there like this, expanding the number of students of all kinds who are applying to grad school.”

Mentors and Mentees

When Jessica Kemp arrived at UT, she joined Student Leaders Pursuing Law, a pre-law group aimed at bringing diversity to the profession. She “hadn’t definitely decided to go to law school” when she joined the organization but was strongly considering it. Though her parents were “always here to support me,” she says, “they weren’t really there to provide me with information” when it came to educational and career plans. When the IE internship program approached the group offering current law students as mentors, Kemp jumped at the chance to develop a personal relationship with someone who knew the ins and outs of applying to law school and being a law student.

As she got to know her mentor and the law school at UT, Kemp says she realized she “really wanted to go to law school and really wanted to become a lawyer.” She took an LSAT preparation class and scored well on the exam.

When it came time to apply to law school, she sat in on her mentor’s classes and attended law school events to figure out whether she wanted to go to UT’s law school. “I had this top-ranked law school right here,” she says, “so I had to see if it was the right place for me; I decided it was.”

Kemp is in her third year there and now mentors pre-law undergraduates and works part time as an assistant director for the internship program, matching students with mentors. “I’m able to see things from their perspective,” she says. “I know what it’s like to be going through the process. I tell my students all the things my mentor told me — what they should be doing, how best to prepare for the LSAT — and all the things I’ve learned on my own that I wish someone else would’ve told me.”

She’s looking ahead to a legal career in which she can advocate for educational or health care issues. Whether in her job or through volunteer work, she says, she wants to “continue helping minority students, first generation college students figure out if law school is what they want to do,” she says. “I want people to be cognizant of the fact we need more minorities to attend law school and practice law so that there are lawyers out there who can represent the people they’re serving.”

Devin Ruthstrom, who this fall began a master’s program in interpersonal communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was paired up with Gary Beck, a graduate student in communication studies.

Ruthstrom says he had “thrown around the idea of grad school in my mind but had no idea what it really meant.” His parents had gone to an unaccredited three-year bible college and “weren’t really able to inform me first, about college in general and second, about graduate school.” But Beck could show him what it was like to be a graduate student and help him figure out whether it was the right direction for him.

Together, they worked on a literature review, attended the National Communication Association’s 2008 convention in San Diego, and visited several graduate-level communications classes at UT and elsewhere. “My mentor gave me a better view of what graduate student life was like over all,” Ruthstrom says. “The biggest question I wanted to answer was if graduate school was something I wanted to do and I found it was.”

Starting Early

Daniel Conroy-Beam graduated from San Antonio’s Health Careers High School in the spring of 2008 and started classes at UT that summer, determined to fulfill pre-med requirements and go on to medical school. Though he knew other options were out there — his father has a master’s degree and his mother is working on a Ph.D. — medicine seemed right. Then, he says, “I completely lucked into a field that I absolutely love.”

He signed up for Introduction to Psychology on a whim, looking for an extra three credit hours to round out the semester. He found himself fascinated by the subject area and developed a connection with David M. Lewis, an evolutionary psychology graduate student teaching the course. After a successful semester in the class, Lewis asked Conroy-Beam to work with him and together they found the credit-granting IE internship program.

“This mentorship thing has cemented my interest in evolutionary psychology,” Conroy-Beam says. “My mentor’s not just a guy I work for, he’s a guy I work with, learn from, get to help.” Getting to see Lewis’s life as a graduate student has “led to me deciding I definitely want to go to graduate school,” the undergraduate says. “I know I want to study this subject, to do research in it and to eventually find a professorship somewhere.”

Because he was a freshman, Conroy-Beam didn’t have much difficulty in switching his major, from a pre-med subject area to, briefly, rhetoric to, now, psychology.

It’s the kind of flexibility and unexpected focus and passion Cherwitz wants to be able to give to more freshmen and sophomores than just those few who find the Pre-Graduate School Internship.

He’s applying for grants to create the IE Academic-Community Mentorship Program, which would match first and second semester freshmen with graduate student mentors and community liaisons — people in the Austin area working in the public and private sectors. He wants to help these students, many in their late teens, “figure out what they want to do with their lives,” he says. “They’ll be able to create entrepreneurial plans for their futures, with a plan, a backup plan and so on, for their academic and non-academic futures.”

- Jennifer Epstein

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Folks;

This posting below, by Anne Colby, Elizabeth Beaumont, Thomas Ehrlich, and Josh Corngold,  looks at how “structured reflection” can help students see alternative ways of interpreting a given educational experience.

It is from Chapter 12, Learning Through Structured Reflection, in the book,   Educating for Democracy : Preparing Undergraduates for Responsible Political Engagement, published by Published by Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint, 989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741-www.josseybass.com. Copyright © The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. 51 Vista Lane, Stanford, CA 94305. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis

reis@stanford.edu

UP NEXT: Mentoring Texas Style

Tomorrow’s Teaching and Learning

Learning Through Structured Reflection

Reflection is widely considered to be the core of higher education, especially liberal education, which was once playfully described as teaching students to analyze Freud from a Marxian perspective and Marx from a Freudian perspective. Our central question in this chapter is how to use structured reflection to help students consider their experiences through lenses that bring the political dimensions into focus. This kind of reflection plays a pivotal role in helping them understand and navigate the real world of political possibility, conflict, and uncertainty.

Structured reflection requires students to step back from their immediate experience to make sense of it in new ways. The object of their reflection could be a newspaper story or scholarly article, their observations while working in a government office or private nonprofit, some kind of political action, or some combination of these and other experiences. Making experiences into objects of reflection means simultaneously heightening their impact while attempting to understand them in connection with any number of other thing: concepts, issues, or experiences arising from other course components; one’s past academic learning or personal history, one’s values, assumptions, and convictions; theoretical or other conceptual or analytic lenses, and the like. In the process, students observe, analyze, examine, and consider their political experiences from multiple points of view.

Of course, one can imagine an almost endless number of frames, lenses, or filters through which to reflect on a given experience, and the choice of frames helps determine the character of the meaning derived from reflection. Different aspects of the experience become salient and take shape. Considering the perceptual and cognitive power of alternative interpretive schemes underscores how important it is for faculty to help students consider their political experiences in terms that contribute to the overall purposes and goals of the course or program.

Reflection has the power to reframe experiences and events in new terms. As a result, even when some course or program experiences, such as working in a direct service environment, are not explicitly political in nature, guided reflection can help students recast them in political terms by connecting their direct service with relevant policy environments or systemic analyses of the needs the organization addresses. A Duke University student, for example, talked about how structured reflection on her internship at the refugee resettlement branch of the Catholic Charities of New Mexico led her to study immigration policy and the process of seeking refugee status.

A widespread misconception about structured reflection is that it entails simply sharing feelings or voicing opinions. Many people mistakenly see reflection as a “feel-good” experience that may be useful for building community but does not contribute to intellectual development. In fact, poor quality reflective activities do sometimes fit this description. In contrast, in well-conceived reflective activities, emotional responses and initial opinions may serve as starting points but not as ends. High-quality reflection calls for well-developed intellectual skill and perceptiveness richly grounded in knowledge and expertise. Although undergraduate students are not experts in the process of reflection any more than they are experts in the subject matter they are studying, well-conceived and well-structured assignments can help them develop greater expertise in the intellectual processes of reflection, analysis, and interpretation as they work toward greater subject matter expertise.

The importance of structured reflection is not simply an article of faith. Extensive research on community service learning shows that the quantity and quality of reflection is consistently associated with both academic and civic learning. Engaging regularly in structured reflection leads students to deeper understanding and better application of subject matter knowledge and increased knowledge of social agencies, increased complexity of problem and solution analysis, and greater use of subject matter knowledge in analyzing problems (Eyler and Giles, 1999). Reflective practices in the classroom have also been shown to help learners connect earlier experiences to new content in order to achieve better understanding of the new material (Lee and Sabatino, 1998).

References

Lee, D., and Sabatino, K. “Evaluating Guided Reflections: A U.S. Case Study.” International Journal of Training and Development 1998, 2(3), 162-170.

Eyleer, J., and Giles, D.E. Where’s the Learning in Service-Learning? San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999.

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Folks:

The posting below looks at how to help students manage their learning time.  It is by Michael Theall, Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio  and is IDEA Item #3 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: Will I Drown in Committee Work?

Tomorrow’s Teaching and Learning

Scheduling Course Work in Ways Which Encourage Students to Stay Up-to-date in Their Work

Background

Faculty often express interest in having students learn basic knowledge, understand major concepts, develop problem solving and critical thinking skills, acquire professional habits and attitudes, and become committed to lifetime learning. One thing that is less frequently mentioned is the need to create conditions under which these objectives can be most effectively achieved. Within this general category, lies an important practical skill: time management, which is one component of “self regulation” (1). While teachers put careful thought into how to fill the available time in a course, they sometimes do not consider or accurately estimate the amount of time that students will need to complete the assigned work. For many students the ability to manage coursework and balance it against other activities is the difference between success and failure. In fact, a major review of research on the effects of college (2) considered the impact of working (holding a job) on academic performance. Interestingly, the finding was that while working reduced the time available to do coursework, there was no significant difference in academic performance between those who worked and those who did not. The authors attribute this lack of difference to the possibility that, “…employment provides a context in which they (students) acquire efficient organizational skills and work habits” (p.

133). Thus, the critical issue seems to be how well one manages one’s time rather than how much time is available. It seems important then, that teachers provide structures and models of effective work that encourage students to carefully balance their course work and other obligations. To use the common expression, teachers should help students to “work smart, not just work hard.”

IDEA Item #3, “Scheduled course work (class activities, tests, projects) in ways which encouraged students to stay up-to-date in their work” is directly connected with time management. It is unique in that it correlates with many other IDEA items touching on several dimensions of successful teaching (3). For example, item #3 is related to items as diverse as #1 (Displayed personal interest in students), #8 (Stimulated students to intellectual effort), #10 (Explained course material clearly), and #17 (Provided timely and frequent feedback). Although these items represent different teaching methods, their inter-relatedness suggests that they have in common a genuine commitment to the student and his/her educational welfare. Item #3 is also correlated with IDEA objectives at several taxonomic levels, and with developing professional skills and competencies (IDEA items 21-24). These correlations directly reflect the goals many teachers list as critically important. They also reflect new descriptions of “significant learning” as described by Fink (4, p. 9 and p. 30). In Fink’s terms, learning is “significant” when students are engaged and

energetic and when the outcomes of that learning are lasting change and continued value in life. Acquiring effective time management and self- regulatory skills is particularly important with respect to academic success, and developing these skills can be built into course design.

Helpful Hints

Research on the dimensions of college teaching (3) provides powerful evidence of the importance of helping students to organize their time. With respect to student achievement, the most strongly correlated teaching dimensions are organization and clarity. When teachers make clear how topics fit and how the assigned work can be efficiently carried out, they help students to construct accurate schemas and clarify the structure of the discipline. The result is better student learning and increased student satisfaction because that learning becomes more apparent. Provide an organizational structure that helps students plan and carry out coursework. This not only keeps students on task, but it is also motivational in that it demonstrates that the teacher wants to promote deep learning rather than busy work and surface learning (5). For example, break work down into manageable chunks and suggest progress benchmarks so that students have the greatest chance for consistent success. In Keller’s (6) description of a motivational design of instruction, key elements involve creating conditions that promote positive expectations and provide opportunities for success. Helping students to stay organized and on task are two such conditions.

A complete syllabus with clear timelines is a solid beginning. Reinforcing the syllabus with regular checkpoints via class dialogue, e-mail, or other communications will help. Personal contact with students who are lagging behind is absolutely necessary. Using collaborative or group work provides a way for students to help each other (as long as the group work is itself organized and supervised). A very useful technique is to ask students, from early in the course, how they plan to organize their time and what they will do to most efficiently carry out the work. An early exploration of these issues will enhance students’ investments in the course and raise issues that might otherwise be

missed.

Assessment Issues

Assessments addressing this item are somewhat different than those used to determine more typical cognitive or affective outcomes. Angelo and Cross (7) offer some methods for determining the success of assignments (pp. 343-361), but other options more specifically addressing workload, currency of work, and the extent to which students understand the “why” and “how” as well as the “what” of assignments can be very useful. Some research (8) has demonstrated that when students understand the rationale for assignments and when they see value in doing the work, they are more motivated to do the work carefully. As this understanding increases, so do students’ positive opinions about the course and the teacher. Three techniques can be helpful. First, an adaptation of the Small Group Instructional Diagnosis (SGID) process (9) can assess the degree to which students are keeping up. Second, the use of electronic communications

available in course management systems can provide a way for students to report difficulties and for the teacher to monitor progress. Third, and most important, conduct regular dialogues with individuals and the class about progress. The instructor’s personal involvement (in casual conversations, e-mail, or class dialogue) in keeping students on track demonstrates both concern for student progress and the importance of the work. It is necessary for students to “learn the material,” but often it is equally important to provide guidelines for “learning how to learn,” that demonstrate how to best manage course workload and meet deadlines.

References

(1) Pintrich, P. R. (Ed.). (1995). Understanding self-regulated learning. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 63. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

(2) Pascarella, E. J., & Terenzini, P. (2005). How college affects students: A third decade of research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

(3) Feldman, K. A. (1989). The association between student ratings of specific instructional dimensions and student achievement: Refining and extending the synthesis of data from multisection validity studies. Research in Higher Education, 30, 583-645.

(4) Fink, L. D. (2003). Creating significant learning experiences. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

(5) Entwistle, N., & Tait, H. (1994). Approaches to studying and perceptions of the learning environment across disciplines. In N. Hativa & M. Marincovich (Eds.), “Disciplinary differences in teaching and learning: Implications for practice.” New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 64. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

(6) Keller, J. M. (1983). Motivational design of instruction.  In C. M. Riegeluth (Ed.) Instructional design theories and models: An overview of their current status.  Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

(7) Angelo, T. A., & Cross, K. P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A handbook for college

teachers  (2nd ed.).  San Francisco:  Jossey-Bass.

(8) Franklin, J., & Theall, M. (1995). The relationship of disciplinary differences and the value of class preparation time to student ratings of instruction.  In N. Hativa & M. Marincovich, (Eds.)  “Disciplinary differences in teaching and learning: Implications for practice. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 64.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

(9) Clark, D. J., & Bekey, J. (1979). Use of small groups in instructional evaluation. Insight Into Teaching Excellence. 7(1), 2-5. Arlington, TX: University of Texas at Arlington.

IDEA Paper No. 40: Getting Students to Read: Fourteen Tips, Hobson

IDEA Paper No. 41: Student Goal Orientation, Motivation, and Learning, Svinicki

IDEA Paper No. 42: Integrated Course Design, Fink

IDEA Paper No. 27: Writing a Syllabus, Altman and Cashin

©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.

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