Musings from an Amateur

The First-Year Experience movement: Are we serving or exploiting?

2012-02-10T15:39:00.000-08:00

"I am not confident that we serve those we research well. . . . With skepticism we should continue to question our rationale for studying the disenfranchised. . .we serve ourselves too by taking up their cause."

This is one of the more insightful things I've read in the last few months. It comes from a book I've referenced before in a previous post. The author is a qualitative researcher and, like many of his methodological peers, he spends a great deal of time researching populations who society views as "in need" in some way or another. However, unlike many of his peers, he is astute (and probably humble) enough to realize that his work may not always be as helpful as he thinks. And, it made me question the motives I have in my work and whether I am as "helpful" as I think I am.

I would consider myself to be one who is involved in what has come to be known as "the first-year experience movement." I am an administrator in a program designed to serve first-year students, I have in the past been heavily involved in new student orientation programming on my campus, and the research I do is either focused directly on first-year issues or involves data gathered from either first-year students or the peer mentors who work with them. I would like to think that my work serves this population in some way and that what I do each day when I come to work makes some kind of difference. On the whole, I would like to think that my motives are pure and see myself as one who "serves" the students on my campus. However, it would be unfair to claim that I am completely selfless in all of this. Not only do I do this work for a salary and benefits (pretty good benefits compared to most of higher ed), but I travel to conferences 2 - 3 times a year (usually in warm places that are nice to visit anyway), am beginning to publish research on my work, and occasionally get invited to make presentations relating to my work and research. So, the first-year experience movement has been good to me.

All of this has me wondering if, despite our good intentions and noble purposes, those of us who do this work might occasionally (and probably unintentionally) be guilty of exploiting the very population we claim to be serving. We claim to do work that helps or serves these students as they make the transition into higher education and our scholarship is intended to advocate for these students and somehow improve the experience they have on college campuses. But, what if the article I publish is only read by a handful of people? And, what if after reading it, they don’t approach their work any differently than before? Have I then used the first-year student population on our campus and elsewhere to further my career, without making any real contribution to the experiences of the real people experiencing the first year of college? Or worse, when write a conference proposal am I ever more interested in visiting a new city and taking my wife with me, than in moving forward an argument or idea with real merit? What about that article that will be published this month? Do I really think it will add to the dialogue and help other practitioners, or did I just want a line on the vitae I'm trying to build?

It seems like those of us purporting to serve first-year students (and this may be true for any researcher or practitioner, especially those in the social sciences) should take care to avoid becoming a player in the scholarship game where we do research, publish studies, and present at conferences, simply for the sake of those activities. Ultimately, we probably can’t ever really know if our work or scholarship is a benefit to others and if we spend too much time worrying about any of this, we'll go crazy. All of us will at some point sincerely try to conduct a study and write a report that will “serve” someone somewhere and still miss the target. Maybe the important thing is to be vigilant, honest, and ethical by holding ourselves to high standards and continually committing to doing the highest quality work we can. . .a helpful thing for me to remember next week when I'm enjoying warm weather and the San Antonio Riverwalk at the Annual Conference on the First-Year Experience.

What if admissions offices cooperated rather than competed?

2012-02-03T10:47:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, Inside Higher Ed reported on initial results of the Predictive Analytics Reporting Framework and the potential for this data to connect students to those online institutions to which they are best suited (the title of this particular section of the article is "Match.com for Higher Ed"). The senior statistician for the project, Sebastian Diaz, comments that his data set positions admissions and recruitment officials more effectively find, recruit, and enroll those students who are most likely to be successful on their campuses. But, the article points out that this sort of academic matching service would require a level of collaboration and sharing among institutions that doesn't seem very feasible at present.

On the surface, viewing admissions as a purely competitive process makes sense. After all, for any given institution there is a limited number of students who are, first, at all interested in enrolling at that campus and, second, who are good candidates for the experience provided, whether that is an intimate liberal arts experience, a distance ed experience, or the traditional state school experience (if there is even such a thing any longer). What's more, for a group of institutions who share much in common, this pool of students is largely the same. So, at some level, it is perfectly understandable that institutions compete for students.

However, this standard view of the admissions process, while acknowledging the competitive dynamic among peer institutions, fails to acknowledge two things. First, among institutions who are very different, there is no real need to compete for students. Second, many of the students who apply to a particular school aren't students that school is competing for and, in fact, may be better candidates for another institution. And, despite the best efforts of campus recruiters and sometimes very expensive marketing campaigns, campuses don't always get the students they want. So, if you and I are both in admissions on our respective campuses (and lets assume we aren't at "peer institutions" but that our campuses differ in some meaningful ways) I will, inevitably, receive applications from students that my institution doesn't want, but that yours does (and the reverse is also likely to be true--you'll receive applications from students that I want). The trouble is that we aren't ever likely to realize this or talk to one another about it. Instead, we'll each send our diplomatically written "thanks but no thanks" letters to our respective applicants, they will hit the trail again hoping to find a school that does want them, and we will hope that the next application we receive is from a student we do want. Ironically, we both have pieces of information that would be helpful to each other, but we'll never share it.

So, what if an institution worked to develop collaborative partnerships with a diverse group of institutions, whose missions, enrollments, geographic locations, were different from its own . This might be something akin to the "bridging capital" Bob Putnam describes in his book Bowling Alone, that connects us loosely to people quite different from ourselves and that facilitates access to community assets and promotes information dissemination. If these partnerships were formalized in some way, institutions could "compete" with their peers, by collaborating with their "distant relatives. These partnerships might give member institutions access to students they may never have found and help students by connecting them with institutions better suited for their needs, interests, goals, etc.

Typically, college athletics is not a good place to look when trying to solve broader institutional challenges; however, in the case of admissions, we might be wise to make an exception. Like admissions, the college sports landscape is highly competitive. Each year there are a small number of blue-chip recruits that every Div I coach wants to sign and bring to campus in the fall. But, once you get through those 100 or so athletes for the particular sport in question, things are a lot less competitive--athletes are trying to find coaches who want them and coaches are trying to find athletes who would be a good fit for their team and campus. What's more, the NCAA's practice of classifying athletic programs into divisions (Division I, Division II, and Division III), there is a clear and simple way of knowing if another coach's program is a "peer" or a "distant cousin." Consequently, it isn't uncommon for a Division I coach to court a recruit and then, after realizing that she probably won't be recruited by top Div. I programs, to make a phone call to a fellow coach at the Div. II level to let the coach know that they ought to "take a look at her." I saw this happen fairly regularly as a student athlete. As an example, one of my teammates at Mars Hill College in the late 90s was initially recruited by a handful of good Div. I soccer programs; however, his standardized test scores were not high enough to qualify him to compete at the Div. I level (due to NCAA regulations). At that point, the coach from one of these programs contacted his friend who was the head coach at Mars Hill and let him know that this player may be a good fit for the program. In this situation, both my friend and Mars Hill benefited. We got a great player who was a four year starter and all-region player, and he got a nice scholarship and a great experience at a small liberal arts college. The Div. I coach didn't benefit directly from this exchange; however, in coaching, reputation is everything, so he likely benefited indirectly. The difference, then, between athletics and admissions is that when an athlete isn't a good fit for a team, there is at least some chance that the coach who has turned him down might be able to help him find another home.

While it would take some coordination and there would definitely be complexities to work out, is there any reason why this sort of sharing and collaboration among distantly related institutions couldn't happen at the level of general admissions and even be formalized in some way? If it were to happen, it would seem to require a few things:

1) The right kind of groupings or consortiums: As mentioned, if everyone in the partnership is competing for the same students, it isn't likely that much sharing will take place. So, member institutions would need to be different enough that they aren't drawing from the same applicant pools. At the same time, if the institutions are too different, they aren't likely to have applicants that, although not a good fit for one institution, would fit somewhere else.

2) Very clear understanding of one another's missions: If the members of the group don't know each other well (their missions, their geographic locales, their academic offerings, etc.), they won't be positioned to make good referrals.

3) Lots and lots of trust and good will: As with any social contract, the success of an arrangement like this would require a collection of campuses that are willing to commit to act in the interest of one another and of the students they serve. At the point that one member starts to hold onto students who would be better served by another member of the group, just to bump enrollments and increase tuition, things will fall apart. Similarly, if back-room alliances between selected members result, the whole enterprise is in trouble.

I'm not overly familiar with the admissions landscape, so it's possible that this proposal has grown from a gross naivete on my part. But, as an occasional idealist and advocate for the power of community, I want to think that it has promise (or, better yet, that it is already happening in some corner of higher ed and I don't know it).

Getting lost in learning: A confession and a glimmer of hope

2012-01-27T12:19:00.000-08:00

It's slightly embarrassing to admit this, but for someone who blogs and talks about deep learning as much as I do, I'm still a bit superficial when it comes to my own formal learning (in my defense, I'll argue that is true of most of us). I'll use my current qualitative inquiry graduate course as an example. Last week I was in class when another student commented that she had read ahead in one of the texts for the class. My immediate thought was--"Don't you have anything better to do?" and I cast a glance at a friend in the class much like what I did as a high school student when one of the "nerds" made a comment in class (apparently, I have matured very little since my days at Skyline High School). More evidence of my failure to consistently be a deep learner: I almost always set a timer for myself when I'm working on research or other scholarly projects and quit as soon as it goes off, I can't think of a time when I have ever read ahead in a class, and I once opted to turn in an entire paper for a political science class because I knew it would make no difference in my final grade. However, I occasionally have moments of brilliance when I become, if only for a moment, the kind of learner I expect students on my campus to be. It happened last night and after it was all over, I wondered what had happened and why, for those 60 minutes or so, I "went deep."

I was reading Bob Stake's very excellent commentary on qualitative research (Qualitative research: Studying how things work)--not because I chose to, but because it was assigned for class--and came across a statement Stake makes about the usefulness of intuition when making judgments about quality (the statement and commentary are too long to discuss here, but on pp. 162 - 163 Stake makes a fascinating comparison between professional judgments about quality and God's statement in Genesis about the "goodness" of the Creation). Before I knew it, I had jotted down a question this raised for me in the margin's of the book, pulled my copy of Blink (Malcolm Gladwell) off my bookshelf, and read about the psychology of impressions for close to an hour. It's worth noting that this happened at about 7:00 p.m., after a 10 hour workday with no lunch, and at the end of a particularly long week.

So, what happened? What triggered or facilitated this episode? Here are some guesses:

1. Interest in the subject matter. I am actually fairly interested in qualitative methodologies. They seem far more human and useful to me than p values, degrees of freedom, and ANOVAs. So, while my excitement about fighting off hunger to read Chapter 9 of Stake's book at the end of a long day may not have been high, I did have a latent interest in the general subject matter. So, the potential for coming across an idea or concept that was interesting was better than if I had been reading Research Methods and Statistics (also on my shelf, but not likely to be pulled down anytime soon).

2. Connections to current concerns or experiences. I am currently working on a paper, which will be presented in April at AERA's Annnual Meeting, that uses qualitative methodologies to explore how learners integrate theoretic and experiential knowledge by sharing narratives with one another. So, qualitative issues are on my mind a lot (in large part because I don't want to look stupid at the conference).

3. Potential for learning/thinking to be made public. One of the requirements for the class is that we post our thoughts to a class google document where the professor and (in theory) classmates read one another's thoughts. So, when I came across the passage I mentioned above, I immediately thought about what I might say about it in my posting to the Google Doc. I also knew that at some point in our next class meeting, I would be asked to comment on the reading. Rather than regurgitating ideas from the reading, but using different words (which sometimes happens), I wanted to raise the question I had while I was reading (which was whether articulating a rationale for intuitive judgments is dangerous) and then have some kind of relatively cogent response to give. I also thought it might be interesting to bring in an "outside" book to the discussion. Hence, my willingness to spend an hour reading something that I didn't have to.

4. Time and space. Had I read the same chapter from Stake's book on another evening when I needed or wanted to get home early, or if I had been reading at home with my daughter's Disney movie playing in the next room or the allure of what might currently be on tv, things wouldn't have turned out like they did. However, last night was a night when I didn't need to rush home and had a quiet office to study in. Context and environment played a role in my deep learning experience.

5. A relatively broad base to draw from and connect to. This will seem overly simplistic and slightly obvious, but it is probably worth stating. I could connect Stake's ideas to Gladwell's, because I had read Gladwell. Part of deep learning is making connections to related concepts. So, in theory, the more one knows, the more connections they can make. However, "connections" don't always have to be to things we've read previously. All learners have a set of life experiences to draw from and connect to, whether that is books read, classes taken, memories from childhood, the trip to the grocery store yesterday, or anything else. If we can bring this set of experiences to mind for learners and then invite them to make connections, deep learning is a lot more likely to occur. However, it's worth reminding ourselves that novice learners are more likely to struggle with this, so we have to scaffold, nudge, encourage, and model it a lot when learners aren't accustomed to "going deep."

I've tried with this list to illustrate that deep learning is dependent on a number of factors--the learner, the instructor, and the environment. Those factors aren't always (maybe "very rarely" would be more accurate) under our control. At the end of the day, deep learning is an organic, spontaneous thing that may or may not happen. But, as learners and instructors we can increase the likelihood of deep learning occurring by being aware of what can lead to episodes like the one I had, and trying to do our best to throw the right things into the pot. So, I guess in some ways it is an act of faith, but one worth taking.

Small programs with big impacts

2012-01-20T09:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning I attended a monthly meeting that, typically, is painfully boring and disengaging (part of that may be my fault and the attitude I bring with me to the meeting). To avoid becoming completely cynical and disengaged, I have committed myself to approaching the first 15 minutes as a "probationary period" of sorts where I genuinely try to listen and give the meeting a fair shot. Yesterday, after an uninspiring presentation from a representative from financial services and figuring that the next item on the agenda wasn't likely to peak my interest much, I was settling into the article I brought to read. I knew that BYU has a Women's Services office on campus, but never really understood what they did or how they did it (which, I'm now quite embarrassed about). The next 20 minutes of the meeting were eye opening for me.

BYU Women's Services and Resources is a small program within the Dean of Student's Office on campus. They have one full-time employee, a small office in the Student Center, and (I'm guessing) not much of a budget. In many ways, it is the kind of place that is easy to overlook and which would be an easy target when budgets are being tightened. To be honest, if it weren't associated with a fairly politicized issue (the experience of women on campus), I'm not sure that it would survive on a campus as big as BYU.

Despite all of that, LaNae Valentine and her team of undergraduate students and graduate interns, are doing more good on our campus than many realize. They offer a wide range of ongoing programming and special events for women on campus; however, to their credit their larger interest is in providing good educational resources and experiences than they are with putting on events (that isn't always true of student life areas on campuses). Consequently, their programming is closely aligned with their mission. The combination of their large target population and diverse, yet focused programming means they reach a fair amount of people. What's more they are positioned to make a tremendous difference in the experience for a relatively small number of students (although not as small a number of students as their budget, square footage, and one line on the campus directory would lead many to believe) who are often in desperate need of the support provided through the center.

This is an interesting phenomenon on campuses where big, expensive programs get a lot of attention. And, we like to believe that these programs, centers, and initiatives are what make the biggest difference for students (after all, if they didn't, why would we spend so much money on them?). Although their size, resources, and very broad missions (broad sometimes means ambiguous and unarticulated) make them highly visible and allow them to "touch" a large number of students, these same characteristics may simultaneously keep them from engaging with students in deeper and more personal ways--the ways in which Women's Services and Resources and other units can.

I'm not calling for the dissolution of SGA's, large student service organizations, or other "big" programs. But, just hoping that more people on college campuses will discover, appreciate, and advocate for the small programs that offer a very different, more personal, and often impactful experience for particular segments of the student population. They don't cost much money, don't need much office space, and are usually quite self-sustaining (if they aren't, they don't survive); however, they touch student's lives and bring a much-needed diversity to our campuses.

A closing word of caution for these programs. Often the success of places like Women's Services comes about largely through the efforts of a single charismatic and tireless leader (this is almost surely the case for Women's Services). In fact, I don't know how else small and resource-starved programs ever survive. The problem is that when there is only one leader, who almost single-handedly keeps the place afloat, long-term survival becomes questionable. What happens when that dynamo leaves? It's important that those who care about these small programs (especially the heroes I've described above) be strategic about looking for, mentoring, and grooming someone to take over, otherwise the impact of these programs will only last as long as the career of their champions.

A tribute to good mentors

2012-01-13T12:01:00.000-08:00

In December, I graduated with a master's degree in Instructional Design from Brigham Young University. In many ways it was anticlimactic--I immediately started a doctoral program, I still have years of school ahead of me, and my thesis was approved nearly a month before I was actually awarded the degree. Still, it was a long road and it feels good to be a little closer to being "finished" (if we ever really are). By nature, I am a fairly reflective person, but especially at transitional times like beginnings and endings. So, not surprisingly, I have spent a fair amount of time thinking back over the last few years and my experiences. In doing so, I have been reminded of how much I owe to good mentors. It is always risky to thank individual people because of the chance that someone is left off the list; however, I'll do it here for two reasons. First, without the support of those I'll list here, I would never have finished, let alone started a graduate program. Second, because there is a good chance that no one will ever read this, the chances of anyone being offended by being left off the list are small.

First, I am grateful to mentors from my undergraduate experience who nurtured my passion for teaching and learning, and who never quit encouraging me to consider a career in higher education. My experience with Pat, Gary, and Stefinee in the now defunct Freshman Academy program was the single most influential thing that happened to me as an undergraduate student. I learned more sitting in their offices listening to and observing their meetings, than any course could have ever taught me. I learned what good thinkers read, what kinds of questions they ask, and how they interact with others in ways that open the door for change and innovation. It was during those afternoon meetings and early morning chats that the scholarship seed was planted for me. And, without my experience in the Freshman Academy program, I would probably never have been hired to come back and work full-time at BYU (which then opened the door to graduate school much wider for me).

Once I began graduate studies my path was somewhat unique in that I was still working full-time. This would not have been possible without a supportive work supervisor. Pat (yes, the same one as above) was not only accommodating in allowing me to adjust my work schedule to fit around classes and research meetings, but has served in many ways as a 4th member of my graduate committee, engaging me in conversations about my ideas, pointing me in the direction of scholarship relevant to my interests, and providing much-needed and well-timed feedback. This last summer when I was conceptualizing and implementing my master's project, she not only gave me generous amounts of time to do my work, but nudged and encouraged me to do more than I thought I could. As a result, my finished project was much better than it ever would have been otherwise.

If you had asked me, ten years ago, what I would be doing when I turned 30, working in higher education wouldn't have been on the list of my 50 best guesses. Often, we need others to help us identify our latent passions, broker opportunities for us to grow, and encourage us when we don't believe in ourselves. My friend Stefinee has been that person for me. I distinctly remember the first time I met her as an undergraduate student. For some reason I had been invited to attend a meeting to discuss a research project she was working on with Pat. She must have sensed that I felt incredibly out of place and out of my league because she made it a point of sitting next to me in the conference room (interestingly enough, the very same conference room that she and I were in when I defended my master's thesis about seven years later), asking me questions about myself, and including me in the conversation throughout the meeting. Since then, on more occasions than I can count, she has played that same role--helping me feel comfortable when I wanted to run, nudging me to stretch myself, and giving me access to conversations I wouldn't have been a part of otherwise.

Of course, there are others; however, none who have played as significant a role as these good friends, mentors, and colleagues. So, to them (as well as the others)--thank you!

2011 Utahn of the Year: Chris Burbank

2012-01-06T12:29:00.000-08:00

Kudos to the Salt Lake Tribune for choosing SLC Police Chief ChrisBurbank as the 2011 Utahn of the Year. In a year when Utah produced a topNBA draft pick and a presidential candidate, it would be easy to bow to popularopinion and select someone who is more well-known nationally. However,with their choice, the Tribune has reminded us that we are in dire need of moreleaders like Burbank—leaders who engage in thoughtful dialogue with all membersof the community, openly listen to all perspectives, accept responsibility fortheir actions, and who consistently adhere to principle. In a yeardominated by spotlight-seeking politicians, deaf to opposing arguments and benton pushing forward extremist agendas (and I’m talking about politicians on bothsides of the party line), Burbank’s leadership is both refreshing andinstructive. Even those who disagree with his views would be hard pressedto offer up any legitimate critiques of the skilled way in which he handlesdifficult and sensitive situations. I would much prefer Burbank to just about any of the political candidates in the upcoming local elections. And, it makes me wonder, could someone like Burbank be successful in politics? First, could someone willing to buck popular opinion and the strong arm of Utah republicans get elected? And, once elected, would someone like Burbank hold to his principles? My heart tells me yes, but my head says no (with regard to both questions).

The shortcomings of a utilitarian approach to New Student Orientation programming: A call for aesthetics

2011-12-02T09:28:00.001-08:00

Prior to my current work with Brigham Young University's peer mentoring initiative I was heavily involved in the university's new student orientation programming. And, because my work is still focused on first-year students, I associate with colleagues (both here at BYU and on other campuses) who spend a good deal of their time thinking about how to orient students to a college campus. Almost invariably I hear them use terms like "plan," "manage," and "direct" to describe their work. This choice of words highlights a common metaphor guiding the work of orientation professionals, what I'll term here the management metaphor--one which is largely concerned with relatively superficial features of orientation programming, including scheduling, event management, feeding large groups of people, and other associated logistics. Clearly, these are all important considerations for an "orientation director" (something has to happen during orientation and it has to be coordinated, particularly on a large campus where thousands of students and their parents are likely to participate). However, problems arise when this metaphor is adopted as the guiding principle in making decisions about orientation programs because it fails to attend to the aesthetics of the orientation experience (and I use the term experience very intentionally here). As a result, students experience orientation as a collection of disjointed events--for example a convocation, campus tour, advisement session, and dance party--and walk away from the experience without having made any meaning, reflected on key messages (e.g. the institutional mission and other core values of the institution), or resolved to do anything differently during their college experience as a result of new student orientation.

A more useful metaphor for orientation programming is the aesthetic design metaphor (yes, I made that up). Through this lens, the process of developing orientation programming is viewed as a process of designing an aesthetic experience for students, that is to say experiences which are coherent, connected, and infused with meaning. In his book Art as Experience, John Dewey describes aesthetic experiences as those which are immersive, complete, and transformative. In contrast, unaesthetic experiences are routine, dispersed, disengaging, and fragmented. Patrick Parrish has described a set of aesthetic principles which can be applied to the design of instructional experiences in an attempt to avoid the negative outcomes so often associated with educational settings (e.g. boredom, lack of motivation, meaningless and imposed learning activities), which seem useful for orientation programming because of its susceptibility to the the same traps of fragmentation and meaninglessness. These "first principles" are that

Learning experiences have beginnings, middles, and ends,
Learners are the protagonists of their own learning experiences,
Learning activity, not subject matter, establishes the theme of instruction,
Context contributes to immersion in the instructional situation, and
Instructors and instructional designers are authors, supporting characters, and model learners

When viewed as an aesthetic design process, orientation programming is elevated to an act of weaving together an experience or narrative which attends to Parrish's first principles and which is meaningful and transformative for students. The goals shift from scheduling events, providing meals, and holding "sessions," to providing an experience which moves students towards internalizing institutional values and changes their conception of the college experience. Imagine the impact of an orientation program which not only helps students register for classes and locate campus buildings, but which poses a question or challenge which can provide a purpose or framework for a students entire undergraduate experience (e.g. "How can my learning position me to solve important problems?" or "As a citizen of a global community, what responsibility do I have to improve my community? How can my college experience prepare me to do that?" or for a faith-based institution, "How can I integrate spiritual and secular learning?"). Further, why does every student have to have the same experience as the student next to them? Could students create their own orientation experience by selecting from a number of events and opportunities, those which attend to their needs and concerns. Finally, as I have written about before here, meaningful conclusions do much to further learning--why couldn't orientation culminate with some kind of experience which promotes reflection, unifies the sub-experiences which have occurred across orientation, and invites students to continue to engage with the problem or question posed on the first day?

None of this is to say that these two metaphors for orientation programming are mutually exclusive or wholly incompatible. An orientation experience can be both aesthetic and pragmatic; however, far too often institutions focus exclusively on planning and managing and lose an opportunity to design an experience. An experience which not only welcomes students to campus and answers their questions, but which like a good piece of art, stimulates reflection, action, and (occasionally, when the stars align) promotes personal transformation.

A Ph. D. is not enough

2011-11-18T11:07:00.001-08:00

One of the most interesting (and often painful) things I have repeatedly observed in my work over the last five years are transitions in administrative leadership at my institution and the way in which these changes are managed. Yesterday, I was in a meeting where one of these changes was announced and, to put it mildly, it was like watching a train wreck. In defense of the administrator delivering the news, I think he meant well and was truly doing his best to be tactful. But, nonetheless, his social and administrative ineptitude were on display for all to see. Consequently, an already emotionally charged situation was made worse. This administrator is, from what I can tell, a brilliant researcher and scholar in his field (Pharmacology); however, like most faculty members, his formal training has done little to prepare him for those responsibilities which take him out of his lab.

While faculty members' responsibilities obviously vary both within and between campuses, it isn't uncommon for them to spend some percentage of their time engaged work falling outside their disciplinary area of expertise. So, on a tour of a typical campus we would be likely to see sociologists and biologists administering departments and colleges, physicists and engineers advising students, and a lot of non-teachers teaching students. To be fair, I know great administrators and excellent teachers with Ph. D.'s in things other than management and education; however, they are the exception. Instead, most have wonderful intentions and want desperately to be good teachers or chairs, but struggle along because of the lack of any real preparation or training. What's worse, there is a dangerous sub-population who suffer from a common psychological condition that condemns them to repeated faux pas and debacles like the one I saw yesterday.

The thought of an academic advisor teaching a law class or an "administrative" employee teaching teaching introductory biology are, obviously laughable, so its a bit ironic that we don't see problems in transfers in the other direction. There has long been an assumption that an earned doctorate (in any field) qualifies an individual to do just about any other kind of work on a campus, whether it is directing an Honors college, overseeing first-year programming, or advising students about general course registration. There may have been a time, before college campuses became the complex animal they are now, when this may have been true. And, at a small college where resources and personnel are limited, utility infielders who teach, advise, administer, and research will always be a necessity. However, as college campuses become increasingly complex, there will become a greater need for the professionalization of roles which, historically, have been viewed as just another part of the professorial duty. At the very least, we cannot afford to continue to assume that a Ph. D. in Pharmacology, in and of itself, prepares anyone to navigate administrative landmines and advise students (about anything but pharmacology), and teach (virtually anything at all).

Joe Paterno is not a victim and neither are Penn State students

2011-11-11T10:16:00.001-08:00

Even if you have no interest in college sports, you've likely heard about what has been happening at Penn State this week, relative to their athletics department and beloved head football coach, Joe Paterno (even my wife, who is so uninterested in sports that she can walk into our living room on Super Bowl Sunday while I'm watching the game and ask in all sincerity "Is this an important game?" asked me what I thought of the Paterno incident last night).

It is undoubtedly a sad and disturbing story. But, as much as I respect Joe Paterno for what he has done in college athletics, for Penn State University, and for individual athletes whom he has coached and mentored, I am not really all that sad for him. The real tragedy is what happened to eight young boys at the hands of someone who they trusted. What's more the riots and protests which have erupted in response to Paterno's firing are not only misguided (and, I suspect for most rioters, an excuse for drunken violence and a tempting opportunity to gather videos that can be posted to You Tube and bragged about later), but draw attention away from the real victims in the situation.

Let me be clear, I am not arguing against public demonstrations and the right for individuals to express their views. And, I am an advocate for college students becoming engaged on their campuses and making their voice heard. However, violence, property destruction, and public intoxication are not civic engagement. And, based on what I have seen and heard from the Penn State "demonstrations" thus far, they look a lot like a bunch of college students wanting to cause trouble, rather than informed citizens working for positive change. In the Inside Higher Ed article linked to above, a number of student affairs professionals "sympathized" with students who are going through the "healing process." While I'm sure that there are students distraught, embarrassed, and discouraged with what is happening on their campus and student affairs professionals are positioned to provide support, I would hope that efforts are taken to help students step back and, again, consider who the real victims are in all of this. While some well-intentioned Paterno-ites surely believed that their protests at his firing would convey messages of support for a campus icon, they likely never considered what kinds of messages such behavior send to, not only the victims in this particular case, but any victim of sexual abuse watching all of this play out. I hope Penn State takes this as an opportunity to help students move past what seems to be very selfish behavior and take a more mature and productive approach to the tragedy that is unfolding on their campus.

Instructional Designers as Weavers

2011-11-04T14:25:00.000-07:00

I defended my Masters Thesis (actually, it was more of a development project than anything) yesterday afternoon. It went well and it felt much more like a dialogue about ideas than a "defense" in the traditional sense. What I enjoyed most was that everyone in the room--myself and the three faculty members on my committee--seemed to learn something during the two hours we spent together.The most interesting idea that came out of our conversation was that instructional design is a process of weaving together an experience (or set of experiences) that move learners towards a desired outcome. And, that the best instructional experiences are those which are based upon a variety of theories, which have been woven together in a coherent way.

Andy Gibbons has written about a theory of design layering where instructional designers approach the process of designing a learning experience as one of attending to a variety of separate, but highly interrelated "layers" (e.g. content, messaging, representation, strategy). Similarly, Joseph Schwab described four "commonplaces" of educational thought that should be considered when undergoing curricular design: the learner, the instructor, the subject matter, and the sociocultural milieux. When instructional design is viewed through these lenses (i.e. layers or commonplaces) it becomes apparent that relying exclusively upon a single theoretical base in making design decisions is inadequate. For example, while relying upon a theory of learning may inform decisions about the types of instructional activities to include in a design and how to sequence them, that theory won't be of much help in determining how to present material to learners. Likewise, a theory of instructional design may provide helpful rationale for the underlying structure of the instruction, but it isn't likely to be much help when a designer encounters problems in measuring or evaluating the learning that is taking place during a course or training program.

Consequently, a good design, while often based upon one or two fundamental or core theories, will rely upon a variety of other theories in order to resolve challenges and problems which arise during the design process (e.g. how will we keep learners motivated? how will we know if they have learned what we hope they will? how will we represent this abstract concept graphically? etc.) A good designer, then, is one who can weave seemingly disparate theories together to construct a learning experience which is complete, coherent, and experienced by learners as meaningful narrative.

In short, the argument I'm making is that theoretical zealots or those familiar with only a narrow segment of theories, aren't likely to be able to design learning materials, experiences, or systems, which lead to meaningful growth for individual learners. Instead, they'll produce the bandwagon curricula which seems exciting on the surface, but which flames out and leaves learners, instructors, and administrators frustrated and unfulfilled. What we need is a generation of design "weavers" who are knowledgeable and nimble enough to weave together great designs.

Why we should all write in library books

2011-10-21T10:29:00.000-07:00

I checked a book out from the Harold B. Lee Library on my campus a few weeks ago (John Dewey's Experience and Education) and when I opened it I noticed that at least a quarter of the pages have notes written on them. To some this would be horrifying or at least annoying--I was excited. At the risk of bringing down the wrath of my bespectacled elementary school librarian (who, by the way, I am still truly terrified of--it's amazing that I don't have more of a negative relationship with books), I'd like to make an argument for the value of writing in books, particularly those books which are likely to be read by others at some point.

I make the assumption that virtually all learning is and should be approached as a conversation. It's easy to see the conversational metaphor in traditional learning activities (e.g. conversations among learners and teachers in classroom settings), but reading a book is also a conversation between the reader and the author. Of course, for some learners, the conversation is largely one-sided because their reading does little to elicit questions, new ideas, or responses. But, nonetheless, when they read someone else's ideas in a book they are engaging in a conversation.

As an undergraduate I had a tremendous mentor who re-ignited my passion for reading (I loved reading as a child, but about the time I hit junior high school it died out for one reason or another). One of the first books he lent to me was Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point. I still remember being intrigued by the fact that he wrote in his books (again, the evilness of this practice had been well ingrained in my mind by Mrs. Robinson at Upland Terrace Elementary). At first, I didn't pay much attention to his scribbles; however, at some point I realized that reading his notes, not only helped me understand Gladwell's ideas but also helped me see how they applied to my own experiences. What I loved most were the questions he posed in response to Gladwell's arguments because they invited me into an internal conversation where I could sift through Gladwell's ideas, my mentors responses, and my own wonderings. I can't say this for sure, but I wonder if I would have been excited about The Tipping Point and reading other things like it, had I not had the "conversational" experience with that copy of the book that particular summer. I spent the rest of that summer borrowing books from the same mentor and I always hoped that when I opened them the first time, they would be filled with his musings and questions.

My reading that summer not only kindled my interest in social science (I read Bob Putnam, Steven Johnson, more Gladwell, James Surowiecki, and Michael Lewis that summer), but taught me about how to have conversations with books. By the end of August I was buying my own books so that I could write in them, ask questions, draw diagrams, and argue with the author. I have continued my habit of well-intentioned book desecration and, today, there probably aren't many books on my shelf that haven't been written on. In fact, I lend a fair amount of books out to the students who I work with. Every once in a while one will make a comment about something I've written, which is gratifying. It's probably a stretch to assume that any of my scribblings will influence anyone quite like my mentor's ruminations did, but it's a nice thought to entertain.

The world needs more Andy Rooneys

2011-10-14T11:29:00.000-07:00

Two Sundays ago, Andy Rooney's final 60 Minutes "sign off" aired. It was typical Rooney--wise, dryly funny, and thought-provoking. I haven't ever been a regular viewer of 60 Minutes, but when I did watch, it always seemed to be at the tail-end of the hour, and I always enjoyed what Rooney had to say.

In his final piece, Rooney shared some insights that seem to have wide application, but particularly for those who teach.

Here are some things I took away:

Stop worrying so much about having (or writing) original thoughts (because there probably aren't any). Sometimes the pressure to do something new, exciting, or original becomes a barrier to doing anything at all and we sit motionless and paralyzed. Although I wouldn't call myself a "writer," I do a fair amount of writing and when the stars align and I do have something close to a coherent and tight argument or what I might foolishly believe to be an "original" idea, it hasn't come as I've been staring at an empty page or blank screen. Rather, I've started writing about something that seems relatively uninteresting and that exercise has eventually led to productive thoughts or ideas. And, in reflecting on my teaching, most of the "disasters" I've had in the classroom or in a training workshop of some kind have come when I was more concerned about being original or creative than I was with facilitating good learning (even if it wasn't the "sexy" kind of teaching and learning that gets talked about on teaching blogs). There seems to be power in teaching simple, but fundamental ideas, and doing it in simple ways.

Tell the truth. Truth is, in some ways, tough to define and what is "true" to one may or may not be to another. But, Rooney seems to be saying that if we were more concerned about being truthful (I wonder if another way to say that might be "sincere" or "genuine") and less preoccupied with being either provocative or "acceptable," depending on the circumstance, our ultimate impact on readers, students, etc. will be more worthwhile. And, if nothing else, by being authentic and truthful, we will feel better about our efforts and be able to eventually look back on a career with contentment (like Rooney seems to have been able to do). Rooney also wisely acknowledges the inevitability of our making mistakes and realizing, after the fact, that what we believed was true really wasn't. However, seeking to be truthful would seem to help eliminate many mistakes that might be made otherwise.

Care about what others think, but not too much. It was refreshing to hear Rooney's remarks about wanting to be liked. It seems like an innately human desire. And, when we feel some desire to have others like us it has a tempering effect on how we interact with and engage with others (read: it keeps us from becoming complete jerks). However, if being liked becomes the driving motivation behind our actions, we're likely to end up somewhere we don't like (and, ironically, become someone who others don't really like). This is especially important for teachers because a lot of the learning--and nearly all of the most important learning--we want for those we teach requires hard work, some degree of pain or discomfort, and some healthy failure. We don't always "like" those who ask these kinds of things of us. teachers, parents, and bosses who care more about being liked than facilitating growth, supporting learning, or being truthful, are dangerous.

Of course, none of what I've said here is original and I probably haven't said anything you didn't already know or hadn't already thought about--but, I take comfort in Rooney's words that "that's what writers do."

More on risk-taking and learning

2011-10-07T09:24:00.000-07:00

In this morning's edition of Inside Higher Ed, Nate Kreuter writes a column about the importance of failure in the classroom. The ideas in the column (along with those in Brian Croxall's blog which Kreuter links to at the end of his piece) resonated with me both because of what I have said about risk and failure in the past and more so because of some recent experiences I have had with students on my campus.

All but a handful of first-year students at BYU take a course known as American Heritage to fulfill a particular general education requirement. It is a tough course, particularly for freshmen, because for most students it requires a depth of learning that they are unaccustomed to and which stretches them in what they feel are uncomfortable ways. Consequently, students frequently voice complaints about their scores on exams and writing assignments.

Over the last year, those who administer the course have worked closely with BYU's Center for Teaching and Learning to redesign the course, particularly its assessments. On the whole this process has led to tremendous improvements, which in my estimation are based on very sound pedagogical principles and which are likely to lead to better learning and better attitudes among students. One of these changes has been to structure writing assignments in a way that initial writing assignments are low stakes (about 10 points each), build students core writing skills by providing valuable feedback on the writing process, and are directly connected to more hefty writing assignments which come later in the semester (i.e. students can use the writing they have done for the initial assignments in later assignments). It is a good model and likely to lead to good outcomes.

Here's the problem--faculty members and teaching assistants in the course haven't done much to make this visible or public for students. In other words, they have built the course to encourage students to take early risks in their writing, risks which can ultimately benefit students; however, they haven't attended to what Kreuter argues are two of the most important things educators have to do when creating a "failure-safe" classroom: they have neither modeled risk taking or publicly addressed the value of "failure." Consequently, over the last few weeks as scored essays have been returned to students with percentages of 30, 40, & 50 (the average across all sections was around 45%), they have panicked and thought "I've never 'failed' a writing assignment before." This emotional reaction has been so strong in some cases that the student has ignored the useful feedback provided on the essay, feedback that would pay big dividends for later writing assignments, and complained.

Maybe I'm naive, but things may have been different if a couple of things had happened early in the semester and again just before essays were returned

Clear reminders about the truly "low-stakes" of these assignments: The first two essays were worth a total of 30 points (10 and 20 points respectively). That is a whopping 5% of the total 600 points available for students to earn across the semester. One could argue that students could figure this out on their own, but the 30 seconds it would take to explain this in a lab section would do much to help students see the assignments as "safe." And, if they see them as safe they are much more likely to take productive risks in their writing and learn more.

Frequent discussion w/ students about the type of feedback they are receiving and its value: Many TAs have mistakenly assumed that students will immediately see value in the feedback provided and use it to improve their writing in the future. While some students undoubtedly were mature enough to do so, others likely see any degree of critique as a personal attack on their identity as a "good student." Time spent inducting students to their role as learners (e.g. welcome and receive feedback, use it to improve, etc.) could shift perspectives and help students interpret feedback in more useful ways. And, this is a message that should be re-iterated to freshmen again and again during their first semester on campus.

Public sharing of risk-taking and failure stories by faculty members: Students need to know that failure and risk are a part of any good academic experience and that, more importantly, people survive and benefit from them. Never underestimate the power of a well-told, genuine, and believable story.

Open discussion about the structure of the course and the rationale behind it: Good course design is much more likely to lead to desired outcomes when learners are partners with teachers in the overall process and understand the pedagogical strategy being employed. If writing assignments are structured to build upon one another and to provide good feedback on the writing process, that's an important thing for learners to know--it's foolish to assume they will figure it out on their own. Instructional strategies shouldn't be secrets we keep to ourselves. Making them visible to students both orients them to the learning experience they will have in our classroom and facilitates metacognitive activity that makes students better learners even after they leave our classes.

To be fair, there is probably little that faculty members or TAs could ever do to completely eliminate student complaints like those I've heard over the last few weeks. There will always be students who are so wrapped up in being awarded the same coveted "A's" they received in high school that no amount of discussion about deep learning, the value of feedback, or the importance of failure could ever change their perspective. But, if we were more intentional about helping first-year students adopt revised perspectives about learning--that it is risky, dependent upon failure and feedback, and sometimes painful--we would both hear fewer complaints and see more students becoming the types of scholars we hope leave our campuses when they graduate

Measuring the value of a university president

2011-09-30T09:45:00.000-07:00

Two institutions in my hometown of Salt Lake City, the University of Utah and Westminster College, are currently in the middle of presidential searches. And, naturally, this has led to discussion about presidential salaries and the need to offer a compensation package sufficient to attract talented leaders. The Salt Lake Tribune published an editorial this morning ("The Pay Game: Academic recruitment not cheap") and argued that the salary increases proposed by the Utah State Board of Regents for the presidents of each of the state institutions (but called into question by Governor Gary Herbert) are a good investment when it comes to finding the right kind of leader.

I think the Tribune has it right, particularly given the fact that the total compensation increase, across all eight institutions, amounts to around $100,000. That's a lot of money, but a drop in the bucket when considering the total higher education budget in the state of Utah. If paying the University of Utah's new president 4% more than her predecessor means the state gets a great leader who can lead the its flagship institution into a new era in higher education, the Regents have made a savvy move and we should be congratulating them for being wise enough to recognize the need to make salary adjustments.

But, how much should taxpayers be willing to pay university presidents? And, at what point does an increase in salary no longer translate into increased value for an institution? For instance, does a $650,000 a year post really pull in a better leader than a search committee would find if the pay were $400,000 a year? And, how does an institution measure the value added by its president? Fundraising dollars? High-profile faculty hires? Athletic success? Achievement of measurable student learning outcomes? Hitting enrollment targets?

Although Westminster College isn't likely to publicize a whole lot of information regarding the salary which will be paid to its next president, there is some evidence that attractive salary paid to Michael Bassis (the current president) has been well worth it. In the article the SL Tribune ran in early September announcing Bassis' retirement, it was reported that his compensation package totaled a little over $500,000 per year. That's less than the University of Utah's president will make in total compensation, but (I'm guessing) quite a bit more than the other 7 state school leaders. However, based on what has happened at Westminster during Bassis' tenure--increased enrollment, the recruitment of a much more diverse student body, the addition of several academic and athletic programs, to name a few--it has been money well spent. The interesting question I would ask now is, would Bassis have taken the job for $400,000 a year. And, if he did, would Westminster have seen the same improvements during his time on campus? What we really need is for some brilliant statistician to take the Moneyball approach and figure out how the Billy Beans of the world can analyze presidential performance and get the most value for their money.

The conscience of the academy

2011-09-23T12:35:00.000-07:00

In a talk given at the 2010 TEDWomen conference, t.v. executive Lauren Zalaznick argued that television can be viewed as our "conscience" in that it reflects who we are as a society. It's not really an earth shattering concept (although Zalaznick's talk shares some interesting data illustrating the veracity of this claim); however, it does raise an important question for any kind of group who claims to be or behave in a particular way, be it a corporation, a school, or a family. That question is "Are we who we really thing we are?" or, put another way, "Do our actions, behaviors, practices, etc. really reflect the set of values we claim to espouse?"

This is an interesting question for academic institutions to consider. And, leads to another useful question, which is "What is the conscience of the academy?" At first glance, it seems like a fairly simple exercise: just examine the mission statement, last presidential address, catalog, or set of standards from the last accreditation. Clearly, these official pronouncements reflect the values of the institution and give us insight into the degree to which an institution is committed to providing a high quality educational experience for students.

The problem, however, is that saying and doing aren't always in alignment with one another. Work in the field of action science has suggested that two types of theories influence the actions of an organization. Espoused theories are those which individuals or organizations claim to follow (i.e. the theories and values manifest in mission statements and catalogs), while theories-in-use are those theories or values that can be inferred by observing the actions of an organization or its individual members. This is not to say that all universities do one thing and say another (In Chapters 11 - 16 of his book, The Learning Paradigm College, John Tagg describes a number of colleges which have achieved a high degree of alignment between their mission to provide a high quality learning experience for students and what actually happens in the day-to-day happenings on their campuses); however, most organizations struggle to some degree to stay true to their stated missions and goals, particularly in the current economic climate when staying financially viable has become increasingly difficult.

Complicating all of this is the fact that those of us who do the work of education students on college campuses are often unaware of the gap between our actions and our stated values. So, training ourselves to examine key practices on our campuses can be helpful in making the invisible paradigm influencing our work more visible and apparent. So, what (or where) is the "conscience" of a campus? Where do the underlying (and most influential) values manifest themselves?

Just like t.v. is not the only place a society's values are apparent, there are likely a number of aspects of a campus where its values shine through. Here are a few that seem worth taking a look at:

General Education & Graduation Requirements: Virtually all students, to some degree or another, view college as an exercise in earning a credential--the degree--which becomes a key for opening other doors (e.g. jobs, graduate school, etc.). Institutions, then, are charged with outlining a set of requirements which, when completed, demonstrate that a student has "earned" this credential. Thus, this set of requirements speaks volumes about what an institution believes an "educated," "learned," or "competent," student looks like or has done. And, this means more than just the classes a student takes. What a school requires in the way of internships, service-learning, capstone experiences, etc. communicates a set of values about what constitutes an educational experience.

Advisement Centers: A fly on the wall in an academic advisement center would learn a lot about what an institution really values. Is it a speedy path to graduation? A well-rounded educational experience? Personal growth? Self-authorship? The sub-text of these advisement sessions is something students pick up on and use to inform subsequent decisions they make regarding their academic experience. If academic advisors engage students in conversations about what they are learning, what experiences they are seeking out to experience the growth they hope for, how their thinking or views are changing, etc., students are much more likely to conceptualize their time on a campus as an opportunity for discovery and growth. In contrast, if these sessions are only about graduating in four years, meeting application deadlines, submitting the proper forms, and fulfilling course requirements, a completely different message will be communicated.

New Student Orientation: Students make a lot of unconscious judgments about their college based on what they see and hear during their first few days on campus. If institutions value a particular kind of learning for their students, this should be explicitly stated and modeled during orientation. Of course, campus tours, social events, and other student-life types of activities are an important part of this experience. However, if orientation doesn't do any more than disseminate information to passive human receptacles and bring students together for dances, parties, and athletic events, a tremendous opportunity is lost. A campus who claims to value service-learning, collaborative experiences, open dialogue, or undergraduate research, needs to ensure that, when feasible, these values are reflected in what students do (not just what they hear) during orientation.

Faculty Reward Systems: Like students, faculty shape their work based, in part, upon what is rewarded by department chairs, deans, and provosts. What is it that faculty are rewarded for and how much does it align with what we say we really value.

Where else are institutional values (particularly hidden ones) made visible?

College Choice: The myth of the perfect fit school

2011-09-16T15:53:00.000-07:00

My friend Gary Daynes linked to a fascinating article from The Washington Monthly in a recent post on his blog. The article reports on the changing landscape of college admissions and highlights ConnectEdu, a company that, among other things, helps match colleges and students in attempt to find "the right fit."

Tools like ConnectEdu and others are long overdue and will be great assets for students, parents, admissions counselors and just about anyone else who cares about the college selection process. However, there is a potential pitfall in this path which is that some students and parents may come to believe that there is a "perfect college" out there for them. This isn't necessarily a new problem (no doubt, some students and parents have always believed this myth); however, the proliferation of college choices available to students in today's educational marketplace, the ease of accessing school information via the web, and (now) tools that help students find "the right fit" are a recipe for what psychologist Barry Schwartz has termed the "paradox of choice. "

For a student, finding a college that provides the academic programs, social opportunities, environment, diversity, etc. they are looking for is a great thing. But, the reality is that the list of schools meeting these requirements is likely to include at least a handful of potential "matches," all of which could end up being a "good fit." The operative word here is could. I say that because the college experience a student has on a particular campus is shaped largely by what the student does once they get there. All the intramural sports, small class sizes, service learning opportunities, and research labs in the world won't make a difference without an engaged, invested, and proactive student on the other end. And, I don't hear this message being voiced very often in the discussions about school choice. Rather, many students (and their parents) are increasingly believing that their college experience will be made or broken by the initial choice they make regarding which school to attend. What happens when a student enrolls at the "perfect fit" school suggested by a match-making service, and then mistakenly believes all her work is done? Will she put forth the effort to become engaged in her campus, get integrated into the community, and do the hard work to find her niche? Maybe, but not if she assumes that club membership, relationships w/ faculty members, and engaging academic experiences will happen on their own.

So, it seems important to temper conversations about finding the right fit, with complementary discussion about the responsibility students have to shape and mold their experience once they arrive on a campus. Otherwise, our institutions will be welcoming excited students who want to be at our schools, but who have no expectation of putting forth the effort necessary to have a great college experience.

Should freshmen be allowed to play?

2011-09-09T08:13:00.001-07:00

Stanford's Athletic Director, Bob Bowlsby, made waves this week with his call to ban freshmen from participating in intercollegiate athletics. While some think such propositions are merely an aim to curb the trend of men's basketball players leaving for the NBA after their freshmen year (the NBA currently requires draftees to be at least 19 and one year removed from high school), Bowlsby's stated rationale is that sitting out a year would give student-athletes time to adjust to the academic rigors of higher education.

While the chances of such a proposal being accepted by the NCAA and its board seem like a longshot, it will be entertaining to see how the rest of college athletics responds and where the idea goes. Even if some version of this proposal were to be accepted (some reports cite that Bowlsby has suggested mandatory red-shirting during the first year as a compromise of sorts), sidelining athletes, by itself, isn't likely to lead to the improved academic adjustment Bowlsby is hoping for. Many athletics departments (including the one on my campus) have bridging programs designed to assist student athletes in making the transition from high school to college (both in and out of the classroom), which should become mandatory and monitored closely to ensure they are doing what they propose to do and not just orienting freshmen to the culture of athletics on a campus.

The bigger issue here is the increasingly wide divide between the academic and athletic missions of big-time college sports institutions. In an article published this morning in the Salt Lake Tribune, the University of Utah's head football coach, Kyle Whittingham, responded to Bowlsby's proposal. As a fan of University of Utah athletics, I like Whittingham and think he has done a tremendous job with his team (they win games and rarely have the off-field problems that sometimes plague other high-profile teams). However, his comments in the article reflect two problematic attitudes that seem to be prevalent among college coaches.

First, Whittingham's statment that "if a guy is ready to play, why wouldn't you play him?" suggests that he wants the best athletes on the field, whether or not they are ready for everything else that comes with being a college student (read: academics) In defense of the corps of coaches Whittingham represents, they face tremendous pressure to be successful and please alumni, donors, and administrators. So, in many ways, they walk a difficult line as they try to put a good product on the field or court, while also pleasing those who want to hold their athletes to high academic standards. The problem is that the pro-athletics voice is almost always stronger (and has deeper pockets) than any of the other stakeholders on a college campus.

Second, although the reporter for the story may have misrepresented Whittingham's views, the article suggests that Whittingham believes that if a student-athlete is "mature" enough to garner signficant playing time, it can be assumed that they are ready to take on a college academic load as well. This seems like a huge stretch and one I'm sure would elicit countless anedcotes from faculty members and administrators demonstrating that athletic maturity/leadership doesn't always transfer into academic settings.

Whittingham does, however, point out one of the biggest flaws in Bowlsby's proposal which is that it is a blanket solution for a problem that only effects a percentage of college athletes. Of course, as a former student-athlete I am biased in my belief that there are plenty of athletes (even within high-profile football and men's basketball) who can balance athletic demands with the academic requirements of university life. Barring all freshmen from participating punishes those who are well prepared and could potentially shield athletic departments from addressing problems which contribute to poor academic peformance (e.g. recruiting and signing students grossly underprepared for college, monopolizing athletes time by involving them in athletic activities for 30+ hours a week, and failing to provide sufficient support and resources to athletes to assist them in being successful in the classroom). A better solution is to hold individual institutions and the NCAA as a whole more accountable for doing what they say they do--providing an experience for student-athletes that enhances their overall education.

On the marginalization of the "scholarship of teaching and learning"

2011-09-02T10:28:00.000-07:00

"[T]here remains a troubling gap between rhetoric about teaching's value and the realities of teaching's recognition and reward."

This statement from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's latest release (The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Reconsidered: Integration and Impact) sums up one of the main arguments of the book, namely, that institutions would do well to modify faculty reward structures to recognize the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) as valid academic work on par with traditional research scholars may do within their discipline, be it physics, economics or theatre.

One associated with such a change is the fact that at most institutions (particularly large institutions), decisions about promotion and rank advancement are guided by general policies which are then interpreted and applied by academic colleges and departments. While the idealist in we would like to think that one day it might be a formal expectation (read: requirement) that the vast majority of faculty members engage in substantial scholarship related to improving the way they teach or facilitate learning, that seems like a steep hill to climb. However, a more feasible alternative would be for each college or department within an institution to commit to having one scholar who conducts a significant portion of their research on teaching and learning within that particular discipline or field.

A structure like this would lead to at least a couple of productive things. First, it would be a way for institutions to make good on the rhetoric commonly heard about the importance of good teaching and learning. Additionally, a researcher in this position (I'll call them "SoTL fellows") would be better positioned to consult with their colleagues than would the traditional teaching and learning consultants working out of the Centers for Teaching and Learning found on most campuses. They would be fluent in the disourse of the discipline, be familiar with curricula for courses taught in the department, have relationships with others in the college or department, and (hopefully) be engaged in enough traditional academic research that they are seen as credible scholars by those they consult with. Finally, they could be effective advocates for promoting the SoTL among their colleagues and help them see the difference it can make in their experiences in the classroom, the lab, or the lecture hall.

An institution who was willing to make this sort of change would also be positioned to gather meaningful data about how the SoTL impacts teaching evaluations, learning outcomes for particular courses and programs, satisfaction rates among faculty members who do significant amounts of teaching. In other words, it would create small cells of innovation across a campus that, in time, could have more far reaching effects upon the learning that students experience.

What is Higher Education doing to address "the demise of guys?"

2011-08-05T15:55:00.000-07:00

In this short TED talk, Philip Zimbardo shares some alarming statistics about males and why we should be worried about them.

One of Zimbardo's arguments is that the traditional industrial model of education--large classes, lecture delivery, rigid policies and requirements, etc.--is a pretty poor fit for male students who want change, novelty, and excitement.

This raises an interesting question about how far institutions should go to "engage" learners, and what that might mean. What kind of responsibility do institutions and individual educators have to provide change and novelty? The knee-jerk response from some in educational technology and instructional design is more media, more gaming, and more online learning. While, technology is likely part of the solution, these cries for technology-rich classrooms seem a little narrow. And, some in education (like Zimbardo) seem to believe that it's gaming and media that have led to some of the problems we see among males (for a counter argument, watch this TED talk from Ali Carr-Chellman).

What else could or should higher ed be doing, both in and outside the classroom, to address the problems we see among male students? When I think about my own campus I can't think of a single initiative, policy, program, or otherwise aimed at enhancing the experience or learning of male students. This is odd considering how much success we've seen from programs focused on women (e.g. Women in STEM, Women's Centers, etc.). Let me be clear that I'm not arguing that we should stop focusing on women. Rather, what could higher ed learn from its efforts to support female students that could now be applied to the "male dilemma?"

Zimbardo and others mention the importance of male role models (I've written about this in a post from about a year ago) and campuses are beginning to address this through mentoring programs and male initiatives like the one at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. But, in talking to those who administer these programs (I learned about UA-LR's program this summer at a conference in the UK), they are small, underfunded, and generally an afterthought of the administration. Additionally, they are frequently focused on segments of the male population (e.g. minority students, first-generation students, or student-athletes).

If institutions are really serious about improving the retention rates, graduation rates, learning, and overall experience of males on their campuses, these marginal programs and the work they are doing will need to influence wider campus practices. Is this happening anywhere? And, if so, is it working?

Can good people make it in corrupt systems?

2011-07-29T12:23:00.000-07:00

In a recent post, I wrote about situational forces and the impact they can have on individual behavior. The argument made is that good people can do terrible things under the right (or wrong) circumstances. On Wednesday, this became a little more personal to me when a Provo City Council member, who is also one of my neighbors, was charged with 10 felonies relating to his dealings in local real estate development. He isn't a next door neighbor and I've never been to his home, but I see him once a week or so and always got the impression that he was a pretty good guy--not someone I would take for a felon or defrauder. The saddest part of it all is that he has a wife and young children that now have to deal with the fall out and find a way to hold a family together.

I have no idea how much truth there is to the claims being made and don't care to make any kind of judgment. It's just a sad situation and one that has brought me back to a question I have wondered about off and on over the years: Can good people survive in systems or environments that seem to incentivize unethical and corrupt practices. I first began asking this question as a new voter trying to make informed ballot decisions. I saw the media regularly uncovering corrupt politicians and started to wonder if candidates in any very visible election or anyone in high profile public positions could hold on to their values and integrity. As a student in an introductory political science class I asked this question of my professor (mostly because he gave us extra credit for visiting him during office hours). After beating around the bush a little, he eventually told me that, no, he didn't think very many politicians stayed 100% honest (which is a little ironic given that until just a few months ago this professor was the chair of the Utah County Democrats now the chairman of the Utah County Democratic Party) and most compromised on their values. Even as a fairly dense adolescent, I was a little shocked and pretty discouraged by his response. And, voting that November wasn't as much fun as I thought it would be.

It would be unfair to paint all politicians or all business people as dishonest, but the reality is that those who work in these environments are often under extreme pressure to produce results, be it a victorious campaign or great quarterly report. Similar pressures exist for professional and high profile collegiate athletics, some branches of academic research, and plenty of other settings as well. And, because we are increasingly becoming a society which values "results" above all else (and, by results, we usually mean things that are easy to measure like profits, votes, and wins), we create systems that reward "producers," sometimes at the cost of values, relationships, and community.

In my heart of hearts I know that there are plenty of good politicians, CEOs, and sports executives that are successful and upstanding. But, I wonder how rare they are becoming and how many of them we'll see 10 or 25 years from now.

Cafe West: An unlikely gathering place

2011-07-22T14:18:00.000-07:00

My wife and I had a new addition to our family early on Monday morning. Her name is Ashlyn and she weighed in at a hearty 6 lbs. 10 oz. (which, surprisingly, is a pound heavier than our first daughter). Needless to say, it has been an exciting and tiring week as we've adjusted to having both an infant and a toddler at home. But, she slept nearly 6 hours without interruption last night and our two year-old has only had a minor show of jealousy, so we are feeling like things are going well.

In between holding Ashlyn and watching a ridiculous amount of baseball while my wife recovered in a hospital room, I discovered "Cafe West," what, at first glance, appears to be a typical hospital cafeteria at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo, Utah. I had eaten at Cafe West three years ago when our first daughter was born and knew the food was good, so I went back the night after Ashlyn was born. It was nearly 11:00 p.m. when I walked down from the hospital room, so I expected things to be pretty quiet. However, when I got to the cafeteria, I was surprised to find nearly 30 college-aged students camped out in a corner of the cafeteria eating, laughing, and just hanging out. And, it was fairly obvious that none of them were patients at the hospital or there to see patients. I went back the next night (mostly out of curiosity, but also for the most amazing onion rings I have ever had in my life) and there was a completely different (and smaller) group of students there.

Provo is a college town, so to see a group of students out enjoying a late night meal at a local gathering place isn't uncommon at all. But, I would never have guessed that gathering place would be a hospital cafeteria. Let alone a cafeteria whose web presence is 4 lines on the general visitor info page of the hospital, who has no signage visible from outside of the hospital, and which a large percentage of the full-time citizens of Provo probably don't know about. What has made Cafe West a gathering place?

I'm guessing here, but these are my hunches:

1. Really good food. No one hangs out at hospitals unless they have a good reason for it. The food is what brings students to Cafe West (and keeps them coming back). Not only does it give them a reason to gather, but facilitates conversation and connection. And, yes, the food is that good. I wasn't lying when I said their onion rings are the best. They make my top 5 milkshake list as well (although there are only 4 flavors to choose from). It also helps that their menu is very simple and easy to navigate--an idea I have blogged about before.

2. Cheap prices. College students, particularly those in Provo, don't like to spend much money on their food (I know this from suffering through six months as a server at a local restaurant where a "good" tip was around 7%). They gather to places where they can hang out, get full, and do it without taking too much of a dent.

3. Unique environment. As far as cafeterias go, Cafe West isn't really all that unique at all (aside from the onion rings & milkshakes). But, as a college hang-out, it's as different and unique as you can find. College students like to feel different and to feel like they have insider knowledge. When you eat at Cafe West for the first time, you feel like you have discovered a hidden gem amidst the relatively boring Provo landscape. I think this adds to the allure and appeal for students.

4. Small and intimate setting. Cafe West couldn't have chairs & tables for more than 60 people and it is tucked away in a back corner of the hospital (just as you come in the "Labor and Delivery" entrance, which is how I found it). What's more, the staff that run the cafe have a knack for making you feel like your welcome there and they're happy to see you (I have a hunch that this is a very intentional effort on the part of hospital administration--Utah Valley Regional Medical Center is part of Intermountain Health Care (IHC), who are well known for their patient-friendly culture and their efforts to embed that culture throughout all parts of the organization, from the housekeeping staff to, apparently, the 20 year old kid who makes shakes in the cafeteria). When I went back on my 2nd night at the hospital, it was the same staff working behind the counter and I got the distinct feeling that they remembered me from the night before. It was also obvious that they were familiar with the "regulars" and called them by name. That's the kind of place people want to go back to and feel comfortable gathering to.

5. Openness and accessibility. Cafe West is open 23 hours a day, which makes it an ideal gathering place for college students who rarely sleep. And, architecturally, it is wide open which facilitates larger groups and makes it easy to see late arrivals, acquaintances, etc. as they walk in (the large group I saw on my first night started with about 10 people and grew and grew as others came). The lightweight, easy-to-move tables and chairs also provide flexibility in accomodating whatever size of group is there to gather.

The thing that I couldn't get over as I watched students and enjoyed onion rings was that Cafe West was never intended to be a gathering place for this demographic, but it happened rather serendipitously because the right conditions were in place. What makes me laugh is that most of the gathering places we try to create inentionally aren't even close to this successful.

Joe Castillo & Sand Art: Stories in unexpected places

2011-07-15T11:27:00.000-07:00

I've posted, several times, about the power of story in learning and communication. This is not, by any means, a new idea--we have come to expect story in certain aspects of our experience. For example, we recognize that the best speakers are those who can tell the right story in the right way (think of the best TED talks you've listened to--chances are they include some elements of story and feature a great story teller). We, obviously, look for good stories in the film and literature we consume. And, to some extent, story is even starting to make headway in the classroom (e.g. problem-based learning, the case-study method, etc.) and we expect good teachers to incorporate narrative into their classrooms.

More and more, however, I am starting to see story in places I wouldn't expect. My most recent experience with an unexpected use of story was the website of a very skilled artist. Joe Castillo is a sand artist who makes a living creating art (very powerful stories in some cases) using a pretty non-traditional medium. Although I didn't think I would ever have much interest in watching someone play in the sand, Castillo turns it into a very powerful art form. What, for me, makes his art so powerful is that he tells stories--some of which are incredibly moving (watch the 9/11 memorial performance posted on his homepage for an example). Part of what is inspiring about great artists like Castillo is their skill and precision in their craft. However, there is plenty of art work out there that is highly skillful, technically sound, and precise, but which doesn't inspire and move us. The power comes in the story.

This all makes me wonder whether we could use story in non-traditional ways in other settings and achieve a power and impact that is generally missing. What if administrators and team leaders pitched ideas and managed projects in ways that capitalized on story? What if the painfully monotonous and largely unproductive meetings we all attend were recrafted to tell stories or so that those in attendance felt like they were part of some kind of meaningful story? Could we rethink the way we plan and organize events--weddings, new student orientation, training seminars--and use story to drive learning and increase engagement and meaning? Or, what if the four year university experience were viewed by higher education leaders as a narrative with all of the elements of a good story, including beginnings & endings, intrigue, authenticity, and risk?

Where else could we start using story to make an impact or frame our work in terms of narrative? Story seems to be engaging, motivating, and captivating in almost any setting.

Situations & systems matter: Lessons for higher ed from the Stanford Prison Experiment

2011-07-08T09:20:00.000-07:00

After looking at it on my bookshelf for the better part of three years, I finally resolved to tackle Philip Zimbardo's book, The Lucifer Effect. I'm only about half-way through, but it has been a fascinating read and helped me see both my work and personal life through a new lens. The underlying argument of the book is that individual behavior can be heavily influenced through what Zimbardo terms "situational forces" and that the systems we create, be it in prisons, businesses, homes, or schools, are critical in determining actions of the individuals within those systems. Zimbardo also points out the common tendency we have to attribute negative (or even evil or destructive) behaviors to individual dispositional factors (e.g. genes, personality traits, personal pathologies, etc.), while completely disregarding situational or systemic factors.

Those of us working in higher ed (particularly those of us who work with first-year students) frequently yield to the same cycle of analysis in that we attribut student failures, less-than-desirable learning outcomes, etc. to the personal or dispositional attributes of the students on our campuses. As I read Zimbardo's book, I had to ask myself, what situational factors on my campus might be to blame? And, what could we do on campuses to create systems that are more likely to facilitate the behaviors we want from students?

This post, is not in any way meant to compare college campuses to prisons or to suggest that the negative things that happen on campuses are comparable to the horrific things that happened in Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE). However, there are lessons and findings that emerged from the SPE that could be instructive for any organizational leaders, including higher ed administrators:

1. Rules, policies, and requirements matter. Students come to understand expectations and behavioral norms, in part, from the rules and policies enacted on a campus. What they read in the student catalog and see on the campus website communicates a set of values about the institution and what is viewed as most important. Even more importantly, if we want students to have particular types of experiences (e.g. service-learning, engagement with peer mentors, etc.), then it is imperative that we embed these practices and experiences within the required curricula and co-curricula. George Kuh has repeatedly made the case for making high impact practices more visible and institutionalized on campuses.

2. Inviting individuals to take on new roles changes thinking and behavior. When individuals integrate or socialize into new organizations (e.g. a college campus), their subsequent behavior is shaped, in large part, by the role they see themselves playing. Consequently, careful attention should be given to the way in which new students are "inducted" into the campus community and what kinds of messages are conveyed about their role as students. Even using the term student has potential for being problematic because students see this as a role they have played (and played well) across their K-12 school experience. Subsequently, they see themselves in a similar role as before and bring with them the same set of behaviors, attitudes, and dispositions that, frequently, are not a good fit for their new college environment (e.g. study skills that worked in high school but which are ineffective in facilitating the kind of deep learning necessary for success in college courses). Something to chew on--what if we frequently referred to students as "scholars" or "learners" in our conversations, literature, etc.? Maybe it's a bit cheesy or over-the-top, but if that is the role we hope for students to play, our language needs to reflect that and reflect that we expect them to play a different role than the one they likely played before they arrived on our campus. Interestingly, clinical psychology and its practice of role induction, may have something to contribute to our thinking in this area. In short, therapists and clinical psychologists have found that patients persist in treatment at higher rates and demonstrate desirable patient behaviors more frequently when they clearly understand their role as patients.

3. Leaders can shape behavior by playing reciprocal roles. In the SPE, subjects selected to play the role of "prisoners" would have had a difficult time playing that role without others playing the reciprocal "guard" role. Consequently, the role faculty members, advisors, peer mentors, and administrators play will influence student behaviors. When we play the role of parent, disciplinarian, grader, or punisher, we invite students to play the reciprocal role (e.g. child, rebel, surface learner, victim, etc.). Constrastingly, if we see ourselves (and our behaviors align with this view) as mentors, guides, co-learners, etc., we're more likely to call forth the behaviors and attitudes we most want in students and which we know will lead to transformative learning.

4. Anonymity = Trouble. One of the most powerful lessons I have taken from reading about the SPE thus far is how much conditions of anonymity influence individual behavior. What's more, many of the current practices on college campuses (particularly large research institutions) have the potential to increase students' feelings of anonymity. Think for a moment about the experiences a new student on a college campus might have--the classes they take, the communication they receive from the institution, the way they conduct business or transactions with the institution, etc.--and then ask yourself whether these experiences leave a student feeling "known" or anonymous (there seem to be some strong connections here to Schlossberg's work on marginality and mattering here as well). I doubt that students who feel anonymous or marginalized will begin to behave like prisoners on our campuses; however, when our campus practices and policies make students feel as though they don't matter or limit their access to meaningful personal relationships with faculty members, advisors, and administrators, their learning will suffer.

So, the next time you hear yourself or a colleague complaining about students, take a moment to think about the system and situuational forces your institution has created and how they might be contributing to the problems.

Answering tough (and meaningful) questions: A case for narrative inquiry in educational research

2011-07-01T10:05:00.000-07:00

In a recent posting on his blog, John Gardner raised some intriguing questions about measuring the impact of our work with first-year students (e.g. How do we measure whether or not students love their university experience? How do we measure transformation?). These are, no doubt, important questions for First-Year Experience professionals to ask. And, if we see our work as more than just boosting retention stats, they are questions that we have to grapple with.

The trouble with questions about “love,” “transformation,” or “the impact of a mentor” is that these things are tough to measure. Granted, researchers can operationalize concepts like love and develop instruments that measure proxy indicators that the more fuzzy concepts are present (e.g. we measure “engagement” by measuring a variety of indicators including time spent working outside of class, interactions with faculty members, study w/ peers, etc.), but this approach has its problems. Before readers’ red-flags go up, this is not a rant against quantitative research or operationalism—this type of academic work has its place and helps us to answer critical questions about student experience. However, while p-values, standard error estimates, and confidence intervals, are sometimes seen as the coin of the realm in academia, for some questions (i.e. those mentioned by John), particularly those with deep personal relevance for us, the traditional quantitative approach can leave us feeling unfulfilled, still questioning whether or not our work has really mattered in the lives of individual students.

The good news is that there are other research approaches coming to be recognized as just as viable as more traditional quantitative approaches. One that may hold particular promise for FYE researchers is narrative inquiry. A blog post is not the place to attempt an exhaustive explanation of this discipline; rather, my intent here is to provide a brief sketch outlining the general landscape of the field. For those wanting more depth (and much more sophisticated) than is found here, these are some good places to start:

“Stories of Experience and Narrative Inquiry,” Educational Researcher, 19(5), 1990

Narrative methods for the human sciences, Catherine Riessman, 2007

Narrative Inquiry, Jean Clandinin & Michael Connelly, 2004

Touching Eternity: The enduring outcomes of teaching, Tom Barone, 2001

Narrative inquiry is a sub-discipline within the broader field of qualitative research. Based on the premise that storytelling is an inherent human quality and that we live “storied lives,” narrative researchers use narrative data sources (e.g. story-telling, journals, field notes, interviews) to study how we experience the world and then make meaning of these experiences. As an example, John’s question about love for an institution could be addressed by interviewing graduating seniors, soliciting stories from sophomore students, or analyzing journal writing from a freshman seminar course, then identifing meaningful themes that cut across the entire set of “data.” Ultimately, the researcher would aim to use these narrative sources to construct a “meta-narrative” that tells an overarching story related to the initial research question.

As with any research methodology, narrative inquiry has its critics. Common criticisms of narrative inquiry include a lack of generalizability, reliability, and validity (similar to the arguments against most qualitative approaches) and these are all fair claims. However, as a general rule, narrative inquirers don’t view these criteria as goals of their research. Rather, their focus is on transferability, apparency, and verisimilitude. To narrative researchers, the narrative approach is a way of addressing personal and human dimensions of experience in ways that quantitative data cannot—they are working from a completely different set of assumptions about research. Jean Clandinin and Michael Connelly (arguably the most well-known and well-respected narrative researchers) put it best in their paper “Stories of experience and narrative inquiry” when they said that “stories stand between the general and the particular, mediating the generic demands of science with the personal, practical, concrete demands of living” (1990).

Lest this post be viewed as a one-sided push for a problem-free research approach, it is important to recognize narrative’s dangers and pitfalls. Because narrative asks researchers to construct stories from qualitative data, the possibility exists for individuals to fake the data and concoct pure fiction, based on nothing but unfounded assumptions and only anecdotal data. Additionally, narrative could be used to misrepresent experience and promote deception. Finally, some narrative researchers (particularly when stakes are high) may present only “Hollywood stories” where, for example, students love everything about their university experience, become deep learners, and are transformed by their college experience for the rest of their lives. But, it bears mentioning, that similar claims could be made of virtually any approach to research, even quantitative methods.

While narrative inquiry may not have the tables and statistical significance that sways some political and campus leaders, there is rhetorical power in human stories that we can relate to and that elicit similar stories from our own experiences. What’s more, narrative inquiry is gaining traction among educational researchers, as evidenced by the recently formed Narrative Research SIG within AERA, the convening of the first ever Narrative Inquiry conference this last May, and the well-respected work of Clandinin and Connelly. Most importantly, narrative offers an approach for answering those questions, like John has posed, that are deeply meaningful to us personally, and whose answers we use to measure the impact of our careers.

What does it mean to be a university student?

2011-05-20T12:59:00.000-07:00

"Neither my undergraduate nor my Master's experiences imprinted themselves on my heart and in my life . . . . I wasn't heavily involved in anything and I feel no special connection to either of my alma maters. And I don't feel like a bad person and I don't feel regretful for having walked a different path."

A reader made the above comment in response to a recent blog post by John Gardner (John is the senior fellow for the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and blogs about issues relating to undergraduate education and the first-year experience).

The poster goes on to make the point that, as educators, we have to be careful not to project our own experiences or aspirations onto the students we associate with (e.g. assume that because our undergraduate experience played out in a particular way, that all the students we work with should have the very same type of experience). This is an important caution because I see colleagues making this kind of assumption (and catch myself as well) quite frequently. We are not in the business of cloning ourselves or dictating that all students approach their education in the same way we did. But, there is a troubling tone to the comment and it seems to suggest that students have the right to be invisible members of a campus and make no real contribution to what takes place there.

A university is, by definition, a community. Accordingly, when a student makes a choice to enroll at a particular institution, they are not just agreeing to take classes and complete assignments. More importantly, they are making a commitment to become a member of the university community by participating in its practices and upholding its ideals. Universities always have (and I hope always will) be gathering places where scholars can come together to both learn from and teach one another.

Although students will sometimes choose to be "uninvolved and uncommitted," it seems slightly selfish to do nothing more than attend class lectures, complete assignments, and then get out without making any attempt to invest in or contribute to the community of which they are a part. And, it runs counter to the commitment they made when they decided to "matriculate" at the university.

I'm not saying that every student needs to be in a campus club or go to the football games. What I am saying is that there are diverse ways to become involved on a campus, from service-learning, to studying with classmates, to working in the on-campus burger joint. And, one of our roles as educators is to encourage and facilitate participation by all students in our campus communities. That may be particularly true of those students who come onto campus with an initial tendency towards being "uninvolved" and "uncommitted." The key, and maybe this is what the poster was getting at, is in extending those invitations in skillful, compassionate, and respectful ways.

As an aside, it would also help if we stopped "recruiting" students in the traditional ways (e.g. "look at our nice dorms," "we'll give you a laptop," "we have great tailgates") and did a better job of helping them understand what kind of commitment they are making when they make the choice to come to our campuses. "Recruiting" needs to be balanced with a healthy dose of "educating," before they've even stepped on campus or registered for their first class.

Dilemmas and the difficulty of being wise

2011-05-13T14:21:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I blogged about the concept of "practical wisdom" and linked to a TED talk by Barry Schwartz in which he describes this idea.

I started reading Schwartz' book earlier this week and have enjoyed it thus far. One of the arguments made by Schwartz and co-author Ken Sharpe is that the rules we make to "simplify" or systematize decisions or actions will often fail us. It was an idea that made perfect sense to me and, at least once, I had the thought "People (not me) are stupid. Why can't they be more wise and stop holding on to their rules so rigidly." Then, today, I had an experience that reminded me how hard it is to be wise.

Each year at this time, my department interviews and hires a large number of undergraduate peer mentors to work with freshmen students during the coming academic year. Like most departments, we have a formal application process and have developed policies to help us make decisions about who to hire (e.g. minimum GPA of 3.4, completed core first-year requirements, not a felon, etc.). Most of the time the system we have put in place is actually quite helpful in (1) winnowing the list and (2) making distinctions between applicants. One of the "requirements" that we have held to in the past is that anyone we hire must be able to attend our "mandatory" week-long training workshop held a few weeks before the fall semester begins. We do this because we believe that the training we provide is beneficial for the students we hire and (I think) that a student's attendance at five days of eight hour training is a sign that they are committed to our program. Anecdotally, I can say that the things peer mentors learn during this week and the social connections they forge with their peers and supervisors are critical to their success and the overall success of our program. So, in general, it is a pretty good policy to require peer mentors to attend.

Well, about an hour ago we interviewed a candidate who I feel comfortable saying is the strongest applicant we have had among nearly 100 that we have interviewed. He is a deep learner. He is personable and has an almost unmatched social ease. He has remarkably pure intentions for wanting to work for us. And, his father is a faculty member here who has been a friend of our department for years. The problem--he is getting married on August 12th and will be away from campus until August 20th, and our "mandatory" training begins on August 17th.

So, my colleagues on the selection committee have a couple of choices: (a) We stick to our guns and let him know that, because he cannot attend the training, we can't offer him a position; or (b) We make an exception to the policy and hire him.

I'm torn. I actually knew before he interviewed this afternoon, that he had a conflict with the training. I hoped that the interview would be lousy and it would be an easy decision for us. We weren't that lucky. What complicates things even more is the fact that we have told other applicants with similar conflicts (far less prepared, impressive, and qualified applicants mind you) that we couldn't hire them. We even told another student, who was a peer mentor for the last year, that because she wouldn't be back from her study abroad trip until after training was over, that she couldn't come back and work for us.

So, now that I'm facing a situation that requires the type of "practical wisdom" Schwartz calls for, I'm realizing that it's not just stupid people that struggle with these things, it's all of us. I really have no idea what we're going to do, but here are some things that I think will guide us.

1. Past experience. There was a time when we didn't have a hard and fast "you can't miss training" policy. It would be instructive for us to think about students who missed training and then look at how effective they were in their role as peer mentors. If, in the past, we've gotten burned then we might take that as fair warning. If, on the other hand, there have been highly effective peer mentors that missed all or part of training, maybe we need to rethink our policy (and design better training).

2. Empathy & perspective. Seeing the situation from a variety of vantage points (the student we interviewed, the student on study abroad that we decided not to take back for next year, the loyal faculty member father) will help us create a clearer picture of the nuances of the situation. And, it will likely help us be more "human" in our decision. For example, how would we feel if we were "punished" for getting married and taking a honeymoon (which is a particularly interesting question for us to ask given the emphasis our university's sponsoring institution places on marriage and family). How would we feel if we were a peer mentor who had cancelled a family vacation or ended an internship early in order to attend training, only to find out that one of our peers was given the luxury of coming three days late?

3. Thinking outside of the box. It's very possible that we are thinking about this in overly black-and-white terms. It may not be an issue of hire him or don't hire him. Rather, there are probably a lot of ways that he could become involved with our department, without being hired as a peer mentor (the policy only applies to peer mentors). For example, he could work in a volunteer capacity, could work in a specialized role under the direction of a staff member (he brings a great deal of media and technology experience with him that we could likely use), he could work as a research assistant for a semester and then become a peer mentor.

So, for the four people that actually read this blog (and that might be generous), what would you do? Are there other guiding principles we could use to help us in our decision?

The University of Utah: From athletic rags to riches

2011-05-06T14:48:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week the PAC 12 Conference announced a multi-billion dollar TV deal with ESPN and Fox. The deal stands as the richest and most lucrative network tv contract a college athletic conference has ever struck and will bring member insitutions better than $20 million annually. The news was particularly exciting for fans of the University of Utah because "the U." will become a member of the PAC 12 this fall. Although Utah won't receive their full share of the tv earnings for a few more years, it is a big victory for their athletic department, not only because of the money that it will bring in, but for the exposure it will give the department and the university.

This week's announcement is just another part of the broader story of Utah's rise from a relatively unknown and uncelebrated athletics program (they were part of the unheralded Western Athletic Conference until about a decade ago when they moved to the equally mediocre Mountain West Conference) to the upper echelons of college athletics. It's the sort of story every athletics program wishes they could tell and what drives the "athletics arms race" described by Murray Sperber in his book Beer and Circus. So, why do some schools make it while others plod along year after year, barely keeping their heads above water? Why was Utah different?

1. Great Leadership: Utah's department of athletics is led by one of the very best athletic administrators in the country, Chris Hill. Not only is Hill a smart and hard worker, he understands the landscape of college athletics and academia having worked in a number of capacities at the University across the last 25 years, both inside and outside of the athletics department.

2. Patience: Utah's rise didn't happen overnight. Hill has been at the helm for the last 24 years and it's taken that long to build the sort of program that exists at the U. Plenty of other programs have had successful years and high-profile athletes, but Hill's teams have been consistently competitive over a long period of time and built a solid base of success and stability.

3. Luck: Utah owes a lot of its success to the instability among athletic conferences over the last few years. Because of the amount of movement and shuffling over the last few years, conferences were looking to expand and bring in new members, so "mid-majors" like Utah were actually part of the conversation. Without that kind environment, teams like Utah would never have been asked to sit at the table.

4. Stability: While the men's basketball team at Utah has been in turmoil for the last 7 years or so, the rest of the department has been pretty stable. The wildly successful gymnastics team has been led by the same coach for the last 36 years (the only coach the program has ever had), the women's soccer coach is in his 10th year, the current football coach has been part of the program for nearly 20 years, and the women's basketball staff has been stable for the last decade. That kind of consistency translates into success--success that big-time conferences notice and want to be associated with.

5. The right market: Other than the Utah Jazz (who aren't likely to be fan favorites in the near future because of the rebuilding they are undergoing), University of Utah athletics are the biggest thing in sports for residents of Salt Lake City and the state as a whole. So, the amount of fan support is where it needs to be and the U. isn't splitting crowds with major league franchises or other large educational institutions.

Of course, it's possible that the best idea in this post is #3 above and that Utah's ascendency has been due to nothing more than luck and timing. I'm willing to admit that, but it's worth looking at their story to see what might be learned.

General Education & the Problem of Fragmentation

2011-04-29T16:06:00.000-07:00

On Monday morning I attended a half-day meeting on my campus where, among other things, we discussed the General Education program at BYU and how to measure students' achievement of our GE learning outcomes. To help us prepare for the meeting, we were provided with a document that outlined each of the learning outcomes, their rationale, and how the institution plans to measure them.

In reviewing the document, one thing that became painfully clear to me was that the only direct evidence of the achievement of GE outcomes we collect are course-specific (e.g. writing samples from advanced writing courses, course assignments/projects, etc.). I'm not suggesting that these artifacts would not tell us anything about what students are learning, but there seem to be at least two problems with relying solely upon course-specific evidence. First, it flies in the face of the underlying philosophy of general education, namely that it should provide a holistic and integrated experience for students that runs across particular courses. Second, it assumes that integration of core concepts and learning outcomes will somehow occur without any intentional or strategic effort on the part of the institution (or, that faculty members are designing assignments that ask students to make connections across courses and between disciplines).

What BYU--and I'm guessing a lot of other campuses--needs to consider is whether the GE program is an isolated and fragmented set of learning outcomes, each of which can be measured independently of the others, or whether we are after more holistic and integrated growth for our students. If it's the latter, then portfolios, captstone experiences, learning communities with shared assignments, and assessment plans that examine student work that arises from these deep learning experiences will become much more important to us than they are currently.

On "well-roundedness"

2011-04-08T13:19:00.000-07:00

High school students are frequently encouraged to make themselves "well-rounded" in an attemp to become more attractive applicants for the schools of their choice. The "good" students follow suit and participate in an array of experiences they hope will "round them out." As a result, we see the honors student who is also a member of the varsity tennis team, sings in women's chorus, volunteers at the local elementary school, and works part time at the Kinko's downtown. The common thinking is that this diversity of experience is good for both the student and the college who will one day send her an acceptance letter. After all, we want well prepared students who can also contribute to a diverse or well-rounded student body. But, this scenario is based on a particular assumption about "well-roundedness," namely that in order to have a well-rounded campus, admissions offices must recruit and admit well-rounded individuals.

The danger in recruiting an entire class of students like the hypothetical one I described above, is that a campus ends up not being well-rounded at all, but populated by a freshman class who all look the same. Yes, the particular extra-curricular activities on each of their applications may vary a bit from one another, but they are nearly identical in that they have each dabbled in a number of things, but without developing the depth of passion or skill that comes through focused engagement in a single activity or area. In contrast is the student who may not have been on the honor roll, lettered in a varsity sport, or volunteered at the hospital, but who was heavily involved in drama at their high school and who comes with deep passion and skill in that area. Or, the student who was the editor of their school newspaper and who developed a broad set of skills through their involvement in that single activity.

So, when we talk about having well-rounded students, do we mean breadth of experience or breadth of ability and skills. My sense is that they aren't always the same and that a long list of extracurricular activities may or may not make for a well-rounded applicant or one who can make a unique and meaningful contribution to the campus community. An incoming class made up of students who were highly engaged in a limited number of activities prior to enrolling in college, may be a more useful way of creating a well-rounded campus community. And, maybe more importantly, such a practice signals to students that we value deep learning and focused engagement just as much (if not more) than the shotgun approach of doing a little of everything, without ever becoming immersed in an experience.

What problems does performance pay solve? What problems does it create?

2011-04-01T13:59:00.000-07:00

A recent article on Inside Higher Ed. reported on a proposal by the British government to link the pay of vice-chancellors to the degree to which they meet professional targets laid out by the governing bodies of their institutions. The argument used by those backing the proposal is that because vice-chancellors (the equivalent of university presidents in the U.S.) make so much more money than most on their campuses, there should be added measures of accountability to justify that pay differential.

It's an interesting idea and not that uncommon in other sectors. Athletic coaches have bonuses written into their contracts for winning a certain number of games or winning championships. Salesmen live and die performance pay in the form of commissions. And, just today, I was in a meeting discussing how to train museum educators where someone proposed that we create monetary incentives for museum staff who interact with a certain number of patrons. In short, whether we're a parent trying to get a child to do something they may not do on their own--eat their vegetables, mow the lawn, or get good grades--or a manager trying to improve the performance of an employee, incentives are part of the world we live in and can lead to a variety of positive behaviors.

The trouble is that, at times, the incentives or reward structures we put in place are actually incentivizing a set of behaviors very different than what we would hope for. And, in settings where innovation or creativity are highly valued, performance-based pay has the potential to discourage the calculated risk-taking necessary for make improvements and breakthroughs to occur. In the case of British vice-chancellors, their governing bodies need to think carefully about what they value in leaders and what constitutes success or "high performance" and then carefully craft their incentives and performance-based pay criteria in alignment with those values. If what the performance indicators are in conflict with other values, there will be trouble and the government might get something completely different than what they expected when they set out to improve the "performance" of high-level administrators.

Compensating or rewarding individuals based on performance measures can solve some problems. By identifying desired behaviors and then "paying out" when they are seen with some consistency, people may start to behave differently. But, there are often unintended consequences and we sometimes create new problems in our attempt to solve old ones.

Can learning happen without the learner knowing it?

2011-03-25T13:41:00.000-07:00

I spent most of last Friday on a tour of Thanksgiving Point with a group of fellow graduate students who are working with Thanksgiving Point management on a project I have blogged about in a previous post. We visited each of the three main venues at Thanksgiving Point and at each venue our tour was facilitated by the director of that particular museum or attraction. Among other things, they oriented us to their venue, helped us understand the guest experience, and showcased exhibits or features they felt were particular noteworthy. One of the directors, while taking us through his space, repeatedly made the comment that "kids are learning here, they just don't know it." After hearing that statement three or four times in a matter of an hour, I started to wonder what that might mean. And, it highlighted for me the fact that we frequently assume that learning is occurring without any real evidence that it is. The TP manager we spoke with assumed that kids, parents, and other guests were learning while participating in the museum experience his venue provides, but it was just that--an assumption.

In the title of this post I posed a question--can someone learn without knowing it? I think the answer to that question probably depends on how a person defines "learning." But, I'm willing to concede that "unconscious learning" might happen in some cases (e.g. The gradual process of becoming a more skilled artist or musician or the familiarity with a new neighborhood that comes over time). But, the larger issue here is how much more meaningful learning is when the learner recognizes that it is happening. And, helping learners see they have learned, seems like an important function for educators and educational environments to play. This could happen in any number of ways, but here are a few

1. Clearly articulate what you hope will be learned. Sometimes just alerting learners to what it is they should or could be learning, helps them recognize it when it happens. The old adage, "you see what you're looking for" applies here.

2. Ask them to reflect at key points in the experience. Ask learners what they are learning and how they are learning it. This could happen at just about any point in the learning process, but beginnings and endings present nice opportunities for reflection. What's more comparing these sorts of pre-post reflections reveals to learners how they have changed and provides an opportunity for them to identify how to replicate the learning process on their own.

3. Celebrate learning. Provide opportunities for learners to demonstrate, share, highlight, or reveal what they have learned. Not only do these sorts of activities deepen learning for individual learners, they communicate to the larger community of learners (a class, a school, an organization) what type of learning the community values.

4. Provide opportunities for learners to teach one another. Nothing lets us know how well we know something like trying to teach it to someone else. And, the process of articulating knowledge not only reveals what a learner does and doesn't know, it deepens understanding and raises new questions that facilitate additional learning.

When ideals and viability collide

2011-03-11T11:27:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday evening, the Provo School Board approved a renovation of the Provo High School football complex. Anyone who has driven by the stadium knows that this sort of project is long overdue, particularly when Bulldog stadium is compared to its neighbor up the hill at Timpview High School. The challenge for Provo School District is how to fund capital projects like this one, in the face of ever shrinking budgets and a reeling economy. Not surprisingly then, Tuesday evening's conversation about the renovation at Provo High was dominated by talk of where the money will come from. The Board of Education has committed $125,000 on the front end of the project and has agreed to subsidize the cost of replacing the track that surrounds the field, but falls far short of the nearly $1.5 million that is needed for the two proposed phases of the project. The Board's solution? Sell the naming rights for the stadium and field to the highest bidder.

At first glance something like this seems like a fine idea and common practice in the world of sports. After all, we could probably all rattle of a list of 5 or 10 athletic venues named after corporations (e.g. The Staples Center in LA, The TD Boston Garden, or Energy Solutions Arena in Salt Lake City). The sense among Board Members on Tuesday was that everyone wins. The district brings in a large sum of cash, student-athletes have a great venue to play in, community members have something to be proud of, and a local business gets publicity. But, it seems like a slippery slope to me and one that leads down an increasingly problematic path where, eventually, educational ideals are likely to be compromised (as evidenced by this extreme case from a Sacramento School District). Of course, community businesses have always been partners with local schools when it comes to athletics. They hang banners at the fields, have their names in the program, and donate goods at reduced cost for concessions. But, in large part, it avoids major problems and conflicts of interest because of its scale. The banners are for the gas station down the street, the concessions come from the local grocery store, and the programs are paid for by the trophy shop around the corner. In other words, the money put up is small and those contributing are people that have at least a small stake in what happens at the school on Friday nights.

Provo District, however, is headed down a different path by asking for million dollar donations. That sort of invitation brings in a much different bidder--one with deep pockets no doubt, but whose intentions aren't likely to be as pure as the burger joint down the road whose owners have had children and grandchildren don jerseys for the school. When asked who his potential donors were, JT McGraw (the driving force behind the project) mentioned that Frontier Airlines would be at the top of his list. It's a savvy move considering their the airline's recent announcement, but one has to ask how much Frontier airlines really cares about Provo High athletics. And, in addition to their name on the stadium, what else might they want to see happen in exchange for their donation? Half-time announcements? Frontier's logo on the jerseys? Where does it stop?

Those, of course, are all extreme examples. But in thinking through these sorts of partnerships, schools need to consider where they might lead. The next time the library needs a remodel, do we end up with the Subway Social Sciences shelf or the Domino's Pizza study hall? And, based on the view of Board Member Darryl Alder--who commented that the district should try to sell naming rights for anything and everything it can--that sort of thing isn't out of the question.

Even in college athletics, where corruption and profit-driven decisions are almost the norm, institutions have largely avoided corporate naming rights for their venues. Most have distinct names, completely removed from individuals or corporations (e.g. The Cotton Bowl, The Rose Bowl, Harvard Stadium, and the "Big House" at Michigan). Even when the stadium does have a namesake, it is almost always an individual or family who, while donating large sums of money, is a key part of the community in those places (e.g. Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City, Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, or Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee).

So, the question Provo needs to ask is where this is all leading and if they'll really end up in a place that they want to be in. Sometimes giving up a bit of money, in the name of doing what is best for students (like this community college in Texas) is a better road.

Attending to culture and tradition as part of the change process

2011-03-04T10:29:00.000-08:00

I am currently part of a group that has been asked to participate in helping Thanksgiving Point, a non-profit organization housed in Lehi, Utah, to rethink the way its staff and volunteers interact with visitors to their venues. It has been an interesting project because it has taken us nearly two months to even begin to understand "the problem," as it were, and what it is that we are trying to design or redesign. In a nutshell, the Thanksgiving Point leadership hopes that we can help them prepare "ambassadors" who can enhance the guest experience by, among other things, facilitating meaningful learning in the various venues, connecting guests with parts of the property they may not be aware of, and putting a "human face" on the Thanksgiving Point experience.

Problems or projects like the one facing Thanksgiving Point are interesting opportunities to see how groups go about facilitating change. One approach (and the one that is probably typical in organizations) is to roll out a new program, provide training to employees/staff to prepare them to "get in line" and implement the new program, and then to follow-up to make sure things are going as planned. It is very top-down and directive, which often sounds attractive because it appears to be "clean," simple, and efficient. Those that employ this approach seem to operate under the assumption that they can tell people what is going to happen, show or teach them about how to make it happen, and then follow up to make sure it is happening. In higher ed we might see this process at work when a campus institutes a common reading program, adopts the campus-wide use of ePortfolios, or when a college decides that they are "going to do learning communities." The thinking is that "best practices," "innovations," or other changes can simply be rolled out and that a few years down the road all of the kinks will be worked out and things will be good. And there are a standard set of methods for facilitating change that flow from this paradigm--orientation meetings, manuals, training workshops, and accountability measures to name a few.

The problem with these types of approaches is that they fail to recognize that change does not occur in a vacuum--each organization has its own "story" that traditions, values, and an embedded culture that dictates the way people speak, think, interact, and make decisions. So, any change effort must in some way or another address the issue of how to change or modify culture.

What the group I am on is starting to realize is that what Thanksgiving Point has really asked us to help them with is a change in culture, particularly as it relates to staff-guest interactions. So, although new employee handbooks, training meetings, or edicts from adminstrative leadership might play a role in the change, they can't be the end. In fact, a superficial approach to change that only employs these methods is likely to engender resentment and counterculture.

So, how does one go about changing culture? There don't seem to be any simple processes or steps, but there are a few things that seem to be important.

Vision: It is nearly impossible to create a new culture when key stakeholders aren't in agreement as to what the new culture will look, sound, or feel like. The danger here is in getting bogged down trying to negotiate. Of course, some negotiation, particularly at the top, is critical, bringing too many stakeholders to the table might mean that you never get anywhere.

Visibility: Images are powerful. And, what people see when they are on a campus, in a corporate office comples, or walking through a venue communicate a lot about what the organization values. I was on the campus of Westminster College earlier this week and noticed that their learning goals and mission statement appear all over campus where students will see them. My guess is that these things have been part of the Westminster culture for some time, but there are new students that arrive on campus every fall and they need to be brought into the culture. Letting them "see" the culture each day on campus helps.

Stories: The stories that are told within an organization help to form, reveal, and shape the culture. If we want to change culture we need to look at the stories that are told and whether they represent the values, priorities, and traditions we associate with the desired culture. Sometimes we already have the stories, but just need to find ways to tell them or tell them more effectively. Other times, we have to go looking for the stories. And, two types of stories seem useful. First, "institutional" stories that tell the story of the organization (e.g. its history, defining moments, narratives about key figures/leaders, etc.) and which are told by the organization. Second, "personal" stories told by individual members of the community but which align with the same messages conveyed by the institutional stories. Not only are stories more emtionally powerful, but they are often more instructive than are overly-generalized or vague mission statements or statements of purpose.

Relationships: Much of the culture of a place is transmitted and represented in the interactions that take place between members of the community. In my first year on my campus as an administrator, I learned more about how to do my job (or how others wanted me to do my job) by the conversations and interactions I had with colleagues, particularly senior colleagues, than any manual or orientation could have ever taught me. So a cultural shift requires that we examine the way interactions occur among community members, particularly newcomers and what Jean Lave has termed "oldtimers" or veterans. By identifying the mentors or experts in our organizations who have bought into the culture we want, we can provide opportunities for them to interact in authentic ways with newcomers and invite them into the culture we want. Over time, this relationship-based approach can have a renewing effect on an organization and keep the culture both rooted in tradition and open to innovation and necessary change.

Gathering Places: The physical spaces where community members gather can do much to communicate culture. What is hanging on the walls, the type and layout of the furniture, and most importantly the conversations and activities that take place there, can be used to shape and influence culture.

None of this, of course, is meant to suggest that cultural change is easy or that telling stories or using images is a foolproof means of implementing change. But, a change that doesn't attend to the cultural context is likely to be short-lived or superficial.

The power of vulnerability

2011-02-25T17:24:00.000-08:00

I've blogged here a few times in the past on the concept of risk and its value in certain parts of our lives, particularly teaching and learning. I listened to a TED talk earlier this week that has reinforced this idea for me.

In her TEDxHouston talk, Brene Brown discusses the importance of vulnerablity, particularly as it relates to our relationships with others. In a nutshell, she argues that in order to feel connected to others and to experience a genuine feeling of love and belonging, we must have the courage to be imperfect and to allow others to see us as we really are. Almost paradoxically, this act of embracing vulnerability and living with the risks that come with relationships (e.g. being the first to say "I love you," readily admitting personal weaknesses and asking others to help us grow in these ways, etc.) leads to what she terms "wholeheartedness" and a deeper sense of connection to others.

I like this concept. I'm still trying to make sense of it and think through what it means for me. But, I think it has serious implications for the kinds of learning that we experience through our relationships with others. I'm sure that I would learn and change a great deal more from my interactions and relationships with friends, family, and colleagues if I was more transparent and honest about my imperfections. This might be the most risky thing I could do. But, it seems to have the potential to lead to more learning than anything else I might do.

College as an experience

2011-02-11T13:12:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I was in Atlanta, Georgia at the Annual Conference for the First-Year Experience. One of my favorite things to do in between conference sessions is to wander around the downtown area of the conference city and explore a little bit. If nothing else it gets me out of the hotel and gives me a chance to clear my head. But, I also find that I learn a fair amount about the personality of a city and stumble across interesting places. So, last weekend before the conference began I had a couple of free hours and just started walking through downtown Atlanta.

About 30 minutes into my walk I came upon The Varsity, "The world's largest drive-in restaurant." I'm a sucker for local burger joints (and I was hungry), so I went in. It was an intriguing experience and one that left me asking questions about why people are drawn to places like the Varsity. The food was mediocre at best, the seating was uncomfortable, and the cashiers scream and yell at customers. And, there are probably dozens of other burger joints in Atlanta that serve food equal to or better than what I ate that afternoon. So, what's the draw?

The thought that occurred to me--and I admit that it is far from original or earth shattering--was that The Varsity isn't selling burgers, fries, or chili dogs. They are selling an experience. Although I could have gone to a lot of other places to get a burger, including the hotel restaurant, The Varsity gave me a unique experience that I couldn't get any place else. As I thought about it on the way back to the hotel, there were some key components in place that seemed to contribute to this type of "experience":

1. A clear theme running across the entire experience. The Varsity is built on the theme of school and athletics, hence the name, the desks arranged in a classroom set up that patrons sit in to eat, the jerseys on the walls, and the multiple flat screens playing nothing but college athletics. Any one of those things in isolation would have been strange or uncomfortable, but they all played into the underlying theme and helped to tell the story of the place.

2. A distinct uniform. All of the employees at the restaurant wore distinctive shirts and hats that were connected to the theme (like Hot Dog on a Stick, but far less embarassing). And, what was even more interesting was that The Varsity subtly invites visitors to become "part of the team" by providing complementary hats identical to the ones worn by employees (you can also buy t-shirts there at the restaurant as well).

3. A unique language or discourse. Each customer is greeted by a cashier with the phrase "What'll ya have?" which like I mentioned above is generally yelled. Even the employees running the "gift shop" where the t-shirts and memorabilia are sold use the same phrase to welcome customers. There are also more sublte aspects of this language, for instance virtually everyone refers to onion rings as just "rings."If definitely falls outside the standard fast-food script and would be viewed as rude or obnoxious somewhere else, but it's part of the fabric of The Varsity and adds to the distinctive experience.

4. Signature items that would be hard to find anywhere else. Like I mentioned above, the burgers and fries are pretty average, but The Varsity does have a unique line of desserts (fried fruit pies, the "Frosted Orange,") as well as "chili burgers." It left me thinking that an eatery doesn't have to have an entire menu of fantastic foods (although some do)--sometimes it's enough just to do a couple of things very well.

5. Simplicity. Deciding what to order at The Varsity is a welcome contrast to the sometimes overwhelming task of placing an order at some other restaurants (e.g. The Cheesecake Factory, whose menu boasts 200 selections). While choices aren't always a bad thing, The Varsity's menu simplifies things tremendously with just a handful of relatively basic options (again, peppered with a few signature items). The simplicity of the choices allows customers to focus on other aspects of the experience without getting lost in complexity or becoming overwhelmed with sorting through a lot of different options (See Barry Schwartz' interesting book The Paradox of Choice for a great discussion of this concept).

Now it's time for my obligatory connection back to higher ed (and I realize that this might be a stretch). What if we thought of our campuses, not as places where we deliver instruction, but rather as place where we stage experiences? I'm not advocating for a fun and games approach to learning whose sole function is to entertain, but for campuses that have distinct missions and objectives (similar to the themes at restaurants like the Varsity) and who design physical spaces, messaging, programs, and curricula that are connected to those missions. For example, a campus who makes their values public in the way classrooms are designed, the language academic advisors or peer leaders use in talking with students, and the unique learning experiences they provide (e.g. study abroad, case-based learning, service-learning, etc.) seems to be closer to offering a unique educational experience--one that has the potential to leave lasting impressions on students and, subsequently, help with retention efforts. But, again, the key here is for all of these elements to be aligned with a clear mission and embedded in various parts of campus.

The Varsity (and places like it) tell a coherent story about who they are and why they exist and they invite visitors to participate in and become part of that story. So, what kind of story do our campuses hope to tell and how well are we telling it?

What is the role of "amateur educators?"

2011-01-28T09:24:00.000-08:00

The Utah State Legislature began its 2011 session recently, which has meant a fair amount of media coverage of what sorts of legislation might be proposed during over the next couple of months. One interesting (and pretty controversial) bill proposed by Senator Chris Buttars has centered around the question of who should have control of public education. Buttars believes that local school boards and the State Board of Education have too much control and wants to shift more power into the hands of the legislature and the governor. While part of the debate has to do with how money is spent and how to make schools and districts accountable for the use of tax monies, there are also questions about what should be taught in schools and how it should be taught.

Arguments over who should hold the lion's share of the power over what happens in schools (i.e. legislators or school boards) is interesting because neither group has much formal training or experience in education. Granted, there are current and retired educators found on school boards and in state legislatures, but they are surely a small minority. The bulk of these groups are business people, attorneys, physicians, farmers, homemakers, and others who in some sense become amateur educators with a great deal of influence over what happens in schools.

There are plenty of good reasons for this to happen. For the most part, we are a country who believes that education matters and that we all have something to gain from having an educated citizenry. Consequently, educational issues are seen as impacting all of us, whether we are parents of school-age children, educators employed in the system, or just concerned citizens. And, because education matters for all of us, we are all given some voice in what happens in schools. We vote for state and federal politicians who enact educational policy and carry it out. And, we vote for local school boards who have influence over issues more close to home. This happens even more often outside of the traditional public school system where we see charter and public school boards made up of non-educators who are interested in what happens in their schools.

We structure things this way, in part, based on the belief that the "crowd is wise" and that inviting participation from a large and diverse group of people can improve decisions and systems. The tension it creates is determining when to involve "the crowd" and when to ask educators to apply their expertise to educational problems. I don't have an answer, but it seems like an important question to raise and discuss. For example, how much influence should the seven member Provo School Board (an attorney, a college student, a businessman, a businesswoman, and three homemakers) that represents the school district where I live have over curricular and pedagogical decisions? And, when do the insights and unique perspectives of individuals outside of education bring innovation and improvements that wouldn't have been reached otherwise?

The difference a community can make

2011-01-21T11:07:00.000-08:00

It seems that recently criticizing and complaining about the public education system has become a hobby of sorts. Politicians make calls for reform (Condoleeza Rice spoke on my campus this week and commented on the "disastrous state of our K-12 education system"), parents berate school boards, and bloggers like me make claims for how things might improve. But, truth be told, not very many of us take the initiative to do anything very productive (so, in some sense this post is a declaration of my personal resolve to complain less and do more).

Every once in a while, however, someone will identify a problem, rally support within their community, and make a real difference. I learned this week about a group of parents in Northern Utah who did that very thing. The school their students attend was recently designated as a "walking school" by district officials, which means that all students live within 1.5 miles of the school and don't qualify for state-funded busing service. Not surprisingly, parents were concerned because it meant that they either needed to find a way to drive their kids to school each day (a big problem for some working parents or families with limited access to vehicles) or let their kids walk to school along a route that includes busy streets and very few sidewalks. A typical “concerned parent” response would probably include highly visible (and audible) efforts to convince someone else to own or fix the problem (angry letters to district officials, impassioned pleas to “remember the children” at school board meetings, or even protests outside district offices). While those sorts of things are part of a democracy and likely have some indirect impact upon systems, they don’t do much other than let officials know that people are unhappy. They make no attempt at a solution.

What impressed me most about the story of Ty Haguewood and his group of parents was that they took a much different approach. Recognizing that the district’s hands were tied and realizing that there were enough parents interested in coming together to develop a solution, they decided to create their own busing system. They bought a used school bus for $6,000, worked out insurance, hired drivers, and set up a busing system complete with formal bus stops and a plan for storing a huge yellow bus in their neighborhood. The 83 participating students pay an annual fee of $206 (about 60 cents per bus ride), which seems like a pretty economical deal for parents (not to mention the convenience factor of letting someone else drive) One parent summed up the groups mindset very well:

“This experience has been very empowering,” she says. “We often get into the mindset that everything is the school’s responsibility. … But sometimes when you have a problem, you need to try to be creative and come up with a solution on your own.”

Stories like this are refreshing because they remind me that everyday people can make improvements in their communities. But, there also seem to be some critical elements of these stories worth mentioning. There seem to be some important reasons why this group of parents was successful and able to bring a new idea to fruition:

1. They cared. This seems to be obvious and is probably the first step in any kind of community action. A less committed group would have given up as they encountered challenges along the way (e.g. the reality of finding insurance for an LLC, paying for fuel, working out storage, etc.). This group was successful because there was a critical mass of people that really wanted to make a difference.

2. They made sure to generate support from a broad base of interested parents. Had there only been a handful of parents behind the plan, not much would have happened. But, the leaders were smart. Before moving forward, they made sure that there were enough interested parties that they knew they would have backing.

3. They had resources. The reality is that the bus cost $6,000. Had Haguewood and Bruce Jones (another parent key to the success of the project) not had the money and the connections they did, the project wouldn’t have made it very far. And, it’s not just financial resources that are important here. Someone (and likely multiple participants) had sufficient time to spend conceptualizing the idea, garnering support, handling administrative concerns, etc. to make this all happen. A group of concerned parents without time and resources wouldn’t have been successful.

4. The group included parents with expertise in key areas pertinent to the project. A randomly assembled group of equally motivated parents in another neighborhood may not have had the same success as did the Sunset Elementary group. They were able to make this work, in part, because they had parents with particular skill sets and experience. Haguewood is a real estate agent and likely familiar with navigating things like insurance policies, sales, and bureaucracy. He also has a commercial driver’s license and past experience as a bus driver. There are probably other parents not mentioned in the article that brought unique skills and experience to bear in playing key roles in the process as well.

What if this problem had cropped up in another neighborhood where parents don’t have time, resources, or expertise? Are there things that can be done to bring together concerned parents and facilitate change in those places?

The importance and value of solitude

2011-01-14T11:18:00.000-08:00

My wife and I are expecting a new baby this summer. Depending on the day, I am either terribly excited or scared stupid. Our two year-old daughter feels the same way. A few weeks ago we were talking at dinner about what it would be like to have another child and what things might change and sensing that she was losing her position as the center of the family she bluntly stated "I don't like the baby." We tried unsuccessfully to convince her that having a brother or sister wouldn't mean losing her place in the family and didn't think much more of it. A few nights later I came home from work after she had gone to bed and thought I would peek in on her to make sure she was sleeping okay. When I opened the door I could see she was laying in her bed wide awake and realized that she probably had been there like that for close to an hour. It sometimes helps her fall asleep if she has someone laying next to her, so I layed down but didn't say anything. After a few seconds she looked at me and said "I think I can share Mom with the baby." I was pretty blown away. First, because it seemed like a pretty sophisticated thought for a two year-old and, second, because it had been days since we had talked to her about the baby.

It is hard to say what would lead a child to a thought like the one our daughter expressed, but I wonder if it was partly due to her lying in a quiet, dark room, all alone with her thoughts for what must have seemd to her like an eternity (anyone with a small child learns that, to them, five minutes is a long time). I have wondered since then if she doesn't also lay in bed in the mornings and think because she seems to have insightful things to say immediately after getting up in the mornings.

As I was thinking about all of this, I came across a lecture on the virtue of solititude given to the freshman class at West Point by William Deresiewicz. In the talk he argues that one of the distinguishing qualities of good leaders is that they find time to be alone. That may mean quite time for introspection, focused and sustained work on a single project (e.g. rebuilding an engine or repairing a toilet), or deep and engaged reading of a text. The point he makes is that these sorts of activities remove us from the frenetic and distracting world we generally find ourselves in and give us an opportunity to be alone with our thoughts. It is during those times, he claims, that we can receive inspiration, be truly creative, and develop the original and insightful vision characteristic of great leaders.

This is an interesting idea and stands in pretty stark contrast to the emphasis we have come to place on connectedness, networking, and multi-tasking. I don't know that Deresiewicz would argue for complete isolation or cutting oneself off from all external influences. Rather, it is periods of solitude, reflection, and just being alone that give us a chance to make sense of our lives and find our own direction.

I work on a college campus where it almost seems to be a necessity to run from one meeting to the next, always have a new project on the horizon, and fill ones day with "productive" activities. I see this in faculty members who move from preparing a lecture, to delivering it, to office hours, to a committee meeting, to work on a paper. I see it in students who go to class, participate in clubs, serve in the community, and study in the evenings. And I see it in myself (yesterday I got to my office a little before 8:00 and didn't stop meeting with students, updating records, and writing proposals until after 6:00. So, I wonder how much this relentless "productive" pace is hurting our learning. How often do we carve out time and space for the solitude that Deresiewicz speaks of? How much is enough? And, should institutions (be it schools, universities, businesses, or families) be more intentional and proactive in expecting and allowing their members to stop being busy and start thinking and sense-making.

Risk, rules, & the need for practical wisdom

2011-01-07T10:09:00.000-08:00

We frequently participate in activities that, although necessary and often beneficial, entail risks. Doctors and hospitals can treat illnesses and help us recover from terrible accidents, but unpleasant or even terrible things can and occasionally do happen in hospitals or medical clinics (e.g. the wrong drug is administered, an unnecessary and very expensive procedure is carried out, or surgeons remove a patients kidney when all they needed was a knee repair). We invest our money with the help of banks and bankers, but they may mismanage and lose our hard-earned cash. We send our children to schools where they can learn to function effectively in society and develop a passion for learning, but schools have the potential to become uninspiring places where teachers fail to facilitate learning. So, what are we to do?

In a TED talk posted earlier this week, professor Barry Schwartz argues that our common response in situations where we want to minimize risk is to (1) make rules aimed at helping people know how to do the right thing (e.g. guidelines or standards for teachers to follow) and/or (2) to incentivize what we believe to be the right types of behavior (e.g. rewards for doctors who save hospitals money or teachers whose students have high test scores). While Schwartz doesn't advocate for complete elimination of rules or incentives and recognizes that they have value in certain situations, he points out they aren't enough when it comes to finding solutions for complex problems and managing risk. He calls for a renewed focus on helping individuals and institutions to develop "practical wisdom" (which is pretty close to Artistotle's concept of phronesis). In other words, preparing people to figure out how to do the right thing when they find themselves in real interactions with unique people in specific circumstances.

As I was thinking about Schwartz's ideas I recalled a comment that Derek Bitter made in response to a blog posting on what beneficial risk in the classroom might look like:

I don't think I could walk into a classroom and follow these steps, or any others, and have them work for me and the class, unless there is something more fundamental present within me as a teacher. I have ideas on what this might be, but can't really narrow it down or even specify it.

Derek's point is well taken. We can't boil risk-taking in learning down to a set of rules, strategies, or activities that come to be viewed as surefire ways of improving learning. It seems that what Derek might be calling for here is Schwartz's concept of practical wisdom. The success of risk-taking in the classroom depends, in part, upon a wise teacher who knows when and how to bring risk into the learning process. So, if we want people (particularly teachers) to take risks in learning (or in any other setting where calculated risk could pay off), we have got to help them develop the wisdom to know when to take risks, how to do it without putting themselves (or others) in unreasonable danger, and how to skillfully navigate risky situations so that good things happen. This is one of the things that seems to be missing in most teacher preparation programs (where the focus is largely on rules and strategies) and governmental programs (large collections of rules & incentives). Yes, individual teachers may develop wisdom through their own experiences, but the institutions concerned with education (universities, governments, schools) seem to do very little in the way of promoting or encouraging the application of wisdom in the classroom.

Instead, we largely treat the teaching and learning process as one governed by rules and incentives. I wonder if this might be because we naively believe that by falling back on rules, policies, and explicitly stated pratices and processes, we minimize the risk that people won't learn. Indeed, it is "risky" to structure systems where practitioners--be it teachers, doctors, bankers, etc.--are allowed to be "wise" because there is always the chance that they won't. But, by failing to include the development of wisdom (and the freedom to use it) in conversations about reform will ultimately prove problematic and limit improvements in our institutions.

Do freshmen students know what is good for them?

2010-12-03T08:10:00.000-08:00

About nine months ago I blogged about a new mentoring initiative on my campus intended to benefit freshmen students. At that time I was a bit worried at the backlash we might receive by "requiring" all freshmen students to participate in the program and asked the question "How much should we require?" A posting on the blog Confessions of a Community College Dean earlier this week got me thinking about this question again, but from a slightly different angle.

In the post, "Dean Dad" tells the story of a first-year initiative that attempted to integrate a variety of best practices (a learning community of linked courses, joint assignments between faculty members, and co-curricular activities) but that, in his estimation, was an utter failure. Interestingly, he reports that the students who participated in the program achieved "course-level academic success," which could be tremendous sign of success. However, the problem he saw with the program was that students "hated it" and opted out of the program as soon as they were allowed to. The program has now been discontinued. Obviously, I don't know enough about this specific situation to make a judgment about whether or not this was a good decision, but I do think it raises some interesting questions for those who design programs and make policies on our campuses.

There seem to be two competing forces at work in situations like the one on Dean Dad's campus. First, as educators we are attempting to creat environments that allow learning, growth, and personal transformation to occur. We create structures, implement policies, provide access to resources, and make requests of students all in an effort to provide them with an opportunity to "learn." Second, as institutions we have to have students choose to come to our campuses and want to stay once they are here.

This can create interesting dynamics because we have to balance "requirements" and asking hard things of students (things they may not like) against their expectations and desires for their experience (which are quite often naive).

College will always invite (or require) students to do things that are difficult, frustrating, time-consuming, etc. I will be the first to admit that many of things we ask of students have no real learning benefit; however, I would like to think that we know something about what promotes learning, and that at least a few of the things that we require of students are in their best interest. So, what happens when things we truly believe are beneficial for students--general education, new student orientation, a learning community program, etc. aren't well received by students? And, as we measure the "success" of a new initiative, how important is the question "Did you like it?"

Part of why I'm asking these questions has to do with the experience I've had watching my campus' new peer mentoring program unfold. There were lots of complaints early on we occasionally hear things like what Dean Dad described in his post (e.g. "you're taking away my freedom" or "this feels like high school"). However, it has been surprising to me to see how many students, faculty members, and parents who once "hated" the program who have are now saying things like "Thank you for your help." And, "I never realized what a good think you're doing." I would also wager that there are a number of students who don't realize the value of the experience they are having now, but that will look back and realize they grew a great deal.

None of this means that an institution should have free reign to require anything and everything from their students and pay no attention to how students are responding. But, I worry when solid academic programs, supported by the literature and that demonstrate academic value, get the axe just so we can keep students "happy."

What is the essence of "education?"

2010-11-19T12:27:00.001-08:00

Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Austin Collie was knocked unconscious in a recent game against the Philadelphia Eagles. The story ended better than expected and Collie sat out a week's worth of practices and the following Sunday's game. Nonetheless, it was a frightening reminder of the violent nature of football and the risk players assume when they step onto the field. The NFL has tried to find ways to protect players (penalties for "unsportsmanlike" play, fines for particularly violent hits, etc.). But, this has raised interesting questions about the nature of football and how much "violence" can reasonably be removed from the game while preserving the essence of the game. The PGA was faced with a similar dilemma a few years ago when Casey Martin appealed to the association to be able to use a golf cart on the tour. His case, which eventually was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, hinged on whether "walking" was a fundamental part of the game of golf.

Situations like these are interesting because they force us to examine a practice (golf, football, etc.) and determine what the fundamental and cores aspects of the practice are. In short, how much can we change about a thing, be it sewing, driving, cooking or otherwise, before it is a different thing?

With the rapid pace at which education is advancing, developing, and evolving, those of us who care about learning will be faced with this question more and more. And, it seems to be at the very core of many of the debates being waged in education today from online/distance education (does it count as education if the students aren't all in the same classroom?) , to school vouchers (is it education if the government doesn't dictate what happens?), to teacher education (can someone who didn't go through a formal teacher training program really educate our children?).

Thinking about these and other similar questions seems important because it requires us to separate ancillary trappings from those core principles that define education as a meaningful process. And, it seems like a really useful way of keeping us focused on the part of education that really matters--human beings and what they are learning.

So, what is the essence of education? I'm not sure that it has anything to do with buildings, teachers, technology, or administrative structures. Those things can and generally are part of an educational environment and are likely to facilitate a number of pretty desirable of outcomes. So, what are the aspects of education that cannot be altered? Some things I would include on my list

Environments and experiences that change those involved in fundamental ways. I don't just mean the acquiring of knowledge. What I'm talking about is a change in the identity of the participants (sometimes minor, sometimes major) and a parallel change in the community of practitioners. If this is true, a lot of what passes for education really isn't.

Relationships, interaction, and joint participation around a common purpose. This doesn't mean that education always has to take place in the presence (virtual or face-to-face) of others. Sometimes the relationship is with someone's ideas (a book, recorded lecture, piece of art, etc.) or the interaction is with an artifact. But, education is inherently social because we interact and participate with people or things people have created or produced.

Support and resources that facilitate the pursuit of individual goals for learning & growth. But, the individual goals should align with or flow from the common purpose shared across the community.

For me that's about it, which means that I see "education" happening in formal school settings, in businesses, on athletic teams, within musical ensembles, and lots of other places. In fact, those of us who are involved in more formal or traditional forms of education could learn something by examining the learning that goes on outside of our institutions.

Remembering the "invisible" members of school communities

2010-11-12T15:19:00.000-08:00

At a Provo School Board meeting earlier this week there was a recognition award presented to Carmen Duarte, who is a child nutrition cook at Farrer Elementary School. It was a pretty simple presentation--a district official read a short nomination submitted by someone at the school, the Board shook Carmen's hand, and she was given some sort of small gift bag. And, I would imagine that this sort of thing happens in school board meetings all over the country. But, what happened next was really quite profound for me. The president of the Board, almost non-chalantly, asked Carmen if she would like to say anything (I think expecting her to decline). Carmen hesitated initially and then, in broken English and fighting back tears, said something like "Thank you. I love working with the children. I love my job." Then she sat down.

It was simple, but I was touched and left having been reminded of some important things

1. Schools are made up of more than teachers and students. And, some of the things that go on behind the scenes--in the library, on the playground, in the cafeteria--are just as important as what happens between teachers and students in a classroom.

2. Recognizing and celebrating good work is a powerful thing for communities. Something important happened when Carmen was recognized. I haven't quite figured out what it was, but something occurred when she was publicly recognized and then had a chance to vocalize how she felt about her work in her school. I think it was a way of our all being reminded of why we care about students and do the things we do. It might have been as important as any business item that was addressed later on in the "important" part of the meeting. I wish we could have had 20 minutes to hear some of Carmen's stories about working in her school and to hear from some of the students and parents who have benefitted from her work.

3. People who care about students can make a difference in schools, regardless of their job. I doubt that the job description for custodians, cooks, secretaries, etc. include much language about teaching or learning. But, I'd bet the farm that students at Farrer learn from Carmen and have a different experience because of their interactions with her.

I was glad I was there on Tuesday.

Learning is risky

2010-11-05T13:24:00.000-07:00

Back in September I outlined a number of assumptions that I hold about learning. One of those ideas was that learning entails some level of risk. At the time, it was a foggy idea that sounded interesting, so I included it in the post. But, since then I've continued to chew on it and more and more it seems like an important idea.

An example that comes to mind immediately is of a child learning to ride a bike. At some point the training wheels have to come off, which in most cases means at least one or two skinned knees. While training wheels, riding on the back lawn, and having mom or dad jog along side the bike can move a child towards competent bike riding, there comes a time when further development isn't possible without a higher level of risk-taking. The same is true of learning a new language--books from the library, Rosetta Stone, and online tutorials will help, but to become proficient, I have to actually speak to other human beings and risk looking stupid. The good news is that eventually I'll figure it out and get better.

There are examples of this in more formal academic settings as well. First-year writing courses almost always employ peer reviews or writing groups where students read and critique one another's writing. While an argument could be made that the feedback students get from peers is often useless (e.g. hollow statements of "great job" or "you need a semicolon here."), the principle still holds true that the point is for students to make their writing public and get feedback--that means the risk of having someone tell you that you have been unclear, boring, etc. And, of course, scholarly work is frought with risk (submitting papers to peer-reviewed journals, sharing ideas at conferences, etc.). But, these "risky" behaviors lead to refined ideas and improved academic work. Our "service" assignments on campus can also lead to tremendous learning as pointed out by Gary Daynes in a recent blog post. Gary argues that it is those assignments that we are unprepared or slightly unqualified for that lead to the most meaningful learning and growth. But, again, there is the chance that we'll (at least initially) be viewed as ignorant or incompetent and that scares us (and those that make the assignments as Gary articulates very well).

Aside from my own thinking on this issue, I would argue that there is plenty of supporting evidence from the academic literature including Carol Dweck's work on intelligence (mindset), constructivist descriptions of learning that emphasize the role of social negotiation, and ideas from management literature regarding the role of transitional phases in organizational learning.

I'm convinced that most organizations don't take the right kinds of designed and thoughtful risks necessary for really great learning to occur.

Flash Mobs & Education

2010-10-22T11:20:00.000-07:00

This morning during the middle of a meeting that I should have paying closer attention to, I looked out the window onto our campus "quad" and saw a crowd of students gathering. Over the course of about 15 seconds, the crowd grew to about 50 people, some of whom were standing on benches taking pictures of whatever was happening at the center of the crowd. When I looked closer I could see that the crowd had formed around a young woman in a wedding dress and her tuxedo-clad "groom." After a few moments of perplexity, I realized I was watching a "flash mob."

Flash mobs are interesting for all sorts of reasons (e.g. What is the benefit or value for those who participate? What sorts of efforts are required to actually pull it off? Why do they make officials, police officers, etc. so nervous?). But, the episode I witnessd this morning has me wondering what the dynamics of a flash mob might have to teach those of us interested in learning.

By definition, a flash mob is pointless, so a strong argument could be made that they have nothing to contribute to our understanding of learning and education. But, I would argue that those that participate in a flash mob, particularly those who organize one, are doing a lot of peripheral learning along the way. This morning's wedding episode was quite elaborate and had to have required someone to pull together a variety of resources beyond the human resources involved. I saw multiple cameras, an authentic wedding dress, a refreshment table, guest book, floral arrangment, table setting, and bridesmaids. Someone did a fair amount of coordination and communication to pull all of this off. It was also fairly well choreographed (or improvised) and included a brief reception line, tossing of the wedding bouquet, and a first dance (complete with a group A Capella performance of what I think was a Backstreet Boys song). So, pointless as it might have been, someone had a pretty good experience in bringing together a group of stakeholders, garnering resources, communicating details, and directing the activities of a relatively large "mob."

I'm always fascinated by these sorts of organic community activities and the learning that happens without any sort of external influence. I'm not equating flash mobs with the sorts of deep and meaningful learning that we want to happen in higher education, but flash mobs might have something to teach us about bringing people together and engaging them in a common cause.

Some interesting connections/implications I see to/for learning:

1. Giving learners/participants ownership over their experience matters. Most of the learning we try to facilitate in schools is directed by the teacher. He is the one who identifies the learning goals, articulates the guiding questions, decides what readings/resources to use to support the learning, etc. In this approach, we assume (often mistakenly) that students will automatically buy into what we're trying to accomplish and jump into the experience with learning goals identical to the ones we have for them. My hunch is that flash mobs work because there isn't an "expert" directing and coordinating them. Of course, there are individuals who take more prominent roles in coordinating and organizing them, but each participant has a fair amount of freedom in determining how they will participate and what role they'll play (although some have commented that flash mobs are just another form of conformity, but that only look organic and creative). That freedom seems to be part of the attraction for those who participate.

2. Having an authentic, public audience influences behavior. When learners know that their learning will be made public and that the audience includes more than an external authority who assigns a grade, they modify their behaviors. I'm not sure that I'm willing to say that an audience always improves learning, but in certain circumstances it seems like it would. Flash mobs form and take place because participants are interested in how their performance will be received by others. If no one would ever see it, there wouldn't be any motivation to organize and pull everything off. The same is true of learning. If the learner doesn't see any use or value in the learning or that there is any possibility that anyone outside of the teacher will care, they aren't likely to be very engaged.

3. Students are not inherently lazy. This isn't earth shattering, but seems worth reminding ourselves of at times. Quite often I hear myself or colleagues disparaging the work effort of students. But the real story is that students are plenty motivated, they just aren't always motivated to do the things we would like them to do. Students work hard in areas outside of their school experience. It is occasionally useful to inquire about what those settings are and why it is that students are willing to work so hard in them. We might learn something. No one forces a flash mob to happen, yet students feel motivated enough to do enough work to have something come together. Why is that?

4. The unpredictable & unexpected make us nervous. About 5 minutes into the flash mob I saw today, campus police showed up and started asking for student ID's. I've heard that the same sort of thing happens more and more every time a flash mob forms, regardless of the locale. Most are harmless and occasionally things get violent or problematic in some other sort of way (impede traffic, etc.), but they make officials nervous because of the unpredictable nature of the group. Learning environments where the teacher cedes control and allows unpredictable and unexpected learning to happen are a bit nerve racking as well. And, while a lot of good things can happen when the teacher takes a step back, they carry risks as well. The question for educators seems to be "How much risk am I willing to tolerate in my classroom, lab, etc.?" Thinking through the sorts of risks that could lead to productive learning, while also considering the potential pitfalls, seems like a productive exercise. But, avoiding all risks inevitably leads to sterile, unproductive learning environments. The interesting thing is that these sterile learning settings might sometimes pass off as "successful" because things have gone "smoothly" or "according to plan."

Again, my purpose with this post isn't to suggest that all learning (or even the best learning) should look like a flash mob, but I can't get past the fact that a group of 50 students got connected, coordinated their efforts, and performed today, without any real reason. I also suspect that at least a few of these students would say things like "I'm too busy" if asked to organize and form a group study session, attend a campus lecture, or meet with a faculty member for additional help in a class. What if they approached with their education (or a small part of it) with the same motivation and effort that they did today's flash mob?

Retention: What is the essence of a successful retention effort?

2010-10-15T18:09:00.000-07:00

This past week I had the chance to visit Mars Hill College, where I spent the first three semesters of my college career. It was a great trip--I reconnected with old friends, saw the Mars Hill Men's soccer team beat a conference rival, drove the Blue Ridge Parkway at the peak of the fall colors, and ate at The Waffle House (where even the worst food somehow tastes amazingly good).

In between reminiscing with old friends and eating far too much southern fare, I thought a bit about my work and what I might learn during my visit. Mars Hill College is an interesting case study in retention because, on paper, one would expect them to have an outstanding retention rate. Classes are small (12:1 student to faculty ratio), virtually all freshmen live on campus, there is a big push for students to connect with faculty and participate in meaningful research projects with them, and it is rare to find a student that is not involved in some sort of campus organization (e.g. 35% of the students on campus are members of one of the NCAA Division II athletic teams). What's more, campus is a bit like Cheers in that "everyone knows your name" (This was driven home to me powerfully in the hour that I spent with the Dean of Students and his assistant--they literally knew every student they passed on campus or that came into their office and called them by name). As far as I could tell, Mars Hill is doing a lot of the right things that should translate into a campus where students want to stay and graduate from.

The strange part of this story (and the discouraging part for Mars Hill's administration) is that their retention rate is pretty abysmal--about 55% in an average year. So, that left me wondering why that is and what a school like Mars Hill could do to hold on to students. What is the essence of retention?

Inspiring stories of friendship

2010-10-01T12:40:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while I hear a story that is incredibly inspiring. A story that leaves me feeling uplifted and motivated to be a better person. Last night KSL news in Salt Lake City ran this story about Mack Bawden and Cameron Judd. In short, Mack and Cameron's story is about friendship, sacrifice, and being human. It also reminded me of the story of Leroy Sutton and Dartanyon Crockett that aired on ESPN's Outside the Lines last summer. It has close parallels to Mack and Cameron's story -- themes of courage, selflessness, overcoming obstacles, and loyalty.

I sometimes wonder why we don't hear stories like these more often. Do they happen all of the time and we just don't know it because there isn't a camera around? Or, are they rare exceptions in a world where self-interest and vanity are the norm?

The thought I had today as I watched both of these stories again was what leads someone to become a Mack Bawden or Dartanyon Crockett? Was it the influence of their families? A teacher? Or, did they just become the sort of heroic people the rest of us aspire but generally fail to become? And, what role do schools have in developing these sorts of students?

The value of tensions

2010-09-24T11:49:00.000-07:00

I attended a talk last Friday on innovation in educational settings by Keith Sawyer. The talk was sponsored by BYU's Mckay School of Education and the Department of Instructional Psychology & Technology. Dr. Sawyer's work is in cognitive science and focuses largely on how to endgender and facilitate creativity within organizations. He spent the last 15 minutes or so of his presentation discussing the challenges that come in trying to create a culture of innovation where one didn't exist before. Much of his ideas were framed around the concept of tensions and constraints (e.g. How can we provide freedom to innovate while also meeting standards and expectations of clients, lawmakers, investors, etc.?). His remarks resonated with me because tensions were something that I've been thinking about quite a bit lately.

By definition, tension implies some degree of discomfort or stretching. It's that gray, ambiguous area that isn't all that comfortable to be in. That place where we're torn between two competing forces that require us to bend and stretch. But, that bending and stretching is a good thing because it forces us out of the comfortable poles into a place where we have to think critically, consider multiple perspectives, and be innovative. Working in the space between the tensions ultimately leads to growth.

Here are some examples of productive tensions I've encountered recently:

-Which students most need my support & Who is most likely to respond to my efforts?

-How can I allow meaningful choice for learners, while still meeting standards laid out by my department, college, or university?

-How do I allow a toddler to explore, learn, and develop independence, while still keeping her safe (and keeping the house standing)?

-How do you facilitate coherent, integrated learning across a course, and foster some sense of emergent or constructivist learning?

-Where is the balance between bottom-up creativity and top-down guidance?

-How do I sincerely forgive those that have made sometimes grievous mistakes, but still hold out some level of accountability?

There are no easy answers to these sorts of questions, which is a good thing because easy answers to tough questions are dangerous and short-sighted. As I struggle with these sorts of issues, the progress is slow (in some ways, these are the sorts of questions that take careers and lifetimes to answer), but I find myself having the occasional insight that makes me a better educator, parent, and person.

So, where are the healthy tensions for you? What sorts of tough questions guide your work?

The dangers of zealotry & ideology

2010-09-17T09:05:00.000-07:00

"The spirit of which I speak creates imaginary and magnifies real causes of complaing; arrogates to itself every virtue--denies every merit to its oponents; secretly entertains the worst designs . . . mounts the pulpit, and, in the name of a God of mercy and peace, preaches discord and vengeance; invokes the worst scourges of Heaven, war, pestilence, and famine, as preferable alternatives to party defeat; blind, vindictive, cruel, remorseless, unprincipled, and at last, frantic, it communicates its madness to friends as well as foes; respects nothing, fears nothing."

This is an excerpt from an 1830 Senate speech given by Edward Livingston in which he spoke critically of the reflexive partisanship and unreflective ideologies that were manifesting themselves in the debates about states' rights. Livingston, who was a close political ally of Andrew Jackson and who like Jackson believed in the inherent goodness and wisdom of the American populace, was discouraged by the lack of civility, informed discourse, and thoughtfulness he saw in the political conversation of the period. At the risk of an oversimplification, Livingston believed that people could make wise political decisions, but that uncivil, ideological debates prevented the wisdom of the citizenry from winning the day.

When I read this part of Livingston's speech last week (in Jon Meacham's biography of Andrew Jackson, American Lion) it resonated with me because I see a lot of the same sort of thing today (maybe it has always been a part of large societies?). Of course I thought immediately of the political realm and the unbending ideology that is part of every election cycle. But, I also see it in education. There are the qualitative & quantitative wars within research circles, the acquisitionists vs. the participationists in the learning sciences, and of course the behaviorists vs. the cognitivists vs. the constructivists. Differences of opinion are a good thing, but only if those that hold those varying positions can engage with one another in civil and productive ways. And, there is less and less of that happening these days.

Pluralism, be it theoretical, political, or practical is a good thing. Communities can thrive when they are made up of diverse individuals who see the world from a variety of perspectives. But, that outcome is only possible when we can engage in thoughtful dialogue with one another and use this diversity to work towards common purposes and, whenever possible, an enriched shared understanding (see James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds for a great treatment of this and related ideas). In fact, the tension created between conflicting ideas can be powerful when it protects against excess, extremism, etc. When two (or more) positions compete for attention and screen each other for weaknesses, we have a much better chance of arriving at some sort of critical understanding that is useful in guiding policy, practice, or behavior. But, we have to listen to each other long enough, closely enough, and open-mindedly enough before we'll ever get to that point.

I saw a good example of this (on a micro-level) recently when I attended a meeting of the Provo City School District Board of Education. One of the agenda items for the board's study meeting was a proposal for the district to contribute some of its property tax revenue to the development of a parking structure for the Provo Freedom Plaza. The board was fairly split and, from what I could infer, felt quite passionately about the issue. There has been some history of less than outstanding real estate deals with Provo city in the past and some board members felt like the district had been burned. Others felt strongly that the board should support the project because of its potential to bring money back to the district in ten years and because of the projects potential positive impact upon the city. Initially, the discussion was quite heated, but I was impressed with board members' ability to put their passions and biases aside and listen to one another. The final vote in the business meeting later on in the evening was still split, but at least two board members who were initially quite passionate in one direction or the other had changed their stance by the time the final vote was called for. It was gratifying to see elected officials who were able to listen dispassionately and be critical of their own views. Ultimately, I think the board made the decision that was best for the city and best for the district.

If only there were more of this in other places be it the senate or academic conferences.

IKEA & Instruction

2010-09-10T17:22:00.000-07:00

My daughter turned two yesterday, which was lots of fun. But it also meant that I spent my labor day putting together her birthday present -- a dresser and night stand for her new room. As an aside, it occurred to me while searching for screw #14554, that I will probably spend the next 8 or 10 labor days assembling some sort of gift because of the fact that my daughter's birthday will always fall just a few days after labor day. The good news is that things seem to get better each year (this year's furniture project went much better than did last year's swing set debacle, but that's another post).

All in all, the furniture was pretty easy to assemble, mostly because the folks at IKEA know a thing or two about design and how to help people like me put together their products. In the four hours or so I spent trying to follow the instructions I had some insights about teaching and learning.

1. Every once in a while force yourself to try to teach & learn visually. IKEA's instructions were made up exclusively of images. That meant that their visual descriptions had to be incredibly clear because there was no written description to fall back onto. It also meant that the design of the furniture had to be very simple and intuitive. Too much of instruction relies solely upon written or oral pedagogies. Written or verbal methods are not inherently evil, but because we're so accustomed to communicating in these ways, it's easy to do it badly without really knowing it. Representing ideas visually requires teachers and learners to think in new ways--recognizing patterns, making associations between ideas, and making sense of the parts of an idea and how they come together to form a meaningful whole (see Dan Roam's ideas in The Back of the Napkin). Chances are that if a teacher can teach a concept visually (pictures, symbols, flow charts, etc.) they (1) understand it deeply and (2) have developed a clear way of communicating those ideas to a learner. The same is also true of a student learning a new concept. If they can "draw" it, chances are they understand it more deeply than someone who cannot (in some ways this is the same premise behind concept mapping and other similar learning aids, but even concept mapping can rely too much on text at times).

2. Identify pitfalls and help learners avoid them. One critique I had of the instructions I used was that there were a couple of places where I made stupid mistakes (mistakes that, in my pride, I feel like most inexperienced furniture assemblers would make) that could have been prevented with simple reminders or warnings. Most were minor, but one added about an hour onto the project (this is one of the few cases where IKEA might be wise to break it's rule of no text. In fact, because text is so out of place within the overall landscape of IKEA instructions, the very limited use of well placed text could draw attention to critical instructions or reminders). When designing instruction, we need to pay close attention to any pitfalls--meaning those things that could be significant setbacks for a learner--and help them avoid them.

3. Minor mistakes, early in the process can be a good thing. This seems a bit contradictory to my comments in #2 above, but let me explain. There is a Japanese proverb that teaches "You will become clever through your mistakes." I believe that is true, particularly of minor mistakes that occur early in the learning process. Mistakes focus attention, can increase engagement, and when caught, can prevent more major mistakes from occurring later on. Good instruction provides opportunities for minor mistakes to be made early. The very best instructional experiences are designed so that mistakes become clearly apparent to the learner (as opposed to being pointed out externally by a teacher or coach) and then force them to figure out what went wrong. That process of asking "why didn't this work?" yields learning that becomes valuable later on and helps the learner better understand the whole (e.g. How the entire dresser will need to come together. There is a fascinating case study on how this happens among West African apprentice tailors in Jean Lave & Etienne Wenger's book, Situated Learning.

4. Provide a real person when things get unmanageable. Luckily I didn't get to this point with my IKEA assemblies (but last year's swing set nightmare was a different story). But, I knew that if I did reach an impasse, I could call the number on the instructions and a real person would answer. Whether it's faculty office hours, a teaching assistant, a help lab, or a peer mentor, learners need a human that can help with things get tough.

5. Humor is a good thing. Although I dreaded the thought of putting together the furniture all weekend, I started off the project laughing because of images like this one. Just the fact that I smiled a bit at the outset, made me a lot more willing to dig into the project. It's important that we find ways to do that sort of thing with learners, because the honest truth is that the best learning is hard and takes effort. The more we can do to prime the pump and make learning an appropriately enjoyable experience, the better.

I still refuse to enter the front doors of IKEA, despite my wife's efforts to convince me that I'll "love it once I try it." And, I'm still not really looking forward to next Labor Day and putting together another birthday present (I'm banking on a bike with training wheels). But, at least I learned something in the process.

My Assumptions About Learning

2010-09-03T14:09:00.000-07:00

I began a new semester of graduate work this week and will be participating in a seminar course exploring learning theory. It should be a nice experience--there are only six of us in the course, we'll be doing some interesting reading, and should have some lively discussions about what learning is and how it happens.

On the first day, Steve Yanchar, the faculty member leading the seminar, did something which I thought was quite useful. He spent about 15 minutes sharing with us what he believes about learning. Steve is one of the most unassuming faculty members I have worked with and it was obvious that this wasn't a case of academic showboating. Rather, he wanted to let us inside his brain for a few minutes so we could better understand his rationale for structuring the seminar in a particular way, one that aligns with his beliefs about learning. He also included in his syllabus for the course, a brief description of his "assumptions about learning." That sort of purposeful, intentional instruction is something I appreciate.

It also made me feel a bit guilty because I realized that I have never sat down and tried to articulate exactly what it is that I believe about learning. Really, answering the questions of "What is learning?" and "How does learning occur?" are the guiding questions for the seminar and I hope to have something a little more polished and thoughtful to say in December. But for now, I thought it useful to try and summarize some of the fundamental assumptions I hold about learning. Here they are in no particular order:

1. Learning involves growth and change. To say that someone has learned something implies that they have been changed in some way. At its core learning involves internal changes wherein knowledge, values, beliefs, or understanding have changed; however, learning is often detected when we observe outward changes in behavior (e.g. the performance of a new skill, the verbal explication of a newly learned concept, etc.). When a person learns, they are a different person in some way; they think, feel, or behave differently.

2. Learning entails some level of risk. Because learning involves change or growth, learners must acknowledge that potential for change exists. Admitting such gaps in knowledge, deficiency in skill, or inexperience is perceived as "risky" because learners often do not wish to appear to be "dumb" or "incompetent." Assuming that risk is a necessary part of the learning process. Until one does, very little learning will occur. Additionally, learning requires an individual to venture into the cognitive unknown where mistakes, failure, and miscues are part of the landscape. Trekking through this space where we struggle, stumble, and fall is a necessary part of the process.

3. Learning improves when learners can make meaningful choices about what and how they learn. Learning requires some sort of active choice on the part of a learner. And, meaningful opportunities to exercise agency increase engagement in the learning process. Consequently, learners are more willing to do the hard work that leads to learning (whether that involves lonely hours in the library, challenging academic dialog with colleagues or otherwise) when they can make some of the choices involved in that process.

4. Learning is improved when it is shared and celebrated. Learning is hardwired into us as humans. I believe it is one of the fundamental purposes of our existence. We are also social creatures. Thus, learning is an inherently social process. I don't wish to discount the necessity of individual study and scholarship; however, at some point the very best learning will always involve some sort of social interaction. Articulating ones learning to an audience deepens the learners thinking, exposes gaps in understanding, and invites the feedback necessary to refine and polish ideas. This "articulation" also includes performances, displays, etc. wherein learned behaviors and skills are shared.

5. Learning is not merely the acquisition of knowledge, rather it is an active and participatory process wherein learners construct new meaning. For a fascinating discussion of these two views of learning see Anna Sfard's work ("On Two Metaphors for Learning and the Dangers of choosing Just One"). While some of learning involves knowledge transfer, learning is more accurately described as the process of becoming a participant in some discourse, activity, or practice. Ultimately, one of the goals of learning is to become a useful and contributing member of some sort of community, be it a city, a professional organization, or family. As a participant in this process, learners have experiences that provide opportunities to change, grow, and adapt in response to those experiences.

I could go on, but it's 4:00 and the sun is shining. These are just some of the key beliefs I hold about learning. You?

What is success? And, how important are outcomes?

2010-07-30T13:57:00.001-07:00

In my work I spend about 25% of my time supervising undergraduate peer mentors. Peer mentors support students in their transition to the university, connect them with university resources, and become sounding boards for new college students as they learn how to learn. Not suprisingly, these peer mentors are largely high-achieving, highly engaged students who do the sorts of deep learning that we wish happened for every college student.

I meet with these peer mentors every other week to hear about their work with students, discuss challenges they face, and support them in their development. One of the most frequent things I hear in these 30 minute conversations is "I'm not really sure if I'm making a difference" or "my students don't respond to me." Essentially, the question these peer mentors ask is "Am I doing a good job?" and "How will I know?"

Those are fair questions, questions we have all likely asked at one point or another. As a very young and very inexperienced high school soccer coach, I asked this question after almost every game we played (especially after losses). Any time we lost I found myself in a dilemma: I believed I was a good coach and that I worked hard to prepare my players for matches, so what did it mean when we lost? Was the fact that the opposing team had scored one more goal that we did evidence that I wasn't successful? These sorts of questions weighed more heavily on my mind when we lost 4 out of our last 5 games of the season after going undefeated up until that point. Teachers face the same sorts of questions when they work hard to help students learn, but are then faced with test scores that are deemed unacceptable or below par.

There was a time when I viewed teacher performance in very black and white terms: If they can't get test scores up, then they don't deserve to be in the classroom. I've softened my stance over the last couple of years and I'm not really sure anymore. I don't know that I have a very good definition of what success is for teachers, peer mentors, or coaches. My biggest question is how much attention we should pay to outcomes (i.e. test scores, pass rates, win-loss percentages, etc.). There is definitely a place for measurment and assessment. We live in a world that values numbers and percentages. We like to count, sort, and rank things. We believe that doing so gives us a basis to make accurate objective decsions about quality. What's more, in an economy where resources are sparse, numbers matter a great deal. But, when our work (and hearts) are wrapped up in helping human beings grow, learn, or change, a purely outcomes-based focus can be incredibly discouraging at those times when the people we work with "underperform."

This post has really been a long and inarticulate way of asking how we can know when we're doing a good job as educators. I still think that there are some key outcomes that we need to pay attention to, but some other possible indicators of success might be

1. Effort, preparation, and thougtfulness. While we can't control what learners do or how they respond to our invitations to grow, there are some important things that are in our control. Preparation and intentionality seem to fit here. Teachers and coaches should work tirelessly to be well prepared and to design learning experiences that meet learners where they are and that help move them towards meaningful learning goals.

2. Using feedback to improve. While outcomes and measurements may not be the sole indicator of success, an educator has a responsibility to use feedback to refine the way they teach. "Failure" (in the form of unsatisfactory outcomes) isn't failure if you use it to get better and change the way you do things.

3. Grit and persistence. How we respond to challenges seems to be an important part of success. While persistence in and of itself may not constitute success, there is a fair amount of evidence that the gritty, never-give-up attitude when sustained over time, does lead to success. What' more, initial "failure" or low-performance provides nice opportunities for learning and reflection, and can be a foundation for eventual success (see this post on the virtue of being terrible, including painful footage of Charles Barkeley's golf swing).

4. Relationships. I have always believed that learning is an inherently social pursuit and that relationships matter a great deal. So, one indicator of an educator's success is the personal relationships they are cultivating with learners. If a peer mentor has good relationships with their students (or even most of their students), I always take that as a sign that something useful is happening. Likewise, the fact that my soccer players seemed to respect me and valued our relationship, gave me comfort after losses when I was questioning my value as a coach.

As I finish this list I realize that this is touch-feely stuff. I'm also willing to admit that there is danger in defining success in this way because of the slippery slope it can present (e.g. "Who cares if none of my students passed the class, they like me and I worked hard, so I am a success."). So, how should we define success as educators? And, how much attention should we pay to outcomes?

Diversifying our approach to problem solving in higher education

2010-07-16T14:34:00.000-07:00

"Our Projects, if we are wise, will be myriad and quiet, not a grand few visible to the whole world."

This is a passage from Bill McKibben's recent book, eaarth. In this part of his book, McKibben is arguing that it's time to shift our global paradigm from growth to maintenance and, that with limited resources, it's too risky to bet on a few, large projects or initiatives. If we are going to make life on our polluted, resource-depleted planet, we need to minimize risk by finding lots of small ways to improve conditions. In essence, in the end we'll be better off making lots of small wagers rather than a small number of huge investments.

There seems to be some wisdom for higher education here--try a lot of different things, minimize your risk, pay attention to what works, and then replicate it if you can. In highly centralized organizations like universities, however, we don't do well with this sort of thing. It's more likely that we invest huge amounts of resources in large-scale initiatives that are very public and that carry huge risk. For example, I've mentioned on this blog before how my institution will be launching a freshman mentoring program this fall wherein every freshman student is provided with an upperclassmen mentor. This has meant vast changes in the way students register for courses, the development of technological solutions involving hours and hours of development and testing, the creation of a new full-time administrative position, and a comprehensive course redesign for one of the largest freshman courses on campus, not to mention a huge allocation of funds to pay and train the peer mentors. The objectives of the program are to balance resources across high-demand first year courses, connect students with an upperclassmen who can support them in their transition, and increase the likelihood that freshmen will use campus resources (e.g. advisement centers, teaching assistants, etc.)

I hope that the program is a success because I value mentoring and believe that it can make a tremendous difference for first-year students. But, McKibben's ideas have me wondering whether a decentralized effort across a variety of departments may have been just as useful in improving the first-year experience for BYU students. What could academic advisors do in their sphere to help? Is there a low-cost social media campaign that the Office of First-Year Experience could have piloted? What if Residence Life had experimented with American Heritage course review sessions taught in the halls? If any one (or all) of those things fail, no one has lost much time or money and central administration doesn't have to worry about looking bad. As it is, the message has been "Freshman Mentoring cannot fail" (that sounds eerily simialr to the "to big to fail" rhetoric we've heard surrounding the automotive and banking industries as of late) and the individuals responsible for making it work are faced with making the impossible possible.

I recognize the value of campus-wide, coordinated initiatives where a diverse group of stakeholders work together to address a campus issue. I hope that is what our Freshman Mentoring initiative is and that it works. If not, we will have spent a lot of time, money, and social capital on a disastrous failure.

So, the question I'm really asking here is when large-scale, resource intense initiatives are the answer, and when we'd be better off encouraging small innovations across a number of departments and areas in hopes that they add up to some sort of aggregate success.

What schools could learn from cab companies

2010-07-09T11:04:00.000-07:00

I spent the first year of my professional career as a teacher. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I thought I was pretty good--I had good rapport with students, I tried to align my teaching with learning objectives, and I believed that I applied good pedagogical practices in my classroom. It's probably pretty easy to spot the problem in this assessment--they are all my own personal perceptions of my ability and performance, and very subject to bias and inaccuracy. This has bothered me lately and I've wondered how good a teacher I really was during that year. As I look back on those experiences, two really important things seem to have been missing: feedback and focused effort to learn from mistakes.

While I tried to regularly evaluate my own teaching, like most of us I probably overestimated my abilities and was likely unaware of many of the mistakes I was making. On a few occasions (three, that I can remember) I was observed by another teacher and then given some basic feedback at the end of the class session. It's fair to assume that both my own evaluations and those of others might have had some slight improvement on my teaching. But, in retrospect, I don't think I was much better in June when the school year ended than I was on the first day of school in September. In fact, I probably developed some bad habits, got too comfortable with the role, and stopped doing some of the little things that make a big difference in one's teaching ability. In short, I may have even been worse.

At the same time I was having these depressing thoughts, I was reading Traffic, by Tom Vanderbilt. The book uses driving patterns and habits as a context for exploring human behavior. He tells a fascinating story about how cab companies and limo services have helped improve their drivers' performance using a technology called DriveCam. DriveCam installs cameras on the rearview mirrors of cars that continusously buffer images (like TiVo) of what is happening both inside and outside the car. Sensors monitor various measurable forces and when a "trigger" is detected (sharp turn of the steering wheel, significant decrease/increase in speed, etc.), the camera records ten seconds of footage both before and after the trigger. This footage is then sent to a database and may be reviewed with the driver in an attempt to correct mistakes and improve safety. Although it probably ruffles some feathers of drivers who feel like their privacy is being invaded, the bottom line is that transportation companies have a lot to lose when their drivers don't drive well. What's more, this is great learning. Drivers can view actual footage of their driving, spot mistakes and fix them, and focus on small elements of the driving performance that seem to make a big difference in achieving good outcomes, namely safety (this isn't unlinke the way elite athletes use taped performances to improve).

This left me wondering why something similar couldn't happen in classrooms, particularly those classrooms led by novice teachers. We spend millions of dollars to equip classrooms with new technologies that are touted to improve student learning and increase engagement. And, while ipods and laptops can help, the core factor influencing student learning still seems to be the teacher. It seems fair to ask why technology can't be used to imrove core teacher practices that would have far-reaching impact upon student learning. There is some work being done in this area (see the work of Peter Rich and this pilot project at the University of Central Florida), but it seems to be on the periphery.

What would happen if there were cameras installed in classrooms that could capture real footage of teacher performance. Are there "triggers" that we would want to focus on? What would they be? Something like this would seem to fill a gap in current teacher development practices. Teachers would have the opportunity to really see themselves teaching (as opposed to their perception of their teaching or someone else's interpretation), use mistakes to improve, and focus on critical parts of their performance that have been shown to lead to significant improvements in student learning.

Measuring what matters: How much should we really care about retention?

2010-07-02T11:46:00.000-07:00

In his February 2010 TED talk, CEO and author Chip Conley tells a fascinating story about the nation of Bhutan and their transformation from an isolated, undeveloped nation to a modern, technologically rich nation that still manages to maintain the essence of their original culture and traditions. Bhutan's story is one of striking the balance between progress and innovation, while stilll maintaining core elements of an identity (a rare feat for any country, organization, or school in today's rapid-paced world). One of the most interesting parts of Conlee's telling of the story is his reason for Bhutan's ability to transorm in these ways. Quite simply, he believes that it is because Bhutan has learned to "count" the right thing, gross national happiness. Forty years ago, Bhutan's King coined the term rather off-handedly to describe his commitment to building an economy that would allow for growth, while staying true to Bhutan's Buddhist roots. Bhutanese officials ran with the concept, developed sophisticated instruments to measure the concept, and used it as a model for the development plan that brought Bhutan into the 21st century. This all stands in stark contrast to most nations' preoccupation with Gross Domestic Product and their belief that it stands as the supreme indicator of a nation's well-being.

There seems to be a lesson for higher education in all of this, particularly the first-year experience movement. Like anyone else, we count what is easily countable. So, in many ways "retention" has become our GDP. We work hard to measure it, argue over how it should be measured, showcase (or hide) it in reports to our administrations, and tout it at conferences. This isn't to say that we shouldn't care about retention--the reality is that enrolled students bring money to the institution and that money keeps us running. But, there seems to be some danger in retention becoming what Conlee describes as a "misplaced metric," an easy to count measure that gives little indication as to the real health of an institution.

So, what should we be counting? In many ways this question hinges on how we define success in the FYE movement and the factors that we believe contributes to a vibrant campus community. What does a "successful" student look like at the end of their first year? What skills, habits, and attitudes would they possess? While the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) has contributed greatly to institutions' ability to measure certain behaviors and attitudes of students, we don't seem to do much on our individual campuses to measure the equivalent of the "gross national happiness" for our campuses.

What would these "intangibles" on our campuses be? While they will vary slightly across institutions, some possibilities might include

A personal reason for being at a particular institution. Do students know why they decided to come to your school? Their purpose and commitment to the educational ideals and objectives at your institution will make a huge difference in their engagement and persistence. If they don't have a set of fairly good reasons for choosing a particular campus, there is likely to be trouble down the road.

Understanding of and investment in an institutional mission. This seems strongly correlated with the idea above, but it seems important for institutions to not only orient students to their physical surroundings, but to help them understand the culture and ideals of the institution they have enrolled in so they might become a part of the community and fulfill their role in it. So, if you are a faith-based institution that espouses character development, do students believe in that mission and pursue that growth? For liberal arts institutions, do your students value a well-rounded education and recognize the importance of breadth in their learning?

Passion for learning. What students believe and feel about learning are important. We want life-long learners that continue to grow and make contributions to society after they leave our institutions. Can the first-year experience nurture this passion? How would it be measured?

This is obviously not an all inclusive list. But, these would seem to be key indicators of the success of a FYE program. There are others including deep learning behaviors, formation of supportive mentoring relationships, and the development of grit and persistence. We probably can't measure them all, but what for you are the key indicators on your campus? What could we start measuring on our campuses that would be meaningful and give us real insight into the success of our FYE programs?

Universities need leaders who know what to count.

The problem of control in education

2010-06-11T09:18:00.000-07:00

I attended TTIX 2010 yesterday at the University of Utah. TTIX (Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange) brings together instructional designers, technology specialists, and educators interested in the use of technology. In her the keynote address, Nancy White explored the question "Should we use communities in learning?" While there wasn't much argument that we should not, Nancy did present an interesting paradigm for thinking about the ways in which learning occurs. She thought about it as an issue of "me, we, and the networks." Or, more simply, we can learn individually, in small groups, or as part of a much broader network.

We see individual and small-group learning at work every day in higher education. But, real networked learning that extends outside of campus seems to be missing from most universities. Of course, students often have their own personal learning networks, but these networks generally live outside of what they perceive as their school experience. Students do one sort of learning in class, in the library, and with project groups. They do another type of learning "outside of school," learning that is largely separated from their course work. This seems problematic to me for at least two reasons. First, formalized "school learning" should be authentic and connected to students' interests. Second, if we really believe that higher education should produce life-long learners, campuses should help students begin to build and use a personal learning network that includes people, media, web resources, organizations, etc. While some of those elements will be available on a college campus, it is either arrogant, naive, or both to think that a single college campus can connect students to all of the resources they will need for a rich learning network. In short, there are times when we need to get students off-campus and encourage them to do their learning there. And, this learning needs to have meaningful connections to what they are doing on campus as part of formal university programs.

Our problem in higher ed is that we want to exert control over students. We want to tell them what they can learn and when they can learn it (the standard course model); we want to create closed learning management systems (e.g. Blackboard &Brain Honey) that allow us to monitor student learning and keep out "intruders;" and we tell them what their learning goals will be (graduation requirements). Universities, by their very nature, will always have some level of structure and exert some level of control over students--I've come to accept that fact as unavoidable. However, why couldn't our institutions help students identify their own learning goals, build their own personal learning networks, and then find ways to connect that learning to university coursework (or internships, captstone experiences, field studies, service learning, etc.)?

We often wonder why students aren't motivated to do the sorts of deep learning that we would hope to see at the university level? But, we can't be too surprised, given the fact that we removed most of a student's autonomy. If students don't have some choice in structuring their learning (and selecting from a list of courses to take is a poor excuse for "choice"), they will rarely be motivated to learn deeply (see this TED talk by Dan Pink for more on this idea or this condensed version of his ideas; his newest book, Drive is also a good read) .

What we need in higher education is more boundaryless, fuzzy, relationship-based learning that doesn't begin and end at the semester. The traditional course model might not ever go away, but why couldn't there be an overarching learning process that is overlaid on top of courses? The type of learning that is motivating, inspiring, and that will likely last well beyond graduation?

What are committees really good for?

2010-06-04T15:50:00.000-07:00

If you work on a college campus (or in almost any large organization) you've probably had some experience with committees. At BYU I sit on a handful, one of which is a new student orientation committee charged with developing and evaluating programming for new students. Our most significant responsibility is to develop a multi-day orientation program that is held on the weekend just prior to the beginning of a new semester. This means that, although we are a standing committee that theoretical operates all year long, most of our "real work" is done in the summer months leading up to September when a large class of freshmen arrives on campus. What's more, the attitude of the committee chair has been that if there aren't pressing agenda items, we really won't benefit from an hour long meeting. I'll confess that, up until quite recently, I liked things this way. From where I sat, it meant fewer meetings, fewer assignments, and more time to work on other projects I have going. I tended to look forward to the "meeting cancelled" email that arrives the morning of the scheduled meeting.

Although our committee's sporadic meetings this summer have given me extra time, I think we've gotten into a bad habit, a habit that will hurt us in the long run. I've seen evidence of this in the last few weeks as I've tried to work through a challenge with another committee member. The details aren't important, but what I've realized is that because he and I have not been seeing one another each week and discussing our joint work, two things have happened. First, we have not been exchanging simple information that would be useful to us in our work. Second, and more importantly, our professional relationship has suffered. We don't have the social capital that we need in order to discuss sensitive matters, tactfully raise opposing ideas, or work through problems that are arising in our orientation planning.

This has all caused me to reconsider the purpose of committees, how they function, and how we build them. So, if I were asked to create a new committee next week, these are some things I would keep in mind to help me in my design:

1. Committee work isn't just about being productive or efficient, it is about establishing relationships among stakeholders. While action items, key decisions, and reports on past assignments are all worthy items on a committee's meeting agenda, just being together and engaging in dialogue might be just as important. And, these conversations don't always need to be focused on our work. Although hearing about a colleague's vacation or how their son is doing on his study abroad in Europe probably won't have any real impact on your campus, having those conversations on a consistent basis will build social capital. That capital will be important during those times when your committee faces difficult decisions, disagrees with one another, or has to address an unexpected problem or crisis that has emerged.

2. Meetings should include plenty of open dialogue and collaboration. Too often meetings become nothing more than reporting sessions where last week's minutes are reviewed, information is disseminated, or decisions are announced. As much as we complain about these sorts of things, I think that occasionally we like report-back meetings because they don't require anything of us. Like a student sitting in an unengaging lecture, we can sit back and zone out, but still convince ourselves that we're doing our duty by being in attendance at the meeting. But, this sort of meeting is a waste of everyone's time because technology has provided much more efficient ways of reporting and disseminating. Committee meetings are about working collaboratively and that means dialogue, brainstorming, rapid prototyping, and those things that can only happen when a group of people is together in the same room. Again, this sort of meeting, one that requires engagement and thoughtful participation, can take some getting used to. But, I would like to believe that it pays dividends in the end.

3. Committees should facilitate useful connections where none existed before. Good committee chairs use committees to establish relationships between stakeholders that (1) misunderstand one another or (2) don't even realize they have a stake in one another's work. While committees should not cease to play a coordination, governance, and project management role, we need to reframe our thinking and view them as a tool for building social capital among stakeholders. It seems odd to put two people on a committee who don't like each other or who haven't worked well together in the past. But, under the right circumstances, useful bonds can be formed and future problems can be avoided. This takes a skilled chair and an already well-functioning committee. But, I've seen it lead to tremendous benefit when it is handled well.

Here's a radical thought in closing. Books like Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone lament the general decline of community and social capital we see almost everywhere. Can good committees make a difference? On a siloed, fragmented campus where departments don't get along and very little meaningful collaboration is happening, could something like what I've described make a difference?

How much has technology really helped us in education?

2010-05-21T13:46:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Atul Gawande's latest book, Checklist Manifesto. In a nutshell, Gawande argues that the right kind of checklist (it turns out that good checklists aren't easy or quick to produce) can lead to vast improvements in the way we do things, and for very little cost. It's a great read and one of the most practically useful books I've read in a while.

Gawande is a physician and uses stories from medicine to illustrate the effectiveness of simple checklists (there are also some fascinating examples from building construction and finance). One of the areas where checklists have made the most difference are in operation rooms. It turns out that for even the most developed countries--those with great hospitals, state-of-the-art medical technologies, and highly-trained physicians--surgical complications are a fairly significant problem. Gawande and his team have managed to develop simple checklists that, when used properly, have drastically reduced complication rates. It is important to note that these have not been modest findings, the results have been startling and and hard to argue with.

The interesting thing in all of this is that the vast majority of physicians and hospitals have refused to use the checklist. Instead most have opted to invest in $1.7 million remote controlled surgical robots that have driven up costs massively, without producing any significant improvements. Meanwhile, the low-tech, low-budget checklists are saving lives.

There seems to be a parallel here to education. More and more, institutions are adopting technology with the hope that it will revolutionize learning. In my graduate work I spend a fair amount of time with instructional technologists, some who tout technology as the saviour of schools. I should also confess that I am sometimes a sucker for cool ed tech gadgets because they seem to make learning fun and engaging. That's not to mention my reliance upon technology for some of the most basic functions of my job (just last night I made a presentation to a group of parents of incoming students and used the bells and whistles of a fully-mediated auditorium to "enhance" my remarks).

The nagging question I keep having, though, is whether the very expensive technology we use has really improved the learning experience for students. It likely cost thousands of dollars to outfit the auditorium I spoke in last evening. And, I would estimate that there are at least 100 other rooms of various sizes just like it across the rest of my campus. In many ways this is nice. It means that instructors can use PowerPoint slides, show media clips, play music, etc. These things are entertaining for students and can deepen engagement. But, how much more did the parents in my session learn because I used technology? What if the computer had crashed mid-presentation? Would I have been prepared enough to make the remaining 15 minutes useful? Would a low-tech "technology" like a "minute paper" have been just as beneficial as a data slide?

I'm not arguing for the elimination of technology in higher education (or any setting for that matter). But, I wonder how often we falsely assume that twitter, tech classrooms, and iClickers will simplify the educational process and prevent educational failures. Could it be that simple pedagogical tools, processes, or philosophies could be just as impactful and at a much lower cost? And, what sorts of new failures does technology introduce? Gawande frames this question well:

"We have most readily turned to the computer as our aid. Computers hold out the prospectof automation as our bulward against failure. Indeed, they can take huge numbers of tasks off our hands, and thankfully already have--tasks of calculation, processing, storage, transmission. Without question, technology can increase our capabilities. But there is much that technology cannot do: deal with the unpredictable, manage uncertainty, construct a soaring building, perform a lifesaving operation. In many ways, technology has compicated these matters. It has added yet another element of complexity to the systems we depend on and given us entirely new kinds of failure to content with."

What are our "educational checklists?" (i.e. those simple and frugal things that can make signficant differences in learning). And, what are the "surgical robots" in education that look cool, but deplete budgets without making any meaningful improvement to the educational landscape? And, maybe most importantly, how do we know when we're dealing with an expensive failure or something that, while expensive, truly will revolutionize learning?

The forgotten part of the First-Year Experience

2010-05-07T07:54:00.001-07:00

A recent discussion on the first year experience listserv has gotten me thinking about the way we allocate resources across the first-year experience. If your campus is like mine you likely have a variety of programming for first year students with most of it being front loaded to the first semester or even the first two weeks of their time on your campus (it's always been interesting to me that we speak of our work in terms of the first year experience, when most of us do very little in the way of formal programming during the second half of that year).

This practice of front-loading makes sense (and has been advocated for by, among others, John Gardner). Among other things, it allows institutions to communicate expectations, help students feel connected to each other and to campus, and provides proactive support that positions students to be successful. These are all good things and the last two decades have provided plenty of data suggesting that they make a difference. The question raised on the listserv was about end of year rituals or ceremonies and that made me wonder if what we do at the end of the first year experience matters.

For much of the formal learning we see in schools and elsewhere, beginnings and endings get a lot of attention. Think about a typical college course. In the beginning students receive a syllabus that outlines the learning objectives for the course, an anticipated timeline for when and how they can expect to be learning, and some information about how to get help along the way. The syllabus (assuming it is a well-written one) becomes a guide for the semester. Plenty of important things then happen in the middle of the course to facilitate learning. Then, four months later there is an ending, an ending that in some cases is quite ceremonious and ritualistic. There is the "last lecture" where the faculty member reminds students of what the course goals were, a "testimonial" of sorts where she might remind them of what she thinks is the kernel of the entire course, and some sort of final exam or project that helps students tie things together and demonstrate their learning. We see this across the entire college experience as well (i.e. Orientation/Convocation followed by graduation/commencement four or five years later). I even vaguely remember it happening when I was a student in Mrs. Palmer's pre-school class. On the first day I remember meeting Mrs. Palmer, getting a tour of the classroom, and hearing about all of the fun things I was going to get to do that year. Then at the end of the year we had a full-blown "pre-school graduation" (complete with homemade graduation caps) where we were honored by our parents and then given a chance to showcase the cutting, coloring, and singing talents we had worked hard to acquire that year. I would like to think that these practices, ceremonious as they may be, also have pedagogical value.

The question this raises for me is whether we could or should do something at the end of the first college year that would have value for students and campuses. The tendency would be to plan an end of year celebration with music, eloquent speeches, and a banquet or refreshments. That may not be a bad thing, but it is expensive and runs the risk of becoming a frilly show absent of any real value. So, are there simple, cost-effective ways of capitalizing on the end of the first year that would be both celebratory and educationally useful?

There are a few things that would seem useful to consider when designing a "second book end" for the first-year experience

1. Revisit the goals, learning objectives, etc. introduced at the beginning of the year. We spend a fair amount of time and effort introducing institutional missions and aims, learning goals, and expectations. It only makes sense that we would want to follow up at the end of the first year to remind students of these same things.

2. Celebrate successes. The National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition sponsors a First Year Students Advocate program wherein they recognize faculty members and administrators who have done extraordinary work to improve the experience of first year students on their campuses. There isn't any good reason why this couldn't happen on individual campuses (I know there are a few campuses that are already doing this). Faculty members, staff, administrators, and student leaders who have done significant first-year work could be recognized. Additionally, first year students who have demonstrated tremendous progress towards first-year objectives could be highlighted. This would seem useful in at least two ways. First, people like to be recognized and when they are, they tend to work even harder because they feel appreciated. Second, it would give institutions the opportunity to recognize best practices and communicate a set of values to the rest of the campus community.

3. Bridge the gap between the first-year and sophomore experiences. I'll confess that I have not followed the SYE (sophomore year experience) movement very closely as of yet. However, it seems to be commonly accepted that the transition from the first to the second year is challenging for many students. If that is true then an end of year book end could be designed to address some of these issues (e.g. how to prepare for the sophomore year, resources to connect with prior to starting classes in the fall, etc.)

4. Reflection on growth, challenges, and lessons learned. The first college year and its experiences provide students with plenty of opportunities to learn and grow. Asking them to reflect on those experiences, make meaning from them, and share their learning in public ways could be beneficial (if you use portfolios on your campus this could be a required artifact in that portfolio).

The challenge in all of this is finding the time, resources, and space for something like this to happen. So, can it be done? And, how would it look on a large campus with a large freshman class? What challenges do small colleges face in considering the end of the first year?

Academic play: Is goofing off in the classroom a bad thing?

2010-04-30T16:41:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite blogs is maintained by Daniel Coyle a former contributing editor of Outside magazine and now a full-time writer. A recent post explored the power of play in developing skill and left me wondering why we don't see more "play" in academics.

Coyle argues that the very best athletes get to be that way, in part, because they spent a fair amount of time "goofing off" in fairly unstructured environments. That's not to say that elite athletes don't at some point adopt a very structured and rigorous training regimen. But, it seems that the path to skill started on playgrounds (for many NBA players), empty swimming pools (skate pros), and dusty streets (Ronaldinho & other South American soccer stars) in a number of cases. The rationale is that these unique practice environments give young athletes a chance to be creative, invent their own games, get lots of reps, and develop a passion for their skill or game. This new-age coaching mindset doesn't always sit well with "veterans" because it can mean chaos, loss of control, and a lack of the all-important "drill."

This doesn't seem altogether different from the view we take of education. In most schools structure seems to be king--highly defined curricula, students in desks, and quiet individual work. While pure logistics dictate much of this structure out of necessity, I wonder how learning would be impacted if students were engaged in "academic play" a little more often.

In A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink describes how this concept of play is taking hold in successful businesses (e.g. Google--they encourage employees to spend 15% of their time working on whatever personal projects they find interesting and loosely connected to Google's mission), the military, and medical training. And, U.S. Soccer just hired former Men's National Team captain Claudio Reyna to try and infuse "play" into the training of youth soccer players in the U.S.

So, what would "academic play" look like? Would it even work in a school or classroom setting where, at best, only half of the learners are motivated to learn?

William Kamkwamba: A case study in deep learning

2010-04-09T10:16:00.000-07:00

William Kamkamba's story is not new (he started his work in 2002 and started getting heavier press coverage in 2008), but I heard it for the first time this week. Aside from being very moving, there seem to be some lessons here for educators and the way we engage students in good learning. One of the things that impressed me with William's story was the fact that he seemed to be doing the sort of learning we all hope students will do, but it happened outside the formal confines of a school or university and with no real external support. As I write this, it occurs to me that good learning like this might result because of those factors (i.e. the best type of learning happens outside of school).

So, my first question is whether it is realistic to expect learning like this to occur within a formal setting. The cynic in me wants to say no, but the pragmatist part of me that enjoys having a roof to sleep under, food to eat, the possibility of providing for my daughther make me want to say "yes, we can do it." So, here are some key principles I see at work in William's story that seem to be instructive for instructional designers, teachers, and anyone that cares about learning.

1. Help the learner identify a real problem or opportunity. William's story started because he saw an opportunity (the winds in Malawi) and wanted to find a way to leverage that opportunity. Because it was a learning opportunity that he had identified and that he cared about personally, he was willing to engage in the hard work of deep learning. William's learning was also motivated by a humanitarian desire to help people in his village, which seems to be important in some way.

2. Allow the learning to be self-directed. William didn't have a curriculum or syllabus he was following. He identified gaps in his knowledge--things he needed to know in order to solve the problem at hand (and related sub-problems that likely emerged along the way)--and then garnered resources to help him learn what he needed to know. Not only does this sort of experience shift the responsibility for learning onto the learner, but it also prepares them to engage in meaningful learning once they leave an institution and don't have a formal system nudging them along the path.

3. Forum for sharing/testing ideas. William's learning was incredibly public. If the windmill didn't work, looked stupid, or in any other way failed to meet expectations he was likely to hear about it from those in his village. Consequently, he was more motivated to really understand the principles of windmill design, electricity, etc. and to produce something that wouldn't get laughed at or mocked. Additionally, because the learning was public he was likely receiving feedback all along the way regarding how to improve his work. That combination of experience and feedback led to much better learning than would have otherwise resulted.

4. Connections to a number of disciplines. While much of what William was learning was focused in a physical science or technology domain, he likely had to learn things from other fields--writing skills, oral communication skills, business principles, etc.--in order to really make his windmill project a success. It was the sort of integrated general education experience that liberal arts folks dream of. The key was that he had selected a problem whose successful solution depended on a broad set of knowledge and skills.

5. A connection to future plans/goals. It's obvious from listening to William's story that he doesn't plan on stopping with a rough-looking windmill outside his family's Malawian farm. What he learned in these initial projects has raised new questions for him, provided access to new sources of learning, provided additional motivation, and helped him develop a vision of what he wants to do and become as he moves forward. This is in striking contrast to the term project or other course assignment that dies quickly once final grades are posted.

This sort of learning requires a paradigm shift for educators. They become designers, facilitators, mentors, and coaches rather than information disseminators and evaluators. So, for something like this to work it would take individuals that understand (1) what good learning looks like and (2) what sorts of mentoring leads to this learning.

We see these things at work in Capstone courses and in abundance in graduate school, but how can these principles be applied at the undergraduate level (or even within secondary and elementary education)? Could an entire education be built around capstone-esque learning like this?

How do we get young men to want to go to college and want to work hard once they get there?

2010-04-02T11:29:00.001-07:00

Earlier this week I read an article about the challenge of engaging male students in a meaningful college experience. I saw the anti-intellectual attitude alluded to in this article displayed at the high school level when I was a teacher and coach, and I see it now in my work in higher education. It's not that male students aren't intelligent, don't work hard, or aren't prepared for college-level work. It's just that, in far too many cases, being a good learner and being a "man" are mistakenly viewed as being mutually exclusive. This false dichotomy leaves young men feeling like they have to choose one role or the other. And, at 18 years old being "cool" or "chill" generally wins out. This means that participating in class, being seen in the library, or having any sort of academic conversation outside of class is strictly taboo (Note: many will do "academic" things when no one is looking, but my experience has been that the best kind of learning is, at least part of the time, public and social).

Really, there are two related problems here: (1) Getting males to want to go to college, trade school, technical training, etc. and (2) Helping those that do go to take full advantage of the opportunity rather than doing enough to not kicked out, but without looking like they really care all that much. I realize that my mentioning these problems is not earth-shattering and that there are a lot of people thinking about the same thing. The shortcoming I see is in the way we go about trying to remedy these problems.

This made me wonder how we could package some of our basic messages about the value of education and deliver them in ways that would resonate with the students we are trying to reach, particularly male students. The Inside Higher Ed article I linked to above mentions a strategy employed by Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia wherein students are introduced to the concept of a "Morehouse Man" that embodies a set of core values that the institution believes are characteristic of the type of men they hope to graduate (Morehouse is an all-male institution). The intent is to help students see and believe that being a man includes being well-dressed, well-spoken, well-educated, etc. and that to become that sort of man a student needs to do certain things while they are in college. The question I would have is whether the audience they are intending to reach (those students that for whatever reason aren't living up to the ideals held out by the institution) really want to become a "Morehouse Man" or at least the image of a "Morehouse Man" that has been created by this messaging.

An example of this same sort of challenge is outlined in Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath. In a nutshell, the state of Texas wanted to decrease the amount of litter on their highways. And, they knew which Texans were most likely to litter, so they targeted their campaign at "Bubba." Bubba represented the 18 - 35 year old male, pickup truck driving, country music listening demographic that seemed to be at the heart of the litter problem. The idea was to give the standard "don't litter" message using both language and messengers that "Bubba" would relate to. So, they brought in members of the Dallas Cowboys, Mike Scott of the Houston Astros, and Willie Nelson and the now well-known phrase "Don't mess with Texas" was born. These weren't just famous people, they were people that Bubba saw as real Texans, men that Bubba wanted to be like. The strategy worked and visible litter along Texas roadways had decreased 72% within five years.

So, the question am left with in all of this is who our Bubbas are and how we can package two old messages (education is valuable and education means doing things that lead to good learning) in new ways. Who would male students respond to and what could that person or group of people say that would make an 18 year-old male student want to be a scholar?

How is community really built?

2010-03-26T10:14:00.000-07:00

In a number of recent conversations with colleagues on my campus we have been discussing the implications of structural changes to the Freshman Mentoring program at BYU and, specifically, what it means for our work of building academic communities among our incoming students. For the last six years or so, students participating in the program not only had access to an upperclassmen peer mentor, but were also enrolled in a cluster of linked courses. This learning community model--shared academic interests, common enrollments, close proximity in housing, and a peer mentor who served as a connector of sorts-- meant that over the course of the semester students were more likely to become part of an academic community. Essentially, they spent enough time together and had enough common experiences that a community began to emerge quite organically (although the peer mentors and faculty members did plenty of intentional things to try to nudge that development).

For the coming year, the mentoring program looks much different. For instance, students will enroll in only a two course cluster where at least one of the courses is likely to be quite large (200+ students and in some cases as many as 800). Additionally, these are general education courses, rather than major specific courses or thematically linked courses. Finally, there is only a loose housing connection within clusters such that there is only a slight chance that any of a particular student's classmates in one of these linked courses will even live in the same residence hall (although they will be in the same complex of halls).

This has left me and others wondering what role community building should play in our work. Is it realistic to expect community to form around these linked courses, and if so, what can program administrators and individual peer mentors do to help it to happen?

In Better Together, Robert Putnam and Lewis Feldstein lay out a set of principles of community-building gleaned from 11 case studies (one of the best books I've read in the last 10 years). One of the themes that emerges from the cases is that most successful communities get that way through face-to-face interactions, small groups (although they may be nested within a larger organization), and shared interests. That worries me a bit because of what I've just described about our new Freshman Mentoring program at BYU. Peer mentors will have fewer opportunities for the sorts of informal face-time they had in the past, they'll be expected to mentor upwards of 60 students, and the students in their "community" are not likely to share academic interests like they may have in the past.

So, are we better off treating this as a program based in isolated relationships between mentors and students. Or, are there ways to build community within these constraints?

One idea that I need to explore a bit more is the relationship between individual relationships and community. Is community just a collection of one-on-one relationships or is it more than that?

Thoughts?

Managing Transitions: What FYE can learn from the corporate world

2010-03-19T14:41:00.000-07:00

Recently I have been reading a book from business literature called Managing Transitions. In it the author (William Bridges) describes a philosophy and accompanying set of strategies that organizations can employ to successfully navigate difficult transitions (e.g. a merger, downsizing, closing, etc.). The premise of the book is that transitions, while filled with anxiety and the sometimes debilitating potential for failure, present tremendous opportunities for growth and innovation.

This has been interesting reading for me because my area on campus is in the midst of a fairly dramatic transition. But, as I read another chapter this afternoon it occurred to me that some of Bridges ideas could be applied to my work in first-year experience. New freshmen on college campuses look, in some ways, a lot like a mid-level manager trying to grapple with changes in her organization. Both are anxious and somewhat frightened of the uncertainty that lies ahead, both are probably questioning their ability to succeed in their new environment, and both are likely to brush up against experiences that expose weaknesses and deficiencies.

So, what can those of us in FYE learn from corporate America about managing transitions?

Bridges' identifies three fluid stages--(1)Letting Go, (2) the Neutral Zone, and (3) The New Beginning (see image below).

It's important to note that these are not three static phases that are moved through in sequential order (like walking through three separate doors). Rather, we find ourselves in all three phases at any given point within a transition. The concept of a new beginning was not new to me--it is where we focus most of our efforts as we design orientations, first-year programs, etc. However, my sense in talking with colleagues on other campuses is that most of us haven't spent much time thinking about the letting go and neutral zone elements of students' transitions onto our campuses. That's where I'll focus the rest of this post.

Letting Go. Among other things, Bridges recommends that those assisting individuals in transition pay attention to what is being lost by those experiencing the change. What are they giving up? What are they likely to long for in the new situation? etc. The first implication here is that we both expect and accept the fact that most if not all new students will experience some sort of "grieving" during their first year on campus. For some it will come in the first few weeks and in other cases it could come much later (e.g. after Thanksgiving or Christmas vacations). But, we shouldn't be surprised or discouraged when we see students struggling with the "I wish I was at home" sorts of feelings. In fact, recognizing and addressing those feelings is necessary for students to eventually become integrated into our campuses. At times, those of us who interact with new students (faculty, advisors, residence hall staff, etc.) might be guilty of trying to skip to the "new beginning" without ever allowing students to let go. One way that this might happen would be to mark the ending in a very public or visible way. Could something happen during new student Convocation or another part of orientation that ritualizes the ending (this could also more effectively signal the new beginning we hope students engage in)? Also, could students be invited to discuss with one another or with a peer mentor/advisor the sorts of things they are giving up as they transition into college (e.g. old study habits, friendships, their own room, etc.)? This could help lead to a conversation about the many things that we provide on our campuses to compensate for these losses--student organizations, academic help centers, residence hall advisors, and more.

The Neutral Zone. The neutral zone is that place between the ending and the beginning where we are trying to find our place, reframe our identity, and figure out how to make it in our new situation. It's in the neutral zone where we see students anxious, stressed, ambiguous, and questioning their ability to make it. And, in some ways, our programs are intended to move students through this uncomfortable place as quickly as possible. The interesting idea presented in Managing Transitions is that the neutral zone isn't necessarily something that we should try to rush people through because of the opportunities for growth and innovation that it presents. A quote from the book (p. 52) captures this idea very well:

"The key to succeeding in these efforts [the efforts to help individuals navigate the neutral zone] is to look at the neutral zone as a chance to do something new and interesting--and to pursue that goal with energy and courage."

I like that thought because it shifts the responsibility for success on to the individual and essentially asks "what can you do during this time of transition to grow, change, be creative, etc" That seems like a liberating thought and one that should be shared with students. In addition, Bridges recommends that the neutral zone be "normalized" such that it becomes clearly understood by students and others on campus that the transition to college won't happen overnight and won't happen without some growing pains. Carol Dweck's ideas in Mindset seem like they would have particular application here; in a nutshell she discusses the idea of a "growth mindset" wherein individuals view intelligence and success as malleable and responsive to hard work and practice. This sort of attitude can help students reframe the way they view failures and help them use the neutral zone and its "failures" as learning experiences that lead to eventual growth and success.

So, the take home for me was that for FYE professionals to really help students "begin" their college experience, we need to pay a bit more attention to the other two elements involved in the transition to college. Thoughts? How are you helping students let go or navigate the neutral zone?

The Power of Ten

2010-03-12T10:32:00.000-08:00

This week I discovered the Project for Public Spaces (PPS), a group focused on improving communities through creating a certain kind of public space. In a 2004 article that appeared in the PPS newsletter, the author lays out the idea of "power of ten" as it applies to public spaces. In a nutshell he argues that a public space will not become a thriving center of activity and discourse until it offers a variety of different types of things to do (hence the title "Power of Ten"). The author, Fred Kent--who is now the president of PPS, uses a park as an example. A great park has a playground, a walking trail, a popcorn vendor, an art display, and is located across the street from a bookstore. Because it offers a variety of activities, it caters to a variety of people and becomes a lively, active place. The sort of place a community hopes it will have.

This got me thinking, again, about the public spaces on our campuses and whether or not they are effective in building community. In my last post I talked a bit about student union buildings and the lack of academic happenings there. As I read Fred Kent's piece and spent some time on the PPS site, I realized that it's not just academics that are often missing from the student union, but a whole host of other things as well. On my campus the Student center has a variety of things going on, but they are all the same sorts of things--a bowling alley, student clubs, a student-service center, and a food court. Those are all great things, but they seem to all appeal to the same sort of student, one likely to be involved in social events, formalized student leadership, and campus-sponsored organizations. If I've read Kent's ideas accurately, the best sort of student center is a little more eclectic and hosts a broad range of things that are likely to attract all sorts of students.

So, if you were going to redesign your student union (or whatever you call it on your campus), what sorts of things would you make sure were there? Or, if your student center is already this sort of teeming public space, what sorts of things happen there that make it so?

A "Third Place" on campus: What would an academic town hall for freshmen look like?

2010-03-05T16:09:00.000-08:00

I just returned from a meeting with a group of librarians on my campus (as an aside, whatever stereotypical illusions I held about librarians being socially awkward book worms were destoryed in the 90 minutes I spent with them). Our conversation centered on (1) their desire to create a third place space within the library that students can come to when they aren't at home and aren't in class and (2) my department's desire to create a space where freshman students and their mentors can build relationships, work collaboratively, and engage in meaningful dialogue. The concept of third place was pioneered by Ray Oldenburg and, in short, describes a public space where members of a community can come together to dialogue and form bonds.

During the meeting my mind wandered a bit (who hasn't had that happen in an administrative meeting) and I began to think about a recent blog post by Gary Daynes in which he drew connections between universities and cities. In his post Gary describes a number of ways in which cities and universities are similar including power systems, food distribution, and police forces. One element of cities or towns that I see missing from my University (and I would imagine a large number of institutions across the country) is the town square or commons area where members of the community congregate to do what I see as the real work of a city (e.g. share opinions about the health or malaise of the community, make suggestions for improvement, and showcase local products and creations). I've oftened wished I lived in small town USA where this sort of thing happened more regularly.

So, this left me wondering about what an "academic town square," particularly one targeted at first-year students, might look like. My initial thoughts are that those desigining a space like this would need to keep a few things in mind:

1. Comfort. This needs to be a place where students would choose to go when they don't have anything better to do. Part of this is attending to physical comfort--it needs to include comfortable places to sit and to work and should "homey"--but, social comfort would be critical as well. Care needs to be taken in encouraging social equality wherein a diversity of people and ideas are welcome. And, a place to buy inexpensive, high-quality food (think coffe shop/cafe) would help as well.

2. Invitations to collaborate. The physical layout and objects placed in the space need to signal to those who enter it that this is a place where dialogue and group work are not only allowed but expected. That means no desks, very little fixed furniture, and lots of studio-like space where people and congregate and engage in "messy" learning.

3. Opportunities for students to make the space their own. The initial design needs to leave room for students to "move-in" and make it their own. I'm not exactly sure what this would look like, but the space should be living and dynamic such that students can make their mark and create a sense of identity or sense of place there (for an example of what I mean, see this blog post from last summer). This might include showcasing of student work (e.g. art, film, music, writing) and not just course projects or assignments.

4. Central and visible. By definition the town square is the hub of the community, both physically and conceptually. An academic town square needs to be accessible to students and should be highly visible so that students know where it is and can see the work that goes on there even if they don't actively participate. A "lab" tucked away in the basement of a building or the corner of the library will fall flat on its face.

5. Commonly accepted "house rules." Some sort of expectations as to what constitutes appropriate use of the space would need to be developed. I'm not suggesting a placard of rules at the entry to the space like what you find at the neighborhood pool. To be effective the code would need to be developed by those that use the space, not a university committee (or even a committee of students for that matter). I'm not sure what the process would be here, but it seems important (anyone with ideas or suggestions for how this could be organized in an organic, grassroots way?).

Part of me thinks I've outlined an expensive plan for replicating the student union building. But, the other part of me thinks that there is a need for a new space that is different from the student union in critical ways: academic dialogue and deep learning experiences, but in an environment that feels like a student lounge. As I walk through the student center on my campus I see lots of activity and energy but it happens in microbursts--a short conversation in the Taco Bell line, a hurried lunch with friends, stopping in to the Career Center to pick up a brochure, etc. What's missing are sustained dialogues about what students are learning in classes, informal conversations about the recent campus forum, or students arguing about healthcare and pulling up C-SPAN interviews online to illustrate their points.

Am I crazy? Could a space like the one I've described work on a college campus? And, what would it look like if the target population was college freshmen?

How much should we "require" of students?

2010-02-26T15:01:00.000-08:00

Brigham Young University (BYU) recently announced a new and expanded Freshman Mentoring initiative that will provide every incoming freshman with the opportunity to connect with an upperclassmen peer mentor and enroll in two linked university core courses. While most people associated with BYU are very excited about the change, we have encountered some resistance from incoming students and their parents who don't like the idea of being "required" to participate.

My experiences over the last week or so with these students has left me wondering how two principles of learning can peacefully coexist:

(1) Students should have opportunities to make meaningful choices about how and what they are learning and

(2) Universities expect students to engage in selected learning activities because they are believed to lead to desirable outcomes.

So, the question I've been left pondering when I hang up the phone with a frustrated mother is how much an institution can rightfully require their students to do. It is almost universally accepted that institutions can require certain things of students in the way of graduation requirements; however, in most cases these requirements are merely a list of courses that a student must take or a number of curricular requirements that must be fulfilled. There are some institutions who also require students to complete capstone experiences or to create portfolios demonstrating competence in particular learning outcome areas. My first undergraduate institution (Mars Hill College) even required students to attend "chapel hour" 40 times during the course of their four years in order to graduate.

For good or for bad, BYU "requires" very little of students. As long as they fulfill a set of broad general education and religious education requirements, and meet the requirements of their particular program, they can graduate with a degree. This has always bee interesting to me because I often hear high-level administrators praise the merits of captsone-like internships, study-abroad experiences, and mentored learning. I've wondered why, if these things seem to make a difference in student learning, we don't ask all students to participate.

This all begs the question of student volition and how connected it is to how much and how well they learn. Do things like having a mentor, being part of a learning community, or attending weekly devotionals make a difference for all students or just those that choose to participate? And, what happens when we compel, somewhat forcefully, students to participate who might not otherwise? Not surprisingly, mentoring literature from fields outside of higher education suggests that informal mentoring relationships generally lead to positive learning outcomes at a higher rate than assigned relationships. What's more, formal mentoring relationships are prone to becoming dysfunctional and leading to a host of negative outcomes for both mentors and proteges.

It's possible that the resistance my colleagues and I have seen will decrease over time as peer mentoring becomes part of the culture of BYU. But, it's also possible that we've made a terrible mistake by requiring students to participate in the program. Thoughts? When should institutions require things of students? And, how do we make those pills easier to swallow in cases when learners object to the co-curricular things they are asked to do?

Ritual & Community: Does it really matter whether I stop and salute the flag?

2010-01-20T10:11:00.000-08:00

Last Friday when I arrived on campus to start another day of work, I saw something a typical ritual on our campus play out and it left me with some questions. Each morning at about 7:30 a.m. a group of 3 - 4 ROTC students raise a large American flag outside BYU's central administration building. I would imagine that this happens on a number of other campuses each morning as well. What might make BYU's flag-raising unique is that while the flag is raised the outdoor campus sound system (the same system that I'm assuming would be used to alert campus in the event of some wide-spread emergency) plays the U.S. national anthem. At some point this evolved into a ritual of sorts in which anyone walking on campus at that time stops, pauses, and places their hand over their heart as the anthem is played. On Friday morning I arrived at the same time this was all happening, so I stepped outside of my car and paused until the anthem had concluded.

No one really wants to be on campus at 7:30 in the morning on a Friday in January, so there weren't more than a handful of others milling about on campus while this was happening. Virtually everyone that I could see was doing the same thing I was doing (i.e. standing w/ hand over heart and watching the ritual play out). However, I noticed that one student for one reason or another continued walking to whatever destination he had that morning. It was interesting to watch how others reacted to this and, subsequently, how he responded to their glances and (in some cases) frowns. This left me wondering whether or not it mattered that he didn't adhere to the social norm and participate in this simple ritual.

Since coming to work in higher education I have come to appreciate the value that a strong community can add to a collection of learners. So, my initial reaction is that participation in communal processes or events is important. However, the question that I was left with was whether ritual really builds community and what impact participation in campus rituals has on learning. As I thought about this concept over the weekend I had a memory of my high school experience and a particular campus ritual that as far as I can tell never positively impacted the sense of community at the school (and that may have even been detrimental to it).

I attended one of Utah's athletic powerhouse high-schools where football was king. Other than a stellar year at outside linebacker on my 3rd grade flag football team, I never played much football but I was never bothered by the focus that seemed to be placed on the success of Skyline High School's football program. One thing that I did, however, find a little odd during my time there was how upset senior football players would become when another student (usually an unsuspecting sophomore) walked on "the seal." The "seal" was our school seal and had been painted or laid in tile (I can't really remember which) on the floor of one of the hallways in the building that housed the main gym and auditorium. At some point I would imagine that the seal may have represented a core set of values espoused by the high school and avoiding stepping on the seal was a physical act that communicated respect for those ideals. But, by the time I entered Skyline any substantive meaning the seal held had been forgotten and the ritual had been reinterpreted to represent respect for football, problematic because the latter is not a value shared by the community at large (particularly given Skyline's poor track record on the football field in recent years).

So, where does ritual fit in education? For it to work it seems like a couple of key things need to happen:

1. Members of the community need to have some understanding of what the ritual represents or what sorts of meaning are attached to it.

2. The ideals embodied in the ritual should be held by the vast majority of community members.

3. Campus leaders should make periodic references to the ritual and remind community members of its meaning.

4. Efforts should be made to help new members of the community learn about the ritual, its meaning, and how to participate.

This is rough thinking on my part and I'm still not sure if I agree with the thoughts I've articulated here. I'm interested in hearing about what others think. What role does ritual play in education? What does an effective ritual look like? And, what does it mean when a member of the community chooses not to participate (like the student who didn't stop for the flag in my first story above)?

Can good teaching be measured?

2010-01-08T08:07:00.001-08:00

In a great New York Times article on healthcare reform David Leonhardt describes the way in which Intermountain Health Care (IHC) helps increase quality and cut costs. Among this list of best practices is the way in which IHC gathers data on the way in which physicians do their work. Some data describes physician behaviors and other is focused on patient outcomes. This data is reviewed and analyzed rigorously and then used to help physicians improve their practice.

A few hours after reading this article I attended a graduate-level "assessment of learning outcomes" course in BYU's Instructional Psychology & Technology department where the topic of discussion was No Child Left Behind and other federal enactments aimed at increasing the quality of education in the U.S. There was a fairly strong sentiment among those in the room that student achievement should not be as large a factor in determining teacher effectiveness as it currently is.

These two experiences (my reading and class discussion) left me wondering what assessment of teaching should and could look like. It has always been interesting to me that educators want their craft to be viewed as a "viable profession," or a "respected field," but also want accountability to look much different for them than it would for say a car salesman or a doctor. Why is it that we would fire a doctor for letting patients die, but we have a problem with applying the same logic to educators? Please don't misconstrue this as an endorsement of NCLB. I'm just saying that student achievement has to be part of the conversation (I also recognize that the conversation must also include discussion of what aspects of student performance should and should not be measured) and that when a particular educator's students consistently underperform (or overperform for that matter), we should make an effort to find out why. This is what I see IHC doing in their hospitals and clinics and those of us that care about education could learn some lessons from them.

1. Classrooms need to be structed in a way that allows for the collection of meaningful data. By data I don't just mean test scores. We've done that for a long time and, apparently, it isn't making a tremendous difference. What I'm calling for are technology-supported classrooms that allow us to examine what teachers and students do while they are learning and trying to learn. Good online learning environments like the Open High School of Utah (see also the recent SL Tribune article) are structured to gather data on student performance and what practices lead to effective learning. It will be difficult and complex, but we need to find a way to do the same thing in traditional classrooms. This data can then be used to help educate teachers about what they do well and where they can improve. Observations are important, but organizations like IHC have found that objective data improves quality.

2. "Chief quality officers" for schools/districts. Although most school and district administrators care about the quality of teaching, the reality is that the bulk of their time and effort is taken up by other administrative duties. What if there were a quality officer for every school as well as a similar individual for a district whose responsibility it was to ensure that data was collected on teacher performance? These individuals could identify high performing teachers in their local area (which may or may not be those whose students score the highest on standardized tests) and then work to find out what it is that makes them successful (much like what IHC does with their physicians). They would also be responsible for helping, not punishing, underperforming educators to revise their practices.

3. Identification of "teaching protocols" that have been demonstrated to lead to positive outcomes. Because they gather and analyze data so well, IHC knows what dosage of medication generally works best for a heart patient as they return home or what steps should be taken in the insertion of an IV in order to minimize the risk of infection. Of course, there are times when physicians should and do stray from these "defaults," but more often than not the checklist they are provided with is close to exactly what a patient needs and will benefit from. Gary Daynes' recent post on educational checklists convinced me that it wouldn't be unreasonable to develop similar checklists or standard processes for particular parts of the educational system. This, of course, is dependent on our ability to gather data and link particular processes to positive learning outcomes for students (see #1 above). And, like IHC, schools and districts could continue to collect data so that the checklists can be revised and refined as new information becomes available.

As I write this I am realizing that I'm echoing a refrain that I've made on this blog before--schools need to be learning organizations that change and adapt over time. We expect this of students. . .why don't we follow suit?

Learning as story-telling

2009-12-18T07:43:00.000-08:00

I listened to a great talk this week by Patrick Parrish, an instructional designer with the COMET project. His topic was "engagement" and he presented a model of layered engagement. For me, the most interesting part of the talk was Parrish's remarks about the "aesthetics of engagement" and the need for instructional designers, faculty members, and anyone who cares about learning to consider the aspects of learning associated with emotion, passion, and love. Parrish suggests that we see learning through the lens of story or narrative. That idea resonated with me and I got to thinking about what elements of good story-telling could apply to creating meaningful learning experiences.

In The Hero with a Thousand Faces Joseph Campbell identified a pattern that all good stories seem to follow in some way or another. When we read, watch, or hear these stories we like them because they take us on a journey that we can relate to and that creates an emotional response for us. This has some interesting implications for learning. What would a learning experience based on some of these same principles look like?

1. Learning would be built around a challenge, problem, or key question. The best kind of learning engages learners in a quest of sorts in which they become immersed in developing a solution to a problem, answering a fundamental question, or creating some sort of meaningful learning artifact. This practice would also engage faculty members in the meaningful activity of distilling their course down to key questions, issues, or objectives and help them connect the often disparate parts of their course (week 1's lecture, next week's exam, the final project, etc.).

Campbell described this part of a narrative as the "call to adventure" implying that some sort of invitation is extended to the hero. It would be interesting for educators to think about this principle and ask themselves "How can I invite or entice students to engage in meaningful learning this semester?" or "What do I do when learners resist the initial invitation?". It also occurred to me that this call to action might occasionally include creating some sort of discomfort or cognitive dissonance for the learner that nudges them into action.

2. Great Mentoring. Good stories usually include some sort of mentor or guide (think Yoda or Rocky's trainer Mickey). Meaningful learning experiences, while shifting the responsibility for learning on to the student, don't leave them helpless. The mentor could be a faculty member, but not in every case. Mentoring could also be provided by other students with particular skill sets or expertise or learners could also be connected with mentors outside of the class (either face-to-face or electronically) that could help drive deeper learning. I have seen this done extremely well in a Microcomputer Design course on my campus where students each select a project to work on at the beginning of the semester and then spend the next 15 weeks building a network of mentors including classmates, faculty from the department, and outside consultants. This group becomes like a learning team that helps the student address challenges in their design, learn new skills along the way, and test their ideas.

3. Discomfort, trials, or "ordeals." This shouldn't be misconstrued to mean ridiculously challenging exams or any of the other sadistic things that sometimes happen in higher education. But, if learning is a narrative and good stories involve pain or discomfort then some of our attempts to "satisfy" or "please" (think about the last student rating evaluation you looked at) learners could be misguided (see this article on learning styles that suggests that enjoyment doesn't always mean that the best learning has occurred). While learning should be fulfilling and meaingful, it may not always be entertaining or pain-free. Allowing learners to struggle with concepts, work through initial failures, or having high expecations isn't a bad thing as long as students feel supported and can see that their "ordeal" will eventually lead them somewhere they want to be.

4. Reward or "Elixir." In a story this might be some sort of tangible object or symbol. In education these might be the solutions or artifacts. Even more importantly it could be the lessons learned or knowledge gained. The key is creating opportunities that allow students to figure out what they have gained through their learning experience. This could be a portfolio, a personal reflection about what they have learned or how they have changed, or an opportunity to showcase or highlight their learning. Campbell argues that this "elixir" is generally something with use or benefit either to the individual hero or to the community at large. That idea suggests that part of our role as educators is helping students step back from their learning and consider how what they have learned matters or what use it may have in the future. A week ago I would have suggested a final presentation as one way of doing this, but my friend Gary Dayne's recent blog posting on the problems with final presentations has made me rethink that. As Gary points out the problem with presentations is that they don't allow students to demonstrate their learning in a meaningful context. Good learning journeys will end with contextual demonstrations of learning. This could be as simple as Q & A sessions or something more complex. But, the point is to find a way for (1) learners to demonstrate to themselves that they have learned something (which a 5 minute presentation generally doesn't do) and (2) to provide the rest of the class with a showcase of good learning. In some cases this might mean a final challenge or trial that asks students to bring what they've learned to bear on a new problem or situation.

I saw a lot of these principles at work in a class that was taught in my department this semester. The course was a freshman seminar (UNIV 101) course, but it was unique in a fundamental way. Rather than a traditional student success course where students have a lecture each week on time management, test preparation, working in groups, etc. the course attempted to help students learn useful skills and principles by working on a project--building a set of loudspeakers. The challenge was pretty clear, build a functioning set of loudspeakers from scratch, but I saw the other principles demonstrated as well. There was a great mentor (the faculty member) who spent significant amounts of time consulting with teams on their design and helping them work through problems that arose. Students talked about the pain and frustration that came with the project. And, the last day of class was a tradeshow of sorts where they demo'd their speakers, answered questions about their design, and shared the "lessons learned" from the project. It was a little messy, frustrating for students & the instructor at times, and probably didn't address all of the transitional issues that some freshman seminars might. But, as I listened to and watched the students on the last day it was obvious that they had the sort of "aesthetic" experience Parrish describes. They had accomplished something challenging and meaningful, had learned lessons that could be applied across their university experience, and they were smiling at the end of it all. Those all seemed like good things to me.

Policy-making is not problem-solving

2009-12-04T08:45:00.000-08:00

Just before the Thanksgiving break I attended a meeting of associate deans as a substitute for my direct supervisor who was out of town. I realized that, as a "replacement player" my wisest course of action during the meeting was to sit back and just observe, so that's what I did. The day's topic of discussion was the time-to-graduation issue wherein BYU students are taking longer to graduate than we would like them to. This seemed like a fair issue to address because we want to make a BYU education accessible to as many students as possible. And, if a student stays for 6 extra semesters, that means denying admission to another student during that time.

I'll give you some key pieces of information in the hopes that you'll start to develop your own solution, then I'll tell you what actually happened.

Fact #1: The largest contributor to extended stays at the university was determined to be course repeats. Simply put, students are taking one or more classes multiple times. That means they're here longer.

Fact #2: The vast majority of students who repeat courses do so because they have earned a failing grade.

Fact #3: The most commonly repeated courses are introductory level courses that are part of the university core (that's code for gen. ed.) program.

Fact #4: Of the 20 most commonly repeated courses, 11 fall within three academic departments (4 in department A, 4 in department B, and 3 in department C).

So, what do you think? How would you go about addressing the situation given these scraps of data? I'm not naive enough anymore to think that there is a single solution or magic bullet for something like this. But, as I sat listening to the conversation play out I was a little amazed at one thing that was never mentioned: how do we help students be more successful so they don't repeat courses?

Rather, the rest of the 90 minute discussion focused on policies that could be enacted that would either punish students for repeating a course or deter them from making that decision in the first place (a limit on the number of courses that can be repeated, averaging all of the grades for a given course rather than awarding the highest grade, extending the withdrawal policy so that a student has more time to pull out of a class if it looks like they're going to fail, etc.). What I observed was an attempt to problem solve through policy-making. I attended a meeting of academic advisors yesterday and the same issue was discussed and, again, everyone wanted a policy and "something in the catalog" so they could have "back up" when they tell a student they can't repeat a course or can't add a 3rd minor.

This left me wondering whether policy-making is always the best way to solve problems. Such a response is common because it is quick and dirty. In our minds we see the scenario playing out something like this: If we implement the policy, students will get it, follow it, and these problems will go away. But too often policies mask the problem and have only superficial influence on the underlying issue.

This seems both cowardly and misguided. It removes from us the responsibility of both improving instruction and working to help students understand what their responsibility is as members of a community of learners. Essentially, this issue of course repeats boils down to human beings and the way they behave. Whether it is faculty members doing a poor job of teaching or students who aren't taking their studies as seriously as they should (my hunch is that it's some of both) a policy won't change those things, only mask their visible consequences.

At some point administering programs has to move from back-door policy making to relationship-based problem solving that makes positive changes in thinking and behavior.