Pseudoteaching, pseudoengagement, and the dangers of equating teaching with performing

One of the best books I've read in the last 10 years was written by Dan Coyle, whose blog is also one of mymost recent post, Coyle discusses the concept of pseudoteaching, which I would define as high-energy and quite often entertaining teaching that looks impressive, but that leads to very little learning for students.  Coyle links to a great post from +Frank Noschese that explores the concept in more depth and provides two contrasting cases that further illustrate the difference between pseudoteaching and "real teaching."  If you have six minutes, watch them both below.
favorites to follow.  In his


#1 -- Pseudoteaching Example
Pay attention to

• How animated the teacher is
• How entertaining he is
• How much students seem to be enjoying the demonstrations
• Who is doing the talking

#2 -- "Real Teaching" Example
Pay attention to

• Who is doing the talking
• Differences in the looks on students faces (as compared to the pseudoteaching example)
• What the teacher is doing

See the differences?

The typical narrative of "good teaching," (especially in popular media) is nearly always aligned with what you see from Walter Lewin, the physics teacher in the first clip.  It's characterized by energy, excitement, smiling and laughing students, and a teacher with a big personality.  This is the cover story of good teaching that Hollywood, booksellers, and the general public likes to believe.  But, there is a more subtle narrative beneath this type of teaching.  Look again at the physics teacher and the way he views his role.  He proudly boasts of "rehearsing" each of his lectures to empty classrooms, two to three times before teaching them.  Consider what this means.  His role is to "perform" and this performance is the same regardless of whether he's "teaching" an empty lecture hall or one full of laughing students.  

Now, in contrast, consider the example from Cary Academy.  First, the teacher is noticeably absent from the clip, except for when he's being interviewed.  Instead of being focused on what the teacher is doing, this classroom is all about what the students are doing, which is engaging with challenging, real-world problems.  The news clip suggests that students are engaging in demonstrations and experiments, but the key difference here is that the students themselves are engaging in those activities (rather than watching a "performer" conduct them at the front of the classroom).  Even more telling is Dr. Matt Greenwolfe's description of his role which is to "create experiences for the students."  Rather than rehearsing what he'll be saying and doing (like Lewin from the prior clip), Greenwolfe spends his time planning experiences that his students can have themselves.  It's much less flashy (and so is Greenwolfe), but engages students as active participants in their learning, rather than passive observers.

This gets at another misunderstood term from the educational landscape--engagement.  Just as pseudoteaching is often confused with "real teaching," its companion pitfall is pseudoengagement.  The average citizen (meaning, someone with no formal training or background in education) sees the MIT physics clip and mistakenly assumes that students in those large lecture halls are engaged.  After all, they are smiling, laughing, and paying attention to the teacher.  In short, they're being entertained.  But engagement is not entertainment.  

Surprisingly, "real" engagement looks very different than the students we see in the MIT case.  If you really want to see it, watch the Cary Academy clip again and pay attention to the looks on the students faces.  No smiles, no laughter, no real indication that they're even enjoying themselves.  Instead, there is a look of concentration, focus, and even struggle or frustration.  And, that's what the best kind of engagement looks like.  Instead of looking like they're watching a movie (which Lewin's lectures might as well be taped performances), they look like they're at work, which is the whole point.  

Learning is work.  And, by extension, teaching involves providing environments and experiences that invite learners to engage in work.  In contrast, "performers" entertain and expect very little from their "audiences" other than laughs and applause.  Likewise, engagement is not entertainment (though it can be entertaining, but not in the same way watching a performance is).  

When we move from pseudoteaching to real teaching, and pseudoengagement to real engagement, not only do students have a more meaningful experience, but quantitative outcomes improve as well.  Case in point, Lewin's "entertaining" physics classes resulted in a drop in lecture attendance, as well as increased failure rates.  Greenwolfe's authentically engaging classes led to significant improvements in AP test performance.

For educators, our role is to help others understand these distinctions, which includes students, parents, other teachers, policy-makers, and legislators.  If we can't reframe the narrative on good teaching and real engagement, we're setting ourselves all up for failure.  Pseudoteaching and pseudoengagement are a little like educational pornography (which I've written about before here)--they serve as counterfeits to the real teaching and learning we hope happens in schools.  And, until we recognize and replace these counterfeits in conversations about education, we won't make much progress.

The John Swallow Resignation: Mistakes were made (but not by me)

This morning, the Salt Lake Tribune reported on what I think is one of the most interesting types of social phenomena we observe in our modern society--the resignation of a high-ranking official in the wake of accusations of misconduct.  The state of Utah breathed a sigh of collective relief this morning at the news that State Attorney General, John Swallow, is resigning from office after only 10 months on the job.


Regardless of where you sit politically or feel about Swallow personally, the breadth and quantity of the accusations levied against him make it difficult not to question his ethics.  There were claims of facilitating bribes, promises of preferential treatment to various individuals and businesses, questions of extortion, and issues relating to the receipt of improper gifts.  And, there was also talk of possible campaign violations in his most recent election.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I lean democrat and thought Swallow was a bit shady long before he was elected (indeed, the SL Tribune's endorsement of his challenger looks pretty prescient at this point).  But, those biases aside, 88% of the rest of our heavily conservative state was less than pleased with him as evidenced by his most recent approval rating, so it's hard to argue that this has all been driven purely by party politics.  Additionally, members of his own party (including the Governor) had done very little to impede the House investigation into the accusations at the center of the controversy.

The almost unbelievable part of this story for me has been Swallow's continued unwillingness to acknowledge  any degree of carelessness, naivete, or unprofessionalism, to say nothing of guilt or unethical behavior. This statement sums up Swallow's stance quite well:

"I maintain my innocence of all allegations and I want you to think for a minute what that means," he added. "If I truly am innocent, as I claim I am, then today is truly a sad day in Utah, because an election has been overturned."

It sounds a bit like Henry Kissinger's response to charges he committed war crimes during the Vietnam era ("Mistakes were quite possibly made by the administrations in which I served."), except that Swallow isn't just pointing the finger at his colleagues, he's denying wrongdoing from anyone in his circle.  His statement "I want you to think for a minute" seems to suggest that the collective citizenry of Utah has made the mistake by "overturning an election."

We may not ever know if Swallow is really guilty of what he's been accused.  But, if he's not guilty, he's either incredibly naive or just plain stupid to have allowed himself to become entangled in so many questionable practices.  So, one way or another, he's made mistakes (I made a similar argument about 18 months ago in a post about athletic scandals).  At this point he'd do well to consider Lao Tzu's  sage advice:

A great nation is like a great man: When he makes a mistake, he realizes it. Having realized it, he admits it. Having admitted it, he corrects it. He considers those who point out his faults as his most benevolent teachers.

One way or another, mistakes were made, and not just by everyone outside of the Swallow camp.  

(Mis)Education and Experience: Two examples grounded in the work of John Dewey

Recently, I've been re-reading John Dewey's seminal work Experience and Education.  It's not an easy read (though it's short), but it's a must-read for anyone who believes that education is about more than transmitting information.  The core of Dewey's argument is that all genuine learning comes about through experience; however, not all experience is equally educative.  He differentiates between educative experience, which expands a learners opportunities for learning and growth in the future; and miseducative experience, which stops or distorts future growth and learning.

I came across two cases this week that are great examples of each of these categories of experience.

First, the miseducative experience from the German school system.  There are 4 million muslims living in Germany, which has led German government and school officials to look for ways to integrate German-Muslims into communities, while still respecting their religious beliefs.  The most recent case has centered on required swimming lessons in German schools and has received a fair amount of international media attention.  At the heart of the buzz is a German court's ruling that Muslim girls must take part in co-educational swimming lessons as part of their educational experience, but will be allowed to wear burqinis.  There are two issues associated with the case--modesty and male-female interactions.  The modesty issue has largely been addressed through allowing Muslim girls to wear burqinis.  However, the plaintiff in the case, a Muslim teenage girl and her parents, claim that requiring her to participate in swim classes with other young men runs counter to their religious beliefs and practices.

German schools clearly believe that swimming is a fundamental skill that all German students should master.  This seems sound and, at some level, the court's ruling makes sense.  If they were to grant exemptions to this requirement for particular students, they would be neglecting their obligation to educate all students.  However, this is faulty logic, and here's why.

The ultimate goal of educational experience is to facilitate and encourage future experience (see Dewey's definition of educative experience).  It's probably safe to assume that the basic swimming instruction German student's receive isn't enough to make them master swimmers.  Instead, it's purpose is to equip students with basic levels of competence and also encourage them to participate in recreational swimming outside of school.  It's a sound approach (and one educators apply in all sorts of other disciplines).  But, the German court's decision is likely to have the opposite effect.  By forcing Muslim girls to swim, they will ensure that these girls will swim for the few hours a week they are required (during the few months when they are in the class).  But, this forced participation is also likely to turn Muslim girls off to swimming in the future.  And, in that way, this will become a miseducative experience  because it is likely to inhibit these students' learning and growth as future swimmers.  In this case, the court has forgotten that the swimming lessons offered in schools are the means to an end.

Now, the educative experience from a pretty unlikely source--a grassroots movement to end street harassment toward women.  Essentially, +Emily May and the Hollaback movement she started invites women to use their smartphones to document, map, and share incidents of street harassment with a worldwide internet community.  It's a really clever idea that uses technology, social networks, and social pressure to fight back agains a pretty ugly trend.  And, it invites and empowers women to participate in an experience that meets both Dewey's requirements for educative experience.  First, it attends to the criterion of continuity because it positively impacts the future experience of both the women who participate as well as the men they are "hollabacking" at.  Women who share or read stories of fighting back against street harassment are likely to be more empowered and skilled in doing so in the future (which would then provide additional experiences and learning opportunities)
.  And, the men who they are responding to are likely to think twice before making similar comments in the future.  Second, Hollaback has provided meaningful opportunities for interaction through its platform because it allows women to share and hear one another's stories in ways that lead to learning.  So, in addition to Hollaback being termed a "movement," it might also be characterized as an educative experience.  From this standpoint, Hollaback is fulfilling the role of an educator to provide, design, order, or facilitate an experience that leads to long-term and meaningful growth.

My point here is that, when it comes to issues of learning and the types of experiences educators should provide, it's important to consider long-term outcomes and how educational experiences and environments can be designed to not only ensure that learners "do what they're supposed to" in the short term (the German example), but that the experience we've provided has the potential to lead to additional learning and growth in the future.

Legitimate Peripheral Participation: A new lens for viewing the first year of higher education

At the outset, let me say that I'm a theoretical and philosophical nerd.  I like to read about theory and educational philosophies because they're just plain interesting and they lead me to see educational experiences differently, which I enjoy.  That said, my strong stance is that, without a theoretical foundation, those who design and order educational experiences (whether that is in a classroom, a home, a playing field, or music hall) aren't nearly as intentional and impactful as they can be when they are operating from a clear set of theoretical or philosophical principles.  Steve Yanchar, a faculty member in the Department of Instructional Psychology and Technology at BYU, has written very eloquently and persuasively about this idea here.

So, with that roundabout disclaimer for any theory-averse readers, here goes.

One of the most interesting theoretical frameworks for describing and understanding learning that I've come across is Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger's notion of Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP).  To really understand the theory, you'll need to read their book.  But, for the sake of this post and your time, here are the main ideas.

• Learning isn't merely knowledge or skill acquisition; rather, learning is the process of becoming increasingly skilled in the practices and discourses of a particular community of practice.  This means that "learning" is situated in particular contexts, activities, and social groups.  For example, learning to be a nurse isn't just understanding what to call particular body parts or how to give an injection (though this knowledge and skill is part of the process).  Instead, learning to be a nurse involves learning to think, act, and talk like expert nurses do.  Ultimately, it is a way of being that subsumes a whole constellation of knowledge, skill, and values.  So, learning is the process of becoming like the experts or "old-timers" that are part of an already existing community.
• In order to learn or become in these ways, a novice or newcomer needs to have access to the practices of the community.  So, that means being around old-timers, hearing the stories they tell, the way they describe problems, and seeing the way they do their work (whether that's making hamburgers at McDonald's, working on stopped up toilets, or writing academic articles).
• Learners also need opportunities to participate in legitimate and peripheral activities within the community and with other community members.  Lave and Wenger use the example of apprentice Vai and Gola Tailors in West Africa, who learn to be master tailors, first by hemming cuffs and attaching buttons to already finished articles.  From there they move on to increasingly complex tasks, all of which are integral to the overall process of tailoring an entire piece of clothing.  By participating in these practices, they don't just learn how to tailor, but learn what it means to be a tailor, with all of the complexities that come with that craft.  All three principles (participation, legitimacy, and peripherality) are key here because if any of these conditions isn't met, learning isn't likely to occur.  For example, if a tailor isn't performing a legitimate aspect of the tailoring process (e.g. distributing handbills in a public square to generate more business) or one that is peripheral (e.g. working in a setting completely disconnected or isolated from the master tailors), he or she isn't likely to master the knowledge, skills, discourse, or tools necessary to be a good tailor.  Rather, the "learning" will be fragmented and artificial.

There's much more that could be said about LPP, but that should be enough to provide a basic overview of the theory.  

Given the work I do with first-year students on my campus, my question is how LPP might inform the way we welcome, orient, and "teach" students during their first year.  Here are a few thoughts:

1.  First-Year Experience programs should be built around meaningful tasks.  Although there are certainly things that we want first-year students to know and be able to do by the time they finish their initial year on campus, talking at students about these things (whether it is in new student orientation, in a freshman seminar course, or any other formal setting) isn't likely to lead to any real learning or growth.  Instead, we should be identifying a series of developmental tasks that students can be invited (or better yet, expected or required) to participate in during their first two semesters.  And, no, I don't just mean coming up with a list of courses.  Thoughtful FYE administrators will consider what the practices and behaviours of "expert students" are and structure FYE tasks/objectives around these things.

2.   First-year students should be provided with a comprehensive view of the mission and purposes of their particular mission from the very beginning of their experience.  In West African tailor shops this happens through the early tasks novice tailors are asked to complete.  It's very simple, by working with finished garments that have been tailored by master's, newcomers develop a good sense very early on of what a quality finished garment should look and feel like.  And, having that comprehensive understanding helps guide and focus their learning as they move through other tasks.  For a first-year experience program this can and should happen at New Student Orientation.  I've written before about how this could happen during an Orientation Convocation, but there are other, more active ways to give students this perspective as well.  One that was suggested on my campus by one of the administrators involved in orientation was to invite second semester students to serve as orientation leaders.  At first this seems risky, after all, how much can a second semester student really know about campus or about what new students need to know.  But, there is an intriguing idea here in that expecting second semester students to convey institutional messages and model effective student habits for their peers might speed up their development.  By expecting nearly new students to help to orient and support even newer students, we provide them with a meaningful opportunity to embrace and internalize a set of beliefs and practices that are important for their success.  And, by involving them in these ways, we involve them in an important aspect of our work (legitimate peripheral participation).  Similarly, any opportunities for new students to mentor, tutor, or advise their peers (even if that is in a simple setting like a study group) can move forward their growth, again, because they are participating in the work of the institution in meaningful ways.

3.  First-year students should have access to "old-timers."  This could mean anything from experienced students, to faculty members, to administrators or staff members.  The key idea is to structure the first-year in ways that provide opportunities for these interactions.  As a non-example, consider the practice of packing new students into large lecture halls for "survey" or "intro" classes.  Not only is this generally a poor way to learn, it provides little to no opportunities for students to have meaningful interactions with a faculty member.  In contrast, small seminars, employment and research opportunities, and mandatory advising facilitate these types of interactions where new students can learn by watching, talking, and participating with more seasoned members of the campus community.

Ultimately, the goal of the first-year experience should be to invite new students to become full participants in the campus community by structuring their experiences and interactions in ways that allow them to actually participate in those practices.  And that can extend well beyond the realm of traditional academics, to the arts, meaningful service, and anything else that a particular campus might value.

Why we should teach them to be wrong: Embracing amateurism in the first year of college

. . . the rewards and refreshments of thought and the arts come from the courage to try something, all sorts of things, for the first time.  These first-time adventures are the spice of life. An enamored amateur need not be a genius to stay out of ruts he has never been trained in."    -Daniel Boorstin, "The Amateur Spirit"

At the advice of a recent TED Talk speaker, I have toyed around with the practice of comparative reading, which is just an academic's term for reading two books in tandem and then drawing connections and comparisons across the two of them.  It's not an earth-shattering idea and most good readers (particularly those who read a lot) do this naturally across the books they read.  That said, my recent efforts to consciously consider  the interconnectedness of two books I have been reading (Spark: How creativity works and Being Wrong: Adventures in the margin of error) has been really useful.  

In the foreward to Spark, +Kurt Andersen  (the host of Studio 360) describes how embracing an "amateur spirit" has enabled him to take on projects he wasn't "qualified" for, reject the fear of failure, and take the risks necessary to be a truly creative person. In the remainder of the book, +Julie Burstein shares a series of stories from the lives of various creative artists and thinkers that illustrate how important this "amateurism" is for creative people.  In Being Wrong, Kathryn Schulz argues for the value of the experience of "being wrong" in our lives in terms of both learning and aesthetics.  Essentially, her message is that we are wrong about being wrong.  Rather than being a sign of inferiority, evidence of ineptitude, or something to be ashamed of, being wrong is tied to our ability to feel empathy, think creatively, and be optimistic.  Ultimately, being wrong is what positions us to learn and change.

Andersen's ideas about being an amateur and Schulz' thoughts about error seem intricately linked.  What's more, the interweaving of these two ideas has huge implications for the way institutions engage first-year students.  New college students display the cardinal signs of error aversion:  when mistakes happen they ignore them, deny them, pretend they don't care, or most commonly blame someone else (particularly roommates and faculty members. I even heard a story last week in which a student had blamed missing an exam on his bed--and he was deadly serious when he offered up this explanation.  I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I heard it).  While this resistance to admitting error or the need for improvement can be frustrating for those of us who work with students, of more importance is the impact this attitude has on learning.  A student who can't be wrong, can't try new things, accept feedback, change plans, or break bad study habits.  So, as much as we would like for students to "be right," we would be wise to shelf that desire in exchange for an effort to help students embrace the curious, excited, and even reckless spirit that comes from the feeling that one is an amateur, which means being wrong early, often, and in spectacular ways.  Students who adopt this mindset will approach their experience on our campuses in wholly new ways.   

Fully acknowledging the reality that any or all of the thoughts in this post are likely to be wrong, here are a few concrete ways institutions can structure the first-year experience to help students fully embrace amateurism:

1.  Ask for stories of being wrong in the admissions process. Whether it is in application essays or on-campus interviews, applicants should be asked to tell and make meaning of their own stories of being wrong.  These stories are likely to be helpful in both evaluating emotional maturity, humility, and openness to learning, the mere act of asking for these stories implies to applicants that "at State U. we value and learn from our mistakes."  Students aren't likely to pick up on this message initially, but it will be one of the threads that will eventually come together to help them understand that the very best learners are those who have been wrong, a lot.

2.  Make stories of risk, error, and uncertainty a prominent part of New Student Orientation.  Orientation speakers could tell stories (particularly from their own first year of college) that highlight the inevitability, value, and even joy of being wrong.  Similarly, peer orientation leaders are positioned to make a tremendous impression upon new students by sharing similar narratives of how taking appropriate risks and seeking challenges have enhanced their college experience.  

3.  Make risk and failure inevitable by building challenging courses into a required first-year curriculum.  Occasionally, students avoid the danger of being wrong by making strategic registration decisions (e.g. a full schedule of PE, art, and pass/fail student leadership courses).  In these cases, students do not become accustomed the rigors of challenging academic work and are eventually blindsided by difficult courses they put off until their second, third, or fourth semester.  By requiring, for instance, a challenging first-year writing course that involves heavy doses of feedback, institutions can quickly acclimate students to a culture of learning from mistakes and embracing vulnerability.

4.  Provide highly visible and accessible support through campus resources, particularly peer leaders.  Challenging students and having high expectations is fine, so long as support systems are in place for students who struggle (which is hopefully all of them to some extent or another).  Help labs, counseling centers, library support, writing centers, etc. should not only be available, but be integrated into first-year coursework so that they become a natural and inevitable part of the student experience.  Peer leaders (e.g. peer mentors in first-year seminars, peer advisors, resident assistants, etc.) can serve a valuable role by connecting students with these resources as well as engaging them in dialogue about their "failures" and "mistakes."  These conversations might be more powerful than anything else that might happen during a student's experience.  While faculty members and professional advisors can serve a similar role, there is a power in peer conversations for promoting reflection and change.

5.  Make institutional mistakes public and model how to be wrong in graceful, growth-promoting ways.  This final point isn't just relevant for first-year students, but for an institution's messaging for any member of the campus community.  When mistakes are made, institutions are presented with a priceless opportunity to demonstrate the value of this kind of experience by being transparent, learning from the miscue, and celebrating those who fully engage in this process and the improvements that result.  This doesn't mean being reckless and apathetic, but honestly recognizing shortcomings and then working (very publicly) to change.  Additionally, taking on a spirit of amateurism by experimenting with innovations and piloting new initiatives, even when it means risking "failure" and critique, shows students that being in a learning community means going out on a limb at times.

It's a bit ironic that much of what we do on college campuses is aimed at developing expertise (thereby extinguishing amateurism) and eliminating error (think of the last study from the hard sciences you read, particularly the methods section).  If we're really about learning and growing, we might be better off if we were wrong a little more often and allowed ourselves to be amateurs again.

                               

On Intentionality: An argument against hoping good things will happen

"Unless the students' experience of classes is connected, it is trivialized. Any course that isn't part of a larger journey is a dead end."

This comes from one of the best books on higher education that I have read in the last decade, The Learning Paradigm College, by John Tagg. It represents what I believe to be the biggest failing of higher education, which is our consistent inability to provide a cohesive, holistic experience that, taken together, actually means something for students. If you haven't read Tagg's book, you should.  And, if you think you don't have time or that the $9.69 it will cost you to buy it used on Amazon is too steep a price, at least read the seminal article upon which the book is based.

Given my frustrations with the problem of fragmentation that pervades higher education, I was ecstatic to hear about my own institutions efforts to provide our students with an alternative approach to their general education.  As I listened to our Associate Dean for General Education describe this new "mosaic" approach to general education, I had to pinch myself a few times. What she was describing seemed nearly identical to what I had dreamed about for some time. General education courses would be grouped thematically. Students would be invited to select a mosaic that provided a series of linked courses, all exploring a larger theme or issue. There were options that aligned with particular courses of study, as well as more general mosaics that could complement nearly any degree program. And, most importantly, it seemed aimed at providing students with an integrated experience that could connect with their interests and future goals. But, the longer I listened, the more I started hearing what became a very troubling phrase: "We hope. . . ."

Let me be clear, there are lots of things for which I hope. I hope my March Madness bracket doesn't get any worse than it did last night. I hope it will stop snowing outside my office so I can walk across campus to the Education in Zion Gallery. I hope my daughters will fall asleep early tonight, so I can spend quiet time with my wife. And, I hope that both of those daughters will become more and more excited about learning as they grow and eventually want a college education.  Hope is great.  But, only if it moves someone to action and becomes an incentive for making intentional decisions that increase the likelihood that the hope will be fulfilled. Without intentionality and action, hope is empty.  What's more, empty hope inevitably leads to the discouragement and frustration that come with unfulfilled hopes. And, as I sat listening to the presentation on BYU's new general education mosaics, I saw us headed down that path.

Theoretically, the notion of mosaics seems sound. After all, if the problem is that students aren't connecting their learning across courses, the solution is to connect the courses for them, right? If we map out those connections and then tell students to take, for example, "Environmental Biology," "Introduction to Human Geography," "Theories of Human Freedom," and "Current Social Problems," they will have completed the "Human Dignity" mosaic and have had a connected experience. Right?  Well, what I found out during part two of the meeting was that we hope this happens. While the mosaic initiative sounded great on the surface, it turns out the proposal is to do nothing more than provide students with a webpage that shows how various courses are connected around loose themes. No culminating or integrative academic experience. No collaboration among faculty members. No invitations to students to demonstrate that they have had the type of integrative experience we hope for.  The moment in the meeting that was, simultaneously, laughable and unbearingly frustrating was when the presenter was asked how many students she thought might take advantage of this opportunity (My guess is next to none because central administration has, in an incredibly curious move, barred the sending of any formal communication to students about this new initiative. Instead, the hope is that students will find their way to the obscure website I linked to above, be fortunate enough to take the initiative to meet with an academic advisor who happens to be aware of and endorse the mosaics, or be told about mosaics by one of the 13 students who meet the previous two criteria).  The response to the question: "We're really not sure how many students will take this route.  But, we hope that even for those who don't, just thinking about the possibility of making these connections will make GE more meaningful for them." Cue unicorns, money descending from the sky, and raucous laughter at our foolishness.

This assumption that grouping courses thematically and attaching a hip name to these categories will fundamentally change the experience of students flows from what Tagg has described as the Instruction Paradigm.  From this perspective, the business of colleges is to offer instruction and "learning" is then operationally defined as teaching classes. You see this at the core of my campus's mosaics: "If we offer the right courses (hopefully the same courses, so it doesn't disrupt things too much) and then point out that they are "connected," students will the make the connections and have an integrative experience.  Lots of empty hope, without any intentionality or strategic thought about the process of learning.

In contrast, Tagg's Learning Paradigm defines a "curriculum" as being about what students learn, not what teachers teach or what courses are offered:

The curriculum should be the institution's systematic plan for what and how students learn (emphasis added). The guiding principle in restructuring curriculum should be that the whole is more important than the parts. Individual courses are of trivial importance. What matters in terms of the students' whole experience is how courses--or other learning experiences--fit together. Colleges should seek to create a curriculum that leads somewhere rather than spinning in an infinite variety of nonintersecting circles. A curriculum should not be a list of classes; it should be a description of learning outcomes. (The Learning Paradigm College, Tagg, p. 326).

The problem with BYU's mosaics is that they are still built around individual courses.  We're still operating from the Instructional Paradigm. Until there is a fundamental change in perspective away from trying to recycle worn out tiles (i.e. courses) to cobble together a poorly looking mosaic (general education), we'll still be providing a fragmented experience for students. Instead, what BYU (and a lot of other institutions) needs is to stop thinking about courses and start thinking about learning. There are at least two fatal flaws in BYU's current mosaic program. First, there has been no attempt to show students where we want them to end up, which is to say that we haven't developed any clear and understandable descriptions of the outcomes for the mosaics (rubrics, video recorded interviews with students who have achieved these aims, and other multi-media descriptions of this type of learning would be a great start). Second, we haven't designed any learning experiences or environmental features that encourage integration across the courses that make up a mosaic (e.g. capstone experiences, assignments or projects that span across courses, faculty collaborations, reflective or integrative writing assignments).

To hope is not enough. Institutions have a responsibility to design and structure both experiences and environments that move beyond hope and into the realm of intentionality and action.

The best kind of colleague

One of my favorite collegial pairs, partly because I'm a descendant
 of the actual Butch Cassidy (aka Robert Leroy Parker).

“A good definition is almost impossible, but you know one when you see one. The connection is almost immediate.You know it's going to be a good day because you will be seeing that colleague.”                                                                         

-Anonymous



This morning, in her "A Kinder Campus" column that regularly runs in Inside Higher Ed, +Maria Shine Stewart posed the question "What makes a good colleague?" The column is thoughtful, well-written, and inspiring--well worth the five minutes or so it took me to read it.  And, it invited me to reflect on what kind of colleague I am.  This assertion, from one of the colleagues Stewart interviewed for the piece, was particularly thought-provoking for me: a colleague is someone who listens and helps a peer when it would be easier just to focus on his or her own responsibilities." Far too often, I'm guilty of becoming wrapped up in my own to-do list or project and forgetting about or even consciously avoiding interactions with others so that I can be more "productive." My department (and my own soul) will be kinder when I finally kick that habit that has crept into my work over the last few years (I rationalize by blaming it on becoming absorbed in my doctoral study, which is probably a factor, but clearly not the only culprit).

In reflecting on Stewart's column and her description of collegial relationships, I recalled a Christmas gift I received over the break that initially only struck me as incredibly thoughtful, but which upon further thought seems to represent the best kind of colleague I could ask for.

My friend +Drake Allsop ordered me a copy of Dan Pink's newly released book (To Sell is Human) and had it delivered four days before it was even available in bookstores.  For someone like me who loves to read, loves social science-esque books, and is a fan of Dan Pink, it was a pretty cool gift to receive.  In that respect, it was the type of gift I might have received from any of a number of friends and family who know those things about me.  But, because of my relationship with Drake, the experiences we had when we worked together at BYU, and some subtle things he did in the giving of the gift, it was a uniquely collegial.  Let me explain.

To begin with, Drake was a student who worked for me in BYU's +BYU Office of First-Year Experience.  Consequently, our relationship should have been dictated by the traditional employer-employee norms, with me as the authoritative supervisor and him as the student who followed directions and did his work (a far cry from collegiality).  However, Drake very quickly became much more of a colleague because he engaged with me in ways that few other students have.  He read what I read, initiated enlightening conversations with me about academic ideas, challenged me when my thinking was off or he saw that I could make some kind of improvement (I'll never forget the day he told me my presentation slides for an upcoming conference were pretty boring--it's true they were and the revised slides were much better), and became a partner with me in my learning.  We also laughed raucously and irreverently almost every day we worked together, which I've found goes a long way towards building a relationship.  

I see a lot of the best parts of my relationships with good colleagues represented in Drake's gift.



1.  It recognized, acknowledged, and validated my intellectual interests.  Drake knows I like Pink and knows what kinds of ideas I enjoy being exposed to.

2.  It invited me to grow and expand my mind.  Drake knows I'm busy and that I'm probably not reading as much as I should now that the new semester has started.  Sending me the book was a subtle reminder to me that I need to continue to expose myself to new ideas, even when I don't think I have time or energy.

3. It challenged me.  A little context is helpful here.  Drake graduated from BYUs Marriott School of Management, and while he is definitely not your typical business student (case in point, he is now an elementary school teacher), we had and probably continue to have some philosophical differences about various issues.  He probably also knows that I shun commercialism, sales, and most profit-motivated ventures.  So, receiving a book that, on its cover (literally), is all about selling myself is a bit of a challenge to my way of thinking.  I appreciate that and it is something that the best colleagues do for their friends.

4. It was an invitation to engage in a conversation with Drake about important ideas.  In the text message Drake sent me a few days after I had received the book he mentioned that he is reading the book too, and that he looks forward to talking with me about it.  While that's the kind of thing acquaintances say to each other (kind of the grown-up or academic version of "hey, we should hang out sometime"), but don't really mean, Drake is sincere.  I fully expect to have that conversation with him when I finish the book.

I'm grateful for both a new book, as well as good colleagues.  They make my work, my learning, and my life (which are all terribly intertwined these days) much more meaningful.

Designing to preserve risk & ambiguity

Typically, risk and ambiguity are things that we try to eliminate from our lives.  We make our kids wear helmets when they ride their bikes to decrease the risk of head injury.  We're given detailed instructions for how to put together complex appliances or pieces of furniture.  And, we make sure plastic storage tubs come with explicit warnings like this, to make sure there isn't any question about the inappropriateness of storing children in such containers.  Clearly, I'm being a bit facetious here, but the point is that most of us operate from the assumption that the more we can get rid of risk and ambiguity, the better things will go.

While this is true in some parts of our lives, there are some aspects of our experience where moderate degrees of risk and ambiguity actually improve our behavior and performance.  Take the design of roads as an example, as reported here and in much more depth in Tom Vanderbilt's interesting book, Traffic: Why we drive the way we do (and what it says about us).  The essence of the argument is that drivers are more cautious, more aware, more considerate, and ultimately more safe when roads are stripped of the features we've long believed make them safer (e.g. signs, dividing lines, large distances between roads and sidewalks, and width to name a few).  Road designers (largely in Europe, those West Palm Beach, Florida has seemed to catch on) have realized this and started to design roads that are just risky enough that drivers have to slow down and drive skillfully (which most of us can do when we are actually thinking about it--the problems occur when we are lulled into autopilot by the "safety" of the road).  It is an incredibly interesting approach and one that will likely revolutionize urban planning and road design in the future (it is a philosophy first pioneered by a Dutch traffic engineer--Hans Monderman)

Risk is a theme I've taken on in this blog a number of times.  I think it has tremendous implications for learning.  My current wondering has to do with what it might mean for higher education institutions to embrace risk and ambiguity in calculated ways.  College campuses are full of the equivalent of road signs and safety features, meant to "protect" students and get them where they're going in a metaphorical sense (be it a job, graduation, or just becoming an engaged citizen).  We have advisement centers and student support services that notify students that they are on academic warning, reminders about graduation deadlines, policies preventing students from enrolling in more than a specified number of credit hours, and course catalogs that attempt to remove ambiguity by clarifying and outlining hundreds of policies and processes relevant to a particular campus.  I'm not ready to say that we should think about getting rid of any or all of those things.  However, I wonder if in our effort to protect students through our various policies, support services, and "clarifications" we might actually be causing more problems than we're solving.  And, are there "risks" that we might allow to become more visible and instructive so students approach their experience with a bit more caution and concern than they might otherwise?

A quick example--the course syllabus.  This great column from Inside Higher Ed (you really should read it, if nothing else, you'll laugh) illuminates the tension instructors face between including so much information that the document becomes laughably long and painfully detailed, and failing to outline the course w/ enough clarity so as to avoid "scandals" that arise when students question policies or procedures.  There is an inherent risk in a faculty member having a thin syllabus.  If the expectations for the course, course policies, and schedule aren't made unambiguous, students may not learn what they need to, we may have an argument with them about absences, or they may not know what to do in the event there is a Tsunami and they aren't able to get to campus for class.  But, when a course is so structured that the syllabus comes to be viewed as a recipe, that if followed leads to learning, we're in trouble.  From my own experience, I can say that when the syllabus outlined exactly what I had to do to earn my "A," I did that and nothing more.  Typically, the course became a hoop jumping exercise.  It was clear and safe, but I didn't learn much.  In contrast, I have had a few classes where ambiguity reigned supreme.  Initially, it was very frustrating for me as a learner because I wanted to know what to do, when to do it, and how to report back that I had done it.  But, the ironic thing is that the ambiguity increased risk and often nudged me to do much more and better work than I would have otherwise.  I don't know that this type of course design is a universal solution; however, designing for learner autonomy can lead to great motivation for some populations of students, particularly high-achieving or self-directed students (see Dan Pink's book Drive for a great discussion of this idea).

Of course, campuses must still be physically safe spaces and be structured in ways that allow students to feel comfortable enough that they aren't perpetually thinking about leaving; however, a little risk might go a long way in improving overall outcomes.

Something no educator should ever say

A few weeks ago I ran into one of my favorite professors from my undergraduate years.  He was (and still is) engaging, fun, concerned about students, and a great teacher.  The two classes I took from him were two of my favorites.  But, I have a bone to pick with him.

It has to do with something he said to me at the point in our conversation when we were discussing the newly re-designed Physical Education Teacher Education program at BYU (the program from which I graduated). Commenting on the utility of the teacher education coursework included in the program he remarked "you've either got it or you don't and we're not going to make much of a difference."  That was a surprising (and rather ironic) thing for a former faculty member and department chair to say and it unsettled me.  And, it isn't the first time I've heard this kind of thing from an educator (for the most recent example, see this interview with a faculty member from the media arts department at BYU where, in reference to the skill of film editing, he states "students either have it or not").

How many of us secretly harbor these kinds of thoughts, whether it is about students' ability to learn to write, learn to conduct research, learn to communicate skillfully in formal presentations, or anything else we might claim to be "teaching?"  And, in what ways might these often hidden assumptions influence the way we go about teaching or mentoring students?

Clearly, learners come to us with a variety of abilities and aptitudes and will achieve "success" in varying degrees due, in large part, to the skills and knowledge they bring with them.  However, to believe that someone "either has it or they don't" is an implicit acknowledgement that either (a) we are poor educators and not competent enough to facilitate learning for learners across the spectrum of ability or (b) that, regardless of our skill as educators, it ultimately makes no meaningful difference in the lives of our students.  I'm not comfortable with either of those conditions.

At a bare minimum, those who hold the view I've critiqued here should do a better job of identifying those students who "don't have it" and advising them out of programs like film and teacher education early on so they can find that field where they "do have it."  Additionally, Carol Dweck's book Mindset, should be required reading for all educators so that we can extinguish the false notions of talent and ability that get in the way of good teaching and learning.  If what we do doesn't make a difference, then what are we wasting our time for?

The Stanford Resilience Project

I recently returned from International Conference on the First-Year Experience, sponsored by the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience & Students in Transition.  Of all the conferences I attend each year, it is slowly becoming my favorite because of the sense of collegiality I feel there and the diverse range of perspectives represented by the international delegates who attend.

One of the very best sessions I attended at the conference was a presentation by Adina Glickman, from Stanford University's Center for Teaching and Learning, on the Stanford Resilience Project.  In a nutshell, Glickman and her colleagues have started an initiative to collect, share, and celebrate stories of resilience from faculty, administrators, and students at Stanford.  Glickman explained in her presentation that they felt something like this was particularly useful at an institution like Stanford where many first-year students may arrive having never experienced significant disappointments, rejections, or failures.  The project was conceived as a way to (a) introduce new students to the concept of resilience and its importance in our lives and (b) to provide a resource that students can turn to when they encounter experiences where a dose of resilience would be helpful (e.g. that first term paper, rejection letter from a limited enrollment program, etc.).

The genius in the project is that the initial objective has been to record a number of these stories and make them available to students.  Fifteen of these stories are available for anyone to view at the project's homepage and more will become available in the coming months.  If you have a few minutes, watch a few of them and consider how hearing these types of stories might benefit students on your own campus.  Particularly noteworthy is the fact that 14 of the 15 stories featured by Stanford come from well-respected faculty members, administrators, and a wildly successful alumnus (Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora). These are individuals who students may mistakenly believe have never struggled.  Imagine the impact upon a struggling student who, in the midst of their "Woe is me, I'll never make it here, I'm the only one who doesn't get it" line of thinking, views one of these videos.  Glickman shared stories in her presentation of students whose experience at Stanford has been transformed as a result of their interaction with the site and involvement with the project.  Future plans include the ability for students to submit their own stories to the project site as well as a database of stories which can be searched using key words.

There are four core values or messages which the project is founded upon

• Get perspective
• Learn about learning
• Seek Advice
• Connect w/ Community

I can't think of any other set of messages that might be more important for a campus to convey to their new students.  Those of us who work with this population would do well to consider how we might use Stanford's work, or better yet, collect and share stories on our own campuses.  I can think of at least two times during the first year when these sorts of stories would have power.

First, at New Student Convocation university administrators and other campus leaders could share stories of resilience as a form of role induction.  Embedded in these stories would be messages about what students should expect from their experience, including challenges, support resources, and the potential for transformative growth.  The concept of role induction comes from the field of psychotherapy and refers to the idea that clients should be prepared for what will happen in therapy.  Typically, this occurs in the first session with a therapist or in some sort of pretherapy preparation.  While a very simple concept and requiring very little time on the part of therapists, it has been shown to significantly decrease attrition and drop-out from within therapeutic alliances.  This same sort of thing should be happening in new student orientation programming and convocation seems like a great venue.  

Second, as much as a campus may try to be proactive in conveying messages of resilience to students on the front-end of their experience, there will inevitably be times when students will need to hear these sorts of stories again.  While that time will vary across each individual student, campuses could be strategic by coordinating some kind of second semester programming where students are brought together to reflect on their first semester experiences and consider how resilience might apply.  This timing would ensure that students have received their first semester grades and have an opportunity to be part of a campus-wide dialogue regarding lessons learned, obstacles overcome, and positive changes that can be made in the coming months.  

Thanks to Adina Glickman and Stanford's Center for Teaching and Learning for doing such great work.

Do we really need honors programs?

Promulgating hearsay is never a great idea, but I am going to do it here at the risk of regretting it later.  In a meeting this morning, where attendees discussed the future of the BYU Honors program, it was related that the President of BYU asked a provocative question:  "Do we really need an honors program at BYU?"  I was as surprised as I can remember feeling in recent memory when the story was related.  Not because I have any real affinity to the Honors program on my campus or couldn't imagine it going away, but because I've long been asking myself that question, but feared raising it publicly because of how others might respond.

The Honors experience at my institution is, no doubt, built upon good intentions.  And, for a student who fully engages in the program, they are likely to have a tremendous undergraduate experience.  This is largely because of the requirements laid out to graduate with University Honors.  In addition to more rigorous course requirements, Honors students are engaged in the arts (and write about these experiences), participate in meaningful service, submit a portfolio demonstrating their academic achievement, and write a thesis in conjunction with a research or creative project conducted in their specific area of study.  In short, because Honors students are required to engage in activities which promote deep learning, they (in theory) learn a great deal more than they would have otherwise and have a more transformative experience.  Most Honors programs also boast of small class sizes and courses taught by the very best faculty on campus.

This all begs the question, why wouldn't a campus want an Honors program?  Aside from the frequent reports that actual experience of an Honors student is likely to be far different than what is advertised in the glossy brochure (for example, on my campus many of the honors courses are actually taught by adjunct faculty, which isn't inherently negative, but far different than what is advertised to students), I can think of at least two often overlooked reasons, as to why any campus should think twice about sponsoring an Honors Program.

The first has to do with resources.  Honors programs, because of all of the opportunities they often afford students (e.g. small courses, subsidized participation in campus arts events, research opportunities), are expensive.  But, a lot of the things we do in higher education are expensive, so this alone shouldn't be overly concerning.  The problem I see has to do with the distribution of resources among students.  On my campus just under 100 students per year graduate with University Honors.  So, not only is the BYU Honors program expensive, but it devotes a large number of resources to a very small percentage of the overall student body (the incoming class hovers somewhere around 6,000 each year).  It may be naive to think that taking the resources devoted to Honors and redistributing them across the entire student body would make a difference (and, I'm willing to admit this); however, these resources could be reallocated to one or more other programs which do have an impact on a much larger group of students.  If nothing else, spending inordinate amounts of money on 100 students a year feels wrong to me in principle.

The second and more important reason I feel the way I do has to do with the implicit message that the mere existence of an honors program sends about the rest of campus (the non-honors portion of campus), which is that everything else we do here is "average," which the larger society (the various Lake Wobegons where we each live) has really taught us to see as sub-par.  As an example, I took the following text from the website of an honors program from another institution just this afternoon.  Consider what it seems to imply about the quality of the courses and learning experiences outside of this particular honors program:

What if your classes were designed around the concept of helping you practice the habit of thinking? Of helping you develop an authentic writer's voice, so that your words have "the feel of you about them," as Irish poet Seamus Heaney once remarked? Of helping you challenge yourself to such a degree that you learn things about yourself that you didn't know existed? If these questions appeal to you, then you've come to the right place.


I can't help but chuckle at the thought of a student reading this and thinking "Do I not practice thinking in my other classes? Maybe I'm at the wrong school."  What I'm getting at here is that when a campus creates an  honors program and then boasts of the great experience it provides, it sends an implicit message to the rest of campus (students and faculty alike) that it is okay for everything else to be less than great.  In the worst cases it provides an excuse for a campus to provide an educational experience to the rest of the student body (which in the case of my campus is a large group) which is lacking in some way.

So, to be more clear, I have no problem with the things that go on in an honors program.  They are educationally purposeful and potentially transformative experiences that we would want for any and all students.  And, it is this point that is at the core of my argument--we should be providing an honors experience for all students on a campus.  Of course, on a large campus like mine that may mean scaling back the honors experience to scale it up to the entire student body.  However, we owe the very best experience possible to every one of the students on our campuses.  Why couldn't every student be required to submit a portfolio, participate in service, write a thesis, and participate in the arts (even if we couldn't make all of their classes small)?  I'm not saying that this is an easy experience to craft or provide, but the institutions that figure out how to do it (or, which already are) will be providing a service to students which the rest of us can only pretend to be offering.

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

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.

More on risk-taking and learning

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

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

"[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.