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

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?

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?

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?

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

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

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.  

  

Does being "educated" include being "fit?"

This article describes a unique program at Lincoln University (Oxford, PA) that requires students identifed as "obese" to either demonstrate  that they have decreased their body mass index (BMI) or take a specially-designed "fitness for life" course that, in theory, should encourage students to adopt a more healthy lifestyle.

As you can imagine this has elicited a variety of interesting responses from members of the Lincoln community and others across the country.  My undergraduate degree is in Exercise Science and I moonlighted as a soccer coach before coming back to the academy, so you can guess where my leanings are (although I wouldn't say I agree with LU's methodology or logic).  But, the real question that this issue raised in my mind was what it means when a university awards a student a degree.

While every institution has its own unique mission and learning goals for its students, I think most would agree that one of their purposes is to provide students with experiences and opportunities that prepare them to be productive, engaged citizens who go out and do good things in the world.  To that end, institutions develop general education or core curricula that are intended to equip students with a general set of skills, attitudes, or abilities that will serve them well whether they end up performing heart surgeries, teaching 3rd graders cursive (btw, how long will that continue?  when was the last time any of us used that "general" skill?), or writing columns for the local paper.  Institutions also develop means of measuring or "assessing" what students have learned or gained in these areas and hold them to some sort of minimum standard.  If those standards are met, the student is granted a degree.  So, in some sense my degree from Brigham Young University is an indication that I have achieved a certain level of competence in the core areas that BYU deemed important when they created their University Core curriculum.

One of the many problems with the logic I have just described here is that universities don't have very good ways of measuring competence.  We subject students to a battery of tests, projects, papers, group-assignments, etc. that we hope will give us some insight into what they've learned, but most are articifial and disconnected from the real contexts and situations students will find themselves once they leave our campuses.  For instance, does the fact that I scored a total of 91% on the exams in my Child Development course mean that I will be a good father?  So, if we extrapolate this to some sort of health & wellness requirement (assuming that an institution has decided that part of a well-rounded education includes the ability to make good decisions about one's health), how does a university determine whether or not a student has achieved competence in that area?  

Looked at from this perspective, the Lincoln issue takes on a little more complexity.  Might they be onto something?  I'm not sure that I agree with the specifics of their requirement (among other things, measuring obesity at the beginning of the freshman year seems to leave out all those that become unfit during college), but there is something intriguing about a policy that requires students to demonstrate competence in a very concrete way.  Imagine how different our institutions would be if students left with a portfolio of hard evidence demonstrating what they had learned (or how much more fit they had become).  A university degree would take on a completely new meaning and employers, graduate schools, and anyone else who cares about higher education could have more confidence in knowing that college graduates do actually possess useful skills.  Right now a college degree is looking more and more like a written testament to a student's abilities to sit through long lectures and jump through hoops.

As much as we might dislike the problems with a policy like the one implemented at Lincoln, let's see what we might be able to learn from them in terms of accountability and real evidence for learning.