Education as a Social Contract

I recently read Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely, and was intrigued by his commentary on how our behavior is heavily influenced by either market or social norms.  When we perceive ourselves to be in a "market" situation, one where we have a business-like contract that requires us to do certain things with the expectation that we will be compensated for our efforts, we act very much like a consumer, employee, client, etc.  Contrastingly, in other situations (e.g. volunteer work, familial interactions, etc.) we perform certain actions not because we believe we will or should be compensated, but because it is the sociall acceptable thing to do.  The work of Ariely and others indicates that we are much happier, more engaged, and likely to report enjoyment when we are driven by social norms and acting without the sort of cost-benefit analysis that drives our actions in other settings.  This made me wonder what type of paradigm students in higher education function on when they enroll in courses, complete assignments, etc.  

My sense is that most students approach education with an attitude that they are here to get something from the university (a degree, certification, and if we're lucky, knowledge) and that in order to procure that set of goods they are required to make some type of payment.  That payment comes in the form of studying, taking exams, writing papers, and in general jumping through the hoops we set up for them (hence the image at the top of the page).  Following Ariely's thinking, this is likely to lead to a very superficial learning experience, one in which students do as little as possible to garner the largest reward (i.e. high gpa's, nice letters of recommendation from faculty members, etc.).  Furthermore, they aren't as likely to enjoy the experience because they are much like the employee who goes to work merely to earn a paycheck and collect insurance benefits.  There is little to no meaning in the endeavor.  

So, my question is how do we help students approach their education as a social contract where they are driven by social norms rather than the market norms that seem to govern the vast majority of our lives?  Is that even realistic?  

I think it is, but it will take a lot of change on the part of our insitutions and those of us who interact with students on a daily basis.  John Tagg has some interesting ideas that seem to be connected to this issue.  If you're interested, read up on what he has to say about "hot cognitive economies" in The Learning Paradigm College. 

We're all Designers

I had an interesting conversation a few weeks ago with Ann  Lambson, curator of the "Education in Zion" exhibit at Brigham Young University.  Ann is a great and innovative mind who cares deeply about education and is doing great things at BYU.  In our conversation she mentioned that she is sometimes discouraged by our failure to equip students with the skills they will need when they leave our academies.  She was making an argument for the inclusion of "design" as a core competency in our general education requirements.    

Ann is right, I think, in her assertion that we (meaning Universities as a whole)  often fill students minds with a lot of knowledge, but don't ever do very much to teach them how to solve real-world problems.  This is not an indictment of entire universities, I think there are individual departments that do this very well (engineering departments, industrial design departments, and others with a more interactive and hands-on approach to learning), but what about students who find themselves in a department like French, philosophy, or chemistry?  Are these students prepared to leave campus and confront substantial and authentic problems or challenges?  As I look around at what is happening in our country and the multitude of problems we face--global climate change, loss of civility, economic woes, and more--I hope that the students we are graduating are prepared to solve these problems.  If not our college graduates, then who?

At the danger of sounding over-zealous, I would argue that we are all designers.  A teacher designs educational environments and experiences, attorneys design legal arguments, plumbers design solutions to leaky toilets.  The problem with colleges is that we often naively assume that by helping students be "well-rounded" or "broad" learners they will somehow magically learn to use the skills and knowledge they acquire to solve problems.  I think this is foolish.  We have to explicitly teach them how to be engaged citizens  who use their skills and training to make a meaningful difference.

What if universities (and some do--please share good examples if you are reading this) included a "design competency" as a graduation requirement?   By "design" I don't mean the same old visual arts requirement that is so easy to tack on to a curricula.  As I have mentioned above, design doesn't just mean producing something tangible; it also means approaching problems critically and working to develop thoughful solutions in a strategic way.  

In my mind there is a right and wrong way to do this.  The wrong way would be to create Design 201 or some other such course.  That would lead to a generic and largely unproductive experience for students.  They would approach it like any other course by jumping through the hoops, disconnecting the content from their lived experience, and treat it as a transaction where they do certain things to receive a particular grade.

The better way would be to adopt the design competency as part of a broader portfolio initiative (no, portfolios are not just for artists anymore).  As part of their university experience students would be required to demonstrate that they have acquired design skills by submitting examples of work that illustrates how they have used content knowledge (nursing skills, engineering principles, the things learned in teacher prep courses, etc.) to develop solutions to real problems that real people actually care about.  Even better would be to ask students to tackle problems existing on their own campuses (the overcrowded cafeteria, the dying grass along side the campus walkways, student behavior problems, etc.).  Students could even approach these problems in interdisciplinary teams where they would learn to work with peers who bring unique skills and perspectives.  

Granted this would take a fair amount of work to coordinate; however, it can and should be done.  If we fail to equip students to make a meaningful difference in their local, national, and global communities, we don't deserve to be in existence.  And, lecturing, administering exams, and asking for writing samples just won't do it.

Are we selling our soul to the devil?

I just recently learned that blogger will allow me to "monetize" my blog and, in theory, make money off my blogging efforts.  That scenario, of course, rests on the assumption that there is someone out in cyberland that actually reads this (and I'm not convinced yet that is true, but I press on nonetheless).  

When I first heard about all of this I was somewhat excited.  The thought of generating even a little money from blogging (something I would do for free anyway) seemed like a good thing.  I was ready to click on the "monetize" tab at the top of my page and start building my kingdom. But, then my irksome conscience kicked in and I had to pause.  I'm not ready to say that those who do post ads on their blog are unethical or breaking some unwritten rule of blogging; however, I do think that this issue warrants some discussion.

The argument for or against revenue producing blogs seems to rest on two key questions:

• What is the purpose of a blog?

• How does one's knowing they have a real audience, impact what they write or blog about?

I would argue that there are two major types of blogs:  the "mommy blog" and the amateur scholar blog.

The Mommy Blog--Hopefully this doesn't offend any one too much, but I couldn't think of a better way to put this.  These are the blogs packed with pictures of family vacations, trips to the park, etc. and that individuals use as a year-long christmas card letter of sorts.  They tell about what is going on in their lives, share funny stories about themselves or family members, etc.  It's almost like an electronic scrapbook open to the world.  

The Amateur Scholar Blog--These are the blogs like the one you're reading right now, maintained by individuals who feel like they know enough to attempt to write intelligently about a topic or field and who hope to get connected with others holding similar interests.

Neither blog is inherently good or evil.  The point is that they have different objectives and different audiences.  My sense is that ads on the mommy blogs  of the world will never really take off because, other than family members and close friends, who wants to read about how your three year-old vomited on the rug?  However, there are a handful of the "scholarly" blogs that probably have enough of a following that an advertiser could see benefit in using that space to market their product or service.   My initial excitement about "monetizing" my blog rested on the probably naive beliefs that one day my blog might have traffic like that.  

There is a problem, though, in all of this.  My feeling is that blogging is mostly for the blogger (see this clip for a concise and thoughtful description of this argument).  Blogging forces us to reflect, make connections between ideas, and articulate our thinking in a way that is at least somewhat coherent.  While some readers might benefit from the ideas I have posted here, the real value is for me because I am engaging in a behavior that promotes active learning and deeper thinking.  What's more, when I blog, I know there is a chance that someone might read it and I work harder to flesh out my ideas and articulate them clearly.  I want people to read my blog because I want to be part of an intelligent dialogue about higher education, learning, design, etc.  

Some would argue that this focus on audience makes "monetizing" a blog seem like a natural fit.  We want an audience anyway, why not get paid for bringing people to the blog.  The problem I see is that catering to an audience of advertisers and consumers is much different than writing for an audience of professional colleagues.  A good example of this same principle is the difference between popular magazines and scholarly journals.  Magazines have to be fun or entertaining because they depend on ad revenue and advertisers want to be sure that what consumers read in the magazine is interesting enough that they keep coming back.  Entertainment, not accurate information or learning, is the objective.  While scholarly journals definitely want a readership, their ultimate goal is to advance knowledge, not entertain.

When we start to blog in an attempt to make money, something seems to change.  No longer are we writing for ourselves or for an audience of peers, but we're writing for the advertiser and for the consumer that we hope will visit our site.  The reflective and pedagogical value of the blog seems to be diminished at that point.  If I'm a big time blogger about design and have a good following, would dipping into the ad pool eventually change the way I write?  I don't know, but it seems like a slippery slope.  Would I start blogging about design software in hopes that the company might approach me about an ad?  Is this really the best software I've seen?  etc.  There just seem to be some problems here, but I recognize that my ideas are still embryonic.  

Am I wrong here?  Can a good scholarly blog also be a marketing & revenue tool?  

Deep Practice

I've been reading up on skill acquisition as of late and came across Talent Code, by Daniel Coyle.  In it he describes a concept he terms "deep practice" and argues that people become very good at something by practicing in a very specific, focused way.  He identifies three rules of deep practice:

 1.  Practice skills in "chunks"

            The critical idea here is that the learner first needs to develop a picture or "vision" of what a successful performance looks like (e.g. watching an expert, viewing film, etc.).  From there they break the skill into chunks and practice those parts of the skill individually, gradually adding pieces over time until each of the individual parts have been integrated into a smooth performance.   Coyle also argues that the chunks should be practiced slowly so that the learner can understand how each of the chunks fit together and flow into each other.

 2.  Lots of Repetitions

            This is similar to the 10,000 hour rule discussed by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers.  The key is spending enough time and energy that the deep practice pays off.  Although expertise will take close to 10 years to develop.  Individual, high intensity deep practice sessions (those that include lots of repetitions) will dramatically increase the speed of skill acquisition. 

 3.  Learn to "feel" mistakes

            This is what I took to be the key element of deep practice.  People who are very skilled in some arena have become that way, not because of some innate genius or talent, but because they have learned to learn.  In other words, they were just as bad as the rest of us to begin with;  however, they were able to identify their mistakes and correct them.  As this cycle is repeated over the course of many practice sessions (often over a period of ten years or so), they develop expertise.   For a great discussion of the same idea, but in different language, you might want to look at Carol Dweck's work in Mindset. 

 When these three elements of practice come together Coyle says it places the learner in the "sweet spot" (very similar to Csikszhentmihalyi's description of "Flow") where the task is just beyond the learner's capabilities.  The dancer Martha Graham has described this as a condition that leads to "divine dissatisfaction" wherein the learner doesn't reach their goal, but is close enough that they are motivated to keep working.

 So, my question after learning about all of this is whether traditional educators can learn anything from all of this.  Can we design learning environments where students are engaged in "deep" academic practice?  Will this only work for the most highly motivated student (Coyle might argue that it does, although I haven't finished his book yet and he has a section devoted to motivation so I might retract this statement)? 

 Learning and thinking, in my mind, are both skills that we are trying to help students acquire.  So, it makes sense that these principles of skill acquisition would apply to our learning environments.  But, the transfer seems to be a little more difficult given that we aren't engaging students in overt actions like a tennis coach or music teacher would. 

 How do we make all of this work for education?

Blind Administrators

A conversation with a colleague yesterday has had me thinking ever since and they have been largely depressing thoughts.

Those that follow this blog know that my work is with first-year students at a large private university.  One of our biggest initiatives are New Student Orientation programs at the beginning of each semester.  Like most educators we are faced with making decisions about where to focus our efforts and what messages are most important to communicate to new students during our 2-3 day orienation sessions.  

Yesterday, I was talking about this with a colleague of mine and she related that one of our administrators had commented that "new students aren't ready to hear about the "Aims of a BYU Education" at orientation--it's too heavy."  In other conversations I have learned that this administrator, however, feels that reminding students to take shorter showers and turn off lights, as well as injunctions to "stay until the very end of weekly campus devotionals" are critical to communicate during orientation.  

This all seemed incredibly short-sighted to me and represents, I think, the lack of vision that is becoming common among university administrators.  I wholeheartedly agree that student behaviour is lacking on a lot of fronts, from mediocre study skills to sometimes appalling lack of decorum.  I also agree that universities have a charge to help students become better citizens, however that might be defined.  The problem I have with most university leadership is their way of going about changing behavior.  

My view is that most behavior stems from internal values and attitudes.  Consequently, if we want to change behavior, we need to change thinking.  Burdening students with a long list of do's and don'ts may bring about temporary changes in behavior (although, I would argue that more often it leads to rebellion and resentment--much like authoritarian parents' inflexible rules for a wayward teenager).  A more effective way, I believe,  to help students adopt change is to help them develop the same vision that we have for our insitutions.  At mine, that vision is almost entirely captured by our Aims of a BYU Education, and I would imagine that similar foundational documents and mission statements are found at almost every institution of higher education.  If students don't ever catch this vision or develop a picture of what a BYU education is all about (or Notre Dame or Westminster College or whatever institution we are talking about) it is naive to expect them to act and behave in the way we would hope they would.  As a result, their educational experience is fragmented and more an exercise of jumping through hoops and obeying abstract rules than anything else.  I think this is what the writer of proverbs may have meant when they said "where ther is no vision, the people perish."  Having an internal picture of the ultimate goal or objective helps frame the way people think and act.

This leaves me with a few questions I need to ask of myself (and wish I could ask of the administrator who I referenced earlier in this post):

• What is the vision that we want students to have of their education?
• Do all of our key stakeholders (faculty, administration, boards, student leaders, etc.) agree on this vision?
• How do we help students "catch this vision?" 
• How will we know that they have caught it

Until my administration, and others, are more thoughtful about the ways in which we orient students to the missions of out institutions, they will never become what we hope they will become.  All the orientation talks, seminars, workshops, and other technical responses will just lead to temporary change and continued frustration.

Millcreek's Fading Civility

I'm going to break from my customary style and comment on something not directly related to higher education or learning (although I do think those of us in that field can learn something from the situation I will describe here).

I grew up in East Millcreek, a small township southeast of Salt Lake City, Utah.  Millcreek was settled by Mormon pioneers who were drawn to the area by the resources of the creek that flows from the nearby Canyon (now known as Millcreek Canyon).  The area gained its name because of the variety of mills that sprang up along the creek.  It was these mills and the local orchards that supported the families that settled in Millcreek.  These were hard-working, blue-collar families that relied upon the creek and each other to survive.  In talking to long-time residents of the community (many who remember the days of operating mills and large orchards) there is very real sense that early Millcreek residents understood what it meant to be a neighbor.  They believed very strongly that how they lived their invidual lives and the decisions they made, had an impact upon the family down the road and the community as a whole.  

Millcreek has changed quite drastically in the last 10 years.  Because of good schools, quiet streets, and beautiful views of the foothills (among many other things) more and more people are "discovering" the area and purchasing homes.  This is a good thing.  Communities need new members and the ideas, young energy, and vibrancy they bring with them.  However, when an individual or family relocates to a new city or neighborhood, they are not just purchasing a new home, but becoming part of a new community.  With this comes a responsibility to seek to understand the history, traditions, and culture of that community.  That isn't to say that new members of a group should blindly accept all practices of that community (otherwise, how would meaningful change ever occur?), but there is value in "fitting in" without losing ones own unique identity or sacrificing all of one's own interests.  At the same time, existing members have a responsibility to be open to the new ideas, interests, and needs of its new members.

So, what does this all mean for East Millcreek?  I won't take the time to outline the current dispute among Millcreek residents (for more information see this Salt Lake Tribune Article for January 26, 2009).  In a nutshell, residents are divided over the issue of whether or not homeowners should be restricted in the size of homes that they build.  One group believes that home owners should have ultimate freedom to do what they want with their land, another wants to place restrictions on the size of homes that can be built in the township. 

 As I have observed all of this play out in the newspapers and among neighbors in my old neighborhood it has been a sad commentary on how we view community.  Essentially, we have become incredibly selfish.  In terms of the current issue in Millcreek, that selfishness is seen on both sides--it's just manifested in different ways.  Whether it is a new move-in acting in complete disregard to their neighbors and building an over-sized home that blocks sight lines and becomes an eyesore, or a long-time resident that refuses to acknowledge that a home built in 1945 may not meet the needs of a young family of 2009, the malady is the same--complete disregard for others.

For the record, I'm in favor of some sort of restriction and have a hard time swallowing the argument that the size of some homes in Millcreek prevent families from growing or expanding (I'm not a demographer, but my sense is that family size has decreased in the last 40-50 years so a need for larger homes seems illogical).  But, my own personal biases aside, I hope that Millcreek's citizens will step back and remember what it used to mean to be part of a neighborhood or community--dialogue, sharing, and compromise.

In terms of higher education, I think we see this same sort of demise on our campuses.  Generally, we have become very fragmented and siloed academic cities of sorts.   We make decisions unilaterally, have given up on building relationships across departments/colleges, and mostly think of our own well-being.    For recent examples of this sort of thing see the two Inside Higher Ed articles below:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/24/heh

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/24/weber

I don't have any real good solutions, but a start would be exploring the work of Bob Putnam in Better Together.  Putnam outlines a handful of successful communities and there are valuable lessons to be learned from these case studies.  Additionally, if any readers have made it to the end of this much longer than intended post and have examples of successfully functioning communities, I would love to hear about them.  Like Putnam, I still have hope that we can build and sustain effective communities, but recognize that they are becoming increasingly harder to find.  

Underprepared & Underaware

I've been doing some work lately that has caused me to revisit a theme that I was quite fascinated with a few years ago.

In "Unskilled and Unaware of it" James Kruger and David Dunning describe a phenomenon whereby individuals with incompetence in some area (humour, writing, etc.) are unable to detect their own incompetence because of a lack of metacognitive ability about the particular skill or ability in question.  This has some interesting applications in education and students' willingness to engage in the process.

If they are incompetent in any of a number of academic areas, but don't know that, how receptive will they be to new opportunities to learn?  Will they engage?

James Prochaska's Transtheoretical Model (particularly the "Stages of Change" he identified with Norcross) has some interesting connections to these ideas as well.  If an individual is at a very early level in terms of their "readiness for change" how do they respond to efforts like first-year initiatives that seek to change academic attitudes and behaviours.  What risk do we run when we try to engage students that aren't ready to change?

Expect some more on this in the coming months.  I'm working on a paper and conference presentation exploring these issues.