What Do Students Owe Their Teachers?

Posted on January 26, 2012 by | 1 Comment

Michael Beltz, Department of Philosophy & Religion, University of North Dakota

As the modern university system becomes more focused on a contractual model of education, an increasing attention ends up being paid to the various obligations and rights that the different members of the contractual relationship have to one another. This focus seems to have its philosophical basis on the notion that higher education is a social institution. Like any social intuition, higher education not only has common goals and values, but it also establishes distinct role morality for all of its members. The social institution places individuals into discrete positions and establishes the proper standard of conduct for individuals within those roles. One important aspect of social institutions is that the roles and obligations generated by those roles are primarily in relationship to the larger collective values and goals. Thus, the responsibilities of a student role end up emphasizing what students owe higher education itself.  For example, a student may have the obligation to be academically honest. This obligation tends to focus on how dishonesty undermines the goals of higher education, like creating an informed citizenry; if large numbers of students are regularly dishonest, the end result is a citizenry that is no more informed than if those students had not attended a higher education institution.

Understanding the contractualization of higher education as only establishing obligations between the individual roles and the goals and values of the social institution misses a key component of contractual relationships. Contractual relationships do not just establish obligations between the roles and the social institution; they also establish the obligations that the individual roles have to each other. Instructors in the higher education social institution often think through what they owe the students. What is less often considered is the question of what students owe their teachers.

In his 1988 book, Another Sort of Learning, James Schall directly addresses this question. Schall focuses his third chapter on the title question “What a Student Owes His Teacher.” Before explaining what students owe teachers, Schall gives a compelling vision of the social benefits and core value of education. He argues that education is about finding ‘inner truth.’ By this he means that students will come to a better and more accurate worldview that is based in reality. When the student has done learning, they will grasp the working of the world they live in better than they did before starting the educational process. Schall states: “The student ought to become independent of the teacher to the point of even forgetting his name, but not the truth he learned.”

To reach this goal, Schall lays out a list of four obligations that the student owes his or her teachers. At first glance this list may seem overly narrow and modest, but this is intentional. Schall is attempting to focus on the interrelational obligations of the student to the teacher, not the student’s obligations to the social institution or the student’s obligations to himself or herself. He argues that the student owes: (1) In the first week of classes, at least, the student owes the teacher a moderately good will towards the teacher. This is a confidence to admit to oneself that the teacher probably has thought through the subject and knows where the instruction will lead. (2) An amount of faith that the student can learn something that seems unlearnable in the beginning. This is a trust the student must have in himself or herself. (3) “The virtue of docility,” which is the fact that they must allow themselves to be taught. He further articulates this as open-mindedness to the subject and instruction. (4) A willingness to engage in the effort of study. This is the ability and desire to ignore distractions and other desires to try to learn.

While some may look at this list of obligations and consider it to be too small to capture all of the things a student owes a teacher, my reaction is that this list may actually include too many obligations. When we consider the nature of obligations, we must be able to find a harm that might occur if the obligation is not fulfilled. In the case of an obligation to a person, there must be a potential that the person to whom we have an obligation will be worse off if the obligation is not fulfilled. When we consider what students owe their teachers, as articulated by Schall, it is not clear how the instructor is being harmed when any of the obligations are not fulfilled. Consider two different students who might enter the classroom. The first student has good will toward the teacher; this student fully embraces the fact that the teacher has a more thorough understanding of the subject and knows where the course will lead. The second student has absolutely no good will toward the teacher; this student does not believe that the teacher better understands the subject matter or course trajectory. This second student cares nothing about the subject matter, but has the desire to meet the credit requirement. This student does not want to learn, but wants the outward benefits of passing the course (for example, they want the course credits on their transcript and want positive benefits to their grade point average). There is good reason to believe that the second student has harmed the goals of ‘inner learning’ and being party to an informed citizenry; that student has not learned anything and will not make more informed decisions that they would have without having taken the course. But this does not mean that the second student has harmed the teacher. We can further imagine that the second student has learned how to appear to be a student of good will. Without having learned this, the student might not pass the course or might negatively affect his or her grade point average. In short, the student owes it to himself or herself to appear to be a student of good will. The first student, on the other hand, we might imagine, has not developed the social skills to seem to have good will. When he or she attempts to make statements expressing good will, they come out awkwardly and are easily misunderstood as being of bad intention. Which of these students poses more potential harm to their teacher? It is the first student that is most likely to disrupt the flow of the teaching, to agitate the teacher, to undermine the confidence of the teacher, and to sow discord within the fellow students about the competence of the teacher.

It does not seem that students actually owe their teachers the inner mental state of good will. Instead, the student owes the teacher the appearance of good will. I believe that the same conclusions can be reached with the other three points that Schall argues students owe their teachers. The student owes the teacher the appearance of good will, the appearance of being open-minded, the appearance of trust in himself or herself, and the appearance of being willing to ignore other distractions. This does not mean that the four qualities that Schall highlights are not valuable for the student; they are. These seem to be qualities that the student owes himself or herself, but not the teacher. This is because it is the student who is harmed when they do not have these internal mental qualities; the teacher is only harmed when the student does not have the outward appearance of these qualities.

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Posted in Michael Beltz, Student Expectations

Reflective Writing

Posted on January 19, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Bill Caraher, Department of History, University of North Dakota

The great philosopher of history, R.G. Collingwood, famously argued that all history is the history of thought. In Collingwood’s estimation, the historian re-enacts that past in his (for Collingwood, the historian was always a “he”) own mind when he reads a historical text or studies objects from the past. While rethinking the thoughts of the actors who participated in a past event, the historian is aware and critical of his own thinking about the past. This critical practice distinguished “the best kind of historian” from other people who make it a habit of merely assembling evidence into an orderly presentation and passing it off as some kind of objective or impartial truth. Collingwood saw the ability and responsibility of historians to think past thoughts as key to the role history plays in the production of human knowledge. In fact, he argued that history was the only discipline that produced human self-knowledge.

While his arguments for the autonomy of history have not received universal acceptance, Collingwood has contributed to how I think about reflective writing in the classroom. Over the course of expounding his larger argument, Collingwood noted in an offhand way that when he reads something he wrote days before, he acts the part of the historian by reflecting on his own writing and using it to reconstruct a past thought.

This was a helpful idea to me as I sat down to struggle with constructing assignments for my graduate historiography seminar. Graduate historiography is a required course for all M.A., D.A., and Ph.D. students in history in our department. Generally, the course elicits a kind of exaggerated dread because it is designed to force students to examine their assumptions and practices as historians. In general, historians regard an ability to recognize one’s own disciplinary, historical, and social assumptions about the past as a crucial step in a student’s development in the profession. The course, then, insists that students reflect and own up to their own position in relation to the process and methods of historical thinking.

Reflective writing has become an important part of encouraging students to write and think about a text, situation, or body of material. Generally, the practice has allowed students a certain amount of latitude in how they approach a subject and has sought to instill confidence in students by recognizing the authenticity of their own engagement with material.  This goals of reflective writing are particularly suitable for my graduate historiography class where I introduce the students to any number of challenging texts and push them to embrace often uncomfortable critiques leveled against longstanding academic practices. This can be, as you might imagine, a difficult task as the students tend to resist the most critical challenges to traditional historical practices. To allow students to engage these critiques in a safe place, I require reflective essays each week that respond to the readings assigned. These then become, to some extent, the basis for our discussion in the seminar.

Traditionally, graduate historiography seminars require students to, say, write a few critical book reviews and perhaps write a longer paper on a particular aspect of historical practice (e.g. women’s history, microhistory, Marxist history, et c.). These are boring things to read and largely reproduce the kind of exercises that students write in their other graduate history courses. On the one hand, historical works tend to be boring, so having students write boring assignments does not make them less useful. And, using an assignment in a graduate historiography class to reinforce skills developed elsewhere in the program can be a good thing. Increasingly, however, I want my graduate historiography seminar to encourage students to engage critically and reflectively with difficult ideas.

So, in the spirit of Collingwood, I ask my students to take their reflective writing, compile it into an archive, and to write a historical paper based that uses these reflective texts as “primary sources”. The goal is, of course, to get the students to think about how they thought about writing history. In Collingwoodian terms, I am asking the students to re-enact, critically, their own learning process.

In other words, it’s an effort to close the loop.

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Posted in Bill Caraher, Graduate Instruction, Reflective Writing

Faculty Study Seminar: Teaching and Neuroscience

Posted on January 17, 2012 by | Leave a comment

This spring OID is running a Faculty Study Seminar on James’ Zull’s  From Brain to Mind: Using Neuroscience to Guide Change in Education (Stylus, 2011). The seminars provide a means for faculty with common interests to learn more about a teaching-related topic. Each group meets four times a semester, at times mutually agreed to by participants, to read and discuss a teaching-related book (books provided by OID). Your only obligation is to read and to show up for discussion.

If you are familiar with James Zull’s 2004 book, The Art of Changing the Brain, you know he has both a keen interest in how the brain learns and a knack for making specialized research accessible and relatable to what we do in higher education.  In his latest book, Zull (Professor of Biochemistry and former Director of the University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education at Case Western Reserve) considers how recent findings in neuroscience can inform our teaching practice.  Looking at how the brain receives and processes information, he gleans applicable insights about cognitive development and metacognition.  Zull argues that due to major social and economic change, a teaching and learning approach that is informed by cognitive science is increasingly necessary.  In an environment in which our students can expect to hold multiple jobs (some of which may not yet exist), where technology is constantly shifting, and where information and opinion seem infinitely available, the awareness of how and why we think as we do is essential to society’s well-being.

If you are interested in participating in this FSS, please contact Anne Kelsch  at anne.kelsch@email.und.edu or 777-4233.

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Posted in Events

It’s All About the Brain, Stupid

Posted on January 12, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Dexter Perkins, Dept. of Geology and Geological Engineering, University of North Dakota

My Epiphany

I started college teaching in 1981 and, like most new professors, knew little about teaching other than what I had experienced as a student. I soon realized that I was in trouble – or, that my students were in trouble – because I had no idea what I was doing. I prepared “great” lectures and delivered them, only to find at exam time that students hadn’t absorbed what I was saying. So, after a few years of frustration, I began to read to find out what experts had to say about teaching and learning.

I read about active learning, learner-centered classrooms, instructional alignment, and many other things. One of the most influential books I read was Experiential Learning by David Kolb (1984). I enjoyed Kolb’s thoughts about Skinner, Dewey, Piaget and others, and about some of the pioneers of learning science and related fields. I was especially intrigued by Kolb’s ideas about what (subsequently) has been called deep learning or significant learning, and learning cycles.

Everything I read sounded reasonable, but something was missing. In retrospect, I think the main problem was that most of what I read was based on behaviorism. The implication was that the best teaching focuses only on improving students’ learning habits and behaviors by using the correct pedagogies and developing the best learning environment. Little consideration was given to physiological factors and what actually happens in students’ brains as they learn. Just as plate tectonics was not accepted as a theory until sea-floor spreading was discovered, I needed a mechanism to explain why the behaviorist approach was valid.

In 2000, the National Research Council published How People Learn (Bransford et al. 2000). In many ways, the NRC publication reinforced what I had read previously. Key points in the first part of the report included:

  • Students are not empty vessels – they arrive in our classrooms with mental models, preconceptions and habits that may hinder or promote learning. Consideration of students’ preexisting knowledge is essential.
  • Learning is not significant without real understanding; it is simply memorization. Lacking significant learning, students cannot use what they learn in one class to solve other kinds of problems.
  • Significant learning will not occur if students are not actively engaged. Perhaps more important, to be successful learners, students must develop metacognitve skill to monitor their own progress.

As before, these points made sense, but I was still uncertain WHY they were important and, perhaps more puzzling, what to do about it. Then I read Chapter 5 (“Mind and the Brain”), a short chapter that, in the space of 20 minutes, answered many of my questions and fundamentally changed the way I thought about teaching and learning.

The brain is a constantly evolving organic machine that changes as it reacts to information it processes. Learning is a process of wiring and rewiring that machine. That’s it; that was my epiphany.

So, what is really going on in our brains? My summary, below, is based on many books and articles, most significantly the books listed in the references at the end.

The Brain

The gray matter of our brains consists of a zillion neurons. At birth we may have 150-200 billion neuron cells, but many disappear (are pruned) due to lack of use. The actual number that remains is uncertain and may vary from individual to individual. Zeul (2002) places the number at around 100 billion, Jensen (2005) says 30-50 billion.

NewImage
Typical individual neuron cells have a main cell body (the soma) surrounded by many raggedly leaf-like branches (called dendrites) that protrude in all directions. The cells also have a single longer branch sticking out called an axon that may extend far from the main cell body (Figure 1). Axons have a smooth surface and are surrounded by a protecting sheath of white matter (myelin) made of protein and fat. When the axons from one cell are close enough to dendrites from another, connections (called synapses) can develop.

Human thinking consists of remembering and comparing information (analysis), and evaluating or making connections (synthesis). Both processes occur because of our neuronal networks. Neurons are connected via a very complex network, and neuronal cells exchange information much like wiring circuits move electrons. When our brain processes information, perhaps visual, aural, or other sensory information from external sources, or maybe just thoughts, signals move at a blistering pace from one neuron to another. Information/signals get picked up by the dendrites, travel to the soma, shuffle down an axon, cross a synapse, and go on and on through the network. Synapses, which can develop in many places on a single dendrite, come and go throughout our lives, so our brains are constantly being rewired. At each synapse, chemical processes excite or inhibit activity in a neuron dendrite, so synapses may be either strengthened or weakened.

The brain’s neuronal network has sometimes been compared with a river drainage network, or to a tree or bush with many branches, but is really more complicated than these simple analogies suggest. Each neuron may have 10,000 or more connections to others, and there are on the order of a million miles of wiring in our brains. When born, we only have a fraction of all the synapses we will later develop, but they develop quickly (synaptogenesis) – the largest number within the first year or so; then the total decreases for the rest of our lives as unused connections are pruned and new ones develop. At the same time, the brain can produce new neurons that contribute to memory and thinking.

The neurons and synapses we use, stick around; others are pruned. So they are gained by experience, and lost if not used. Consequently, what a person does, sees, hears and thinks about lead to changes in the brain. Rewiring is an ongoing process and connections are made and broken in just seconds or minutes. Reinforcing those connections takes longer times, and much reinforcement is done while we are sleeping at night. Firmly connecting new circuits to old ones may take days or longer, but eventually circuits and connections that are fired the most may become “hard wired” and semi permanent. Specific skills such as driving or dancing, or knowledge of a particular subject – all are wired in the same way.  Such connections are difficult to develop and perhaps, more difficult to eliminate. (Think about this the next time you encounter someone who is stubbornly wrong about something!)  So, the brain adapts as needed and growth is different for different people depending on their experiences. Researchers, who have actually been able to “see” (image, using several different techniques) brain connections form, find that different parts of the brain develop and respond to different kinds of stimuli. Brains of musicians are wired differently than brains of figure skaters, for example, and different people respond to stimuli in different ways.

One key component in all this is the myelin that forms the protecting layer around axons. Myelin, essentially, can change a local road to a super highway. The better myelinated an axon is, the better and faster the signal transmission. At birth, few axons are myelinated. Myelin develops in different parts of our brain at different times, making us better and better thinkers and firmly cementing some bits of knowledge or skill in our minds. Coyle (2009) suggests that myelin may be the most important thing in our head. Studies reveal that expert athletes, musicians, or scholars all have different parts of the brains that are especially well myelinated.

What’s It Mean?

So, students are not empty vessels. They come to our classrooms completely wired. They have knowledge, mental models, and habits that are built in. This prior knowledge consists of real, physical brain circuits. Unfortunately, those circuits may be poorly or inappropriately developed, and a student’s knowledge and ways of thinking may hinder learning or make it difficult for them to understand what we are trying to teach. When students fail one of my exams, it may not be that I am a bad teacher, or that they are bad or lazy students. It may simply be that they do not have the brain circuits necessary to succeed. When students tell me that they are “bad at science,” it really means that they do not have the requisite neuronal networks to succeed, or at least to believe they can succeed, at science. So, we teachers need to help students develop new mental models and to eliminate old ones – a physical process involving changing the structure of their brains.

Many authors, including the ones referenced in this article, have talked about the importance of deep/significant learning. Consideration of the brain’s dynamics explains what this really means. When superficial leaning occurs, students may temporarily absorb some information for short term recall. They may learn how to do something, but the new skill won’t be long-lasting. In contrast, when significant learning occurs, physical changes occur in their heads. The learning experience has been strong enough to develop new synaptic connections between neurons. New knowledge, new ideas, new ways of thinking become semipermanent fixtures as neuronal networks are modified. Coyle (2009) argues convincingly that significant learning cannot be obtained without what he terms “deep practice” because deep practice is necessary to promote myelinization.  Call it what you want, deep practice, targeted practice, focused practice – the key is that all practice is not the same. If we want to promote significant learning, we have to teach in a way that promotes meaningful, significant, practice and thinking.

Thinking about the brain as a living, evolving, organism makes it clear why students must be actively engaged if they are to learn. Engagement means that they are really using their brains, and the exercise promotes the physical changes necessary for real learning. In Teaching With the Brain in Mind, Jensen (2005) says that promoting engagement requires us to teach in a way that is focused and relevant. We need to deliver information, or assign tasks, in absorbable chunks, and reinforce what we do. Repetition, perhaps involving previewing, reviewing, revising and other things students can do, is key.  These activities promote physical changes at the synapses (termed long-term potentiation) that strengthen the synapses and make them especially receptive to future similar inputs.  Metacgonition is also important because, as students monitor what they are learning and evaluate outcomes, the connections that manifest learning are strengthened and reinforced.

Understanding the physiological basis of learning is one thing; using this knowledge to revise instruction is another. There are many paths that could be followed and no one way is best. For some practical examples, check out Teaching With the Brain in Mind (Jensen 2005), the New York Times Best Seller Brain Rules (Medina 2008), or the recent and very engaging Talent Code (Coyle 2009). There are many other good references, but these three are both informative and a fun to read.

References

Bransford, J.D., Brown, A.L., and Cocking, R.R. (2000) How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. Nat. Acad. Press, Washington. 374 p.

Coyle, D. (2009) The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How. Bantam Books, New York. 246 p.

Jensen, E. (2005) Teaching With the Brain In Mind. Assoc. Superv. Curric. Develop., Alexandria. 187 p.

Kolb, D.A. (1984) Experiential Learning: Experiences as the Source of Learning and Development.  Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs. 364 p.

Medina, J. (2008) Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. Pear Press, Seattle. 301 p.

Zull, J.E. (2002) The Art of Changing the Brain: Enriching the Practice of Teaching by Exploring the Biology of Learning. Stylus Pub., Sterling. 263 p.

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Posted in Dexter Perkins

Blink Grading

Posted on December 1, 2011 by | 2 Comments

Michael Beltz, Department of Philosophy & Religion, University of North Dakota

As the fall semester at University of North Dakota comes to a close, many instructors, myself included, are shifting their thoughts to the most difficult and stressful aspect of the teaching profession: grading. The amount of work that needs to be graded at the end of each semester poses a problem that does not occur during the rest of the semester; namely, final grades must be submitted to the registrar within 48 hours of the administration of final exam. During the rest of the semester, when students submit papers or written exams, it may take me as much as two weeks to evaluate, comment on, and grade these types of assignments. While I have less other work to do during finals week, I still worry that the limited amount of time that I have to grade final work for students is not sufficient to accurately evaluate these projects, papers, exams, and assignments.

It turns out that having less time to grade this work might mean that I am more accurate in my evaluations than if I were to have more time. In his book, Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell argues that we may be better in our evaluations if we think less about those judgments. He argues that snap judgments are better and fairer reflections than when long analysis is conducted before the judgments are rendered. This may seem counterintuitive, but Gladwell’s analysis consistently shows how immediate judgments tend to be more accurate and superior to carefully weighed judgments.

In the context of evaluating students’ work, the principle is simple. If we eliminate those factors that might produce biased evaluations, then allowing the intuition of a professional to come forth will make the evaluations quicker and a better reflection of a student’s work. Since most instructors have years of experience and have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of assignments, the subconscious of the instructor will be a better judge than when the evaluations are made consciously.

One area of Gladwell’s argument seems particularly troubling for traditional grading strategies. In what he calls “The Storytelling Problem” Gladwell highlights a variety of cases where individual judgments are different when the person is required to explain why they reached a conclusion. When a person makes an evaluation immediately, but are not forced to justify their evaluation, those evaluations tend to be more consistent with their previous judgments and with the judgment of others. However, when the same individuals are required to first establish criteria for evaluation or must first explain how they are thinking about something and then make the evaluation, their judgments become more sporadic and random. The reason for this, he postulates, is that your thoughts become confused and we end up focused on the wrong aspects of our evaluations. When professional tennis players are asked about how they hit a tennis ball, the top players in the world cannot adequately explain a skill that they have mastered. People engaged in speed-dating end up giving unacceptable partners higher scores and acceptable partners lower scores. In the context of grading student work, when we feel that we need to provide students with feedback, we are really providing a text designed to justify the grade we are giving the piece of work. During the process of justifying an activity that we have done innumerable times, like grading, we often end up talking ourselves out of our initial judgment.

If I read a student paper that initially seems to be a B+, I should be confident that my professional ability to evaluate an assignment is accurate. However, if I then look at the comments in the paper or at my comments on a rubric form, I will expect these comments to be consistent with that grade, i.e. the amount and types of comments should be equivalent with other papers that are earning a B+. They should be less critical and fewer in number than those receiving a B and more critical than those papers earning an A-. When the justifications on the paper do not fit within the expected severity or amount, we are faced with a problem. We might change the amount of comments to reflect our judgment. Unfortunately, in most cases we change our judgment to reflect the justification. Thus, we override our immediate judgment to fit our story (our justification). Why do we automatically believe that our comments or our rubrics are a better judge than our snap judgment? Galdwell provides an overwhelming amount of evidence that conforming our judgments to fit a story is less accurate than allowing the judgments to stand alone without any justification.

This does not mean that our snap judgments are always accurate reflections; personal biases and subconscious mechanisms can often make our snap judgments inconsistent and flawed. The good news is that these biases tend to occur in regular patterns and can be guarded against. Gladwell argues that there is an important way to guard against these biases. He argues that the more information we have when we make a judgment the less accurate it will be. This is not to say that we should make evaluations capriciously; instead, we should eliminate any information that might push us to a certain decision, when that information is not what is being evaluated. A well-meaning mentor of mine in graduate school gave me advice on grading final assignments. He argued that I should tally up each student’s scores before I started to grade the finals. This would allow me to know how many points each student needed to earn on the final to receive each grade. I then would only need to determine whether each student had reached that threshold score. When I tried this approach, I was amazed at how many students seemed to submit final work that hit almost exactly on the border score. Was it just a coincidence that this high percentage of students ended up right on the border of two grades? The more likely explanation was that this additional information was clouding my judgment. Since I had a score in mind at the start, when I looked at each paper that score would carry more weight and significance than any other grade. Thus, I was biasing my judgment towards those scores and was not accurately judging the student’s work.

So what additional information might get in the way of accurate snap judgments? There are three types of information that seem relevant in the context of grading finals. First, it is the information that identifies irrelevant features of the student. This includes their name, major, gender, race, ethnicity, etc. None of these factors are relevant to the quality of work produced by the student. If we know who a student is before evaluating his or her work, we are likely to have personal thoughts or feelings enter our evaluations. Knowing a student is a major or a first-year student or even a nice person, is likely to bring inappropriate emotions into our judgments. These emotions, since we are not evaluating how the students make us feel, can only skew our opinions of their final work. Second, any information about what students need to score should not be known. As mentioned above, this information plants a preconceived benchmark in our minds. To me, this seems no different from a student asking what they need to know on a test so they can get a C. When students ask me this, I find it very problematic because the question indicates that they want to do the exact minimal amount and no more. Instructors should avoid this temptation, just as we advise students to avoid it. Finally, instructors should eliminate knowledge of the previous work the student has submitted. If we know that a student has earned B’s on their previous exams, we are likely to end up starting with the assumption that they will earn roughly a B on their final work. While this assumption may be accurate in many cases, it does the student a disservice. Ideally we evaluate each assignment on its own merits, and not in conjunction with the student’s other work. This information is likely to end up biasing us towards the status quo rather than being reflective of the actual quality of the assignment.

Where does this leave us? Gladwell’s argument, when applied to grading, presents us with two core principles for more effective grading: 1) grading fast can mean grading better; and 2) less information can mean more accuracy.

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Posted in Final Exams, Michael Beltz, Time

On Teaching

Posted on November 29, 2011 by | Leave a comment

The Fall 2011 (Number 2) On Teaching newsletter from the University of North Dakota’s Office of Instructional Development is now available!

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Posted in On Teaching

Midsemester Reflection of a First Year History Teacher

Posted on November 17, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Robert Caulkins, Department of History, University of North Dakota

Bob is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History and has graciously agreed to share some of his experiences as a first semester instructor with our Teaching Thursday audience.

Bill Caraher recently asked me if I would contribute a piece to the Teaching Thursdays blog and, although I read this informative blog with some regularity I have always been hesitant to add my proverbial two cents to this column—I had not actually taught a college level course of my own.  As Bill has since pointed out, I can no longer say that, and in fact I’m really excited about some of the developments that I have recently observed among my US History to 1877 students.  This excitement comes from actually watching one component of my teaching strategy work with my students.

When I initially constructed the syllabus, selected the textbook, and chose some ancillary readings for the course, I had a very broad concept for the class in mind and that was to examine the historical development of the “American Character.”  Early in this conceptual stage I decided that by presenting early American and colonial history in a comparative manner that was more closely tied to anywhere else other than the American portion of the North American continent and not focusing just on what white Europeans did once they arrived on the shores of the future thirteen colonies, I believed that my students would be able to make larger historical connections to what many people believe are uniquely American values and characteristics.  My greatest hope was that I would be able to pique the curiosity of the students concerning where these “American” traits originated from.  Of course implementing this plan was another matter. 

Throughout the teaching process I have faced the same problems and difficulties that most other teachers have had to deal with and one of these issues is getting adequate feedback from the students on the effectiveness of my teaching.  While I’m as human as the next teacher and would be overjoyed to hear what a “great teacher” I am, I’m also enough of a realist to know that there are students in the class that are there for any number of reasons, some of which do not have anything to do with satisfying an unquenchable thirst for knowledge of American history.  More pragmatic issues such as filling electives or completing general studies requirements are motives that are just as important to some students as the motives of those who see history as a component of their liberal arts education.  In order to find some sort of balance or center to aim at as a teacher, I started the semester by giving my class of fifty a survey with some questions that I hoped they would answer honestly, providing me with enough information to allow me to tailor certain aspects of the course to achieve my teaching objectives.

The survey allowed the student to remain anonymous as no names were required or wanted—in fact I told the students that if they did not want to fill it out they did not have too.  I did not receive a single returned blank survey sheet.  The survey addressed six questions, and while the class roster provided an answer to the first question, which was, “what year or grade are you in?” is available in People Soft, having the student identify themselves as freshmen or sophomores while providing a brief writing sample had some value in determining who I was teaching and what my expectations of them would be.  While there is no way to draw grand conclusions from this particular question their handwritten responses allowed me to connect the rest of the survey to the grade level of the student.  There were no surprises in the answers, out of fifty students, forty-four of them were either first or second year students, and here they were almost evenly divided. 

For the sake of brevity I won’t go over all the questions, but the two questions that have since provided the most utility for my teaching were, “What questions would you like answered while you are here?” and rather surprisingly, “Where are you from, and what is your ethnic background or heritage?”  The big question for me, was to discern what if anything the students enjoyed learning about and how to best connect the events of the past to them personally in the present and their own personal history or background seemed like a good place to start.  The responses to the question of what they wanted answers too did not produce what I thought were any profound revelations.  One student expressed curiosity over the role of religion in the formulation of laws while several others wanted more information on wars the United States had been involved in.  Another student wanted to know why an entire semester was devoted to a survey course that only covered half of the country’s history.  For the most part I was left with the impression that those whom I was dealing with possessed a kind of tabula rasa when it came to their own country’s history.  The responses concerning their ethnic and cultural background however, were brimming with information.  According to their answers the entire class was native born and all students but one claimed some ethnic or cultural background, the lone dissenter simply identified himself as an “American.”  This ethnic background information became useful in that I could use it to lead class discussions on a nation formed by diverse groups of immigrants by linking the colonization of North America to the students own immigrant roots.  The trick was going to be putting these two components together and provide the students with enough information to stimulate their curiosities to the point where they would develop questions concerning the country’s past. 

Last week, after giving the class their second term examination results, I directed the students to write a short, in-class essay on what they have learned to date about American history.  Several of the students stated that they had augmented their existing levels of knowledge but pointed out that they had benefitted from some particular area of history that extended beyond the usual limits of a survey course in American history.  But the majority of the students almost without fail noted the expanded or more cosmopolitan manner of how they now viewed America’s early history.  Many students noted particular historical characters that they had never heard of before, while other encouraging feedback concerned student’s comprehension of complex concepts such as the application of “enlightenment era” philosophies during the formation of the country.  But it was individual observation and comments that gave me the most satisfaction.  One student expressed relief to know that divisions and rancor between political parties was not new or a twentieth century development and was very surprised to know that it has existed since the formation of the nation.  Other students expressed surprise over more mundane aspects of what had been taught in the previous nine weeks of the semester—such as reconsidering the cultural mythology surrounding Christopher Columbus.  Other students professed a new understanding of the history of slavery in America, some complete with expressions of surprise at the levels of suffering endured by slaves held in captivity.  Overall I am very pleasantly surprised by what I had received as feedback being two-thirds through the semester.  I truly appreciate this opportunity to share my experience with others and I hope that some of this may be beneficial to the other rookies coming along in the future.  I am reminded though that the semester is still not over and there are a few other items though where the jury is still out on how my class is dealing with requirements for the course such as their writing assignment on selected portions of Alexis De Tocqueville’s Democracy In America.  This might make an interesting follow up post.

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Posted in First Year Reflections, Graduate Instruction, Robert Caulkins

Thinking through Attendance

Posted on November 10, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Michael Beltz, Department of Philosophy & Religion, University of North Dakota

Over the last several years, I have had a shift in my thinking about attendance in my courses. Now, as I think about my courses in the spring semester, I may be changing my views once again. The specific issue I am currently wrestling with is whether to formally take attendance every class period. This is not an issue I am concerned with for most of my courses. I do not feel that it is necessary in small seminar classes. In those classes, because of their discussion format, I am able to learn student’s names rapidly and naturally. Nor am I concerned with large lecture classes (over 75 students). In these classes, developing a personal connection with the majority of the students is unrealistic. My concern is whether to implement formal attendance in mid-size classes (between 25 and 75 students). My structure for this size of a class is a hybrid format of lectures, group activities, and whole class discussions. In the large scale lecture course, even in an active discussion, only a small minority of students will be able to contribute to the discussion. In the small seminar class, time typically permits all students to contribute to the discussion. The hybrid nature and the number of students in the mid-size courses make these classes problematic. In these classes, it is possible to hear from a majority of students, but not all students. This is a challenge because these mid-size courses demand that students be involved with the collective learning activities. This requires that students be present and prepared for the class; missing either of these undermines the class goals.

The question is: Should I formally take attendance in my mid-level courses?

Argument against attendance #1: Formally taking attendance is overly time-consuming (or counterproductive).

At the University of North Dakota, if a class meets three days a week, each class period is only 50 minutes long. Even if attendance is only takes 5 minutes (which for me is optimistic in a 75 student class), this means that 10% of any course is spent on this activity rather than on the course subject matter. There is a two-fold problem with this. First, students are paying for this time, but it does not have any direct value to their learning. Second, by adding formal attendance taking to a course, I would only be able to cover 90% of the material that I would otherwise be able to cover. In addition, since this missing 10% would not come from a single course period, all of the daily course plans would need to be revamped and revisited.

There seems to be at least two different responses that might be given to this argument. First, it might be possible to formally take attendance without spending valuable class time. One solution might be to hand-around a sign-in sheet (or some other strategy like daily quizzes) where students record their attendance while the class is going on. Unfortunately, this approach comes with two costs. There is the potential for students to cheat the system and falsify attendance (by having someone else sign them in). Additionally, having a sign-in sheet pass through a class means that every student will be distracted from the class concepts and activities at some point; thus undermining the argument in favor of the sign-in sheet. Second, this argument can be criticized for conflating amount of time in the class with productivity in the class. If taking attendance were to make students more attentive, understand concepts better, or learn more, then it would be worth the lost 10% of the total course. This, obviously, does not mean that taking attendance makes students learn more efficiently (more data would be needed for this claim); it simply means that the use of time in this manner is not sufficient grounds for rejecting attendance.

Argument against attendance #2: It is not the proper role of an instructor to take attendance.

An instructor’s primary role in any class is to provide a quality experience for students. This experience should be based on the professional expertise of the instructor combined with the instructor’s judgment as to what should be learned and how the content and/or skills are best covered in the course. Formally taking attendance is not often seen as the most appropriate role of the instructor. Students’ have a role in their education, too. This is usually understood to include being present and prepared for each class period.  In this understanding of the roles of the instructor and the students, being present would clearly be the students’ responsibility, not the instructors.  By taking attendance, the instructor is taking the burden of this responsibility.

This argument revolves around the idea that all individuals in the learning process have obligations and responsibilities; if either the instructor or the student fails to meet their responsibilities, the learning process breaks down. I am receptive to this general proposition, but the idea of multiple responsible agents does not mean that the responsibility rests just on one individual. Attendance in a class is not just the students’ responsibility, even if the responsibility is unevenly on the students’ shoulders. For example, one responsibility that students have toward their own education is to ask questions of the instructor when they do not understand the course concepts. Instructors have the ability to discourage or encourage this type of discussion. Even though it is primarily the students’ responsibility to ask for clarification, the instructor has a reasonable responsibility to be accessible to students, to answer questions, and to be open to a discussion of the concepts. This same principle applies to attendance. Attendance is primarily the students’ responsibility, but instructors have some limited responsibilities (like giving incentives for attendance and making sure there are not disincentives for attendance).

Argument against attendance #3: Students are adults with free-will and should be allowed to make up their own minds as to whether they come to class or not.

Different individuals have different values. As adults, students should be allowed to establish their own priorities and act on their values (as long as those actions do not harm other individuals). If a student has determined that some other activity has a higher value to them than attending a class period that is his or her choice. To supersede this judgment is to see the students as less legitimate decision makers than the instructor. This is a clear case of paternalism. Equally important, students who do not attend class regularly will be found out. In the end, their grades will likely be lower than their classmates.

This argument hinges on the relationship between paternalism and attendance policies. It argues that formally taking attendance forces students to conform to the values of the instructor and not to act in ways that they might normally choose. There are two problems with this argument. First, there is nothing about formally taking attendance that undermines the students’ autonomy. They still are allowed to make decisions based on their values. Class attendance is still voluntary, but the consequences of noncompliance are clear and reinforced in every class period. If anything, attendance policies make students better decision makers because they have more information available to them when they compare their values. Secondly, paternalism is rampant and beneficial in mid-size classes. Instructors have guidelines for all sorts of class behavior (both within the classroom and outside activities involving the course). Students respond to these guidelines all of the time. Taking attendance shows students that the instructor values students being in class and that the instructor believes that regular class attendance increases the effectiveness of the course. This is no different from telling students that they cannot sleep during class. This is paternalistic, since it tells students how to behave, but this does not make it wrong to try to stop this behavior.

Argument for attendance #1: It holds students accountable for their actions.

Like most people, students do not want to do things that they will not get credit for. Since most educators see attendance as beneficial to learning, formally taking attendance creates a direct and immediate benefit to the student. It gives them credit for the action and costs them when they violate the expected behavior. Students know what is expected of them and can act accordingly. Even if attendance corresponds to success on class assignments, these evaluations are more sporadic. Formally taking attendance gives daily feedback to the student about whether they are meeting the course expectations. This direct and immediate feedback is more meaningful and lasting because of its regularity.

I am sympathetic to the idea of creating positive incentives to encourage beneficial student behaviors. However, it is not clear that formally taking attendance is incentivizing the right behaviors. Taking attendance does create an incentive to be in class, but only that action. It does hold students accountable for whether they are in class at a specific time, but it ends there. The incentives push students towards coming to class even if they have not prepared, are sick, or cannot stay awake for 50 minutes. Taking attendance, by itself, encourages students to come to class, but does not encourage them to be actively engaged with the class.

Argument for attendance #2: It provides data about the effectiveness of teaching.

In theory, there should be a correlation between class attendance and final class grade. This does not mean that a student with perfect attendance will get a good grade or that a student could not receive a strong grade despite spotty attendance. However, when we look at a cohort of students, there should be a direct benefit between class attendance and what students learn. Formally taking attendance provides direct evidence as to who was in each class and how often a student was not present. This data should allow us to determine whether what we do in class is effective. If the correlation between attendance and final outcomes are strong, this indicates that classroom time is important to student progress. If students who attend regularly and students that attend irregularly earn the same grades, this indicates that class times and activities do not provide students with information or tools necessary for success. (It is important to note again that this should apply to large groups of students and might not reflect every student outcome). The additional data provided by taking attendance also allows us to examine the success of class activities. We can compare the correlations between attendance and grades to determine what activities have the greatest impact (not just what students prefer).

This defense of formal attendance is nice in theory, but does not seem strong in practice. It is true that we end up with more data to think about, but that data is only useful when it is actually analyzed. This means that we would need to use this data in a systematic and sound manner to analyze a course. This seems unrealistic for most instructors, since it would require timely (and potentially massive) data analysis. Instead, it seems more probable that this additional data would only be used anecdotally and it would be susceptible to confirmation bias.

Argument for attendance #3: It provides supporting evidence for determining some components of students’ grades.

Many classes incorporate points in their grading schemes that come from discussion, participation, attendance, or some other structure that rewards students for being prepared and involved in collective learning. Unfortunately, most assessment in these areas is highly subjective. Having accurate and complete attendance records provides a defensive argument if a student challenges any of these subjective grades. If a student complains that they ended up with a B for class participation, an objective number can be used in a disagreement. As the university structure moves increasingly towards a contractual and legalistic framework, this objective data protects instructors’ interests.

This argument seems to be reversed from the previous argument. It may be great in practice, but it is problematic in theory. It may prevent challenges to individual grades, but it provides false security and seems to be based on a lie. Attendance is clearly a necessary condition for participation and active learning, but attendance is not a sufficient condition. Students cannot participate in class if they are not there, but mere presence does not affect participation. Using class attendance as a sole justification for a participation grade conflates these two aspects of education. It also provides a false sense of objectivity to how these grades are determined.

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Posted in Attendance, Michael Beltz

Help Needed for the Capstone Assessment Project

Posted on November 8, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Anne Kelsch, Director, Office of Instructional Development, University of North Dakota

Nineteen faculty met in May of 2004 to read and score student papers, written by graduating seniors in a variety of majors, for written communication and critical thinking. The aim of the project was to find out how well these two intellectual skills, at the heart of both the old General Education (GE) program and the new Essential Studies (ES) program, would be demonstrated by students at the time of graduation. We sought to determine whether their writing and critical thinking met standards of achievement that faculty had determined to be appropriate for graduates of the university.

The following report summarizes both the process and the findings. Conclusions from that study and other assessment projects conducted for the GE program were discussed extensively by members of the GE Task Force and influenced decision-making regarding the ES program. Now, with the first large group of ES “completers” due to graduate from UND this spring, it’s worth revisiting findings from 2004 as we prepare to conduct a similar assessment of writing and critical thinking skills this December when we will examine a sample of student work from several different Essential Studies (ES) capstone courses. The goal is take a close look at the learning of our senior students as they close out their undergraduate programs at UND.

This December project is our first try at assessment of “C” course work, and it’s our first cross-course look at learning outcomes for the ES program. After this initial project, we expect that the process will become a regular feature of the assessment plan for ES. The project will be led by Joan Hawthorne, Director of Assessment and Regional Accreditation, and Tom Steen, Director of ES, with support from Anne Kelsch and the Office of Instructional Development. The plan is to organize a team of faculty from across the campus to work together in a half-day retreat where we will review student work samples, using previously-developed UND assessment rubrics. Based on the team’s work, we will gain a picture of the quality of student learning in their general education at UND. Results will be shared with the full campus community, and they will be used in the ES program review planned for 2012-13. Those involved in the scoring will be invited to discuss the results and suggest ways to strengthen our offerings and program features in ES. The plan is to conduct this assessment work on two ES goals each year, thus setting up a two-year cycle. This year, the assessment focus is on the two goals most frequently used now: Thinking & Reasoning and Communication. In addition, since some “C” courses are approved to also meet the requirement in Advanced Communication, the project will also examine the more in-depth learning that “A” designated capstones are aiming for.

We could use your help. To conduct the Capstone Assessment Project, we need campus faculty members to serve on the assessment team. Ideally, team members should include faculty who have taught ES courses, been involved in validation/revalidation of courses, and served on the ES or GER Committee. But ES is a campus-wide program, and faculty from all programs and majors, whether directly involved inES or not, will also have useful perspectives. If you have an interest in what our students are learning in our undergraduate programs, please volunteer. To do so, contact Tom Steen, Office of Essential Studies, 777-4434 or thomas.steen@email.und.edu.

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Posted in Anne Kelsch, Capstone Assessment

The Substance of the Syllabus

Posted on November 3, 2011 by | 1 Comment

Bill Caraher, Department of History, University of North Dakota

I’ve been thinking about how I run a digital history practicum lately and considering how my experiences in this laboratory course can inform how I teach in more traditional courses. Recently I received a comment on a post that I cross-posted with my own blog, regarding my decisions to go without a syllabus in my digital history practicum.  The well-meaning commenter seemed appalled that I did not have a syllabus and went so far to insist that I “owed the students” a syllabus.

This got me thinking.

It’s not that I didn’t think about making a syllabus or couldn’t be bothered to do it for this class. Instead, I decided that the course was not a traditional course and the goals associated with the course divided evenly between learning by practice and a well-defined goal independent of the learning process.  The course had as a client the Chester Fritz Library and the success of the course dependent in part on the success in putting together a digital history collection and various online exhibits for the library. 

So at the start of the class, instead of circulating a syllabus, the class of four graduate students met and discussed the various expectations and deadlines for various parts of our project. As a result of this discussion, the class itself created an informal syllabus. Since then, we have mostly held to the various deadlines, although I am not convinced that we did as well with the various expectations that involved parties had for the class. 

I will admit that this course is a unique case, the students are almost all graduate students and advanced graduate students at that. We met informally and cultivated a flexible, collegial atmosphere rather than one informed by the traditional teacher – student dyad of authority. 

I had lunch last week with my fellow Teaching Thursday editor, Mick Beltz. Over some sandwiches we discussed the tendency toward contractual understandings of syllabi among students and the rise of the “student as customer” mentality.  We speculated about a  slippery slope where the student as customer arrives in our classroom expecting a precise definition of what it is that they will learn, how much better it will make them, and what the eventual value of this knowledge will be on future earnings and happiness. The quantitative and qualitative character of the imparted knowledge is girded about by a contractual syllabus and a series of rigid rubrics and standardized assessment methods that track the students’ progress through a series of environments arranged like a decentralized assembly line designed to produce a perfected person, a qualified employee, and a happy customer. While we all agree that some parts of this model are inevitable or even intrinsic in how higher education has been conceptualized in the US, the reality of this increasingly commodified view of the educational experience is depressing and limits our ability to adapt to a dynamic classroom environment, disrupt the student-teach dyad, and challenge authority.

In fact, as a result of our conversation, I began to wonder whether the syllabus does more to create the contractual and consumerist attitude by students toward their education than almost anything else. It immediately places the faculty member in the position of someone who owes the students something.  I always imagine the syllabus as a document that basically tells the students that I have something distinct and material to impart and sets their expectations of my performance. Like a contract with a local company, the student is put in the position of making sure that I deliver on the goods that my syllabus/contract promised. 

It wasn’t until my conversations with Mick, that I remembered my first experiment with unconventional syllabus writing. In my Latin 202 course last semester, I wrote a one page syllabus with some vague learning goals. (Something along the lines of “Learn Latin gooder” or “to engooden your knowledge of the Latin language.”)  I did this because I was not entirely confident with the level of preparation the students had or my own abilities to “engooden” their Latin.  Over the course of the class, we discussed various possible assignments re-arranged the value of various successful and failed assessment activities, and established together expectations of weekly work.  This was successful (mostly) because it created an environment where we could adapt the class continuously to our performance. I remember being encouraged by discovering that I am not the only one who approached my classes in this way.

For my digital history practicum, I anticipated that advanced graduate students might see the syllabus as redundant and perhaps condescending. The goals of the course came as much from our conversations with our “client” (the library) as from what the students wanted or what I expected them to learn. In other words, the syllabus became redundant in an environment where the students knew that they had to learn to complete a task.

This kind of environment, of course, simulates life. As the students in the class look ahead to writing their dissertations, they will likely discover that this process does not come with a syllabus. Moreover, when they write their first scholarly articles, there are no deadlines, learning goals, assessments, or rubrics that constrain what they do or document what they learn.  Even outside of the comfy confines of the academy, the students will inevitably discover that life does not offer syllabi. Success, happiness, and fulfillment, do not come by fulfilling the obligations set out on a sheet of paper.

Do syllabi do more harm than good?

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Posted in Bill Caraher, Syllabi