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

Thinking about Teaching Digital History: A Follow Up

Posted on November 1, 2011 by | Leave a comment

A short follow up to a post from two weeks ago on Teaching Thursday.  The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Profhacker blog has featured a couple of short posts on integrating a digital project into a class.  The author, Amy Cavender, is discussing how she’s doing this in her class with a post here and a follow-up post here.

Some of her observations resonated nicely with our post on collaboration and teaching digital history through practice.

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Posted in Bill Caraher, Digital Humanities

Rethinking the Case Study Model for the Humanities

Posted on October 27, 2011 by | 1 Comment

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

Over the past decade, there has been a resurgence within higher education teaching literature, of advocates for using case studies as a tool for successful student engagement. The idea is that instructors can increase learning outcomes by providing concrete and detailed cases for students to explore. This exploration can occur at many levels of instruction, from individual explorations, to small-group interactions, to whole cohort focusing discussions. What is most striking about this resurgence is how the values promoted by this approach have developed out of specific disciplines. Specifically, the benefits and weaknesses of the use of case studies are products of the two academic disciplines (Engineering and Health Sciences) that have been at the forefront of this resurgence in the use of case studies. It is my proposal that the use of case studies in the humanities rethinks the potential advantages of case studies, without abandoning the strengthens that have made their use appealing.

The use of case studies as a tool for educational development has three main advantages. The main strength of case studies is how they frame the students in their own learning. Caroline Whitbeck, a prominent engineering ethicist, warns against how modern engineering and modern ethics courses are structured. The danger is that we allow individuals to passively experience their educations. Formulas are presented in their finalized and whole forms; problems are explored after they have been resolved; and, entire educational fields are explained to students in linear and concise narratives. Whitbeck argues that the goal of ethics should be to design courses so that students will be engaged participants who design good choices, rather than detached spectators who merely criticize choices made by others. Case studies can help this transformation to occur within our students, by shifting their perspectives. Instead of being docile bodies that absorb completed solutions, well-constructed case studies force students to place themselves in the shoes of the characters in the case. They are forced to confront how they would act in the situations that are presented. This occurs in a controlled and safe environment, so there is less pressure; case study activities are akin to the science laboratory (constructed problems, all of the equipment necessary for completion is provided, assistance on working through tough parts, etc.). It is this advantage that has led many academics to include case studies as a form of experiential or hands-on learning.

The second advantage that the case studies provide is richness of details. When case studies are fully developed, they provide information and details that make any subsequent discussions more enlivened. This is because they provide situations that are overdetermined; there are multiple ways to explain the events that are presented and multiple details that may be addressed by different students. The idea is that case studies allow for the inclusion of details and contributing factors that are often left out of contrived and artificial examples. This helps students develop their critical thinking skills by allowing students to make their own determination of what details are important and relevant. The use of case studies in health service education benefits greatly from this advantage. Nursing students, when presented with a rich set of details need to be able to distinguish which details and factors are relevant to the underlying condition and which are red herrings. The same general principle is important for other disciplines, providing students with the opportunity to sort between relevant information and irrelevant information, argue for these distinctions, and defend those determinations.

The third advantage that case studies have is their underlying reality. In both engineering and health sciences, case studies tend to be derived from existing real-world situations. Thus, when students are presented with a case study, the significance of the student’s decisions is amplified. The individuals presented in the case study are robust and complicated individuals; in many cases, these people’s health and welfare are in the balance. It is true that the student decisions do not change the outcomes, but they often provide glimpses of how options turned out for these real people. This allows students to see the actual ramifications that some of the decisions led to; ideally this can instill in students the costs that some decisions have for the participants.

It is my contention that the humanities could benefit by using case studies more, if the model for the use of case studies was reframed. The use of case studies by Engineering and health science has direct benefits that can be preserved. However, this experiential learning approach to case studies may not be appropriate for the humanities. There are many potential benefits that can be enhanced by shifting away from the hands-on paradigm to an alternative model. The model I propose comes from the idea of the natural philosophy experiment. This approach is the traditional thought experiment in philosophy. The instructor proposes a short, but complicated scenario and asks students to provide possible solutions to the scenario. A classic example of this type of thought experiment is to ask students: “Can you provide a solid argument for why you know that you are awake right now, and not still asleep in your bed dreaming this conversation?” These scenarios have two pedagogical advantages. First, they force students to take a position and defend that position. These types of scenarios allow all students the opportunity to participate, whether they have read or not and whether they understand the rest of the course material or not. This occurs in a classroom environment, where the risks involved in a wrong answer are low and potential for group contributions are high.

The second advantage that natural philosophy experiments have is less obvious; they have the ability to test the consistency of students’ thoughts. The thought experiments are constructed and controlled by the instructor. This means that the instructor has the flexibility to change parts of the scenario to challenge the students’ initial arguments. If a student argues that it is acceptable for a person to steal a loaf of bread to feed her starving family, the instructor can change the scenario to not be about theft of bread but the theft (and reselling) of illegal drugs. Any changes to the scenario are at the discretion of the instructor. Any changes in the way that a student argues his or her position can be highlighted and explored. The ideal situation exposes our unstated assumptions, the contradictions in our thinking, and any conclusions that are obscured by our own biases.

This approach to the use of thought experiments has been challenged in a variety of different ways. One of the strongest critics of this approach comes from the field of feminist ethics. Carol Gillian has used criticisms of this approach as the basis for her argument against traditional models of ethics. There are several criticisms that are leveled at this method. It is argued that these scenarios are too removed from people’s actual lives. The scenarios are presented in such abstract ways that the options do not seem real; it is rare for a person to have no other option than to steal a loaf of bread in order to keep her family from starving. The second criticism is that these types of scenarios privilege thought-patterns that move from abstract principle to concrete case, but not from concrete case to abstract principle. Students tend to get positive feedback when they start with a principle (like stealing harms innocent people) and progress to the case where the principle is applied (this is a case of stealing, so it is wrong).

By rethinking the way that case studies are used in the humanities, I believe it may be possible to maintain the advantages of the Engineering and Health Sciences use of case studies and the advantages of the natural philosophy experiment, but also avoid their limitations. Both the case study and the natural philosophy experiment move students from spectators to participants. Their value is primarily in encouraging students to actually engage in the decision-making processes, rather than just comment on the mistakes made by other people. Both of these methods allow students to explore their attitudes and assumptions in closed, safe environments. There are limited risks involved and the actual scenarios are created for a purpose and carefully controlled by the instructors. The second and third advantages of the ways that Engineering and health sciences use of case studies  seem missing from the use of natural philosophy thought experiments in the humanities.

This does not have to be the case, though. If we use case studies the same way that thought experiments are traditionally used, we can keep the advantages of both approaches to student learning. Instead of using short and direct thought experiments, there are advantages to using complex, dense, and real-live case studies. This does force instructors to give up control over how the discussions will progress, but this trade-off comes with many benefits. By using a case study as the basis of the thought experiment, we maintain all of the richness of details. This, in turn, requires that students be able to discriminate between the relevant and the irrelevant. It allows students to see the real world implications of some of the decisions. This combination also avoids the problems within natural philosophy experiments. First, the cases are not abstract, they are based in real people’s experiences. Second, the complex richness of the details avoids biasing the activity toward students who more easily work from abstract principles to concrete cases; instead, students who work from the particular to the universal have as much to work with as those who work from the universal to the particular.

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Posted in Active Learning, Michael Beltz

Thinking about Collaboration and Digital History in Practice

Posted on October 20, 2011 by | 3 Comments

Bill Caraher, Department of History, University of North Dakota

Over the past half semester I’ve been working with a dedicated group of graduate students on public and digital history practicum. The practicum focused on the creation of a digital history collection and exhibit celebrating the Chester Fritz Library’s 50th Birthday. This project has had its ups and downs and we’re only half way through the experiment, but I felt like we had gone far enough along to reflect on some of the things that I’ve learned coordinating a class in an intensively collaborative, digital environment.

The class was designed, at least in theory, around the needs of our “client” the Chester Fritz Library and through several meeting with various stakeholders in the process – the Director of Libraries and the heads of various divisions – and sitting in on a  town hall like meeting of library staff, we developed an overall strategy on how to approach the library’s 50th Birthday as a digital, public history event. The library helped us set some deadlines and shape some expectations for how this project would fit within the festivities that they had already planned in the fall of this year.

Fritzat50

Check out the page here

The class itself consists of a five student dream team (as an Eagles fan I can say that): 3 Ph.D. students and an M.A. and a B.A. student.  At the midpoint of the semester, I asked the students to reflect upon their experiences in the class and my observations below derive in part from these reflections.  I not only received their generous permission to reflect on their reflection papers, but I’ve also asked them to check out this post and comment on my efforts to summarize their thoughts.

So here they are:

1. Structure and Room to Fail.  When I initially imagined the class, I had figured that our conversations with the library would help us shape our project, its deadlines, and goals.  So I did not create a formal syllabus, but rather created a list of suggested deadlines for various aspects of the project. In other words, the course lacked much in the way of formal structure, in part, because I hoped that our stakeholders and the students would set deadlines and goals.

They did move in this direction, but I overlooked one small issue in the planning of our public, digital history collection: the time to struggle and even fail. Some of the students initiatives which seemed quite reasonable involved far more time than any of us expected. The combination of unexpected delays, problems with workflow, and even plans or projects that didn’t work out, slowed the project down and the lack of a firm class structure gradually eroded a sense of urgency. Only a firm intervention set the class back on track, but by then, I think that the class was behind where we all hoped we would be as the public festivities started around homecoming week.

In the future, I think a firm structure would have provided some context for the kind of risks/reward analysis that my team considered when embarking on a more difficult or ambitious component of the project. In other words, we might have been more conscious of delays and other risks of ambitious plans, if there were checks on he system throughout the process.

2. Digital Immigrants. The digital learning curve was steeper than expected even for the most committed digital immigrants (i.e. students who were committed to learning digital tools but not “natively” familiar with them. I dislike the term “digital native” and “digital immigrant”, but in this case it seems particularly useful). In particular, I found that the students struggled to keep pace with the expectations of the digital world, where content has to appear continuously or at least at regular intervals to attract attention in the din of the internet. Student work patterns tended to encourage episodic writing usually toward the end of the term when papers become due. Asking them to produce content continuously throughout the semester and to write it directly into the digital stream (via a blog, a Twitter feed, and a digital collection) clearly created issues for our students who felt more at home with crafted final papers that emerged from long(ish) gestation periods and were refined over multiple drafts.

History is rather unique in that it tends to privilege to final product over the process. Historians tend not to dilate long on methods. The importance of the final product over the various intermediate steps that a scholar would take along the way, contributed to my students’ reluctance to expose their creative process to the world. So not only was the pace disruptive to their workflow patters, but they had few examples of pre-publication, public work to look to for guidance (and they do not read my blog or any other academic blogs.)

3. Collecting vs. Interpreting. One of the most interesting challenges of the process of producing web content on the fly is that my students initially insisted on a rather rigid division between the process of building a digital collection and the process of interpreting it. This divide, of course, is grounded in traditional models of historical research which imagines the first step to be data collection which forms the foundation for the analysis and interpretation.  This approach relies on a view of historical artifact as objects that exist outside of the interpretative process.  In fact, historians are still something bothered by the idea that our research questions can and do shape the kinds of evidence we look for in our sources and collections.

The dichotomy between collecting and analyzing is not grounded in reality, of course, (as any graduate student in the field could tell you): historical evidence and collection are the product of conscious decisions and selection processes. In other words, the collection itself – with its limits and character – is the product of historical thinking in the same way that more formal, written analysis and interpretation is.  Understanding these two processes as separate created a rift in their workflow and contributed to their difficulty in creating content continuously for the collection

4. Collaboration. In working with a group of students, I somehow expected a magic moment of collaboration to occur as individual’s found complementary interests, abilities, and schedules. So far, this has not happened. In fact, most of the year it was a challenge to get the entire group together at one time (we did not have a scheduled class time because I anticipated having to meet in different venues and with different stakeholders; this oversight is related to my point 1) much less having them work together as a cohesive unit.

The lack of collaboration between the students led them to be concerned that they were working on the same projects at the same time. Moreover, it became difficult for the students to synchronize content production, analysis, and interpretation across multiple sites and across different forms of content. The result is a series of fine semi-independent projects that are attractive, intriguing, and almost exciting, but not nearly as good as they could have been.

I’ve learned the collaboration requires a certain amount of leadership on my part as the instructor.  On the other hand, understanding how collaboration worked and didn’t work brought to the fore the challenges of public and digital history as a process. While collaboration always seems like a way to make a project easier, it also requires that all participants have a commitment to a particular approach to documenting and understanding the past. Finding this middle ground for all the collaborators likely requires more effort from everyone involved that simply letting team members go out and work on related, but ultimately independent projects.

Of course, this is the genius of promoting collaborative work at the University. It forces collaborators and supervisors to not only articulate a (frequently shifting) final product, but also forces everyone involved to focus on process. As so much of what we do in the humanities is refining our processes (methods, procedures), I have come to appreciate the value of collaboration not as a means of getting students to work together, but rather as a means of unpacking the process of creating the knowledge.

5. Final Projects. As the semester crosses the half-way point, I’ve begun to think about what I can expect of this group for a final project. To some extent the work itself – with all its flaws and strengths – represents a final product. On the other hand, it seems like a public work should represent more than just an exercise in process. To manage a final product, we have to have consensus on what would make our efforts to collect and analyze a digital collection successful. (This does not mean that the process has to be closed or the final results definitive.)

At the same time, we need to have some kind of reflective component to the class so that we can all consider the academic, intellectual, and practical lessons of our work. My hope is that this blog post is a first step toward that.

Crossposted to New Archaeology of the Mediterranean World

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Posted in Bill Caraher, Digital Humanities, Digital Workflow

On Teaching

Posted on October 18, 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

Reflections on Advising a Student Organization: The Interplay of the Curricular and Extracurricular

Posted on October 13, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Rebecca Rozelle-Stone, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy and Religion

In my position as Assistant Professor of Philosophy here at the University of North Dakota, I have the pleasure of serving as the Advisor to the local chapter of the Phi Sigma Tau International Philosophy Honor Society, which, on this campus, organizes and runs the “Philosophy Club.” This is the kind of service that is quite gratifying to me, for despite the hours each semester spent holding meetings, sending emails, organizing discussions/presentations/film-showings, keeping the National Headquarters informed, and other such duties, I get to spend time outside of the classroom context with some of the best undergraduate students in our discipline.

While it is true that I perform at least two roles for the members and officers of Phi Sigma Tau–being both their teacher (at least for many of them) in the classroom and their advisor for their organization–the students also have dual roles in this regard, being both learners enrolled in university courses and officers/members of this organization. Many renowned philosophers of education, including John Dewey and Jane Addams, argue that the functions of formal education and civic engagement are complementary; in fact, these thinkers would contend that genuine education includes learning that comes not only from books but also from democratic participation in processes of cultural and communal life, like involvement and leadership in clubs. So in many ways, I think these dual obligations, for both the students and for myself, reinforce one another: we bring ideas and reflections from classes to the event planning processes and discussions hosted by Phi Sigma Tau, and we take those practical experiences of decision-making and professional association into the class, where they inform and enliven theories on power, interpersonal ethics, and democracy, among others.

Despite all this, the club and the classroom can also promote objectives that are at odds with one another, which can bring the responsibilities into conflict. The Phi Sigma Tau officers at UND, for example, identified their primary objective for the club as enlarging the interest in philosophy across the campus and recruiting more members for Phi Sigma Tau. I thought this goal made sense, and suggested that the best methods for attracting more people to philosophy would remain at the relatively “introductory” levels of philosophic themes and conversations; that is, our discussions and club events should not alienate students unfamiliar with philosophy by presenting topics too advanced or requiring some prerequisite knowledge of the history of philosophy. In this way, the club fosters discussions and presentations that remain at the 100 or 200-level so that anyone can join in, at any time, without feeling “left behind.”

On the other hand, our philosophy classes, especially those being taken by Phi Sigma Tau officers and members (who tend to be philosophy majors or minors) expect cumulative knowledge and remembrance of other classes’ content; the readings are required and often lengthy, difficult, and necessitate long-term commitment and patience. The ideas and themes are complex and are developed over the course of a semester. In these advanced courses, students learn not only new content, but also new methodologies of doing philosophy, and sometimes even new paradigms for what constitutes philosophy. All these lessons (and more) cannot be effectively conveyed by the Philosophy Club activities, it seems, especially if the club’s goal is to stimulate initial interest in the field and to spark a desire to study philosophy. We know that the form of an enterprise dictates its content, and this is as true in the case of an episodic club with no prerequisites, as it is in the case of a semester-long upper-level philosophy course which benefits from the regularity and consistency of its participants as well as from the time to investigate a theme in an ongoing and expansive way.

Therefore, I find myself in a bind when I observe students who compromise, to some extent, their semester course studies in order to be more active in Phi Sigma Tau (or other similar organizations and extracurricular activities). While the club can be instructive, in a concrete fashion, about some of the abstract theories being raised in classes, it can also be a scapegoat or distraction for students who become discouraged and fatigued by the challenging texts and complex ideas raised in their advanced classes. It may be that they sense that increased activity in academic clubs compensates for decreased energies in the classroom. Given my dual roles, I am conflicted in these situations about whether to endorse uncritically the enthusiasm for the club, or whether to put on the “teacher hat” to gently remind them of their other obligations.

I still have not fully resolved this tension. However, I have tended to emphasize the curricular more than the extracurricular to the students with whom I work in Phi Sigma Tau. My reasoning is this: Insofar as we claim to be really committed to philosophical thinking, we must dedicate ourselves to that which continually challenges us to extend, broaden, and most importantly, deepen our ideas about existence, ethics, politics, religion, metaphysics, and so on. I assume that this general idea need not be discipline-specific. The broadening of interests function can be fulfilled to some extent by participation in the organization; however, few organizational activities can supplant the deepening value and function of reading an entire philosophical work (or works) over the course of the semester, with a corresponding ongoing conversation maintained with the same committed participants, and the culminating experience of articulating a nuanced argument, developed over a long period of time and through countless questions and epiphanies. Because of this unique and crucial value of the classroom experience, my advisory role to Phi Sigma Tau must consider more than the stated objectives of the club, for the students who comprise its core will betray their leadership as honor-worthy philosophy students to the extent that they compromise or avoid the demands of courses that stretch their attentiveness and require their intellectual and emotional patience. Seen in this way, the students’ success in their courses is foundational to any success their organizations will achieve.

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Posted in Advising, Rebecca Rozelle-Stone