Throw the baby out?

News: Searching For Better Research Habits – Inside Higher Ed.

So, I encourage you to read the above-linked IHE article, but I’ll give you a brief idea of its point. Students tend to misuse search engines (Google and JSTOR alike) due not only to a lack of understanding of how the algorithms produce results, but also a lack of understanding of how to create a critical thinking-based search process in the first place. Many more topics are hit in the article (again, you should read the whole thing), but that simple observation made me wonder.

How many educators would respond with the “Google is making us stupid” observation and disallow its use in their courses. Then I got really depressed, feeling certain that would be the reaction of the majority (pessimistic of me, I know).  In short (right. You Esposito, short winded?), I think it foolhardy to imagine, in a post-Google world, that the 21st century, networked learner can be prohibited from using “simple search” strategies.

Rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water, why wouldn’t we accept that they’ll go anywhere they need to in order to find information? And for the archetypal student referenced in the article, with the six classes and the part-time job and the life they also want to lead, “fast enough is true enough.” All we can do is teach them the difference and let them decide, for well or ill, how they’ll conduct themselves and their continuing education in a scholarly or non-scholarly way.

Well, Duh!!

The Latest Stay-in-School Tool for College Students: Facebook – Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

I almost can’t bring myself to write a rant about how I, and all my Social Media-Friendly Colleagues, have been saying this all along.

…I said almost.

Of course it’s more important that first years engage rather than how they engage. And of course, a more engaged student is going to have more friends than a disengaged student. The engagement argument has been supported by scholarly research since 1985. Meeting students in their environment and encouraging them to engage with academia in which ever ways they feel most comfortable is as self-evident as breathing. “Allowing” the student to choose their own preferred means of engagement is an expression learner-centered education.

And no, I don’t have a great lot of data to support my observations that this balance of power shift away from teacher-centered environments can only be good for higher education, and that it will lead to more transformative experiences for traditional-aged college students. I don’t have the data because that’s someone else’s agenda. The mentor in me shuns the agenda’s of others and only allows me to care about those of my students.

Ask Me a Simple Question, Get a Novel-Length Answer

A colleague of mine proferred this simple question on her facebook status:

“Help me out friends and family: What’s something you’d like schools/teachers/classes/administrators to do to help make a positive change for our future.”

My response?

Work together to ease college admissions expectations for non-academic requirements. It’s ridiculous that many university music programs, for example, require students to perform concerto movements for admission–this is what is required of professionals auditioning into orchestras. Do universities want to teach or only to educate prodigies? And yes, the author of this rant does hold two music degrees.

And what does this encourage our high school juniors and seniors to focus on? Are they strengthening their learning skills in other subjects or essentially guaranteeing they’ll be academically unprepared to handle the rigor of college-level learning? The same goes for extra-curricular activities and volunteerism expectations in general, while the only academic assessment is a cursory glance at GPA and SAT scores. The typical high school senior is spread too thin trying to achieve excellence in so many areas other than learning beyond standardized tests, that things such as critical and creative thinking, and the ability to take ownership of their own knowledge acquisition is entirely undervalued.

Sorry for the novel, Melissa…must have struck a chord with me.

Reflections on Remediation

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/01/21/freshmen

The linked article’s title is great for a start, but what I’m troubled by is the buried survey results on tutoring and what they call “remedial work.” I’m perfectly willing to admit that tutoring can rise to the level of remedial work, but why do we need to attached such an emotionally charged word as “remedial” to what  amounts to learning support?

My campus’ learning center embraces what I think is a healthier attitude toward learning support in the development of its tutoring and Supplemental Instruction (SI) programs. I suspect most university campus do the same, but here tutors and SI instructors aren’t simply finding remedies to educational ailments afflicting students who come to the center. They practice approaches that bridge gaps between learning styles and teaching styles. Similarly, our writing center isn’t simply a place to go have your paper spell-checked. To our writing center, good writing is good thinking and they want to be involved to provide support to students from the beginning–whether it’s brainstorming a paper’s topic or identifying the appropriate citation style, the writing center aims to support the student in a learner-centered way.

Maybe I’m wrong, but the article seemed to stigmatize the idea of learning support…and it bugged me.

You rotten kid!

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/01/04/miller

Am I wrong to be irritated by the fact that most of the “learned scholars” bashing American students in this article don’t spend any introspective time reflecting on their own teaching methods? Why are we not trying to find ways to engage the disengaged?

Maybe I’m guilty of not reading far enough into the article to identify the strategies the educators are proposing to address this issue. But it seems most of the article spent its words bashing students and the comments posted on the site simply jumped on the bashing band wagon.

Is this generation of learners coming to college at a disadvantage from the effects of “No Child Left Behind?” Do universities expect too much of students (loads of extra curriculars, high standardized test scores) leading to over-scheduled students who’ve been told, their entire educational lives, what the correct answer is and how their meant to deliver it? Could these realities be partially an explanation of American students being ill-prepared to find their own answers in a critical-thinking-based learning environment? will they be ill-equipped to write university-level papers in their first semester?

Answer those questions however you wish, but regardless, American Universities face a challenge to bring these students along or doom them all to service-level occupations for the rest of their lives. When is “teaching” going to cease to be a dirty word at the university level?

You Watch Your Phraseology!

So, as is usually the case when I blog, I find myself in a bit f a quandary about just what to feel after reading this article:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/10/23/professionalism

I’m a generation in age removed from those I advise and teach and have noticed some accuracy in the reporting of universal tendencies in the behavior of members of the Millennial Generation.  However, the general tone of the article seems to indicate that the HR people doing the assessing were as curmudgeonly as Mayor Shinn from “The Music Man.” And the suggestion that university educators are contributing to the problem simply isn’t good for the vein in my head.

Polk offered a number of suggestions about what colleges can do in the classroom to improve the “professionalism” of their graduates.

“… some professors will say, ‘Just call me by my first name.’ There’s no way I think that’s proper behavior in my classroom. It creates this wonderfully false impression that professors are less authority figures than they are friends.”

No, let’s not break down the typical power structure of teacher-centered teaching by humanizing ourselves as professors. Ignore the fact that one of the verifiable universals of the millennial generation is that they respect and admire educators who are not only experts in their field but who can also have a healthy laugh at her/himself and display an appropriate level of irreverence from time to time.

“There’s this moral authority that some professors get uncomfortable with. For this to work successfully, when a professor calls out a student’s behavior, the administration should be there to back them up immediately and say, ‘Your behavior is wrong.’”

Isn’t is possible to impress the importance of professionalism and respect upon younger generations by earning it and displaying it to them as well. And what happens when the professor is being unreasonable with her/his demands of respect or accusations of inappropriate behavior, the department backs her/him unquestionably and the student is unjustly reprimanded? What have we taught the student then?

“One of the things you’ve got to ask yourself is, are we just a bunch of dinosaurs looking at young people saying, ‘What I’m seeing here is inappropriate,’ ” mused Polk, who made sure to note he was 61. “Are the changes in attitude here generational or are they lifestyle changes? Will you people eventually take on conservative professionalism or have things just changed?

And what if things have changed–is that such a problem? Do we really care if the investment banker reaping the super huge bonus at the end of the year despite his under-performance is tattooed or sports body piercings? Is the more-problematic behavior in this scenario the former rather than the latter?

By all means, as educators, it is inherent upon us to prepare those we teach for a successful life in the world of work–let us teach a strong work ethic and an unwavering sense of professionalism and respect. But to suggest that the only way to do so is to blast university education sixty years into the past is ludicrous.

“First, it’s medicinal wine from teaspoon, then beer from a bottle!”