Thoughts on Education – 2/2/2012
I was reviewing some articles that I thought I might write about here, but I really didn’t come across much that I found incredibly useful in the last couple of days. I had picked out a couple of articles on gaming in the classroom, thinking from the titles and blurbs that they would be interesting, but I didn’t come up with much. The best, probably, is this one from the New York Times. It’s ok, but it has the same flaws that I see in so many of these articles, namely that it says this would be a great idea but then fails to provide any resources or solid examples. So, the theory might be great, but what am I supposed to do with it? I feel that way about a lot of the educational “advancements” out there. They always sound great, but how do they actually work? That’s why I like the idea of the “flipped” classroom model, as I have seen more about how that works than anything else.
The interesting thing about the flipped classroom is that everyone starts off the article saying how it is an obvious fit for math and science, but they think it could probably work for the humanities and social sciences as well (see this one for example or this one that is even advertised as flipping a history class but uses a chemistry video to show how its done). But that doesn’t seem as obvious to me by any means. As this article from another blog here in WordPress shows, the real idea behind flipping is a pretty natural fit for teachers from all areas. As he says, “I think good teachers have been doing this sort of thing, well . . . forever.” I have to agree in general, as what else is a discussion section or anything like that anyway. Yet, making the next step and giving up the lecture is a much bigger one. Is a better model the one from my grad school days — the large lecture two days a week and then a discussion section the last day? Yet, I was never satisfied with those, as it never seemed like the students were all that prepared to discuss. They wanted the material delivered to them, not to have to interact with it in a meaningful way. The level of engagement was low, as it often is in my discussion classes today, where about a third of the class is actively participating, another third is paying attention, and the rest are completely tuned out. I just wonder what incentives would be needed to get a higher level of engagement. Because without students paying attention and participating, this will be a failure.
How about these ideas/questions?
- Would the students be more willing to do a serious amount of work outside of class if they only met one day a week?
- What sort of incentives would be needed to get the students to do the required work ahead of time? A required one-page response? Completion of a mastery quiz? Completion of a blog post?
- What do you do with students that have not, despite all incentives, done any of the required work? Do you have daily grades that they essentially don’t get? Do you kick them out? Do you let them stay on the assumption that it’s better for them to hear what’s going on even if they haven’t done the prior work?
Just some practical questions that I’ve had running through my head while I’ve been reading over things. I actually got some of these questions while wandering through an H-Net discussion over flipped classrooms. It is a bit hard to follow, as you’ve got to delve through the forums, but there were a lot of good pros and cons raised about the flipping idea, and I feel that it is really worth reading for anyone considering something like this. Even though H-Net is history focused, the ideas are mostly general and could apply to any discipline.
By the way, this one is the absolute best article on flipped classrooms for those of us in the humanities and social sciences. It covers the usual major criticisms of flipped classrooms and refutes each quite well. I’m not going to go back and repeat them here, but I will just recommend you go and see for yourself.
Thoughts on Education, 2/1/2012 – Digital Learning Day
So, Happy Digital Learning Day everyone. OK, so I had no idea it was that day either, but that’s what I found out as I started moving through the educational news that I read every morning. I guess it’s appropriate that I’m working on this project at this time then. I certainly envision any changes that I make to my class to include a significant digital element. In fact, I would like to go ahead and include more of it in my class now, although I am not sure how at this point. Thus, part of what I am doing is trying to figure out how to use all of these new tools out there and how to use the various ideas that I am trying to accumulate. I want to make something new and relevant, and I think that digital technology has to be at the center of it.
What is unfortunate about all of it is how hard it is to find good digital tools for higher education. If I was teaching K-12, there appear to be a lot of apps out there for use, although I, admittedly, have not evaluated them to see if there is real quality or just quantity. For higher ed, there’s a lot of stuff out there for organization, note-taking, and whiteboarding (did I just make up that word?). There’s not much that seems of actual use in a classroom outside of access to resources. in that category, there’s a ton of stuff out there. Simply get the Smithsonian, PBS, TED, or many other apps out there, and you have a ton of free content at your fingertips. If you’re not using Flipbook on an iPad, you are missing out on one of the most spectacular apps that I have ever come across. So, if I want content, I can get it, but that still puts the creation of assignments and linkages on me. I know that’s part of my job, but I kind of expected there to be some actual premade content out there for higher ed, and there just isn’t very much. There are things to show, but not much set up to do. I was talking with my Dean about this, and he suggested that it is because there’s more money in K-12 ed than in higher ed, and that when there is money in higher ed, it goes to research, not to teaching. Certainly, in teaching at a community college, I’m really at the low end of the totem pole for these types of things, but I just imagine what could be out there.
I guess if I was ever to consider a different career, I would love to go into the educational technology field. I’ve considered getting a second Masters in Instructional Design or something like that, but this lack of content seems to be a huge hole in the educational ecosystem. I don’t know if there’s any money to be made in it, but I’m just waiting around for someone to make it at this point.
In thinking about Digital Learning (caps intentional on this day), I have done some reading, and I’ll include a few of the interesting things I’ve looked at here:
http://mindshift.kqed.org/2012/02/on-digital-learning-day-7-golden-rules-of-using-technology/
MindShift is one of those programs I found through FlipBook. I like their discussion of education and technology and read it daily. Again, if you’re interested in the topic, check them out. Anyway, I like this article, as it evaluates the role that technology can play in the classroom. I’m going to have to think on it more deeply at another time. I like the first three points as some basic starting ideas on technology
- Don’t trap technology in a room. This is very true, as the computer lab is something that many of us (like me) have no access to, and so if I want to use technology, trapping it in a single room makes it useless unless you are one of the lucky ones to be able to schedule in that room.
- Technology is worthless without professional development. Completely agree. We don’t get any of this provided to us, and I remain so busy between my teaching life and home life that I don’t get a lot of opportunities to go out and participate in professional development either. I’d love it to be a more real part of my actual job, and I really am going to have to figure out how to make time for it, as it is never going to be just given to me.
- Mobile technology stretches a long way. Use the resources that you have. A good number of people are carrying around high-powered computers in their pocket. Give the students some reason to use them beyond texting.
Beyond that, I need to follow up on some of the links in the article, and I have it saved in Evernote (another great free app) to do just that later.
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/happy-digital-learning-day
Another thing I read every day is Inside Higher Ed. They have a number of educational technology resources, and this one celebrates Digital Learning Day as well. Interesting links off of the page mostly, although I like seeing the discussion generally in this blog.
Through the Inside Higher Ed site, I also found this resource. I will check out the video later (my internet connection at home is not cooperating for streaming video from my living room right now, and I don’t feel like moving to the bedroom for a stronger signal). But the broader site of Teachers Teaching Teachers sounds promising and worth checking out more.
Anyway, that’s a few links for today. I have some on gaming in the classroom that I’ll save for sometime in the next couple of days, so hang on for that.
Thoughts on Education, 1/31/2012
No links and articles today. Just some thinking.
I guess the thing on my mind more than anything else is how radical of a change is acceptable and/or appropriate if I am to do a total redesign of my class next semester. I’d like to jump in whole hog and change everything. However, there’s the question of how to do it and if it would be accepted by the students and my fellow faculty members if I am doing something completely different.
So, here’s a basic outline of what I would like to do for my hybrid classes: I would like to remove lecture from the class completely. They will still have access to my lecture materials, as they do now, ie. through the lecture notes, PowerPoints, and audio podcasts that they have at the moment. However, they would be material that the students would be responsible for working on outside of class, much like the textbook reading is now. I would like to move beyond the idea that I am presenting them with the material. There are two big reasons why I am unsatisfied with the lecture model:
- It puts me as an infallible authority on the material. The students hear me lecture and write it down. They then parrot those same things back to me on the assessments for the class, as if my interpretation and the things I cover were the only thing that was important out of all of the class. The relationship of me as the deliverer of information as if from on high is uncomfortable to me, and it just breeds the idea of the students as passive learners.
- It covers things the students should have had before. If I am echoing what the students were supposed to have learned in high school, then what am I doing. Yes, I might go into more depth. Yes, I might talk about different things with different emphases. Yet, at the heart, I am delivering a historical narrative that should be no different from what they have had before. The idea that a history class should be a chronological accounting of what has happened in history seems ridiculous to me. If that is what I have trained for and what I get paid for, then this is an easy job. Anybody can get up there and reread a textbook to them. But, what is that really teaching them?
So, what then takes the place of lecture, as that’s currently what I use 80% of my class time for? I would like to divide my class of 45 in half, with half meeting on one day a week and the other half meeting on the other day. Then I would like to have each day have a topic. The students would come in prepared with having covered the basic information that is necessary and prepared to discuss something in more depth. We would do history by actually talking about events, people, ideas, and such in history. I would not give them the narrative and have that stand in as the whole class. Instead, they would drive the class, through the topics that we would discuss. The topics would not be comprehensive in nature, and they would not purport to tell the students everything that happened.
This certainly falls into the “flipping the classroom” model, turning the standard class on its head. The thing I worry is that it is too radical. Could our community college students handle it? Would they come prepared? Would they do it? What resources would I need? Do I have time to recreate my class? Is this too ambitious?
An example of what I could do one day comes from what I am currently calling an in-class activity in my class. The subject is the Triangle Fire in New York in 1911. The students are responsible for watching a 2-hour video and reading some short biographies of the people involved. We will then discuss the event in class, talking about what happened, why it happened, what the result was, and how it fits into the history we have been studying.
Thoughts on Education, 1/30/2012
Continuing to think about education, using articles I have saved in Evernote.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/2012/01/07/tips-and-success-stories-for-effective-mobile-learning/
“Tips and success stories for effective mobile learning”
Mostly focused on K-12. It talks about “bring your own device” schools, much like the Weatherford ISD is trying. I’m curious how that will go. The question, of course, is what do you do with the students who do not have a device? That’s as far as I got though, as the second and third pages of the article require you to log in to read them. It was not particularly relevant, and so I didn’t think it worth logging into a random site I’d never heard of.
Click to access mobile_star.pdf
“Education‘s Guide to Mobile Devices: Everything You Need to Know About Mobile Tech and Your Schools”
OK, so I registered for this one. It is much more interesting, even though it is, again K-12 focused. I just wanted to note a couple of things here. I fully agree with the following: “To make the most of mobile technology, teachers must have proper training, and schools must go through a change management process, says Greaves. Technology-rich schools whose principals ―have formal training in change management far outperform the technology schools where [principals] don‘t have this formal training,‖ he says. ―At a lot of schools, they just provide the technology and think that, by itself, will carry the day. But if you don‘t actually give [educators] the training of what to do with it, nothing changes.‖ A change management leader looks at the students within a class and evaluates to what extent they are working on a fully personalized basis. ―If 30 kids in class are all doing the same thing,that‘s a clear sign that you haven‘t changed anything,‖ Greaves adds.” I totally agree, and I find that to be the hugely limiting thing for me with adopting new methods of teaching and integration of technology. I always feel that I am doing it all on my own. I feel that I am way out in front of where most people are, and I often feel lost in trying to decide what to do. I also feel limited in resources, although being part of the QEP this year has helped in that regard. Still, I feel like I’m wandering in the wilderness and could use a lot of help to develop the random ideas wandering through my head.
There is also an interesting resource there called PD360, which is, unfortunately aimed at K-12 only. There is no option to sign up as a college instructor, but it is apparently hundreds of hours of professional development online. Maybe I should check out Starlink, if that’s anything like it.
http://mindshift.kqed.org/2012/01/shifting-the-classroom-one-step-at-a-time/
“Shifting the Classroom, One Step at a Time”
OK, so this one has me pegged from the first paragraph: “Teachers who are interested in shifting their classrooms often don’t know where to start. It can be overwhelming, frightening, and even discouraging, especially when no one else around you seems to think the system is broken.” I feel like that all the time. So, of course, I’m going to read this closely.
The whole post is interesting, and I need to explore it in more detail. There are three links to talks here that I need to watch at some point when I can have some time at a desk with headphones rather than sitting in the living room with my computer as I am doing now. That’s always the thing, creation is hard. Doing something new is hard. I want to dive in and recreate very soon. Do I have the time/resources for this?
I highly recommend this as a starting point to rethinking the classroom!
- All administrators have worked as teachers
- They don’t focus on tests
- Teaching is a revered profession
- They trust teachers
Thoughts on Education, 1/29/2012
So, today I’m going to look at a number of articles on education. I am curious to see the thoughts on the state of education today, as well as what people are talking about as far as improvements go. I’ve saved a bunch of articles on education onto my Evernote recently, so I’m just going to go through them and work on them here.
Readings:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/28-7
“A Crucible Moment in Education”
Some thoughts – What do we mean by education? This article raises the question of rote memorization versus developing actual thinking skills. We have been slowly emerging from a period of memorization as the highest value of education. What does it matter whether our students can memorize useless facts and data, when we should be concentrating on making them functioning and independent members of society. They need to be taught how to think at all levels. While this article concentrates in on K-12, this is just as true in the realm of higher education. I have been slowly coming to this realization over time, as I have worked through thinking about what I want my own students to learn. As the article puts it nicely, what really matters is helping the students “learning how to figure things out for themselves, and learning how important their educated selves are to their communities and the larger society as a whole.” I have already been working toward removing lecture as my primary role, as that leads to a narrow focus on my own words as law, with little room for students to do work themselves. I would like to make the education experience much more about the students becoming educated than about me providing education.
http://www.philosophersbeard.org/2010/11/critique-of-modern-university-part-i.html
“A Critique of the Modern University part I: Education”
Starts with: “The educational role of universities is supposed to be some combination of enlightenment (moral education and love of knowledge) and human capital growth (economically productive skills and knowledge).” Then, as he says, the university is failing at both of these. Says that universities should not be the first place that students even encounter the idea of enlightenment. It is actually a failure that our students come to us so unprepared and so unable to think. It is a failure of the system as has come before, and it means that universities are set with a task that students pay a large amount of money for and should be able to find on their own before, even in the free education that they are required to have. as he says, “Bear in mind that no-one is stopping you from reading books or following correspondence/evening classes in your spare time, and many people do so. Linking ‘enlightenment’ so strongly to universities makes it seem an elitist project.” I struggle with this myself. What am I offering students? Why is the point when I am lecturing and discussing topics the first time that people have heard it? Does this mean that we are failing ourselves? At what point do we sit down and think about things outside of those that are required? Yes, part of it is that I am presenting things in a different way than what people have traditionally been taught, but why is that? Why do we wait so long, and why do we charge people (even at a CC) to learn this? Plus, as he says, what is the value on it anyway? How do I convince a student that they are getting value for this? What value are they getting? What value is there in a more open mind?
That leads into the second part of the article – what is the value of the education? Is it just valuable because people get better jobs? What does that have to do with the skills that I teach them? Plus, is it just that the people who would go to college are more likely to get a better job anyway? He has an interesting point here, that what a university really does is expose people to the ideas of a middle-class life. It has the possibility of raising up people who would not get there otherwise, while consigning those who do not get it to menial, uneducated jobs. Regardless of fairness, I’m certainly not comfortable with that idea as a formative part of what education is about. Yet, the simplicity of that model is hard to deny as well.
So, what is the solution. Ha! Articles like this provide no solutions, just outline the problems. Blame is all around – students for not caring, instructors for not caring, professors for not caring, etc. But what do we care about? How do I teach to 180 students a semester who could care less about the education they are getting outside of what it means for them getting a better job. There’s only so much I can do. Yet, in his mind, this is what I am: “Professors themselves have almost no professional interest in education and consider students basically a nuisance – a time sink – except for those few who are truly inclined to the life of the scholar and will reproduce the academic establishment into the future. . . Professors naturally prefer conferencing – hanging out with their intellectual peers – to teaching Bio 101 to hungover Freshmen on Mondays at 9am. And who can blame them?” We are unresponsive and uncaring to an unresponsive and uncaring student body. His solution to all of this – some magical restructuring of the entire system that will make education equally available to all and move it away from a postsecondary model. I read those solutions and think, that sounds good. But how would you do that? How would you change the whole system? Is it worth just trashing it all? Would my students come to this overhauled education system that promised them enlightenment? Well, his solution is make sure that practical skills are included as well. So, now what? I don’t know
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HechingerReport/~3/iWoNQLhG9XQ/
“Free courses may shake universities’ monopoly on credit”
This is a hot topic today, the university education without a university. Getting it through free courses, adding up “credentials” around the web and making a “degree” that employers would value as much as an actual university education. I think the most interesting comment is : “I don’t think free is necessarily the key point here. But the fact that there is this innovation around what’s offered by the mainstream system shows that the mainstream system isn’t meeting the demand that exists. A university degree has become a passport into adult employment, but it doesn’t really fit with what people really need for the rest of their lives. Most of the things you’ve learned are outdated by the time you’re done.” That again echoes what I have said before, that I need to rethink the way I’m doing things. The brick-and-mortar, go for four years, live on campus, etc. model is only available to a certain number of students. Everyone else needs more options, and these free courses can offer that. But does it mean the same thing? Is there value to coming in and taking a class versus doing things on your own as you go along? We are back to the model being broken. The problem, of course, is that until there is a new model, these courses are “nice” but don’t mean anything. Great, you took a free course at MIT. So, where does that go on a resume? How does it help you get a job. Does your employer care about it? I ran into the very same problem. The only thing that would make me more valuable to my employer is if I got a Ph.D. That’s it. I can take all the other things I want – continuing ed, free courses, digital graduate certificates, etc. – but I would pay for it on my own, use up my own time for it, and see no reward whatsoever.
“Online course start-ups offer virtually free college”
Similar idea – the online credential that comes from combining the free options from traditional universities into a “degree”-type thing. But, nobody takes it or respects it, and I’m sure most people have never even heard of it. My first thought, but it comes from the universities, so why is the university model broken if the primary alternative is repackaging the university education?
“E-Testing: The Future is Here”
Ha! I’m already doing this. In fact, the primary restriction from me doing it more is the continual resistance from our Testing Center to me sending students there to test. Think if we had the money and resources to actually put something like this together and create a real e-test that was strong, safe, and hassle-free.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/2012113131643983539.html
“The fading dream of higher education in the US”
The heart of it: “In response, higher education has also abandoned the common good. Most in the US now view it solely from a narrowly economic perspective. Vocational training has replaced the liberal arts, while administrators strive to make their campuses engines of economic growth, rather than sites for intellectual experimentation and meaningful cultural encounters. Of course, graduates need to earn a living, but they also need to have a life worth living. And adapting colleges and universities to today’s profit-driven environment imposes financial and educational costs that may simply be too high – for students, for the academy and for that elusive common good.” So, as usual, everything is doomed. It’s such a doom-and-gloom field, that you wonder why people even bother.
At it’s heart is this problem – education is getting more expensive. Salary and benefits are getting more expensive. Providing the latest building, facilities, sports stadiums, student halls, dorms, landscaping, etc. is more expensive. At the same time, state and federal funding is dropping off a cliff. That means the burden is more and more on the students themselves. They have to pay for it. And, of course, then they ask more and more what they are getting for their money. And, as she says, the main people who get blamed for all of this is the faculty – we are elite, out of touch, expensive, and not giving students what they really want. The assumption is that there’s no value to what we have done to train to be academics, and that what we decide to teach is invalid if it is not tied directly to specific skills. And, yes, all of those are true. Yet, we go back to the question of what the purpose of an education is anyway. Is it to train you in job skills or to educate you. This is a scary question to ask at a community college, as it is assumed to be more of the former, yet they hire people like me who have the aim of the latter.
She also looks at the other pressures on faculty. 1) fewer full-timers means more done by fewer people 2) less value on educational background in administration 3) grade inflation from the pressure of keeping your job by pleasing the students
http://www.good.is/post/is-sweden-s-classroom-free-school-the-future-of-learning/
“Is Sweden’s Classroom-Free School the Future of Learning?”
More relevant to early education, but an interesting look at the limitations of the traditional classroom. Proposal for non-classroom spaces where independent learning goes on.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/114054
“Lectures for a New Year: How Schools Fail Creative Kids”
Ha! Fail again. I’m going to watch it later, so I’ll revisit this one.
“Study – Positive Outcomes for Dual Enrollment Students”
Hey! Positive! Interesting here that deal enrollment improves the chances both that a student will go to college and that the student will succeed in college. However, this does not bode well for our current method of doing it: “the effects were only evident when the dual enrollment classes were taken on college campuses. Students who took dual enrollment classes on high school campuses showed no statistical gains.”
http://www.economist.com/node/17723223
“Doctoral Degrees – The Disposable Academic”
So, a bit sideways related to the issues here. But it does get at a fundamental problem. Doctorates train you for research positions that don’t exist anymore. Instead, people get doctorates in a field with little chance of a research university job, little training for the teaching job they are likely to get, and a lot of time and money spent to get there. Nothing I don’t know (and haven’t already experienced).
http://chronicle.com/article/Badges-Earned-Online-Pose/130241/
“‘Badges’ Earned Online Pose Challenge to Traditional College Diplomas”
Back to the idea of an alternative. A credential can point to actual skills that you earn versus specific degrees. As it says here, a degree on the wall says that you completed a course of study from a certain place, but it doesn’t say what degrees you have actually earned. A credential can provide a more direct reference of skill sets earned and distinctions gained. It can provide a broader look at what education actually is and what it can provide. But we, again, run into that same problem as before – what real value do they have? Who recognizes them? If I were to get one, who would know, who would care, and would it actually get me anything?
Thoughts, Ideas, Ramblings, and Other Things 