Real Life Paradigm Shift

Today, I attended a workshop on the The (Secret) Steps: Simple Ways to Efficiently and Effectively Teach an Undergraduate Course.  This workshop is part of a series of workshops on Preparing Future Faculty organized by the Center for Teaching Excellence at UH Manoa.  I had been receiving emails about monthly workshops but really did not pay too much attention to them until a friend informed me that she found the workshops to be extremely helpful for her as a lecturer.  I have been tossing around the idea of teaching as a career path but I had not made too much effort to explore until now.  Thus, I figured I might as well start. 

I had a positive experience at the workshop but then again I always love continuing development sessions and always come away with at least one bit of new and useful knowledge (Hello, Zotero!).  I found it to be especially relevant to our discussion about higher education curriculum because it focuses on what the educator can do to be effective in their teaching roles.  Much of what was presented mirrored Tagg's Learning Paradigm. 

There were four steps that were presented:

1. Don't reinvent the wheel
2. Create assignments that work for you and the students
3. Use writing to learn
4. Learn from students
5. There really are no steps.

The first step underscored the idea that there's no need to take on the stress of creating new learning strategies at the beginning of the teaching assignment (full disclosure: this workshop was designed for adjunct instructors...but an educator is an educator is an educator).  Learn from what's been done before, use old syllabi as guidelines, and there are tons of resources available online to help you craft syllabi.

The second step touched on assignment design and purpose.  Similar to our discussions on creating active learning environments where deep learning occurs, it was stressed that assignments had to have a purpose and challenge students in an intentional way.  It called for the educator to create assignments that are designed to build a particular set of skills.  Additionally, rubrics are an important part of the assignment process.  A tip that was given was to have students write out three to four sentences paraphrasing what they thought the assignment was asking for.  This is a great way to determine if students understand the assignment and would save you time and effort in the long run to work on how clearly you express your expectations.

The third step delineates the importance of implementing writing activities to create active learning environments.  Not only does this build on the student's ability to write coherently, it creates an opportunity for them to develop critical analysis skills and become deep learners.  And let's face it, students need to practice writing beyond texting, Twitter, and Facebook.  

The fourth step was the most important, I thought.  Learning happens bi-directionally.   The best learning environments are when both the students and the educator learns.  This was significant to me because it asked for the instructor to understand the new post-traditional types of students they will deal with and it asks the instructor to be open to constructive criticism from students about their teaching methods.  This openness can be constructed through mutual respect from educator to student and vice versa as well as the creation of a safe environment where the student is the center focus.  Mid-course evaluations of the professor are an example of how this can happen positively.  

The fifth step, well, is not really a step at all but I thought it was a great way of bringing it all back to the heart of the issue--that it's a matter of attitude and outlook.  A student-centered framework allows the educator to understand which strategies will work best to achieve their purpose of creating a learning environment that nurtures student growth and development. 

Significant concepts and tag words that I heard from the presenter: Student-centered learning; rubrics, assignment design, active learning, dynamic, student engagement, evaluations, reflexive teaching, coaching.   

I know I am slowly building a better understanding of what I need to do to create a positive learning environment for students that takes into consideration their skills, experiences, stories, and beliefs.  I appreciated attending the workshop and having the concepts we learn about curriculum, teaching, and assessment being confirmed.  What we discuss in the classroom is being perpetuated and disseminated in positive ways that are informing new educators.  That gives me hope that this learning-centered paradigm shift is occurring. 

Are you seeing shifts in the teaching paradigm in your experiences outside of the classroom?  How do you feel about these changes?

Serve the Community or Serve the World?

Our discussions on Internationalization and Globalization reminded me of my purpose for pursuing my degree in higher education in the first place. I spent five years at my undergraduate institution. It was a small, private Liberal Arts university situated in a city touted as the All-American city despite its high crime rates and poor reputation. Nonetheless, I feel that I received a great education. The issue was that this city had one of the larger populations of Cambodians in the state and a large Southeast Asian population overall but I was one of maybe ten total Cambodian students. I could not help but notice the lack of representation of Southeast Asians in the school. I could not figure out why there were so few Cambodians when there were so many in the community.

On the other hand, interestingly, there was a large Hawaiian student population. I would not know until later that the school does recruit many students from Hawaii as well as all over the nation and world. There were also many other Asian populations on campus and thankfully, the diversity initiatives on campus were amazing. There was no lack of variety in student organizations for almost every ethnic group, except my own.

It was after I had graduated when I was approached to be on the Southeast Asian Recruitment Committee with the Assistant Provost of the school that I realized that the university was doing very little to recruit, engage, or support its surrounding community. It was quite literally the Ivory Tower in which groups just a few miles away felt it was unattainable because relationships were not being developed and fostered. The focus was more on recruiting from outside.

The reason I bring this up is that I believe a higher education institution has an inherent responsibility to serve its surrounding community. I sometimes question why the focus is so much on globalization and having a cosmopolitan view when the local community is just as important as their needs are still underserved. 

The way I connect it to our discussions about internationalization and globalization is that there is such an intense focus on how to build a university and curriculum that develops globally competent students and communities that those who are within the direct vicinity (and thus have the potential to directly benefit from the school) are not being engaged. Focusing on recruiting students from outside the local area prevents the local community from benefiting from having their students educated.  The focus on expanding (especially within the context of the curriculum) creates breadth but not depth.
You can try to create globally competent individuals but what about ones who are locally competent?

Do You Donate?

Today, I received a phone call from an undergraduate student at the business school of my alma mater.  I was expecting it.  You see, every year around this time, I always get roped into these phone calls even though I know what it is they want from me (I somehow can never ignore a ringing phone).  The gist of these calls are to solicit donations from alumni of the university.  And because I have always been in school, I have politely and apologetically declined.

The pitch is pretty interesting.  They ask me to provide a modest donation of $350, initially.  $350?  That's almost half of my rent.  And each time I apologize and say no, they lower it in increments.  The last pitch was for me to make five small monthly installments of $10 after I received my taxes. That shocked me a bit.  It was quite...crafty.

But the most interesting change that I noticed in this conversation that was different from the last five over the years was the admission that they were trying to get as many alumni to donate as much as possible, no matter the amount.  This invoked memories of our last class where Dr. Collins explained the ranking categories for the U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges report. (See where UHM ranks here!) A significant ranking category is that of the percentage of alumni who donate to the college.  I had not realized that was a major category and I found it very interesting to get this phone call and understood why I kept getting them.  Previously, I never thought it to be a big deal.  In fact, it puzzled me that a private university would extend so much effort to collect a couple of bucks from me.

It's not to say that I did not want to donate.  I experience a lot of anxiety and guilt over these phone calls.  I hate to say no to these students who must have it tough to make these calls in the first place.  I also hate to say no to an institution that supported me through my degree.  I would gladly donate if I felt I was in a position to do so to help other students.  Now I feel as if I should call back and donate at least a little.  I understand the rankings are skewed and there are politics and power plays that are executed behind the scenes to manipulate the rankings but I also do take pride in the education I received from my alma mater and want to see it be able to provide more quality education to new students.  I do feel that they are doing something right and that should be supported. 

How many of you have received these calls?  Do you donate?  Why or why not?  Does it matter to you the reasons why the school wants your monetary support?  Are there maybe other ways that alumni, who cannot contribute financially, can support and give back to the school? 

Edited to add link for methodology of rankings:

The percentage of alumni giving serves as a proxy for how satisfied students are with the school. A higher average alumni giving rate percentage scores better in the ranking model than a lower average alumni giving rate.

Declining by Degrees

In EDEA 646, American College Students, we watched a PBS documentary, Declining by Degrees, and I thought it was especially relevant to the Curriculum class because it identified some major issues with higher education that we discussed about the instruction paradigm. The documentary explored the pressures facing institutions to retain students, pressure on professors to grade on a curve to retain students, and the surface level learning methods students employ to get by in their classes. The documentary reinforced much of what was discussed in Tagg’s book about the instruction paradigm and basically delineated all that was wrong with our higher education system of this age. I've linked it below. If you have time, I highly suggest watching!

Students interviewed describe how they are beating the system and using surface learning methods by doing the least amount of work to get the desired grade. Interestingly, the faculty in the documentary described this phenomenon as "sleepwalking through college". Complaints on either side (administration, faculty, students) are prevalent in this video. Who will accept responsibility?

During one particularly interesting moment, one of the interviewees mentioned efficiency as the motivating factor in the teaching process. Some students had complained that they felt that they were lost in large lecture-style classes. My initial thought during this moment was how can teaching be efficient, in the true sense? By nature, the give and take of information requires critical thinking, disagreement, dissonance, follow up, and critique. That process is not about efficiency. Making teaching efficient is contradictory...efficiency is for factory lines in manufacturing plants (reminds me of the RSA Animate video we watched earlier in class). What about effectiveness? 

The higher education system has become so much more profit-minded and career-oriented that concepts like efficiency is overpowering effectiveness. And students are graduating with pieces of paper that don't necessarily mean much anymore. There's no way to gauge if they are actually learning. Grades certainly don't mean what they used to mean. And I'm not sure if ever meant what it was supposed to mean either.  

Should higher education be valuing efficiency over effectiveness?

Schooled 'Bout School

I have been raised to value and take pride in my education. Growing up, it was ingrained in me that education was the key to a better and more prosperous life. I never questioned it. Education is a major part of my identity. In many ways, I naturally assumed that this was the way to go.

That foundation was rocked a bit when we watched "Schooling the World: The White Man's Burden", a documentary on the effects of Western education on developing worlds. Specifically, it focused on the Ladakh people in India and how they are being indoctrinated in Western education and ideologies that are ill-suited for their world. Furthermore, the loss of language, culture, and understanding their environments is troubling.

Some interesting points from the film:

1. Western education is creating a "human monoculture" as diversity is being destroyed.
2. Traditional forms of education (by family and community) is slowly dying as children are being indoctrinated by western ideals and prepared for a modern/urban environment
3. Education dividing families and communities into children who 'know' more than their elders and creating issues of inferiority in elders.
4. Modern/urban education is creating more social inequity as students cannot return home and utilize their education so they move to big urban developments where there is a lack of jobs. 
5. Social justice advocates would benefit from understanding how they are truly "helping" people in the developing world.

I could not help but evaluate how my life has been changed by education. As a Cambodian American, I struggle with balancing western values with my traditional Khmer culture and upbringing. It's a never ending battle. On one hand, my family pushed me to pursue education but in many other ways they struggled to keep me cultured in their ways. I'm sure many can relate to these struggles. The education that they wanted for me served in many ways to draw me further away from their reach. My fluency in Khmer suffered--I had never even been given the chance to learn how to read or write. My relationship with them also suffered. There was little we could discuss that we had in common. I understand now the struggles they face with wanting to come here to escape oppression and find opportunity for their children only to deal with struggling to preserve identity and culture in a western society.

I find as my identity is evolving, I have a desire to reclaim some of the culture and language that I have lost. The questions raised by the documentary is helping me to critically think about my education and my experiences. I am certainly realizing that western education is not so appreciative of diversity and culture. It's giving me the drive to make it my life's work to protect culture and help to give it a place within our education system.

What's the Point?

In Chapter One of The Learning Paradigm College, Tagg poses the questions, "Is college, for many students, a barrier rather than a path? It's something to be gotten out of the way, over, past? Is college mainly a hoop for jumping through?" (p. 6).

As I've continued to pursue my education, I have wrestled with this question because I am from the camp that believes that college and higher education serves a higher purpose than to just help graduates get a job. I understand the need for colleges and universities to be able to measure outcomes on the basis of whether their students are able to get jobs after they leave with their diplomas.  However, I feel that the importance placed on this outcome is very shallow.

I am not asserting that this should not be a reason for many to attend college.  It is valid and obviously very important.  It's just that I know of many students who assume that they will have a job at the end of the road when it takes more than an education nowadays.  Certainly, if students are not learning at a deeper level, as Tagg puts it, their educational qualifications may be shaky at best. This doesn't provide a great foundation for deep learning in the future outside of college.

I struggle with the disappointment that the biggest reason students want to go to college is so they can get a job.  The choices they then make are geared towards that singular purpose.  Classes are chosen in a track system so students can get where they need to be in the shortest time possible.  The curriculum, as Tagg also points out, is just a collection of classes.  So what does the degree even mean?

I am still defining what my purpose for pursuing education is but what I do know is that I value learning in the moment and in the future. As a result of the mentality that college is just a place to get you somewhere, the value of college is seriously undermined. Unfortunately, I believe many colleges are bowing to public pressure to create programs geared more solely for employment and are slowly losing sight of a higher purpose.

In It Together...For the Grade?

It's the first day of class. You expect to walk in, introduce yourself by name, job title, and department. You expect to go over the syllabus and identify what you have to do in this class to get an A. You expect the professor to make all of the decisions. This is something you accept and have been accepting since your K-12 years. You don't question it. 

So you walk into class. You sit down, introduce yourself by name, job title, and department. You go over the syllabus and figure out what you need to do to get an A. Nothing new.

And then the professor tells you that you have 40 minutes to decide, as a group, whether you want to be evaluated and graded on the basis of your individual work at the end of the semester or whether you want to be evaluated and graded based on the average of the group's work (read: individual grade vs. group grade).

Say what? The student gets to decide on how they're to be evaluated? The relationship between the professor and the student that most of us have come to expect and accept has totally been upended.
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True story. You can imagine the looks of shock, confusion, and nervousness that passed through the room. And in those 40 minutes, plus some overtime, many different thoughts were explored. Some individuals expressed excitement about the possibilities (positive) that could arise from this experiment. Some expressed reservations about the potential pitfalls, citing negative group work incidents they experienced in the past. We voted and by a majority accepted the challenge.

Personally, I found myself intrigued by the thought of all being in it together instead of just focusing on ourselves and our grades. Looking around the room, I recognized many faces from previous classes and determined that I would love to work with each and every one of them in that capacity. I admired and respected all of the contributions of my classmates and I felt comfortable 'taking the risk' with these individuals.

It's interesting to assess my relationship with grades throughout my education. In high school, I worked to achieve A's. Nothing else would suffice (I had to get into a good college after all). In college, my grades fell for the first time initially and then stabilized as I found a better handle on college work. But it wasn't the same. I worked but I didn't obsess about A's. Interestingly enough, this time around in graduate school, I found myself wanting my A's. I wanted to prove to myself that I was that good (whatever that means). But this class flipped the script and I am definitely reassessing my relationship with teaching, learning, and grades.

Maybe I'm more optimistic about working with other people and collaborating than others but I'm actually excited for this opportunity to experiment how our class dynamic is affected by this. It is a scary notion but I think for the first time ever, we have the power as a class to affect our learning and the learning of our peers in a way that transcends the traditional classroom. It's no longer just the responsibility of the professor to teach and for us to accept that. We have the chance to take responsibility over our own learning. And really, at this stage in our lives and careers, it's not really about the grades anymore. I am confident that we will have a completely successful experience and I truly believe that we are in it together, no matter what.