tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66395341243655458512024-02-20T03:09:45.096-05:00Grazing: Steve EhrmannGrazing: Steve Ehrmann's blog and web site Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.comBlogger60125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-24334297996172681142021-01-08T17:19:00.005-05:002021-02-05T18:05:44.372-05:00Book is on its way!<p> For almost five years now, I've been researching and writing <i>Pursuing Quality, Access, </i>and<i> Affordability: A Field Guide to Improving Higher Education. </i>It will be available as an eBook, softbound, and hardbound. To get a look at the table of contents, reviews, a video by me introducing key concepts, read the entirety of Chapter 1, and to order the book, check out <a href="https://bit.ly/3fold-Stylus">https://bit.ly/3fold-Stylus</a>.<br /></p><p>The book is based on the last 10-20 years of development of six institutions: Georgia State University, Governors State University, Guttman Community College, Southern New Hampshire University's "College for America" program, the University of Central Florida, and the University of Central Oklahoma.</p><p>What they all have in common: their pursuit of institutional-scale, sustainable gains in the quality of learning, equitable access, and affordability for students and their benefactors. Even more significant, family resemblances across these institutions suggests a general framework that other institutions can use to chart their own paths toward transformation. </p>Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-52855161932927828072019-07-24T11:00:00.000-04:002019-07-24T11:01:21.661-04:00Should we promote "digital learning" as a banner for institutional transformation?<div class="post-message " data-role="message" dir="auto">
<div>
Edward Maloney and Joshua Kim wrote a <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/technology-and-learning/theorizing-digital-learning" target="_blank">provocative blog post</a> in InsideHigherEd. Here's my comment:<br />
<br />
<br />
Eddie and Josh,<br />
<br />
You wrote, "A model for digital learning is a set of integrated ideas, concepts and <br />
frameworks that help us build hypotheses and make sense of data."<br />
<br />
I think that, to advance digital learning, don't think of it as digital learning.<br />
<br />
Based
on my study of six institutions that have been gradually transforming
themselves to improve quality, equitable access, and affordability:<br />
1.
Technology is essential for making such gains, e.g., as a tool for
undergraduate research, as a tool to help institutions make sense of big
data about their educational process, as a way for people to
collaborate across barriers of time and space, as a platform on which
students, faculty, and others can reflect about a student's achievements
and learning; (and so on)<br />
<br />
2. However, technology is not, and should not, be seen as THE way to describe educational transformation.<br />
<br />
Advances
in technology and increases in its availability are just one of many
important enablers of transformation of higher learning, each helping
reinforce the other. Some others include: <br />
<ul>
<li>Pressures for
institutions and degree programs to be more accountable for their
outcomes, especially affordability, equitable access, and what graduates
are now able to do;</li>
<li>Increased national and institutional attention
to educational strategies such as high impact practices, essential
learning outcomes, backward design, and authentic assessment; greater
faculty comfort with such strategies;</li>
<li>Transformative leadership from many positions in the institution; </li>
<li>Changes in academic culture, e.g,, increased percentage of faculty who
see evidence-based improvement of outcomes to be possible and essential;
prioritizing continual improvement of outcomes; legitimacy and rewards
for faculty and staff who invest significant time working with other
faculty (including faculty from other departments) and with staff to
achieve such improvements.</li>
<li>More learning spaces with lower density, furnished with movable chairs and tables;</li>
<li>Changes in accreditation practices so more attention is paid to quality, access, and affordability outcomes;</li>
<li>Changing public opinion about the goals and values of higher education
(is digital learning the way to brand this change to the public?)</li>
<li>(and so on)</li>
</ul>
<br />
So
should our announced focus be Digital learning? evidence-driven
learning? culture-driven learning? improved learning through
transformative leadership? accreditation-driven learning? or none of the
above?<br />
<br />
Analogy: if your family business were making salt, perhaps
you'd write a cookbook entitled, "A Pinch of Salt." Perhaps that book
would pay too little attention to other ingredients and how best to use
them. So it wouldn't be a very good cookbook.<br />
<br />
I've been engaged
with improving higher education for fifty (?!) years, with special
attention to educational uses of technology. I've seen way too many
tech-driven educational improvements flounder because they were too
siloed: they allowed technology spending to siphon budget and attention
from other enablers; they suffered a fatal collision between rapid,
somewhat turbulent rates of change in digital tools and resources versus
human capital's comparatively glacial rate of change.</div>
</div>
Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-36183339028657976122019-04-21T16:02:00.001-04:002019-04-21T16:05:10.858-04:00Make Transformation Possible by Changing Barriers into AssetsThe headline could apply to lots of important topics today. In this case, I'm referring to the possibilities for the gradual transformation of our institutions of higher education.<br />
<br />
I've been studying six colleges and universities for the last three years. Each has been working for five-ten years with some success to improve quality, equitable access, and affordability, simultaneously.<br />
<br />
Each institution wants to attain such gains on an institutional scale, and in ways likely to thrive into the future. So each has treated barriers to transformation as malleable, not fixed:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Many years ago, <a href="https://strategic.gsu.edu/accomplishments/goal-1-accomplishments/" target="_blank">Georgia State</a> began reorganizing so that a variety of administrative and academic units could work together smoothly to improve graduation rates while maintaining or improving quality. [The link in this bullet, and in those below, lead to more information about the institution's pursuit of 3fold gains.]</li>
<li><a href="http://www.govst.edu/vision2020/" target="_blank">Governors State University</a> has built close, long-term working relationships with area community colleges to increase transfer rates and prepare students for its challenging upper division academic program.</li>
<li>Southern New Hampshire University's <a href="https://collegeforamerica.org/" target="_blank">College for America</a>, an online project-based curriculum, educates working adults within their workplaces; the university-business partnerships help keep education grounded, motivating, and supportive.</li>
<li><a href="http://guttman.cuny.edu/about/" target="_blank">Guttman Community College</a> was founded to support a variety of kinds of experiential learning. Its scheduling system enables class meetings so long that, in the middle of class, students can spread out into the city, do brief fieldwork assignments, and return for an immediate discussion of their findings. Doing without academic departments has helped faculty collaborate across disciplinary lines.</li>
<li>The <a href="http://sites.uco.edu/central/tl/stlr/" target="_blank">University of Central Oklahoma</a> has implemented a Student Transformative Learning Record (STLR- pronounced stellar). In this ePortfolio, students can post achievements from courses, extracurriculars, and other experiences. They reflect on those experiences and describe how those experiences document their growing expertise and developing values in six crucial dimensions.</li>
<li>The <a href="https://www.ucf.edu/strategic-plan/files/2017/07/Creating-Our-Collective-Impact-rev072017.pdf" target="_blank">University of Central Florida</a> got in on the ground floor of online learning, committing in the 1990s to train and actively support every faculty member teaching online. Rapid growth of online programs has enabled major savings in plant, maintenance, and operations. Meanwhile, a substantial fraction of all full-time faculty have received extensive education in how to teach well online and, indirectly, on campus.</li>
</ul>
<div>
That's a little taste of what has emerged from these six institutional case histories. In early 2020, <i>Quality, Access, Affordability: Pursuing 3Fold Gains in Higher Education </i>will be published by Stylus. </div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-33190428495831563762019-04-16T10:57:00.000-04:002019-04-16T11:10:38.502-04:00"Technology as Lever": the story of my most influential article is as instructive as the article itself"<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/246430027_Implementing_the_Seven_Principles_Technology_as_Lever" target="_blank">Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever</a>," written by Art Chickering and me, is undoubtedly my most influential article - cited thousands of times.<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>The article begins by listing the Seven Principles, in case you're not already familiar with them. They were formulated by Chickering and Gamson in the mid 1980s as a summary of teaching & learning activities that research showed were particularly powerful.</li>
</ul>
Personally, I've been influenced almost as much by how the article came to be written.<br />
<br />
PROLOGUE<br />
<br />
For technology to influence educational outcomes, it isn't enough to have and use the technology. That technology must be used to carry out an activity that is, even without that technology, educationally powerful. The question should not be"Does technology X improve learning outcomes." Instead it should be "When technology X is used to support a particular teaching and learning activity, does that activity improve learning outcomes?"<br />
<br />
So what might those powerful teaching and learning activities be?<br />
<br />
At conferences and in campus visits, I started asking faculty what technology-assisted activities seemed most powerful and most likely to have widening use in the coming years.<br />
<br />
Eventually, I came up with a list of about seven such patterns of activity (e.g., active learning, working in teams on a realistic and motivating project). A little later, my colleagues Robin Zuniga and Trudy Banta pointed out that my list paralleled Chickering and Gamson's "Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education." So I started using the Seven Principles instead because of the extensive research showing their effectiveness.<br />
<br />
Robin and I used that insight to develop an item bank for student surveys on their uses of technology for specific activity: The Flashlight Current Student Inventory. Thanks to Gary Brown and his colleagues at Washington State University, an early online survey tool was created to manage and extend those survey questions. Use of the Flashlight Online tool spread eventually to a couple hundred institutions.<br />
<br />
GENESIS<br />
In the mid 1990s, I bumped into Art Chickering. He knew of how I was using the Seven Principles. "Why don't we write an article together about how to use digital technology to implement them in undergraduate education?" he asked. .<br />
<br />
I was highly skeptical. Examples of technology enhancing seven principle activities seemed so self-evident. I literally could not imagine anyone reading or valuing such an article. Chick persisted so I asked him to send me a first draft. If, when I'd read it, I thought I could help, I'd send him a rewrite. He did, and then I did.<br />
<br />
Eventually, our article appeared in the paper <i>Bulletin of the American Association for Higher Education</i>, where I worked. It was 1996 and AAHE had just created its first site on the World Wide Web. There was very little content on it yet. I suggested to the websmith that they link the text of our article to the AAHE home page. The initial URL: http://aahe.org/ehrmann.<br />
<br />
VIRUS<br />
Readership started strong and multiplied each month. For at least a decade, the article drew over 4,000 hits a month. Impressive for an article I thought no one would read!<br />
<br />
I got some insight into why the article was so influential on a visit to the University of South Carolina (USC) in the late 1990s. In a talk, I described one way in which technology could be used to implement a Principle: giving rapid, useful feedback to students. When I was in high school, teachers had given the same comment on papers so many times that explanations and suggestions had disappeared. If a passage seemed awkward to the teacher, they'd write "K" in the margin. Not helpful!<br />
<br />
Today, I said, USC faculty can ask for student work to be submitted electronically. Then they can use the "Comments" feature to type detailed feedback about specific elements of the student's work. Better yet, the next time you want to make a similar comment, you can copy the initial version of the feedback and, if necessary, adapt or improve it. The more times similar feedback is given, the better and more helpful it can become.<br />
<br />
<i>Here's the kicker</i>: Later in my visit, Bill Hogue, the CIO, introduced me to another audience of faculty. Bill remarked that he'd heard my talk the previous day.Then he explained the time-saving idea for improving feedback on student work. Bill added that he'd never considered using a computer that way.<br />
<br />
<b>The ideas I'd thought too obvious to need explanation were in fact 1) powerful, 2) easy to comprehend, 3) easy to spread from person to person by word of mouth, and 4) could be useful to the listener no matter how much or how little relevant experience they'd had.</b><br />
<br />
MORAL<br />
I'm writing my first book in quite a few years. The hidden assumptions beneath my draft may well be the most important ones for the book to explain. Perhaps those insights will be simple and powerful enough that readers will want to share them with their friends.Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-80792259352193143612018-07-10T11:16:00.000-04:002018-07-10T15:18:40.602-04:00When it comes to feedback about faculty or courses, one size does not fit all<b>Considering the Design of Evaluations of Faculty or Courses</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
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I saw yet another item in the POD listserv whether and how to ‘grade’
teaching, student feedback. Obviously, any such system requires collecting best evidence and in several different ways, "triangulating" from them to get a more valid, reliable sense of what's been going on. </div>
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<br /></div>
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The fallacy I see in most such discussions is the assumption that one procedure must fit all kinds of courses and faculty. (The IDEA Center is a noteworthy exception to 'one size fits all.')<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Before getting to judging faculty, let's be clear: the <i>most</i> important target for intensive evaluation is the performance of academic programs (e.g., degree programs, general education, writing or other essential learning outcomes as they are mastered across the curriculum).<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>What should students have learned by the time they leave (not just in content and capabilities but also in motivation and perspectives)? </li>
<li>What did students learn by the time they left? Compared with the goals? compared with students graduating five years earlier?</li>
<li>Have equity gaps increased or decreased for students who have been in the program? </li>
<li>Has the program made responsible, effective uses of its resources including students' time and money?</li>
</ul>
</div>
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<br /></div>
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Now, let's talk about making judgments about faculty. We can learn more, and waste less time and money, by having different inquiries for different situations</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Purpose -Formative<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Purpose - Summative<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Sample criteria<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">The top educators (or courses) (~5%)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Cross-fertilization among
most engaged innovators, SoTL practitioners. Forge direction and leadership
cadre for future programmatic improvements<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Rewards of distinction<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">In what ways has your work benefited
the practice of other faculty and staff, here and at other institutions?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Broad middle<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">(90%)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Provide feedback useful for faculty growth and course improvement<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Use evidence of growth or
no growth over the years as one of many inputs into personnel decisions<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Use highly engaging
practices? With desired effects?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Bottom of the scale (~5%)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Identify and then fix problematic teachers/courses if
possible<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Identify teachers/courses performing
at unacceptably low levels, term after term.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Is instructor showing up? Providing
feedback in a timely fashion?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
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The "broad middle" is the most important group because they do most of the teaching and have far more impact, collectively, on students. Because so many faculty are in this group, any central committee or office will be able to spend comparatively little time with each instructor, teaching assistant, and learning assistant. So these kinds of feedback need to come from standardized processes (e.g., standard data about course performance; standard review from peers who have been educated about what's worth noticing and how to coach).</div>
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<br /></div>
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The bottom of the scale is the most important for a "high touch" approach because of the risks that the intervention might make things worse. Each case requires sensitivity and a unique approach.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The top of the scale is also worth high touch, to harvest, interpret and disseminate important lessons and new challenges arising from the work done in these very best courses.</div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>Does your institution have a faculty/course improvement program that treats the worst performers differently than the others -uses different criteria to judge them, gathers different data about them?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><br /></i></div>
<br />
<b>The Book in Progress</b><br />
<br />
As you might know, I'm working on a book tentatively titled, <i>Quality, Access, and Affordability: Pursuing 3Fold Gains in Higher Education</i>. About 2/3 of the planned book is in at least first draft shape. The book describes 5-6 institutions that have been working for years to enhance how well students learn, to make access more equitable, and to control affordability in time and money, for the students, the institutions, and their benefactors. Even more important, these institutions have all been trying to accomplish such gains in ways that are scalable (engage more than boutique numbers of students) and sustainable for many years to come.<br />
<br />
If you'd like to hear more, write a comment below or email me (ehrmannsteve gmail).<br />
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Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-53395888739695267252018-02-14T11:42:00.003-05:002018-02-15T12:41:14.772-05:00Progress on quality, access, and affordability in higher education<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">For much of the last two years I've been researching and writing a book: </span><br />
<div>
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To describe how some colleges and universities have been (re)shaping themselves in order to make sustainable gains in educational quality, access, and affordability at scale, and </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">From their experiences, to suggest a conceptual framework and implementation principles that can be used to pursue such 3fold gains more effectively and efficiently.</span></li>
</ol>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There's a lot of research and writing still to do. The book probably won't be published until late 2018 or early 2019.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Recently, the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Group invited me to give a webinar on some of the most important findings and suggestions emerging from the book. A video of the event is on YouTube at <a href="http://bit.ly/3Fold-FRLV-Feb18">http://bit.ly/3Fold-FRLV-Feb18</a>. </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My talk begins at 6:37 into the video, pauses for 20 minutes at 50:16, picks up again at 1:10:48 and concludes at 1:22:15. In the talk itself lasts less than an hour. </span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">The book analyzes a number of case histories; some points about Georgia State University's recent history and achievements are included in the talk.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Some Tentative Findings:</span></span><br />
<br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Pursuing three gains (in quality, access, and affordability) as three independent agendas is probably not the best way to actually achieve such improvements in institutional and program outcomes. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Instead create a single constellation of changes over the years that, as a group, cumulatively improves elements of quality, access, and affordability. ("pursuing 3fold gains")</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There are three major ways to conceive of how how learning should be organized. Each suggests a different, <i>incompatible</i> way to pursue 3fold gains. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Institutional case histories also suggest that, for 3fold gains to be sustained at scale, the constellation of changes needs to include targeted improvements aligned across: </span></li>
</ol>
<ul><ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Educational strategies, </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Organizational foundations (including culture), to better sustain those strategies at scale, and </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Interactions with the wider world that also influence the sustainability of the institution's educational strategies. </span></li>
</ul>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I hope you'll take a look at my talk. Post your reactions here or contact me at ehrmannsteve at gmail.</span></span><br />
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<!--EndFragment-->Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-35245482666075958692017-06-20T16:32:00.000-04:002017-06-20T16:39:43.825-04:00Improving Course Outcomes - Uses of Undergraduate Learning Assistants<style>
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</style> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Trained “undergraduate learning assistants” (ULAs) can
provide invaluable support for faculty seeking to redesign or enhance their
courses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 2006-2014, the USM
redesigned 57 courses spread across eleven of its universities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>About two-thirds of those courses used
prepared ULAs in a variety of ways to improve learning outcomes, including:
</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Making it more practical for faculty to use
research-informed teaching and learning strategies, such as more active and
collaborative learning in the classroom; </span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Monitoring computer labs where students used
interactive courseware;</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Coaching particular students who were having
trouble in the course;</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Helping grade quizzes and online participation;</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Providing indirect ways of saving faculty time;
and</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Advising the instructors on how to improve the
course.</span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"><b>ULA-enabled course redesigns appear
to have been more successful in lowering DFW rates than were redesigned courses
that did not take advantage of ULAs.</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b>Redesigned
courses using ULAs cut DFW rates by an average of 8 percentage points as
compared to only 2 percentage points on average for courses that did not make
use of ULAs.</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">For the full report, written while I was with Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation at the University System of Maryland, <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/yurn4a8e9oc56y0/ULA%20Research%20Brief-FINAL%20-15May2016.pdf?dl=0" target="_blank">click here</a>. </span></span>
Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-83084630791736134852016-12-22T18:29:00.002-05:002016-12-22T18:29:39.146-05:00"Flipped Classrooms" versus "Blended Courses" versus "Hybrid Courses"
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Many faculty and staff take“flipping the classroom” to mean that they should make recordings of lectures, assign them as homework, and use the vacated lecture time to more interactive work in the classroom. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Will that work? What if students aren't investing enough time in homework now? Will it help or hurt to add video lectures to that load? And if students continue to come to class unprepared, won't the instructor feel compelled to drop the interactive work in class and lecture instead? The more things change, the more they may stay the same.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Improving learning outcomes requires more than swapping the same activities into different contexts.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">And using the term "classroom" as a synonym for "course" tends to divert attention from what goes on outside the classroom. That's not good. Think of typical classroom lectures as exercise videos. How strong do people become from watching exercise videos? Their new strength comes from the practice they do after watching the video: the homework.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">"Flipped classroom" has displaced an earlier, more suggestive term: "<i>hybrid courses</i>." By hybrid, I mean a course whose design gets its educational power by making the most of what's possible in and out of classrooms. Drawing on those two sources, hybrids can be different and more effective than either of those sources.</span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">[It's true that many hybrids also adjust the amount of time students spend in and out of classrooms as part of their design. But in my view a well-implemented hybrid gets the most value from its way of multiplying what can be done in and outside classrooms.]</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">For this blog post, let's just focus on interpersonal interaction in hybrid courses. Many research-based practices for effective education rely on heavy doses of interpersonal interaction, far more interaction than in most lecture-based courses. When designing a hybrid course, what kinds of interpersonal interaction are best done online? face-to-face?,</span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Interaction better done face-to-face </b></span></span></div>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The virtually instantaneous judgment needed for some
kinds of coaching (think of using prepared learning assistants to help facilitate student discussion and collaboration in the classroom);</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The quick back-and-forth that can resolve some
misunderstandings (think of using clickers to support peer instruction);</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The sharing of emotional responses that can help
further motivate students and introduce them to different ways of perceiving and
valuing. ("<a href="http://sehrmann.blogspot.com/2015/02/to-love-beauty-of-equation-what-do-you.html" target="_blank">The equation of simple harmonic motion</a>" is an earlier blog post on that potential.)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">(add your own suggestions) </span></span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Interaction better done online</b>:</span></span></div>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">More thoughtfully paced interaction that’s important
for novices just learning to think and communicate in the terms of the field
they’re studying (see Smith citation below);</span></span></li>
<li>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">More options for students to study and discuss
different things, according to their interests (ditto about Smith)</span></span></li>
<li>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Greater ease of communication, especially for students
who’d rather not interrupt, students (and instructors) whose native language is
not English</span></span></li>
<li>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">More visual forms of peer-to-peer communication (e.g., students
using video clips to help explain a point)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">(add your own suggestions) </span></span></li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="background-color: yellow;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">For online discussion to work well, instructors had better
coach the students in how to make constructive contributions. Then instructors ought to use simple
rubrics to give students simple feedback (and fractional points toward their
grades) – this week have you shown evidence understanding the contributions of others? Are your contributions helping to move the discussion and the work forward? <span style="background-color: white;">When I taught an online course a couple years ago, I was staggered by how the intelligence of student contributions improved when I took those two steps.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Here's an research report from Karen Smith on the importance of asynchronous
discussion to learning a new language. The language is
Spanish. However, if you think about it, deep learning of any content involves
entering a new community and
mastering at least the rudiments of a new language. The study of
literature, of social work, and of mathematics all have their own ways
of thinking and communicating. The sample size in Smith's study is
small
(different sections of one class at one university) but the findings
ring true
to me.</span></span></div>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Smith, Karen L. (1990) Collaborative and
Interactive Writing for Increasing Communication Skills, <i>Hispania</i>, LXXIII:1,
pp. 77-87.</span></span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">To sum up: let's take a fresh look at how the best use of out-of-classroom work can enrich learning done within classrooms, and vice versa. And let's call the results "hybrid courses."</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">PS. No, I haven't forgotten "blended courses." For me, the word "blended" suggests that faculty mix some face-to-face with some online, shake the result, and serve. Yug.</span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
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Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-65803259077575269552016-07-08T16:59:00.005-04:002016-07-08T17:00:32.162-04:00Barrier assumptionsWhile working on my book on academic transformation, I've been looking back over a 40-year career engaged with innovation. The news isn't all bad. Islands of improvement have multiplied and some have grown to be quite large, even though great swaths of academic practice remain unchanged.<br />
<br />
For the book, I've been noting assumptions that hold many of us back, especially when these assumptions reinforce barrier practices. Here are a few of the most important of these barrier assumptions:<br />
<br />
1. Relying mainly on <b>experts explaining things to students (for
example, lectures, demonstrations, textbooks) works well enough</b>.
Learning can't be improved by altering teaching. Students learn more or
less because of their talents and problems. Attempts to increase grades
are almost always illusory and result in watering down the curriculum.<br />
<ul>
<li>Counter-assumption:
the vast weight of evidence supports the finding that relying
primarily on explaining things is not very effective, not an equal playing field for students, and not a very good
use of anyone's time. Changes in teaching can result in improvements
in learning.</li>
</ul>
2. <b>Faculty jobs are about working alone</b>, especially where teaching is concerned. Reward systems reinforce working alone, with each instructor working alone to teach a course or section, having his or her own advisees, etc.<br />
<ul>
<li> Counter-assumption: Learning that results in lasting changes in student capabilities, perspectives and direction emerges from a constellation of experiences in many courses and experiences. In order to intentionally improve those graduation, faculty need to invest significant time and effort in working together, as a regular part of their responsibilities as teachers.</li>
</ul>
3. <span style="background: white; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin; mso-highlight: white;"><b>Any inquiry into how time, money and facilities are used
by students, faculty and programs is a disguised and illegitimate ploy by the
administration to restrict academic freedom and to fire people</b>.</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="background: white; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin; mso-highlight: white;">Counter-<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">assumption</span></span>: To improve learning requires rethinking the organization of academic work in smaller or larger ways (rather than adding new practices and expenses alongside the status quo). This rethinking involves how people spend time and how the institution allocates resources. Assuming that the starting point is that people can keep spending time and money as they have guarantees that the status quo remains the norm. (See myth #1)</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%;">4. </span><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%;"><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%;"><b>Innovations <span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">are a</span> completely new beginning (and a leap into the dark)</b>, especially technology-based innovations. For example, research on
libraries has no bearing on using the Web as a library. Research done
on the instructional software of the 1980s can't possibly suggest any
useful insights in dealing with this year's adaptive tutoring systems.</span> </span></span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%;">Counter-assumption: the most important determinants of student learning are what students do. Technologies - whether they are textbooks, computer software, classrooms, or learning management systems - exist to make it easier for students (and instructors) to do certain things. Lecturing, textbooks, and streaming videos from the Khan Academy all offer students explanations of content. Therefore their potential and their limitations are likely to be similar.</span></span></span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%;"><b>In your experience, what barrier myths hinder our efforts to keep improving access, quality and affordability?</b> </span></span></span>
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ul
{margin-botto</style>Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-92024460639919127702016-04-15T10:40:00.003-04:002016-04-15T10:48:10.061-04:00What is "academic transformation?" (no, really...)I need your help.<br />
<br />
Like some others, I define "academic transformation" as making gains in selected facets of access, quality and affordability in higher education.<br />
<ul>
<li><b>Access</b>: How many people can learn? what kinds of people can learn?</li>
<li><b>Quality</b>: What are the outcomes? how effective are the practices aimed at fostering that learning?</li>
<li><b>Affordability</b>: Is a particular type of stakeholder willing and able to invest a particular resource over the long term? Stakeholders include students, faculty, units such as academic departments and teaching centers, institutions, and benefactors. Relevant resources include time, money, and facilities.</li>
</ul>
These three goals have been called an "<a href="http://www.changemag.org/archives/back%20issues/march-april%202009/full-iron-triangle.html" target="_blank">iron triangle</a>" because of the widespread perception that to make progress in one or two of these goals, one must make sacrifices in another. For example, if budgets remain constant (affordability), people may assume that all efforts to extend access pose a threat to quality and all efforts to improve quality must be limited to a subset of students, unfairly penalizing other current or potential students. <br />
<br />
In practice that triangle can be stretched. For example, the shift from hand-copied manuscripts to printed books in higher learning enabled gains in certain aspects of all three goals. More recently the growth of the Internet offers a wider range of more affordable resources to a larger number of learners. Flipped courses offer potential gains in all three spheres.<br />
<br />
A lot of people are talking about this kind of threefold transformation. I am beginning to study:<br />
<ul>
<li>Who's trying to do it? </li>
<li>How? </li>
<li>How's it going? </li>
<li>Are there lessons to be learned from their experiences about how to conceptualize and implement academic transformation? </li>
</ul>
I'm looking for real-world cases of attempted academic transformation. Can you suggest any efforts that I should study?<br />
<ul>
<li>Perhaps people at an institution are trying to transform a crucial teaching/learning activity such as coaching, assessment of higher order learning, or capstone courses. </li>
<li>You might know of an effort to energize students, get them to take personal responsibility for assessing their own learning, or to become more resilient so that they can get more value from their academic programs; </li>
<li>Perhaps a college or degree program has taken on a form that makes it more effective in all three areas than many of its competitors. </li>
<li>You might recall a particular course with an unusual design that happens to have strengths in all three of these areas. </li>
<li>The work that occurs to you might focus mostly one of the three goals but potentially have benefits in the other two as well. For example efforts to make education more affordable might potentially have implications for both access and quality.</li>
<li>Maybe you know of an effort to make gains on a scale beyond that of single institutions - a new policy, or consortium, or mediating institution helping sustain relationships between distant learners and distant institutions.</li>
<li>You might be aware of an effort to help programs judge how well they're doing in one, two or all three of these goal areas. </li>
</ul>
Whatever the particulars, I'm looking for cases where people are:<br />
<ul>
<li>Making a serious effort to be strong in some aspects of each of these three goal area;</li>
<li>Paying attention to what's actually happening in each area, so that the goal doesn't devolve into a marketing tagline ("We're a quality program!!!!"</li>
</ul>
Notice I'm not insisting on success. We can learn at least as much from efforts that flopped or withered. You don't need to have any connection to the instance you're suggesting. Just point me in the right direction and I'll take it from there.<br />
<br />
Please email your suggestions to ehrmannsteve at gmail.com.Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-25195141585611573172015-12-08T10:03:00.000-05:002015-12-08T11:31:05.854-05:00For teaching and learning, what feels best may actually be worst.Everyday experience makes it obvious: experts should explain something clearly
so that students can understand the point effortlessly. For students, reviewing their notes and materials, or practicing bits of knowledge or skill until they feel locked in - that's the most efficient, successful way to
study. <br />
<br />
However, research summarized in <i>Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning</i> by Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel (2014) demonstrates that these obvious facts about learning are destructively misleading. (Some other good volumes summarize overlapping bodies of research and make similar points.)<br />
<br />
I cringed as I read, remembering how counter-productive my own approach to college work had been:<br />
<ul>
<li>When I could follow a lecture, point by point, I assumed that my preparation was adequate and that I'd learned what I needed . (Taking a quiz even a day later would have shown me and the
instructor that I really hadn't learned anything lasting.)</li>
<li>Drilling on a certain type of problem and getting it right
each time once again misled me into thinking I had learned something that would
last. My delusion was reinforced by quizzes that typically covered
only recent material; in that context, cramming seemed efficient. </li>
<li>Partly as a result, I got average grades in my MIT engineering courses yet my bachelor's didn't prepare me to actually be an engineer. And by the end of my first year of doctoral work in management at MIT, I had again gotten B's and A's in six courses in economics (undergraduate and graduate) yet could recall almost none of it. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
</ul>
Research suggests that my faculty should have taught me differently, and I should have studied differently. For example:<br />
<ul>
<li>When students have to work to recall something (e.g., on a quiz) they are much more likely to remember it than if they spend the same amount of time reviewing that material. (see p. 34 for some relevant research on this point) Working to answer the test questions helps students learn.</li>
<li>A variety of practice is important. College baseball players who were thrown a mix of fast balls, curve balls and sliders didn't feel like their hitting was progressing. In contrast, another set of players was "studying hitting" by being thrown fast balls until they could hit them, then curve balls, then sliders; they could see their progress quite vividly. Yet, in game situations, those frustrated players who had practiced hitting a random mix of pitches had better batting averages. (pp. 79-82 in <i>Making It Stick</i>)</li>
<li>When students have to make predictions and then test them, the learning is more likely to last. For a vivid example of the failure of a hands-on lab that didn't take the time for students to learn through predict-try-observe-repeat, watch the video, "Can We Believe Our Eyes?" It is part 1 of the series, <a href="http://www.learner.org/resources/series26.html" target="_blank"><i>Minds of Our Own</i>.</a> The videos are an excellent illustration of ineffective and effective approaches to teaching. And each sequence begins with interviews with graduating MIT and Harvard seniors who still misunderstand ideas that they were supposed taught, often more than once, in middle school and onward.</li>
</ul>
<b>Takeways: </b><br />
<ol>
<li><b>The kinds of teaching and study that intuitively feel most efficient and effective can easily result in an illusion of learning. </b></li>
<li><b>The kinds of teaching and study that are best at producing lasting, usable learning may feel to the student, in the moment, to be difficult, time-consuming, and non-productive. Complaints may ensue. (<i>Make It Stick</i> and several other equally good volumes are packed with examples of "desirable difficult" ways of teaching and studying, and the research that has demonstrated their effectiveness.</b></li>
<li><b>Therefore, one important preparation for both faculty and students is to help them anticipate these difficulties and, where possible, to see early signs that really usable, lasting learning is beginning to develop. </b> </li>
</ol>
I'll be writing a second post on this material soon.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-33264582744393972582015-08-30T14:39:00.001-04:002017-06-20T16:34:56.173-04:00Confusors - Derailing Discussions about Teaching, Technology, and Reform<i>I've written a couple times in this blog about confusors, but my 2009 essay on the topic was on a web site that has now disappeared. I've resurrected it here and updated it.</i><br />
<br />
We can't improve teaching, our uses of technology and the ways we organize academic work unless we can talk about it. But such conversations often become more like bull-rings when participants don't notice they're using a common word or phrase to mean different things.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">"Teaching," "learning," "assessment," "campus," "liberal education," "general education," "learning goals," "cost-savings," "MOOC," "course redesign," "competence-based education," "online learning," "flipped classes," and "adaptive learning" are just a few examples of the linguistic traps, that I've termed <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>confusors</i></span>. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span> </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: small;">For example, two people might get into a bitter argument about regional accreditation of institutions. But the argument turns out to be a waste of energy because they don't actually disagree about anything substantive; they've each been unwittingly using a different definition for "assessment." </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I’ve been in a couple pointless arguments about lectures and active learning. One discussion turned out to be a waste of time because, while we actually agreed, we hadn’t noticed our conflicting definition of "lecture." The other wasted quite a few minutes of our lives because we hadn’t noticed our clashing definitions of “active learning.” <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: black;"><a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/readers-defintions-of-ed-tech-buzzwords-confusion-and-skepticism-continue/57301">Click here to see a column in the Chronicle of Higher Education charting multiple definitions of some widely used ed-tech terms.</a></span> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></blockquote>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span>Any confusor has two defining characteristics:<br />
<ol>
<li>A term has more than one widely used definition (e.g., "teaching" can mean that an expert is explaining something, or it can refer more broadly to any action of an expert that is designed to help someone else learn). During the moments when a professor is silently watching students discuss an issue, is the professor teaching? The first definition says 'no,' while the second says, 'yes.'</li>
<li>When people fail to notice that they are each using different definitions for the same term, unnecessary arguments or confusion can easily result. Perhaps just as dangerous in the long term is when participants are lulled into thinking they agree on a point on which they actually clash. Many people might agree that continual improvement of teaching is important, but when a faculty development program is at issue, they might realize for the first time how dangerously they differed on what "continual improvement of teaching" means.</li>
</ol>
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HaP7zBojICcQyaVkTWc0_feMChkVpcGOTFIxn_3QTvk/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Click here to see a list of confusors with their conflicting definitions</a>.</span></span><br />
<br />
To have more productive conversations about teaching and its improvement, what terms and definitions do we need to add to this list? Please add comments below or email me at ehrmannsteve at gmail.com. <br />
<ol>
</ol>
Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-4988215477973722662015-03-08T16:28:00.000-04:002015-03-08T16:28:18.923-04:00What is Liberal Learning? (No, really...)<style>
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</style> <span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This is the third in a series of posts about my own deepening understanding of liberal learning. <span style="font-weight: normal;">The first summarized a <a href="http://sehrmann.blogspot.com/2015/02/beyond-university-ideals-of-michael-roth.html" target="_blank"><b>talk by Michael Roth</b></a> on the values of liberal education and the second speculated about why it had taken me so long to learn <a href="http://sehrmann.blogspot.com/2015/02/to-love-beauty-of-equation-what-do-you.html" target="_blank"><b>to see the beauty in an equation</b></a>. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
Eric Liu, author of A Chinaman’s Chance, opened a door for me in his recent keynote at AAC&U when he talked about a "virus" that's loose in the world. Liu described the virus as a passionate belief that there is only one correct, virtuous way to see and to act in the world. Folks with this virus believe that something is inferior or wrong about people with any other view. This virus can be a belief in the primacy of one's country of birth, one's skin color, religion, or ideology (for example, the passionate belief that the world can be totally understood and improved by paying attention only to market forces).<br /><br />
Liberal learning, asserted Liu, is the antidote to this virus. Liberally educated people:<ul>
<li>Understand their worlds from varied and conflicting perspectives, as economics and as ecology, as a balance of power and also as the sum of its accidents and also as the result of individual decisions.</li>
<li>Realize that all their options are, to some extent, imperfect and subject to criticism and opposition. Nonetheless, they are intellectually and emotionally prepared to use evidence, to act, and to live with the consequences.</li>
<li>Can use evidence and reason to question accepted truth. I know from a variety of perspectives and from many sources of evidence that this way of seeing the world, and acting in the world, doesn't come quickly or easily. </li>
</ul>
<br />
In fact, liberal learning is the toughest and most time-consuming part: <br />
<ol>
<li>of effective education for work, </li>
<li>of education to be an effective citizen, and </li>
<li>of education that enables you to transform yourself. </li>
</ol>
<br />
All three of those goals are important. <br /><br />But my caution light goes on whenever I hear people who simply advocate higher education for work. Period. Without a liberating education, those employed graduates will only be able to do the job the way others do it. They won't have the ability to question accepted wisdom, to bring others around to their novel point of view, and to change what's done, or how it's done. And they won't be prepared to change jobs or careers (without going back to school for a different form of training). <br /><br />That was Liu's point: training people for a specific job is not enough to assure a healthy democracy because effective citizens need to question their way past slogans and opinion leaders. It's not enough in a society that values innovation. It's not enough to help someone become (perhaps somewhat to their surprise) into a different person (I entered college at 18 with life-long desire to be an engineer and graduated as someone who looks a lot more like the me of today, not just in career aspirations but in perceptions and capability). <br /><br />Liberal learning ought to be the toughest and most valuable feature of education for jobs and professions. It needs to be the toughest and most valuable part of learning to be an effective citizen. And it is certainly the toughest and most valuable part of a college education whose graduates habitually question their own comfortable beliefs and perceptions. <br /><br /> Perhaps the most important challenge to champions of higher education is to figure out more affordable ways of strengthening the heart of liberal learning.Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-88179885977356770392015-02-08T10:31:00.002-05:002020-03-20T17:38:23.588-04:00To love the beauty of an equation, what do you need to learn? (Some Observations about a Liberal Education, and Three Roles for Technology)<i><span style="font-weight: normal;">My last post, <a href="http://sehrmann.blogspot.com/2015/02/beyond-university-ideals-of-michael-roth.html">summarizing a talk by Michael Roth on the values of liberal education</a>, was the first in a series that are part of my own redefined, re-energized sense of the goals of a college or university education. The post that follows was originally written in 2006.</span></i><br />
<h2>
</h2>
<br />
<br />
In 1967, when I was a first-year student in engineering, I took physics. To derive a mathematical equation to describe how a pendulum sways back and forth, the professor began with Newton's Laws. Then he wrote line after line of algebra down the blackboard, each line representing a step in the reasoning. The climax at the bottom of the board: a surprisingly short equation which, the professor told us, was called the Equation of Simple Harmonic Motion. T is the time it takes the pendulum to swing, L is the length of the pendulum, and g represents the strength of gravity. One implication: how long it takes a pendulum to swing depends only on how long the pendulum is, not on how hard you push it. <br />
<br />
The professor then pointed out that this equation doesn't just describe the swinging of a pendulum. The same equation, he said, also describes the vibration of a weight suspended between two springs. And it also describes the flow of electricity in a simple electrical circuit that consists of a battery and three elementary components (a resistor, a capacitor, and an inductance, as I recall) linked together with wire. Then the professor leaned forward over the lectern and asked passionately, "Isn't that beautiful?" I was in the second row and I wrote it all down, concluding my notes with the word 'beautiful,' just in case "beautiful" turned up on the next quiz. <br />
<br />
Several months later I learned the same equation again, this time in a calculus course, and the lecturer said the same thing. And "beautiful!" I wrote once again in my notes. And I heard "beautiful" down a third time, two years later, in an introduction to electrical engineering.<br />
<br />
Two years later, I had become a doctoral student in management at that same university. I shared an office with Lew Erwin, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering. We had been undergraduates together and were good friends. <br />
<br />
"So why did you leave engineering?" Lew asked me one day. I was already enough of a manager to answer a question with a question, so I retorted, "Why did you stay in engineering?" <br />
<br />
He thought for a moment and then responded, "Well, take something like the Equation of Simple Harmonic Motion. It describes the motion of a pendulum, and a mass vibrating between two springs, and electricity flowing through a simple RLC circuit, and I think that's beautiful!" What happened to me at that moment has happened again every time I've told the story. And it's happening as I write these words. My eyes teared up, my jaw dropped, and I said in awe, "My god, it is beautiful."<br />
<br />
Almost twenty years later, I was listening to a couple of physicists at the University of Maryland, Joe Redish and Jack Wilson, talk with one another. By this time I was a program officer with responsibilities to find and then support innovative work in higher education. I'm afraid my attention wandered after a while as they talked with one another. One of them said something like, "Yahda yahda yahda equation of simple harmonic motion." And suddenly all of those things that happened in college came up back to me and for the first time I wondered, "Why was it that three excellent instructors worked so hard to teach me something, and failed completely, when a couple years later a simple remark did the trick?"<br />
<br />
So I wrote a little paper for myself, comparing two quite different notions about why this might be so.<br />
<ol>
<li>Maybe I'd matured, in <a href="http://www.indiana.edu/%7El506/theoryframe/506Model.htm">the way that William Perry once described college students maturing</a>. Perry's research suggested that younger students tend to see the world in black and white terms, with the professors the sources of truth and knowledge. After a couple of years of development, they can conceive that there might be more than one truth but, at this point, they have only themselves as a point of reference. "Everyone has a right to his own opinion," is a comment that's a hall of this stage. Only later, often not until after graduation, can students use evidence and their own values to choose among several 'truths,' using evidence reason to take a stand and to act. </li>
<li> Or perhaps I'd seen the beauty so easily because, by this time, I'd done research myself and had learned how hard it is to describing something complicated and real in a simple, useful way, and how much harder it is to come up with such a simple, useful conceptual description that would 'work' for three different situations that, on the surface, looked completely different. (By that argument, the way to help freshmen see the beauty is to make sure they do this kind of research when in high school). </li>
</ol>
I finished the paper unsure of which explanation was more persuasive. It seemed a good agenda for future research. <br />
<br />
I sent a copy to Lew Erwin, by now a professor himself at our old university. Next time I saw him, I asked "So which of these two theories is right?" <br />
<br />
"You're wrong," he laughed. "Both your theories are wrong. You learned about the beauty of the equation from me because it was me who told you. I'm your friend. That's certainly how I learned it. At nights sometimes, I would sit on the roof of our fraternity with my friend Phil Abbot, looking at the stars and talking about things like this." <br />
<br />
Lew went on, "I've been teaching for a while now and I've figured out that a teacher may be able to teach what to think. But only a friend can teach you how to feel about it."<br />
<br />
I think there's some truth in all three explanations. College does help some students develop through a very complex process of reorganizing the ways they understand the world. And research -- research that encourages students to develop explanations and then test those explanations -- can help. But Lew was right, too. Our relations and conversations with friends, often outside classrooms, can change how we feel about things <br />
<br />
<a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1991-12-18/news/9104230457_1_manufacturing-engineers-engineering-professor-engineering-and-applied-science" target="_blank">Lew died young</a>. It was the most horrible of ironies: late one night, as he lay sleeping with his wife, his wonderful heart just stopped beating. I told this story about him, me, and the equation of simple harmonic motion at his memorial service. Ever since, I've told it to others, to let them know what Lew taught me. Please pass it on.<br />
<br />
PS. Want to learn about the Equation of Simple Harmonic Motion? Here's <a href="http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/pend.html"> one of many sources on the Web</a>.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>PPS. What does all this have to do
with educational uses of technology?</b> We know that technology, whether that technology is a
computer or a piece of chalk, doesn't <i>cause</i> learning.
However, technology can serve the cause of learning by enabling
people to learn in ways that
might otherwise be difficult or impossible.
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">So, if you
believe the Perry explanation, technology can give students more choices in how to learn, choices that stretch but don't
go beyond the student's stage of understanding. That's a
strategy that Perry scholars have recommended. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"> If you think
that research experience was the key, computers and the
Internet have vastly widened the scope of meaningful
research open to undergraduates and students in K-12
schools. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">And if you think that being with friends is key,
consider how to use modern technology to increase the ways in which people can bump into one another, and commune.
</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-size: small;">To repeat, none of these uses of technology
would compel all students to learn the beauty of that equation.
But aren't they three interesting ways to water the seeds we
plant?</span>Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-49462519383762677212015-02-05T07:08:00.001-05:002015-02-05T09:44:33.898-05:00Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters, Michael Roth<ul>
<li>Liberate</li>
<li>Animate </li>
<li>Cooperate </li>
<li>Instigate</li>
</ul>
<br />
Michael Roth, author of <i>Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters</i> and President of Wesleyan University, used those four terms to summarize historical threads that have combined to justify and shape liberal education. He explained them in a dynamic and sometimes hilarious keynote at American University's annual teaching day conference last month. <a href="http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/57371950" target="_blank">Roth's talk begins at the 57:44 mark of this video segment</a>.<br />
<br />
<b>Liberate</b> - as Jefferson and others argued, higher education is a process in which, through inquiry, students should learn who they can become, and what they can do. This ideal is the opposite of the notion that students should first decide what to do, and then to college in order to become an X as quickly as possible. The latter is something between training and indoctrination, Roth argued, not a liberal (liberating) education.<br />
<br />
<b>Animate - </b>As Emerson and others asserted, higher education should make elements of the world come alive for for the student while making the student more alive to that world. Things that had seemed dull, stupid or inscrutable can become marvelous, intimate, and awesome to a more educated human. <br />
<br />
<b>Cooperate</b> - American pragmatists argued that freedom is empty without cooperation and interdependence. William James said that education is overcoming your blindness about how the world looks to others, why those others think as they do and feel as they do. Education should attack the pathologies of individualism, not reinforce them. another thread: Jane Addams wanted an education that would prepare a student to make a better world, not to paralyze and distract them by <i>only</i> being able to finding the faults in the acts of others. Don't sacrifice compassionate understanding on the alter of critical thinking.<br />
<br />
<b>Instigate</b> -John Dewey, Richard Rorty,and Emerson saw a goal of liberal education as helping students learn to think against the grain, to question and change what has been accepted as normal or obvious.<br />
<br />
This is just one of the reasons why I've recently come to see more clearly that education for the workplace should not define higher ed: potential student (a) picks a job, (b) picks a course of study, (c) succeeds in that course of study, and (d) gets that job). Instead much of the hard work of higher education- that part that can take several years of work - is to developing the kinds of capabilities described above - capabilities essential for a respondible job, for becoming a citizen, and for becoming even more true to your self.<br />
<br />Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-15390054108131148192014-12-18T14:00:00.003-05:002014-12-18T14:02:14.339-05:00Interesting opening at LaGuardia CCBret Eynon and his colleagues at LaGuardia are highly respected for their work on integrative learning and ePortfolios. Bret asks for help in spreading the word about an exciting new position now open at the College:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"LaGuardia Community College was recently awarded a prestigious $2.9<br />
million US ED "First in the World" grant. “Project COMPLETA:<br />
Comprehensive Support for Student Success” links digital technology<br />
with exciting pedagogical and co-curricular innovations to build success<br />
for more than 25,000 of LaGuardia’s diverse, low-income students.<br />
COMPLETA links a range of High Impact Practices, including the First<br />
Year Experience, into a transformative, college-wide, integrative<br />
design. We're inviting applications for a Project Coordinator who will<br />
play a critical role in helping to lead this showcase project.<br />
<br />
"We're looking for candidates who have experience with higher education<br />
innovation and project management. COMPLETA links pedagogy, assessment,<br />
professional development, and technology, including ePortfolio and<br />
learning analytics. We're seeking a smart, energetic innovator who will<br />
be committed to our students, someone who can learn and grow as an<br />
educational leader as they help to advance our nationally-recognized<br />
change initiatives. Detailed position description and application<br />
information are both available at<br />
<a href="https://www.rfcuny.org/hr/pvn/cgi-bin/show_job.asp?pvn=RMP-1141" target="_blank">https://www.rfcuny.org/hr/pvn/<wbr></wbr>cgi-bin/show_job.asp?pvn=RMP-<wbr></wbr>1141</a><br />
<br />
"Please share this announcement with anyone you know who you might be<br />
interested and appropriate. The position is open till filled; resume<br />
review will begin on <span class="aBn" data-term="goog_810960835" tabindex="0"><span class="aQJ">January 27th</span></span>. We will circulate this announcement<br />
now and again after the holidays. Thanks for any assistance you can<br />
provide.</span>"Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-901863535090358252014-12-16T16:37:00.003-05:002014-12-16T16:37:52.978-05:00How regional teaching institutions can compete more successfullyTom Carey has just written a provocative <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-beta/challenges-regional-undergraduate-universities-%E2%80%9C-middle%E2%80%9D" target="_blank">blog post in Inside Higher Ed</a>, describing how regional four-year institutions and two-year institutions might reshape and market themselves as teaching institutions of distinctive value in their area. I'd summarize the message as 1) identify learning outcomes of distinctive value in your region (to some degree, the less universal the better) and that can be linked to some teaching/learning strength in which you're particularly strong (preparing for work in a certain type of job, after preparation by a co-op program with numerous, fascinating placements in that same field, for example). His strategy is much more detailed than this, but it's still a quick read. Once you've read it, let us know what you think!Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-67017699561507810742014-11-24T12:18:00.000-05:002014-11-24T12:22:32.955-05:00What does "Learning Outcome" mean? No, really...."Confusors" are terms such as
"teaching," "assessment," and "interactive," each of which has several widely-held, <i>conflicting</i> definitions. When clashing definitions remain hidden, bad things can happen, needlessly.<br />
<br />
For example, imagine a group of faculty hotly arguing the consequences of 'technology in classrooms.' Perhaps some have a lecture hall in mind, others a seminar room, and still others are thinking about the library because, for them, "classroom" is a synonym for course. Meanwhile some are assuming 'technology' only means computers, a problem if some of the others are imagining cell phones or laboratory demonstration equipment.<br />
<br />
Similarly it's dangerous to draw many conclusions from an article about what's wrong with MOOCs if the author didn't explicitly select one of the <a href="http://sehrmann.blogspot.com/2013/02/what-does-mooc-mean-no-really-what-does.html" target="_blank">many accepted, conflicting definitions of "MOOC</a>".<br />
<br />
"<i><b>Learning outcome</b></i>" is also a confusor, I now realize. Earlier today I read this sentence in a report addressed to provosts and other senior administrators about the value of a new teaching strategy, " ...72% of institutions showed improved student learning outcomes."<br />
<br />
Nowhere in this report is the term 'learning outcome' defined. That made me more conscious that most of the time when I hear "learning outcome" used in conversation, it's left undefined. Set aside the question of whether that 72% improvement was measured in a single course, or across many degree programs. There are at least three widely-used definitions of 'learning outcomes':<br />
<ol>
<li><b>Good test results or grades</b> at the end of a unit or a
semester. Often good marks can be achieved through memorization or
applying routine problem solving skills in a routine way. Teaching to the test is one way to improve this kind of learning outcome. Cramming for exams is another. "Here today,
gone tomorrow," is what many faculty and educational researchers agree happens to
much of this kind of learning. </li>
<li><b>Reduction in failure and dropout rates</b>
from a course. This definition overlaps #1, but sometimes a
student might drop a class for reasons unrelated to learning. </li>
<li><b>Learning that lasts</b>. In this definition, achieving a learning outcome means that students developed a capability and then showed they could use it in a later course, for example. This definition implies that, if a student has achieved a learning outcome during college, they can use it in graduate school or a job the next year.</li>
</ol>
So the report I was reading asserted that " ...72% of institutions showed improved student learning outcomes" What does the author mean? From here on, "learning outcome" joins my list of hot buttons - confusors that can cause real trouble.<br />
<br />
PS. <a href="http://www.tltgroup.org/resources/confusors.htm" target="_blank">This web site describes many more confusors</a>. Do you have a favorite?Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-26642389538902688992014-09-08T19:19:00.003-04:002015-02-05T09:35:27.905-05:00I'm starting a new roleI've spent the last few months thinking hard
about exactly what I wanted to do next. A vision of the kinds of
improvement that were possible in the long term for university teaching,
and a path for getting there began to take shape. (An earlier version of some of those ideas was tested in this blog, in entries <a href="http://sehrmann.blogspot.com/2014/05/an-incremental-approach-to-improving.html" target="_blank">like this one</a>. <br />
<div>
<div>
<br />
Once I realized that working with those ideas was my goal, the next challenge was to find a place to put these notions
to the test (somewhere near Silver Spring, MD where Leslie and I have long lived) and to find a good
team to work with. </div>
The great news is that there was such
a
place and they were looking for someone with ideas and a track record like mine.
<br />
<br />
So I'm happy to announce that I've just accepted the position of
Assoc.
Director for Research and Evaluation at the University System of
Maryland's <a href="http://www.usmd.edu/cai/" target="_blank">Center for Academic Innovation</a>, working with MJ Bishop. The System has a delightful
range of distinctive institutions as members, which should provide a good fire in which to cook my half-baked ideas. And it gives me a chance to give back to the state where we've lived for
35 years. I'll be starting in my new role on Sept. 22.</div>
Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-22391588770379490672014-09-08T11:41:00.002-04:002014-09-08T11:41:51.026-04:00Limits to Interactive MOOCS (?)In a <a href="http://www.wired.com/2014/08/mooc-completion-conundrum-can-born-digital-fix-online-education/" target="_blank">recent Wired article, "The MOOC Completion Conundrum: Can 'Born Digital' Fix Online Education,"</a>, Dror Ben-Naim points to the potential of more interactive MOOCs to provide a more individualized, interactive educational experience.<br />
<br />
Experience with interactive tutorials over the last half century suggests at least two questions to ask about any new strategy of this type:<br />
<br />
<b>1) How many person hours does it take to create, and debug, an hour's worth of student experience? </b> Historically that figure has been "hundreds to thousands," and the time requirement has changed less than one might guess over the decades. That's partly because the standards for the user experience have increased as the technologies have improved. But an even bigger factor has been the need for human judgment to assess how satisfactory each branch will be for various kinds of learners (learners with different preconceptions, learners with different reading skills, etc. etc.)<br />
<br />
<b>2) How many person hours does it take for a faculty member to decide whether this package offers good experience for all students?</b> Textbooks are generally comparatively easy to judge because tables of contents and thumbing through the book make triage easy. Instructional videos generally take much more time because faculty may feel the need to watch virtually the whole video, or video sequence, before their students see it. Interactive software can take even more time when instructors, unfamiliar with the package, want to see how it reacts to students with varied preparation, misconceptions, etc. It's that same problem of judging the branching that makes development so expensive.<br />
<br />
<b>3) How soon might changes in underlying technology make the user interface seem old-fashioned, or interfere with the operation of the software itself? </b>In that event, where will the money and effort come from to update the software? <br />
<br />
Interactive tutorials have often demonstrated impressive educational results, compared with less interactive ways of teaching the same content or skills. However most such packages have died without ever progressing to Version 2.0 because there was no satisfactory answer to at least one of those three questions. <br />
<br />
So, if you hear about a new technology for creating highly interactive and individualized instruction, it's wise before you leap to ask those three questions.Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-47747610725932780082014-07-01T13:34:00.000-04:002014-07-01T13:34:19.039-04:00Impact of Online Teaching Upon Campus TeachingSome months ago, with help from Camille Funk and Patty Dinneen of the Teaching & Learning Collaborative, I surveyed faculty from George Washington University who had worked with instructional designers to develop and teach online courses during the summer over the last 15 years. Our research question: had this experience influenced their subsequent teaching on campus. In a word: it did. <br />
<br />
Faculty who had been through the program once were influenced in many dimensions of their teaching. For example these kinds of changes in campus teaching were reported by at least half of the respondents:<br />
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Faculty who had participated two or more times were influenced much more.<br />
<br />
I've heard anecdotal reports of such influence for years but we got a 53% response rate. Of those respondents, 85% reported influence on their campus teaching in at least one dimension.<br />
<br />
Here's my full <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2RHJuZs7ItOYXQ1Nm83cnRhd3c/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">report</a> and the <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2RHJuZs7ItOQU1zakFHNTdheW8/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">survey</a> that was sent to faculty. Feel free to use or adapt the survey; if you're doing so, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know (ehrmannsteve at gmail.com)<br />
<br />
<b>Note: </b>One reason this program of developing summer courses has lasted 15 years, attracting both faculty participation and GW resources to support them, was that teaching online summer courses made money for both the university and for the participating faculty. As faculty interest in developing summer courses increased, GW had the incentive to hire more instructional designers to help them. In effect, improving teaching on campus was being rewarded (via the intervening step of improving teaching, and increasing revenue, online). That fact suggests a policy I'll describe in <a href="http://sehrmann.blogspot.com/2014/07/propagating-teaching-improvement-by.html" target="_blank">my next post</a>.<br />
<br />
<br />Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-71810248889740224542014-07-01T13:30:00.003-04:002014-07-01T13:33:26.854-04:00Propagating Teaching Improvement by making it More Rewarding for Faculty and the InstitutionFor teaching techniques that are needed institution-wide, seek opportunities where those techniques can be incorporated in programs that can earn the institution, the department and the individual faculty some extra money (e.g., summer courses, new degree programs) (Sharing revenue with faculty isn't automatic, but, to provide incentives for widespread teaching improvement, it's essential.) <br />
<br />
For example, at almost every university and college, it's important to find ways to encourage students to invest more time and effort in assignments outside class. Today's full-time students spend only about half the amount of time on assignments they did thirty years ago, and about half the time that faculty think students need to spend, according to Arum and Roska in <i>Academically Adrift.</i><br />
<br />
One of several mutually reinforcing ways to do that is by quizzing students online in ways that require them to reason about what they've been assigned to learn. These online quizzes and assignments can both (a) provide instructors with advance notice about students' readiness for class, (b) enable instructors to prompt students about what else they need to do to prepare for class, (c) enable instructors to call on students by name when they get to class, and (d) encourage students to be (even) more ready for the next class meeting. If there is faculty-staff agreement about the power and flexibility of this use of online preparation of students (and instructors) for upcoming classes, then it makes sense to strongly encourage any new revenue-generating courses and degree programs to include that practice. Once faculty try out the technique in that new degree program or summer course, they may well begin using the approach in their other courses as well. As these pioneering faculty use the technique, other faculty may follow suit. And the more often students see it in classes, the more likely they will be to accept it as a normal feature of studying.<br />
<br />
Make sense? or not?Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-64789003706159191612014-05-21T15:32:00.003-04:002014-05-21T15:32:37.937-04:00Example of a flipped courseMike Moore, Prof. of Economics and International Affairs at George Washington University, has problems with asthma. So this past semester he taught two courses to GW students (mostly) from Santa Fe, New Mexico. He did it by prerecording his lectures, posting them on YouTube, conducting live online office hours using Blackboard Collaborate, and visiting GW monthly for 90 minute face-to-face sessions with his students.<br />
<br />
Mike didn't jump from traditional teaching to this strategy in one huge leap. <br />
<br />
Some years ago, he taped some lectures on background material so that students could study and review them as often as they liked. A few years after that, he tried GW LectureCapture - a system for automatically recording all class sessions and making recordings available only to students in that class. He'd worried that students wouldn't come to class if recordings were available but (as with every other faculty member I've found who's used a system like this), his worries were unfounded. Attendance was unaffected.<br />
<br />
Recently, he realized it would be better for him to spend some time in New Mexico and got permission from Mike Brown, his Dean, to teach a hybrid course - a mix of online and face-to-face instruction. <br />
<br />
Early on he decided to use YouTube so that anyone could see his lectures. He then took a look at examples of classes on YouTube. Some had pretty poor audio or picture quality; he knew he wanted to do better.<br />
<br />
To create the lectures with HD quality, he pointed the camera of an iPad at a whiteboard. He was no longer limited to the normal time constraints of a campus class. So he created about 75 small lectures, averaging 15 minutes in length. Some was material that would normally have been given in class but he also added additional material. This was the big investment. "I hope I can do this again because creating those videos took maybe 400 hours of work," he commented: if he teaches the course again, he can reuse some or all of those videos. He likes this approach to creating chunks of video because he can edit them if he likes. That removes the pressure to do each one perfectly the first time.<br />
<br />
Even though the material is abstruse, the videos are popular. His videos had already been viewed over 65,000 times and over 60% of those views were requested from outside the United States.<br />
<br />
Mike also created some interactive homework online, using Blackboard: multiple choice questions that provide hints to students if their initial answer is incorrect. There are also four online quizzes each semester: multiple choice and only a small fraction of the class grade.<br />
<br />
For his live online office with Blackboard Collaborate, Mike uses a tablet so that he can draw. Those sessions are recorded so students can take part live and/or review them later.<br />
<br />
Monthly Mike comes to GW for live, 90-minute sessions with students, a mix of lecture and discussion The midterm and final are administered during these sessions as well. After the midterm he polled students and about 2/3 responded. "<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;">They love it, the structure, the delivery.</span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: small;">The most telling set of comments is that they
loved being able to listen to the lecture whenever they want, pause, replay to
get the details." One student could take the course despite the fact that he had to spend a month in Malawi during the semester. I interviewed Mike before </span><span style="font-family: Cambria;">the</span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: small;"> final was administered but he was already pleased with the quality of the students' work. I've heard </span><span style="font-family: Cambria;">since that his end-of-course student feedback scores were among the best he's ever received. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Cambria;">I take particular note on that last point. Student feedback is not proof of superior learning. But, if the learning itself could be assessed, it would not be surprising to find that this design could be both more accessible to both faculty and students (they don't need to all be in the same place, and there's less need to coordinate schedules) and also produce superior learning outcomes. There's a long history in education of using technology in ways that can produce gains in quality and access simultaneously, going back to printed books as a way of both increasing an author's audience and enable readers to study the author's words more closely than would be possible in an auditorium.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;">if you'd like to learn more, Mike's email is mom@gwu.edu. </span><br />
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<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> </span><!--EndFragment-->Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-30760003975744655832014-05-08T13:05:00.000-04:002014-05-08T13:05:10.571-04:00An Incremental Approach to Improving Learning Outcomes (Better than "Flipping")Arguably the most important facing higher education is that, for a variety of reasons, the ways students aren't mastering higher order skills (ability to use knowledge to analyze, create, innovate, act wisely and ethically, etc.) nearly as much as needed nor as much as they once did. Arum and Roksa's <i>Academically Adrift</i> is one persuasive source of empirical evidence on that point. Just one of many important reasons for declining student achievement: <i>full-time</i> students are investing only about half the time in academic work than they did thirty years ago.<br />
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Against this backdrop comes a rush of discussion and confusion about 'flipping courses,' a notion that is sometimes justified as a strategy for improving higher order learning. I think the term 'flipping' is being used to point to some good changes but, as a label, it's more misleading than helpful.<br />
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For example, a recipe for improving learning needs to include more than one way to assure that students learn from their assignments, including doing the kind of work, and enough work, to reorganize their minds. <br />
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I recently gave a featured address at the International Conference on College Teaching and Learning on this set of questions, entitled "Bit by Bit: An Incremental Approach to Improving Learning." <br />
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Briefly, many elements are needed for a successful, sustainable approach to teaching what is actually college-level learning, including:<br />
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<li>Reconsidering the course (and academic program) in light of what graduates need to be able to do with the content they've learned, in later courses and after graduation ("backward design");</li>
<li>Stealing the students' beer time - assignments and other academic work that are so engaging that students will choose to spend more time studying (this is necessary but not sufficient for students to study more);</li>
<li>Leveraging face-to-face opportunities for what can be done best face-to-face;</li>
<li>At least four kinds of feedback (what Schön and Argyris called 'learning loops'), including:</li>
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<li>Feedback that keeps students going (farther and deeper), helping them see progress, helping them get unstuck;</li>
<li>Feedback from that student work going to faculty, to help plan the next class session;</li>
<li>Feedback to faculty that helps them tweak the design of the course;</li>
<li>Feedback to faculty that helps all this work seem more rewarding, encouraging those faculty to keep on improving their courses.</li>
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I called the talk 'Bit by Bit' because these kinds of improvements don't all need to be done simultaneously or only in this order. In fact there are even smaller chunks of improvement that can be tried (and supported by the institution), one at a time.</div>
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The long term goal, however, is cumulative, major changes in how we teach, how students invest in their own learning, and what our graduates are able to do.</div>
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I've recorded a version of the address on YouTube, in two installments. The whole talk is about 50 minutes long:</div>
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Part 1: <a href="http://youtu.be/Z-1fayCy69k" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">http://youtu.be/Z-1fayCy69k</a></div>
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Part 2: <a href="http://youtu.be/VgaFTXCYtzc" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">http://youtu.be/VgaFTXCYtzc</a><wbr></wbr> </div>
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<br />Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6639534124365545851.post-20275977112833517822014-04-12T09:27:00.002-04:002014-04-14T10:35:26.155-04:00Three steps forward for GWThe following three recent events have at least one thing in common, which I'll get to in a moment.<br />
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First, George Washington University agreed to host a program to host undergrads and high school students from Brazil in an exciting and innovative summer program. The Brasilia Program exemplifies a crucial strength of GW education - creating a rich interaction between formal instruction and real world activity. In this case, students are taking classes in the mornings and doing field work in the afternoons. Georgette Edmondson-Wright, Assistant Provost for <a href="http://summer.gwu.edu/" target="_blank">Summer and Special Programs</a>, pulled together a coalition of faculty and staff from across GW to plan this superlative initiative. (And it doesn't hurt that, at a time, when GW is working hard to balance the budget for next year, the Brasilia project will help the entire institution financially.)<br />
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This past Monday, the <a href="http://gwtoday.gwu.edu/university-honors-faculty-0" target="_blank">Faculty Honors program</a> showcased what's great about our faculty and graduate assistants. Awards were given for teaching, scholarship and service and some of our longest-serving faculty were honored. If you weren't able to be there, take a look at these <a href="http://tlc.provost.gwu.edu/2013-2014-faculty-award-winners" target="_blank">inspirational videos</a> of the recipients of the Trachtenberg Prizes, the Bender Awards for teaching excellence, and the Amsterdam awards for best teaching by graduate students. The ceremony drew a packed house to the Morton Auditorium. It was particularly exciting to see the students who'd come to help honor their instructors. Kaithlyn Kayer of the Office of Teaching & Learning (OTL) coordinated preparations for the ceremony and Aaron Kramer of the Teaching and Learning Collaborative (TLC) organized the teaching awards competitions from beginning to end. Folks seemed to think it was the biggest, best celebration of its kind that GW had ever had.<br />
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"Biggest and best" was also a phrase that came to mind the very next day on the first day of <a href="http://research.gwu.edu/research-days-2014" target="_blank">Research Days</a> at GW, when research by over a hundred undergraduate and many grad students was displayed and judged. (To get a sense of how excited I got, and why, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YC3kcDEmjs&feature=em-upload_owner" target="_blank">check out this video, starting at the 3:00 mark</a>.) The <a href="http://undergraduate.research.gwu.edu/" target="_blank">Center for Undergraduate Fellowships and Research</a> (CUFR) worked closely with the Office the the Vice Provost for Research to create this event. For CUFR, Paul Hoyt O'Connor and Prof. Margaret Gonglewski led the way. The exhibit halls at the Marvin Center were jammed with faculty, students and staff who'd come to marvel at the work and talk with the student researchers. Two years ago, Research Day for undergraduates drew 69 student researchers, last year 89, and this year about 115. What impressed me even more was the uniformly high quality of the work this year. I don't envy the 80+ faculty who had to pick the winners from this stellar group but I certainly do envy the hundred faculty who got to mentor them!<br />
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What do these three events have in common? Aside from the fact that all of them were significant for the entire university, they were each pulled together by people from the Office of Teaching and Learning; OTL includes Summer and Special Programs, TLC, CUFR, Assessment, and Academic Technologies. In each instance, our folks worked closely with other units and individuals all across GW. But, OTL is my unit so I'm especially proud of the people I work with.Steve Ehrmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960072471169560307noreply@blogger.com0