We The Professors

THE ABOMINABLE UNFAIRNESS OF ALLOWING DEBT

Millions of college and university students in the United States are being pushed into incredible debt through student loans and other types of financial aid. Not just debt that lasts a year or two, but debt that lasts a decade or two or three.

And this is flat out the wrong way to do things. It compromises the future of a significant portion of the workforce. And it hurts society itself. According to an article in Huffington Post, unpaid student loans have swelled to more than $1.3 trillion, prompting dire warnings about future effects on the growth of the U.S. economy. And solutions to this daunting problem seem to be impossible.

So why would those of us who teach in and administer higher education allow our students to incur these exorbitant amounts of debt to go to college? And to allow this while we also realize that many of those students do not have the maturity to graduate in four years or to even graduate at all with anything resembling an actual education?

Students should absolutely not be permitted to graduate with a degree but not an education.

In its most recent survey of college pricing, the College Board reports that a "moderate" college budget for an in-state public college for the 2014–2015 academic year averaged $23,410. A moderate budget at a private college averaged $46,272. With these amounts of money at stake, higher education must become a system that filters out those students who don’t or can’t, right from the beginning, make the grade. College can no longer just be looked at as a maturing experience, a necessary bridge between high school and adulthood. The hard realities are that to saddle a kid with thousands and thousands of dollars of debt for something he mostly dislikes and that has little impact on him is just unfair.

There are plenty of students for whom college works, but also plenty that simply need more time to mature and to reap the true benefits of a higher education. And I certainly realize that kids who graduate from high school do need something beneficial to do, but needlessly incurring debt that lasts decades is not that thing.

One thing that should and can be done is to make the first year of college an intense, individually focused, pressure packed experience, one that weeds out those who should wait a few years to mature and to understand the attitude and discipline required in higher education.

It’s obviously disheartening to have to have a conversation with a student about maturity and not continuing when we know that that student might be the one who matures in his junior or senior year. But it’s also disheartening to watch the debt pile up and then watch students drop out after two or three years. The first year of college has to actually live up to the quotation attributed to a Dean at Harvard Law School: "Look to your left, look to your right, because one of you won't be here by the end of the year."   

And as I said in a post on Jan. 5, maybe it’s time to throw away the manual on higher education and recreate the entire model of what truly needs to be accomplished. And financial aid is surely one of those problems that must be discussed at the very beginning. 

 

STORYTELLING: A FURTHER ANGLE

I have written before in this blog about the power of storytelling. And each year as I watch the Academy Award presentation show (as I did last Sunday evening) I am again reinforced and reminded about a story’s power to impart meaning in the most powerful way possible.

And I am therefore led down the path of saying that all professors in any field can utilize the power of stories to better impart the knowledge of their disciplines more effectively.

I’m not talking here about having students write stories, although in many courses that can be useful and necessary. Rather I’m talking about the professor structuring his/her courses and presentations and projects and readings around stories. History is the most obvious example of using stories and a prof only needs to study the presentations of the documentary historian Ken Burns to see powerful storytelling.

Stories can be informational, emotional, funny, sad, tragic, poignant, differently structured, told in words or pictures or charts or graphs or video or in many, many other ways. But stories always have to be two things: memorable and interesting.

Through being memorable, stories allow thinking and learning to take place. Through being interesting, stories allow attention to be maintained.

Examples.

Psychology is the discipline of studying and explaining behavior and the workings of the human mind. And behavior is about stimulus and response. And every stimulus and its corresponding positive or negative or emotional or intellectual response can be told BETTER by using a story.

Literature is the study of story structure and using interesting and fascinating characters to fit into those structures, and thus to fascinate and create mind-blowing narratives that resonate and remain a part of us forever.

Mathematics, because of its abstract nature, is harder to fit into the story motif. But every application of mathematics to other disciplines is the story of problems and how those problems can be solved and why those problems need to be solved.  Many stories are structured and told to present and solve problems, whether those problems be crimes, or journeys, or social, or numerical.

Business and economics are case studies and societal stories, and can best be taught that way.

I could go on and on, and I hope that by now so can you.

Take your next class and:

• find a way to fit a unifying story into it.
• create a fascinating and interesting story that explains the material.
• structure the entire class and classroom environment around the concept of a story that is both interesting and memorable.
• allow students to structure stories that better explain concepts previously only explained by facts.

Just examine your own fascination with stories. Then imagine or re-imagine your course as a story. Then break the big story into many smaller stories. Then teach the course that way.

Awards are given for storytelling because people love stories. The subject you love can also be loved for its stories. You just have to structure the process and the stories.

No Oscars, but lots of rewards.

 

SHARE AND SHARE AGAIN

In his wonderful new book titled “What to Do When It’s Your Turn” Seth Godin writes:

“Many powerful organizations fear a truth-teller. They work hard to avoid being confronted by an individual who sees the world as it is and by a person who cares enough to change things.”

This quote applies absolutely to colleges, universities, schools, departments, committees, requirements, and courses.

Too many administrators of every kind make excuses about why maintaining the status quo and not rocking the boat and not making waves (or even ripples) are the right ways and the easy ways to run an organization of any size.

If your life is in higher education, share this with the people you work with and for, and tell them to share it with the people they work with and for.

And maybe, just maybe, just maybe the truth-tellers and the ones who care can emerge.

 

READING AND MORE READING

Remember when the Harry Potter books came out? Kids young and old and older were lined up to get them and to read them. They were a phenomenon like no other. And it was all about reading. And it was great.

Yep, we all know students don’t read enough books. It's no longer a Harry Potter world. Not in high school, and certainly not in higher education. Sure, your students may read the textbooks, but it’s a relatively unique student who reads regularly for pleasure. And any teacher at any grade level knows that reading has as many benefits as almost any other educational activity. 

So, here are two ideas to help students in higher education not only read more, but to understand the pleasure, enjoyment and life benefits of reading books.

(1) Many colleges and universities have incoming freshmen read a book before arriving. Then the author often speaks during orientation and the book is subsequently discussed during the semester. That’s a great idea and should be an activity done by every higher educational institution. But why not expand the idea and have students read a book during each of their courses that is related to the subject of the course? Not a textbook, but a kind of pleasure book. A book to show students that there are great and popular books written about biology, psychology, mathematics and media. Sure, students will have to read five books if they take five courses, but…well, but why not? It’s a long semester. And what credit is this reading worth? Either extra credit or as a regular assignment with some writing and discussion.

(2) Why are there not campus reading groups? Why not required campus reading groups? Every student must belong to a group that includes 10 other students and a faculty member. A book is selected, read and discussed. Then another, and another throughout the academic year. Groups change every year and can often be organized by majors. How is credit for this activity given? It isn’t. Upon their entry into the university each student signs an honor-code-like agreement that requires their participation in this activity. Then let peer pressure and fascinating books do the rest.

Can books be required reading if they’re not attached to courses? Certainly they can. A process simply needs to be worked out that makes the activity interesting and enjoyable enough to achieve buy-in. Do students have to pay for the books. No, they should not have to pay for these books. They should be provided free either as an e-book or a print book.

What about the argument that there is enough for a prof to do without these extra books and groups to occupy their time? This is simply not a valid objection. The whole higher education enterprise is called education. Helping students find ways to become citizens who read regularly for pleasure is just another part of the educational process. It’s an important activity that simply must be done. If a course has too much to cover for reading to occur, then cover less and make time for the reading. Higher education includes understanding time management, for both faculty and students.

Hate these ideas? Do not want extra reading. Do not want to do this kind of thing. Then shame on you. Yep, shame on you.

 

DISCUSSION, DIALOGUE, QUESTIONS, READINGS AND BEGINNINGS

Often faculty have the problem of simply not being able to begin a meaningful discussion in a class. Where do you start? Do you call on students? Do you ask a question and hope for the best? Are your students so used to the fact that you lecture that they just feel like they do not need to answer questions or talk? Or maybe you’re one of those profs who ask a question, wait 10 seconds, then answers it yourself.

Regardless, there are many, many, many reasons to have meaningful discussions in most courses. Here’s how I have done it.

I assume that in your courses students have regular readings between classes, and that you expect them to come to class having done the reading. I’m also assuming the class has not too many more than 25 students.

Here’s what you do.

Walk into the classroom a few minutes early. Sit somewhere in the classroom and arrange your seat so that the class can sit around you, or at least that all of them can arrange themselves to see you. DO NOT SIT IN FRONT OF THE ROOM.  Make miscellaneous small talk with students as they enter. Be genuine. Do not fake it or force it.

When class time arrives, read a short and fascinating passage either from the reading or just a passage related to the subject of the class. (If you usually take attendance, do it later in the class.) Don’t make what you read more than two or three paragraphs. Then, ask a great—not just a good--discussion question related to what you just read. Make the question you ask something you have spent time on to make certain it is interesting enough to generate discussion. Then, wait. Make eye contact as you look at the students. Wait for an answer. Sometimes I have requested the answer also be in the form of a question.

Then move forward, waiting for other students to respond with either comments or questions. Ask questions of your own and make comments as though you were just a member of the class. But always remember that your job is also to be in charge, to keep the discussion going, and to maintain adherence to the topic.

Keep things moving quickly and significantly for 30 minutes. Then pass out note cards and ask students to summarize the key points made in the discussion. Then end the class conversation by discussing the summaries, or by providing your own perspective on the day’s topic.  But do not walk to the front of the room. Maintain your position within the confines of the class. Use your comments at the end of the class to create closure and to serve as what a teacher is, an authority figure on the understanding of the topic.

The keys to success in this type of activity are beginning with a reading and asking questions that do generate discussion. Take time to come up with things that are exactly right.

Finally, it’s obviously not necessary to do this kind of discussion during every class session. But, every few weeks it can be totally worthwhile.

  

THERE’S NO BUSINESS LIKE…

I’ve felt over the past month or so that there seem to be too many posts in this blog that might infer that teaching in higher education is not a great career. There also have been findings lately that too few graduate students want to become professors these days.

So allow me a personal note.

Higher education teaching, approached and pursued passionately, is one of the most respectable, most rewarding, most fulfilling careers there is. How do I know? I was a college and university professor and administrator for 40 years until I retired in 2013.

Yes, the whole enterprise changed dramatically over the years, although probably not as much as it should have changed. Students changed faster and higher education has often struggled to keep up.  But I have typed my syllabi on typewriters and on computers. I have written on blackboards and whiteboards. I have used slide projectors, 16mm film projectors, and YouTube. I have lectured, not lectured, flipped classrooms, and created endless group projects. And I have worked in the United States and abroad.

So, other than the very obvious and gratifying reasons of helping students become educated citizens, helping them understand skills, and watching them figure out the dreams they wanted to pursue, why did I find higher education interesting enough to spend a lifetime pursuing?

Because it was a sort of calling, a no-business-like-show-business string of years and decades, an endless way to always stay young because youth was all around me, and a series of beginnings and ends that brought anticipation and relief and hellos and goodbyes to a level beyond imagination. Sure the hours were long and the grading and research requirements were daunting. But every career has its hard and often tedious work.

I pursued my career because I couldn’t imagine what those businessmen who went to an office in a skyscraper and didn’t teach or advise did all day for enjoyment and satisfaction. Because of the good kids (and colleagues), the problem kids (and colleagues), the driven kids (and colleagues), and the kids (and colleagues) I knew shouldn’t be there. Because of the spotlight, the chances to shine, and to fail, and to wear different hats at different times, and to never really be bored, or know what might be coming.

Because, selfishly, tenure meant security. Because my office could be as messy as I wanted it to be and that was okay. Because books surrounded me. Because conversations were stimulating. Because it allowed me the deepest thinking and longest deliberations about subjects and disciplines. And because the rewards were so much greater than money. Higher education gave me prizes, surprises and the satisfaction that I got better and better and finally looked upon myself as the best teacher I ever was in the semester I retired.

And finally, as the song says, it was also “the costumes, the scenery, the makeup, the props, the audience that lifts you when you're down.”

Yep, being a professor is a great life.

     

CHOOSING COURSES THE WAY THEY OUGHT TO BE CHOSEN

Too many students choose courses by teacher rather than by interest or content.

“If Dr. Smith teaches the course I will not take that course no matter how much I might love the topic.”

“If Dr. Jones teaches the course I will take that course no matter what it is and what time it meets."

Consequently in many cases Dr. Smith’s courses do not get enough enrollees to be offered and therefore Dr. Smith is relegated to teaching only required courses and, too rarely, an elective in his/her area of specific knowledge.

One straightforward way to prevent this is to simply not list faculty names on the schedule of courses released to students before they make their choices. Just put TO BE DETERMINED by each course. Let students choose by content rather than by professor.

But what if a student wants to know about a specific course by talking to the prof about that course? Solution: Have a two-page summary of each course, written by the professor offering the course available in the department office (or online) for any student to examine.

But what if the problem is that if Dr. Lawrence teaches a particular course, then students who find that out when the semester begins will simply drop the class or, because Dr. Lawrence is so easy, students will pour into the course? Unfortunately, the remedy here is to either not hire or to get rid of faculty such as Dr. Lawrence. Departments with mediocre and unsatisfactory faculty do suffer the consequences of those faulty choices.

Hire the best. Keep course schedules anonymous.  

 

SETTING THE HIGHEST EXPECTATIONS

The beginning of a semester is a time for every professor to make a statement about the quality and the expectations of his/her academic program and the specific course the students are taking.

Here’s an example of one such statement that, with slight modifications, can be used by any program. When I used it, I did so on the first day of the course. I first read and discussed it and then distributed it as a written document.

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This academic department is committed to teaching you how to be an educated person/professional in the area(s) of (your area here).

• Our mission is to train professionals.
• Our standards are professional.
• Our expectations are professional.

We want you to be good time managers, good team members, good writers, good speakers, and good students. We want to teach you how to be those things and we want to be sure you succeed in this department.

As a member of this course, the department and I will have high expectations for you. We will expect you to treat this class just as you would your first job. We will expect your best effort and we will expect your best work.

We will expect you to attend every class and let us know before the class begins if you cannot attend. We will expect you to participate in each class, to ask questions, to contribute to the discussion, to be present in spirit as well as in body.

We will expect you to read often and to write and to speak well. We will expect you to remember the things you have learned in the classes that came before this class.

We will hold you to high standards of academic practice in terms of integrity and ethical principles. 

This course may be harder than any course you have ever taken.

But at the end you will have the satisfaction of having met professional standards and of being one step closer to achieving what we hope are your goals and dreams.

It is possible that you may not succeed because you do not fully understand our expectations. You should understand that everyone in this program knows we are not one of the best programs in the university. We know we are THE best in the university and we will expect the best from you.

Those of you who do not believe they can succeed, those of you that choose not to succeed, and those of you who will not put forth the effort to succeed should leave the classroom now. Otherwise, take out the pen and notebook and the assignment I asked you to bring to today’s class.

 

THROW AWAY THE MANUAL, CREATE A WHOLE NEW MODEL

Maybe it’s time.

Time to throw away the manual on higher education and rewrite how we teach and why we teach all the things we teach.

Time to recreate the entire model of what needs to be accomplished in colleges and universities.

There have been many, many, many piecemeal changes, but now it’s time to go further.

No professor will deny that students are very different and learn very differently today than even 10 years ago. They think in terms of short text messages and 140 character posts. Information is not so much learned as it is looked up using Google. Attention spans are drastically less than even the 22-minute spans of the recent past. Reading books or plays or poems is seldom their favorite activity. History means what happened last year or last month. And as an example, many students have no idea what a typewriter even was, let alone the fact that it was the primary means of writing just 25 years ago.

It’s clearly a new world.

Thomas Frey is executive director of the DaVinci Institute, a 17-year old think tank that periodically gathers groups of high-profile intellectuals for conversations about the future. Among their predictions, according to Frey in a recent article, are that the average person  “will have to reboot their career six times because of the whole issue of technological unemployment — they’ll have to switch gears a lot.” Also, “half of traditional colleges are going to fail by 2030 because they will not be able to adapt to those new realities, and people will need to learn things in a much shorter period of time. It’s also predicted that over 2 billion jobs are going to go away, and that’s not intended to be a doom and gloom statement, but more of a wakeup call, because jobs are being eliminated at a faster and faster rate.”

Frey is also quick to point out that these predictions are not designed to all be true, but rather often just to start conversations.

And perhaps that conversation in relation to higher education is to throw out the way we do things and start by actually building a totally new model.

There’s little question that some courses need to be eliminated, and conceivably whole majors as well. Perhaps every student simply needs an expanded liberal arts curriculum with a few specialized courses built in. Different ways of thinking about using and teaching technology certainly need developed. Different approaches to career selection need to be explored. And then there is the incredible issue of financial aid, which needs to be entirely re-invented.

And these are only a few “conversation starters.”

Scary stuff for a new year. But hard work that definitely needs to begin now.

More posts to come on this topic. Watch this blog.

 

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

Yes, it’s the holiday season no matter what country you are living in. And often that means a holiday respite from grading and classes and meetings and all-things-academic. And that’s as it should be.

As a tribute to the holiday season I’m sharing something absolutely, positively non-academic. It’s courtesy of Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman, who writes the best cookbooks ever. Enjoy ‘em and consider this my gift to you.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
(Next post will be December 29.)

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A Recipe for the Best Gingerbread Cookies Ever

Ingredients

FOR THE COOKIE:
    •6 cups all-purpose Flour
    •1 teaspoon salt
    •1/2 teaspoon allspice
    • 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
    •1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
    •1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
    •1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
    •3/4 cups softened butter
    •1-1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
    •1 cup molasses
    •2 whole eggs
    •1 tablespoon maple extract

FOR THE ROYAL ICING:
    •2 pounds powdered sugar
    •1/3 cup whole milk
    •2 whole large egg whites
    •Miscellaneous Candies, Sprinkles, and Other Decorations

Preparation Instructions

In a large bowl, combine the flour, salt, allspice, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, and cinnamon. Set aside.

In a mixer, beat the margarine (or butter) and brown sugar until fluffy. Drizzle in the molasses, mixing well and scraping the sides of the bowl a couple of times to make sure it's evenly combined. Add the eggs and maple extract and mix. Add the flour mixture in three batches, beating until just combined after each addition.

Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or more if you have time!

When you're ready to bake the cookies, remove the dough from the fridge and preheat the oven to 350 F. When the dough is soft enough to roll but still firm, divide it in half and roll out each half between 2 sheets of plastic wrap (dividing it in half just makes it more manageable.) Cut out shapes of your choosing and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a baking mat. Bake for 12-15 minutes, depending on the size of cutters used, until the cookies are baked through but still soft. Remove with a spatula and allow to cool completely.

***IMPORTANT NOTE: Bake for less time if you desire a softer cookie and if cookies are small. Keep an eye on them and don't let them get too crisp.

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To make the royal icing, beat the powdered sugar, milk, and egg whites until thick but still able to be piped. Transfer to a piping bag fitted with a fine tip (or a squirt bottle.)

Decorate the cookies however you'd like, using icing as an accent and as glue to hold on the candies. Allow icing to set before transporting or serving.

 

MISCELLANEOUS COMPENDIUM OF OPINIONS

Creativity is a form of knowledge. Creativity cannot be evaluated by a grade, only encouraged by a teacher/mentor. Do not penalize the creative student for your own lack of creative understanding.
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Here’s how to know if you’re on the right track: if students attend your classes because they want to, not because they’re forced to. If at the end of the semester, they tell you they will miss the course and not just you, the teacher.
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Hiring great professors is not really a search for talent. It's a search for attitude. In our departments we ought to be having a war for attitude. A school filled with motivated, connected, eager, learning, experimenting, ethical and driven people will always defeat the one that merely has talent. Every time.
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Your job isn't only to teach, it's to matter to those you teach, to make a difference. That’s what success is.
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“At the grueling Iditarod, there's a prize for the musher who finishes last: The Red Lantern.

Failing to finish earns you nothing, of course. But for the one who sticks it out, …there's the respect that comes from finding the strength to make it, even when all seems helpless.

Most parents (and most bosses) agree that this sort of dedication is a huge asset in life. And yet, …I can't help but notice that schools do nothing at all to encourage it.”

--Courtesy of Seth Godin, Sept. 5, 2013

 

BOOKS FOR THE SEASON

Yes, once again it’s the holiday season. Below are three books that would be excellent gifts to yourself or to others. Two of them are specifically about education. The third is a bit more eclectic.

All three are interesting and engaging books for both faculty and administrators. And always remember that if we don’t read about what we do, then why do it at all.

Class Not Dismissed: Reflections on Undergraduate Education and Teaching the Liberal Arts by Anthony Aveni (University Press of Colorado; October 15, 2014).

Colgate University professor Anthony Aveni tells the story of his six decades in college classrooms. Through anecdotes of his own triumphs and tribulations—some amusing, others heartrending—Aveni reveals his teaching story and thoughts on the future of higher education. Although in recent years the lecture has come under fire as a pedagogical method, Aveni ardently defends lecturing to students. He shares his secrets on crafting an engaging lecture and creating productive dialogue in class discussions. He lays out his rules on classroom discipline and tells how he promotes the lost art of listening. He is a passionate proponent of the liberal arts and core course requirements as well as a believer in sound teaching promoted by active scholarship.

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Minds on Fire: How Role Immersion Games Transform College by Mark C. Carnes (Harvard University Press; September 15, 2014).

The author shows how role-immersion games channel students’ competitive (and sometimes mischievous) impulses into transformative learning experiences. His discussion is based on interviews with scores of students and faculty who have used a pedagogy called Reacting to the Past, which features month-long games set during the French revolution, Galileo's trial, the partition of India, and dozens of other epochal moments in disciplines ranging from art history to the sciences. In these sessions students are assigned roles informed by classic texts in the history of ideas. Class sessions are run entirely by students; instructors advise and guide students and grade their oral and written work. It seeks to draw students into the past, promote engagement with big ideas, and improve intellectual and academic skills.

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What To Do When It’s Your Turn by Seth Godin (December, 2014) 

This book is a manifesto about living with things that might not work and embracing tension when doing your art. Explores the dance we all have to do with our fears, the tension we all must embrace in order to do work that we care about. It pushes us to dig deep inside so we can do better work and impact the things we care about.

 

DON’T TRY TO BE ORIGINAL

This blog preaches a lot about change, but perhaps not enough about originality. And maybe that’s because nothing is original anymore. And obviously there is a great argument for saying that everything has been done in terms of ideas and initiatives and that any new efforts do spring from a place of replication.

But then again, it’s not important to be original.

It’s only important for you to improve on original.

Don’t just cut and paste a good idea, project or concept. Take it and run with it, making it your own, putting your stamp on it, adding more value, building your own version of better onto someone else’s version of good.

It might be a course assignment, a way of completing a project, a use of technology, a method of mentoring, an advising technique, or an approach to leading a department or a college or a university. Just make it your own.

Don’t try to be original. Just try to succeed in owning an idea and loving the fact that you made a good thing better.  

 

TO ENCOURAGE, TO PUSH, OR TO EXHORT: IT’S OUR JOB TO FIGURE IT OUT

We’ve all had them in our upper division senior level classes. Those students who are consistently excellent and who aspire to greatness and who we know could actually achieve that greatness. They are those students who really want to become and who could become the best of the best

But how hard should we, their professors, push them?

• Perhaps we give them a kind word and a gentle nudge.
• Or, perhaps we have an honest talk with them about their true horizons.
• Or maybe we push them as hard as we can with detailed evaluation of their work, with a demand for excellence beyond the excellence required of others, and with the extra and difficult work that will help them grow further than even their own expectations.

Yes, we want them to see and to understand how absolutely excellent they can be. And we also want them to understand the incredible effort necessary to be excellent and the devotion to career that it will demand.

And we want to encourage them about keeping the drive and ambition that they currently have. We want to nourish it.

But we don’t want to go too far. We don’t want to discourage them, or burn out their enthusiasm or their ambition. We don’t want to drive them beyond their own present boundaries and their own necessary growth to the land of “too-difficult” and “I can’t do it.”

• But to be great in any field does require aggressive pushing.
• It does require encouragement that is more than gentle.
• It does require an explanation in undiluted words telling them how good they can be and how much it will truly take to make the world beyond their dreams actually become a reality.

Average students are easy to teach. Poor students are a challenge because they require constant motivation. Good students take time to teach but make teaching the rewarding profession it is.

But the students who can be truly great are the hardest to teach because we have to make the greatest number of decisions about how exactly to teach them.

And the key reason it’s so difficult is that we encounter so few of these students and each one is a magical individual that requires exclusive nurturing.

But it unequivocally is our job to do it and to figure out how to do it. Because we are teachers whose very job it is to recognize greatness and to help it happen. Not every student has the potential to really change the world. But those who do deserve our absolute best teaching and our absolute highest level of honesty and assertiveness and help.

 

CONCEPTUALIZING THE FUTURE AND MAKING IT WORK

I don't often say this, but I consider what is written below to be an extremely important post. If you enjoy it and, I hope, agree with it then please share it with others at your school. The more people in higher education who understand the necessity of what is said, then the closer it can become to actually being accomplished.

Next post will be December 1.

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Would it work?
Is it a crazy idea?
Is it different from the way it has always been done?
Is it risky?
Would it dazzle?
Would it improve a situation?

Is it worth spending minutes, hours, days and weeks getting right?

The innovation space in higher education teaching is relatively small. While there is so much discussion about new techniques, new formats, new tools and new activities, most profs still primarily sit or stand in front of a class and talk.Flipping the classroom is in its infancy and may never grow at all into a significant method. Online classes are so varied in how they’re done that they are virtually indefinable. And many profs are simply uncomfortable doing things they’ve never done.

But what about finding new innovations—new ways of teaching that aren’t performances or lectures or group work or anything that is now done? What about ways that don’t remind traditional students that college is just more of the same “school” that they have disliked or hated or been bored by in the past.

How do we get the ideas, concepts and designs that will take higher education from point A to point Z?

• Perhaps the innovative course becomes just sitting around asking and answering questions.
• Perhaps the design becomes drastically altering course time patterns.
• Perhaps it’s the concept of scrapping the stand-alone course in favor of course groupings that are offered back-to-back-to-back.
• Or perhaps it’s just saying that the present system does not work the way it should and sitting down with a few others and figuring out ways to change the future. Ways that dazzle, ways that are not the ways of the past, ways that are risky or even a little crazy.  Ways that definitely do improve the situation.

And yes, education always does have to educate. But it cannot be your father’s way of educating. The ways of the one-room higher education schoolhouse just do not work. And that means that right now there’s an unmistakable need to create different ways.

And getting there is hard work.

Here are two brief examples to show you there are other ways.

Lots of higher education pundits discuss the use of guest speakers in courses. Guest speakers can be a new voice, an expert voice, a voice that says the same things you say but in a more authoritative and somehow more credible way. But most guest speakers are local in-the-flesh people brought into a class to talk.

Yet today’s technology makes the concept of guest speaker far broader. Using Skype or Google Hangouts or other related software and using today’s projection technology it is easily possible to bring guest speakers into your classrooms from anywhere in the world. All it takes is coordination, connections and the confidence to make it work.

And don’t just use one guest speaker. Take advantage of the many voices available to you during as many class sessions as possible. Few students would expect or reject an economics course taught by you with guests from Harvard, Switzerland, the U.S. Department of Economic Development, the Cato Institute and the London Centre for Economic Policy Research.

A second idea is along the same lines. There are a couple thousand TED talks on every topic imaginable. Why not begin each class session with a relevant TED talk that opens the door to the concept(s) of the day? Use each talk, which is really like having a knowledgeable guest speaker, as a springboard to questions, to discussions, to having students prepare and deliver relevant talks of their own. The sky’s the limit on their use.

These are ideas not for you to necessarily adopt, but rather to demonstrate that the whole objective and design of how to educate and how to teach and how to inspire can and must evolve.  It’s not an impossible task and it doesn’t have to be done all at once, or even alone.

But it does have to be done. Otherwise, the future is just another version of the past. And the past just isn’t working anymore.

Come up with ideas and innovations that are worth spending minutes, hours, days and weeks getting right? And be willing to do everything it takes to get from concept to reality. 

 

POTPOURRI FOR NOVEMBER

Ideas to ponder and to connect to higher education. From performance reviews to delighting students to forgetting technology to amazing resumes. 

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A post from the blog of the venture capital firm, First Round Capital. 

"When Carly Guthrie was running HR for Per Se, one of the hottest restaurants in New York, the General Manager gave her a piece of advice: “You know, Carly,” he said. “If we’re doing our job as leaders, a performance review should only be two columns: Column A is what you do great and Column B is what you do not-so-great. Now, here’s how we move things from Column B to Column A.”

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Warren Buffett, American business magnate, investor and philanthropist:

"If we are delighting customers, eliminating unnecessary costs and improving our products and services, we gain strength. But if we treat customers with indifference or tolerate bloat, our businesses will wither. On a daily basis, the effects of our actions are imperceptible; cumulatively, though, their consequences are enormous."

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John Lasseter is Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios and Principal Creative Advisor, Walt Disney Imagineering: 

"Technology is amazing and it is getting better all the time. The tools are remarkable. But the most important thing is, as you are deciding to learn about computer animation, forget the technology! The technology never entertains an audience—it's what you do with the technology. Therefore, the most important thing to learn is learn the basics...learn the fundamentals...of art...of drawing....color theory....principles of animation..."

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From the blog of Seth Godin, American author, entrepreneur, and marketer:

"References available upon request

Of course your references are available upon request. What are you going to do, refuse? 

If your references are amazing, don't offer them on request, include them. If they're not stellar, do better work and get some stellar references. Give me names and phone numbers and actual testimonies."

 

JUST SAY NO

Are you a workaholic? Do you know workaholics? Is there a part of you who thinks all professors, to some extent, have to be workaholics? Or is the plight of the workaholic just a problem of time management?

Maybe workaholism is just wrong. Grading papers interminably, planning courses, writing syllabi, creating activities and presentations, doing seemingly endless committee work, advising, and participating in student groups and activities. And on and on and on and on and….

But wait!

It can’t be wrong because it’s November and the workload is, it really is, unbearable.

But wait again!

Workaholics simply create more problems for themselves and often create shoddy work and shoddier results.

A workaholic is defined as compulsive. And compulsively working more-often-than- not leads to burnout. And not just the burnout that everyone experiences sometimes, but the burnout that hits harder than you ever thought. Burnout that makes a professor not ever want to work, or worse, do everything badly.

Another thing that workaholics often suffer from is simply throwing sheer hours at everything, thinking that time will make up for what is often intellectual laziness. Couldn’t get it done during regular working hours because you just weren’t motivated? Then let’s spend the weekend at the office where we’re likely to be even less motivated, but actually forced to have to meet the deadlines.

Being a workaholic is never a solution. And yes, time management probably is the resolution.

Or maybe it’s just saying no.

 

EVERYTHING HAS TO BE POSITIVE

If you were asked to take a student interested in attending your university to visit a class in one of your courses, how would you explain the course to her (and perhaps her parents) as you walked across campus?

What about a faculty candidate? How would you describe your course to him?

In both cases, would you focus on describing the course content, or the students, or how you teach the course, or just an insignificant one-sentence overview?

Would you use focus on using positive words rather than negative words? Would you have to apologize for the condition of the classroom? Would the majority of your students appear to be students actively interested in education and learning? Would you have to apologize for your students?

If you had not had a heads-up about the visit to your class, would your visitor still have a good understanding of the educational experience by attending your class?

Are you even the person your program should be asking to do this? If not, why not?

So many questions. So worth asking. So worth thinking about.

Because you never know what those people, students or faculty, interested in joining the culture that is your school will focus their decision on. And you want to give them a positive experience in every detail of their visit.

 

FINDING YOUR OWN CONNECTION

One of the best professors I ever had was a man whose name I unfortunately can’t remember.

It was a long, long time ago before the Internet, even before desktop computers. It was my first semester in graduate school at The Ohio State University. The course topic was communication theory. It met for three hours each Monday night.

On the first night of the course the professor, a handsome 40-ish guy dressed in business casual, entered the small classroom and sat on a stool in the front
of the room. There were about 25 of us. And for the next two and a half hours he talked, mesmerizing each and every one of us with information about the basics of, importance of, stories about, and research into communication theory. He never moved from the stool, never wrote on a board, never held anything in his hands and did not bring anything to class. Yet not a single person in the class that night came away with anything but awe…at both his knowledge and his ability to impart that knowledge in an almost hypnotic way.

Even years and years and years later I have never forgotten that night and the15 subsequent nights of that course.

He was a great teacher. He connected with the subject matter and with the students. He was involved. Yet he did not pace around the room, did not stand up, did not raise his voice in incredible enthusiasm. But he connected.

Every teacher is a performer. But every teacher has to find her own way to perform and to connect. She doesn’t necessarily have to be an evangelist seeking to convert the unconverted. She just has to use the skills she has to bond student to subject.

It does still involve passion and enthusiasm, but driven forward by a style that is the professor’s own. The unknown professor above had a speaking style that was quiet. But it was not a monotone delivery. It was sincere and it was intelligent and it was incredibly interesting…to listen to and to watch. There was amazing intensity in him for his subject and that intensity spread to every student in the course.

Setting a high standard for yourself is the first quality of a great professor. Finding those characteristics and ways to connect that are purely personal to you as a presenter of ideas and information can make you an even greater teacher.

 

THE EXPRESSION OF ANGER. THE ART OF NEGOTIATION.

How does a professor express anger in a classroom? Anyone who teaches knows that at some point in every course the professor gets extremely annoyed and/or displeased.

Perhaps he/she says this.

“I am an expert in the subject matter of this class. I am intelligent and have spent my entire life up to this point training my mind and honing the skills necessary to impart my knowledge and expertise. I have written and published articles and books in my field.  So I may, just may, have something interesting and enlightening to say. As students of mine I should tell you to sit down, shut up, and stop acting like this is high school. This is college and it is your responsibility to be a college-level student. And right now, that’s what I feel like saying.”

But that cannot be all that is said. In a higher education classroom anger means that, along with that anger, some negotiation must occur.

This can be said:

“But, I’d rather we all think for a few minutes about the words of former President John F. Kennedy, who said: “We cannot negotiate with people who say what's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable."

I will not tell you that my rules are the only rules and that your desires have to be negotiable. That’s not the way the world works and it shouldn’t be the way this course works. But, I could also say that life is unfair and sometimes you just have to live with the consequences. But that would only be my anger talking. And then we both would simply leave the classroom saying the words from the film NETWORK: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” And that’s not what either of us wants.”

Students should know that sometimes you, the professor, gets angry. Show it. Prove you’re human. Be honest about the fact that you’re pretty annoyed. But the moment of truth is really the idea of where do we all go together from this point.

Then, like a leader talking to an employee you should discuss in a give-and-take, but hardnosed, way the things that should happen. Don’t feel like you need to win all the points in the discussion. But do expect the respect and the attitude of unbridled cooperation from your students.

Expressing anger is one of those things in higher education that most professors avoid. Being angry, even occasionally, can label a prof. But it has to be okay to be the kind of teacher and colleague who can say what needs to be said. Don’t be afraid to express yourself.