We The Professors

CHOREOGRAPHY AND THE SPEED OF STUDENT LEARNING

It’s Monday. Perhaps it’s a new week, or a new month. Or maybe it’s even a new semester.

You're standing in front of a class. And you want to do things differently, better. You’ve heard about and read about a lot of techniques.

But…you’re not feeling like you’re a risk-taker or even an out-of-the-box kind of person. What exactly can you do? What’s the first step?

That’s one of the most daunting situations we as teachers face. Our comfort zone is sssoooo very comfortable.

So what DO you do?

What you do at that moment is based on a couple of thought processes that must occur long before you’re actually standing in front of that class.

The first is choreography.

The classroom is the place where a teacher does his/her work. And to work correctly, classes (and courses) have to be choreographed much like a choreographer arranges a dance routine. But for a professor, it’s not all about movement. It’s about what to say, how to say it, when to say it, what to write, what to show, where to be in the classroom, when to stand, when (and if) to sit, how to begin, how to transition, and how to finish.

Difficult, right?

Yes, it is difficult, but necessary effort if you really want to do things differently and if you really want the new things to work. And, the great thing about choreography is that you can set the pace from comfortable to new and different as quickly or slowly as you want.

The second thing to do is to spend a lot of time pondering the speed of student learning.

It took me a long, long, long time in my career to realize that I was trying to get students to learn all the material I wanted them to learn instead of actually presenting and concentrating on the amount of material they actually could learn. I was going as fast as I needed to go instead of as slowly as the students needed to progress. (Read those two sentences over until you totally get them.)

The amount of material presented in a class is not professor-driven. It has to be student-driven.  And yes, that’s almost always a slower pace and less material.

I always remember the teachers I had who simply were obsessed with getting through the material no matter who needed extra time, or whether or not the whole class wanted to spend a little extra time on something. College, in particular, is about learning things completely, even if the syllabus says that more and more things have to be learned.

Here’s an example.

In a public speaking class, there are usually three speeches each student must master: a speech of introduction, an informative speech, and a persuasive speech.  The key learning outcomes in the course are to get students to learn and feel comfortable speaking in front of an audience, and to teach them the process of speech preparation through the act of planning and outlining the three major types of speeches.

But what if the class cannot progress as fast as the learning outcomes demand? What if not enough students can master the first speech? What if teaching research and outlining takes three weeks instead of two? Do you simply move to the second speech because the syllabus and the calendar demand it?

If the class is professor-driven, then the answer is almost always yes. If you allow the learning to be student-driven, then the answer is often no.  

Professors who understand that the pace of learning cannot be the same for every course are always better professors and better teachers. And, to repeat, it often takes a very long time to really internalize the idea that it’s not about what you’re teaching. It’s about what they’re learning; what the students are completely understanding and mastering.

Choreography, and an understanding of the speed of student learning…both are keys to great teaching and comprehensive education.

 

UNSTRUCTURED AND UNPREDICTABLE ASSIGNMENTS

What do kindergarten teachers and college professors have in common? More than you think, and it has nothing to do with students.

Kindergarten teachers are extremely spontaneous. They generally can do what they want how they want and they can improvise both activities and ideas into genuine learning. Their teaching can often be as unpredictable and unstructured as their five-year-old students.

After kindergarten, and throughout elementary, middle and high school, teachers (and students) are both obligated to be less spontaneous? For teachers, there are lesson plans and rigid requirements as well as preparing students for standardized tests.

But, get to college, and the teachers and the teaching can again become more spontaneous. Sure, there are definitely things that must be taught, but the methods and the manner and the creative license are much, much greater. And while activities cannot be too unstructured, they certainly can be unpredictable.

Here are two examples I have used.

1. Walk into a class having done absolutely no preparation. Be  one hundred percent improvisational. Let the class flow naturally around the topic of the day. Let the way the lesson proceeds be a mystery. You throw out ideas, students pitch in, things go off on occasional tangents. Your only job is to keep things rolling, but without a plan of any kind. And by the end of the session you should all agree that things were educational, interesting and informative.
   
   
2. Use the unexpected assignment. I used to teach non-fiction writing. Mostly students wrote stories about people, events and places. But a very early assignment in this course was always one of my favorites, and one that I spontaneously thought of as I was walking to class one Spring afternoon. The assignment asks each student to explain Einstein’s equation E=mc² in no more than 250 words. The explanation has to be in the student’s own words, preferably be story-like, and has to make sense to a non-scientist. It challenges them to research, to think, to synthesize, and to be a bit creative. Yet, it was educational and interesting and totally related to learning how to write concisely.

These are just two ideas among many. Your ideas can obviously be more related to your specific discipline.

And the key here is not to look at these as simply thinking outside the box. The key here is to fascinate yourself as a university professor and to provide yourself opportunities for growth and imagination.

Try it. You’ll see that things like these do work.

 

BE IN CHARGE OF MAGIC

Is there magic in your teaching? How about in your research? How about in your work with students, colleagues and committees outside of class?

Yes, MAGIC.

In a recent blog post, Seth Godin said it perfectly…and it applies to higher education perhaps more than to anyone else.

Here’s some of what he says:

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“When designing a new product or program...

...where's the person in charge of magic?

...Who is obsessed with creating delight, with building in remarkability, with pushing the envelope (every envelope--money, tech, policy) to get to the point where you've created something...that will make a dent in the universe?

It won't happen on its own. It never does.”

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Are you in charge of magic?

 

WHAT A PROF CAN LEARN FROM A COACH

What is the difference between a teacher and a coach?

The definitions say that teachers and coaches are both people who instruct. And obviously coaches are more often concerned with things like athletics, acting, and debate. And coaches, particularly athletics coaches, often have many more perks.

But there are some things that college teachers can learn from athletics coaches.

1. In colleges and universities the stakes for a coach are usually higher. Coaches have to get their players to succeed. Losing seasons often mean lost jobs. There is no such thing as tenure for athletics coaches, but if they keep winning their tenure can be long, or better yet, they can move to a better and higher paying job at another school.

College teachers do not consider themselves to be held to the high stakes and lack of job security that coaches have. A prof never really has a winning or a losing season. But maybe that’s a mistake. Are the stakes not higher for educating students than for winning athletic games? Should professors not consider their jobs and their efforts supremely significant in terms of training the workers and the citizens of tomorrow? Yes, on both counts.

2. Coaches are more aggressive in their approach to their students/players. Coaches are hard to please, demanding, and uncompromising. And if a player doesn’t measure up, he/she can quickly be off the team.

Professors can never be as aggressive as coaches. Students and administrators see to that. But professors can function like coaches. They can be demanding, uncompromising, and have extraordinary expectations that require students to measure up or risk being out. And they can do it firmly, but courteously. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, there might be everything right with that. 

3. Coaches have help. The larger the program, the more assistant coaches are employed. And sometimes a head coach is mostly just the face of the team. But there still is accountability.

4. Coaches make more money…lots more money in some programs. Few coaches are paid as little as the faculty at their schools. The rationale is that these coaches bring in much more revenue to the school than faculty.

For these last two there’s little that can be compared. Professors don’t make the money coaches make, even though professors deliver virtually all the academic instruction and their teaching is responsible for the majority of the students who attend and remain at the university. And college teachers don’t have assistant teachers, or equipment and transportation staff, or academic tutors.

University professors are obviously not athletics coaches. BUT, while profs do not have any of the perks that these coaches have, profs can learn that also being coaches in their classes and holding students to the same winning/success standards as coaches can work, and can make every professor a better teacher.

 

FIVE FUNCTIONALLY FASCINATING CLASSROOM TECHNIQUES

Here are five things to do that will make your classes more engaging, more appealing, and more learning-centered. 

1. When you enter the classroom, write on the whiteboard the four or five individual words or short phrases that the entire class will be built around. Then cleverly do this.
   
   
2. Enter the classroom and sit down in one of the classroom seats. Converse with the students around you. Be casual. When the class begins, start with a question related to the topic of the day. “Let’s begin by discussing the reading I gave you for today on the role of news and opinion in today’s society. A question I have is: Why does it even matter that we understand this? Why should we care? Why do you think I even had you read this?” Then, continuing to stay seated among the students, simply answer those initial questions and lead the class through a comprehensive understanding of the topic. And eventually as you do this, stand up and move around the room as you talk and students talk. Never really stand in the front of the room. Just maintain control and let the choreographed discussion flow.
   
   
3. Another effective technique is to walk into the class with four whiteboard markers. Put them down in the front of the room. Walk to the back of the room and tell the class that each and every student is to walk to the whiteboard and write a short but significant and discussable question about the reading and/or the topic of the class. Then build the class around the best of those questions. Also, ask some students to answer other student’s questions.
   
   
4. This technique works best in a class that meets for 75 minutes or more. First, briefly present the day’s topic to the class. Let’s say it’s an introduction to the study of rhetoric. You would explain that rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the capability of writers or speakers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. Hopefully the students would have read something about this and perhaps even heard a great example of persuasive public speaking. Then (and this is the good part) give each student a note card. Then have them raise their right hands and take an oath. The oath says: “I (name) promise to not speak to another person for the next 20 minutes. I will remain silently alone in introspective contemplation in a quiet place.” Explain to them that this is an extreme deep thinking assignment. They will all leave the classroom for 20 minutes. They will find a quiet place (not the classroom) and spend every second of the time thinking about rhetoric and its significance to public dialogue. Is rhetoric dead today? Is posting on social media or tweeting the new rhetoric? Why might rhetoric be the most important thing to be studied and discussed in today’s smaller world? Then, on the notecard they are to write one unbelievably significant 10-word sentence that is the result of their deep thinking about rhetoric. The thing they write should be worthy of the kind of thinking a college student should engage in. When they return, each student will read what they wrote and the discussion can proceed from there.
   
   
5. Have the class meet in four different campus locations for four consecutive classes. I have met in places like the University President’s conference room, the center of the college basketball court, a large auditorium, a fraternity house, a dining hall, a coffee shop, a theatre, a dance studio, a yoga studio, a museum and a variety of science labs. In many of these rooms we sat on the floor in a circle. Usually I first talked about the purpose of the room we were in and how the class might be conducted in the spirit of the associated activities. Discussion was then led creatively, purposefully and often student-driven.  Sometimes small group activities occurred.

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There are many more equally and more inventive activities that could happen depending upon the subject matter of the course and the class. The purpose of these things, however, is not to be creative or inventive. The purpose is to make learning more interesting and to show that there are different ways to think and learn and not all require a classroom or a teacher or a lecture. Learning can be self-driven, discussion-driven, location-driven and question-driven.

Inventive techniques do work. All they have to be is tailored to the topic-of-the-day and then choreographed.

 

LET’S CREATE ENTREPRENEURIAL DREAMS

It’s January. And as a person employed by a higher education institution, you should be making resolutions about academic activities. But never, ever, never call what you make a resolution. Resolutions are things we hope we’ll do. No guarantees. Too often just made and forgotten.

What you should actually be forming are declarations I call entrepreneurial dreams.

Yes, I can already see your eyes rolling.

OMG, you’re saying. The expression is way too “out there,” too emotional, too touchy feely, one of those expressions created by people who sit in bean bag chairs in their offices and still wish they could follow the Grateful Dead.

But you should still use the expression. Every last one of you should use it. And you should use it publicly and loudly.

Because higher education needs more doses of entrepreneurship.

• The organizing, managing, and assuming the risks of an enterprise characterize the word entrepreneurial.
• Dreams are ideas or visions often created in the imagination that one wants very much to do.

So entrepreneurial dreams are sorta/kinda ideas and visions you can champion, and can do your absolute best to take the risks and make happen.

All of us except the most cockeyed optimist believe that higher education needs some help. Certainly everything is not broken, but some things definitely need work. And simply saying parts of the system are broken does not begin to fix them. It takes one voice and another and another and then a lot of effort.

Barack Obama said: "One voice can change a room, and if one voice can change a room, then it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it can change a state, and if it change a state, it can change a nation, and if it can change a nation, it can change the world. Your voice can change the world.”

John Dewey said: “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.”

Entrepreneurial dreams are things you can get passionate and emotional about, and things that are all about change.

Here are four dreams for the winter and spring to start you out.  (I will only give you a couple sentences on each idea. You can adapt, organize, manage and assume the risk yourself.)

1. Plan an amazing orientation for new students next Fall. Not one based only on social activities and games. But one based on the meaning of a college education, the academic expectations, and even service learning.
2. Change up the ways you teach or administrate. Do what you do differently and in ways you dream to be both better and a little out of your comfort zone. It’s often called re-imagining yourself and your job and it involves lots of risk and plenty of reward.
3. Don’t ever make your classes an extension of high school. Figure out ways to talk about this departmentally and even college-wide. Make certain every student understands the prestige of a college education and the need to have a different mind-set and work ethic.
4. Be action-oriented. Higher education can only be helped by action. If you’re a new prof, suggest changes and enlist support. If you’re burning out, fix the reasons why and help others with similar situations. If you’re near retirement, suggest changes and enlist support just like new profs.

Be an entrepreneur of dreams.

Make the time to do it. It will be worth it. Higher education depends on it.

 

FINAL EXAM FALLACIES: PART 2

Today, a little more about final course evaluations.

Let’s begin with a question.

At the end of a semester, what do you really need to find out from your students?

• Perhaps it’s how much information they retained throughout the term or were able to breathe in over a few late nights during finals week.
• Maybe it’s how fast they can write essays or how many multiple-choice questions they can answer in two hours.
• Or possibly it is just to make your students take the same sorts of archaic medieval final exams you were made to take when you were in college. (Sorry to be so harsh.)

But really a course is much like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Each week is the adding of certain pieces and the end of the course is simply adding those last few pieces and looking at the complete picture. In a puzzle there is no dreaded end, only the enthusiasm of adding the final pieces and feeling good about what you just completed.

What each professor has to figure out is a final event or evaluation that doesn’t end the course with a thud, but rather, provides the student with the enjoyment of finishing a long and rigorous journey with a feeling of completion and satisfaction.

A comprehensive final exam quite obviously never does that.

• • • • •

Sometimes we give comprehensive exams to punish those students who did little during the term and will never be able to do well on an exam that covers the whole term. We tell ourselves these slackers deserve to do badly, thus we make life miserable for every student. At other times we do comprehensive finals because they can be done on Scantron sheets and machine graded in a few minutes.

And at still other times we tell ourselves that these comprehensive short-answer tests will prepare students for other types of comprehensive exams such as the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) or Law School Admissions Test (LSAT).  But the problem here is that those tests are designed to measure totally different long-term skills that have been accumulated over years, rather than just the retention and regurgitation of 15 weeks of information. You cannot study for the GRE. You can only perhaps improve your scores by becoming familiar with the types of questions that will be asked and understanding the nuances of timed testing.

• • • • •

Over my years of teaching I think I have done almost every type of end-of-semester activity possible. Early on I did do comprehensive exams. (But I was obviously young and foolish then.) Thus, for many of my most recent years I have tried to be creative, to put myself in my students’ shoes, and to think about jigsaw puzzles.

And I have always tried to pursue an evaluation/activity that would be as interesting to me as it was to my students. A satisfying ending to a long journey of working and thinking and learning together.

That’s what it’s all about. Conclusions we love rather than journeys we are simply glad to be done with.

    

A PLETHORA OF PONDERINGS

Today, a potpourri of things faculty and administrators can do, can ponder, and can enjoy.

1. Faculty need to be keen observers. Learn to really observe your students and yourself and to self analyze and learn. Keep a notebook. Just as we often keep a listing of academic accomplishments, keep a list of teaching techniques and classroom exercises that work so you can refer to them constantly.
   
   
2. All teachers and administrators have to be able to speak eloquently, insightfully and inspiringly about their program, department or
   majors. This may be an elevator pitch, a longer TED-like talk, or a recruiting presentation.  Program ambassadors able to speak powerfully and instantly are not only extremely helpful. They are also someone every faculty member should be required to become.
   
   
3. Many of us can remember “the old days” when a good day in class was when the teacher showed a film or projected slides. Then came overhead projectors which were never as much fun, but did serve as a kind of transition to present-day technology. Today there are smart boards, also called electronic whiteboards. And while no one really ever had to learn too much about slides or films (except threading that pesky 16mm projector), knowing how to work smart boards and actually incorporate them into your teaching is kind of an art. 
   
   There is a school of thought that simply recommends using smart boards to show films and slides. But I think the point is to work them into the learning process so that they become a true ingenious tool in the teaching process. We do not want smart boards to simply be overused and thus to become boring. But we do want them to be, just like films and slides were, a fun and interesting resource that promotes and assists teaching in ways that make teaching more innovative, creative, and original. Think hard about this new resource. Don’t waste the opportunity to make it something truly different.
   
   
4. A great story brings emotion to a topic. Pictures also bring emotion. And so do words. If you want something to be scary, use scary words. If you want it to be powerful, use powerful words. If you want your presentations to be more passionate, use words and pictures that convey that passion.
   
   
5. The purpose of life is: Constant Forward Progress. It’s telling yourself you will make Constant Forward Progress. It’s figuring out how to make Constant Forward Progress. And it’s actually making Constant Forward Progress. Make a decision today that you will start on that path and a year from now be amazed at yourself and what you have accomplished. 
   
   

THE FALLIBILITY OF OBJECTIVE TESTS

Higher education should be about learning, not about testing.

Yes, learning has to be evaluated, but not in a way that simply requires memorization and very little critical thinking or analysis. Things like true and false exams, or multiple-choice exams, or fill in the blank exams just do not cut it in higher education. And if they could cut it, it would take much more time and skill to create these kinds of tests than the average professor has. And if the textbook provider provides test questions, then that often requires teaching to the questions.

And none of those things is what higher education is all about.

In my last 10 or so years of teaching I never gave an objective test, even if I taught classes of 50 students. Why? Let’s say it again.

BECAUSE HIGHER EDUCATION IS ALL ABOUT LEARNING AND NOT ABOUT TESTING.

Did I give tests at all? Sure. In-class essay tests sometimes. Take home tests sometime. I also had students usually do what I called educational briefs. (Stop smirking.) A legal brief is a summary of the important points of a longer document. I had students write briefs which were one page (250 words) summary-like documents on a particular subject, issue, set of terms or concept.  I assigned one educational brief a week and it allowed me to assess thinking, writing, understanding, and analytical skills. These were easy to evaluate and created a kind of portfolio of documents that allowed for the grading of a student better than any objective test.

Obviously in classes that I taught there were other forms of evaluation. I often taught writing courses so there were always story assignments. In some classes there were also team projects, student presentations, and laboratory experiments. But in every class there were the educational briefs and either short or long essay tests.

I realize there are many, many arguments for objective tests, the primary one being  that these tests allow for the quick examination of knowledge in very large classes. But, as I said, unless the developers of such questions are skilled in the techniques that truly measure thinking in exams that are objective, then these tests are often just a meaningless student exercise in either memorization or random guessing.

Too often objective tests are just given because they have always been given, because profs just don’t feel like grading written pieces, because objective tests allow professors to have more time for research and service to be accomplished, and because they are simply the easy way out.

But higher education is not high school where material has to be covered because statewide testing is used. Nor do we in college have to ever teach to the tests. Higher education requires more rigorous and new methods of evaluation.

In every discipline, academics ought to be thinking about different kinds of evaluation methods than the 19th century-invented objective test.

HOW TO TEACH STUDENTS TO WRITE, VOL. 1, NO. 1

“Writing is an extreme privilege but it’s also a gift. It’s a gift to yourself and it’s a gift of giving a story to someone.”
--Amy Tan

 

So, how do you teach college students to write? What are the early steps in getting students to understand what real writing is and why they should want to learn it?

Is it by doing exercises in such things as free writing? Or by having them practice and understand correct grammar and punctuation? Or by first having them write a good sentence, then a good paragraph, and then a good essay?

Yes, all those things can often help beginning college writing students. But my philosophy has always been that students write best when they are interested and passionate about what they have to say. I do think writing is indeed storytelling. And compelling stories in which a person is interested and invested are often the best ways to get a person to begin to write well.

• I never felt the worth of having students do practice exercises by writing about people or events they do not care about.
• I never felt that having students write essays on societal issues or historical incidents was necessarily good.
• I never even thought that having students write gripping accounts of faux news events was a great idea.

But I did think that having a student tell a story about something they care about or that a teacher motivates them to care about always made for better writing.

In a college I taught at in the U.S. the campus was not far from a wonderful historical cemetery. It was only about three or four acres, surrounded by a deteriorating wrought iron fence, had tombstones dating back to before the Civil War (some falling over) with all manner of epitaphs, was a little overgrown and only occasionally manicured, and had an Indian mound in the center. Almost every student in the college had probably walked by this cemetery and was at least aware of its existence. But few had really thought about it nor considered its significance as an artifact of history and a collection of people’s very personal memories and tributes.

Before the assignment I talked about the cemetery quite a bit in class. I talked about history, about my own family members who had died, and I let them share oral stories of their own family members from long ago. Then I finally walked them over to this cemetery for a 90-minute stroll. They had to walk through the graveyard alone, not talking to anyone else, simply taking in the atmosphere. And, ultimately, they had to write 250 to 500 words before the end of the day telling an absorbing story of their experience and observations.

The exercise always succeeded. By the time I took them to the cemetery they were eager to go. Some of them had obviously gone before I took them. That was fine, even encouraged. But I did not tell them the writing assignment before I took them. And the whole experience never failed to generate passionate, personal, precise pieces of prose. A few semesters I even published a collection of them for others to read.

A writer invested in telling a story they are interested in, whether it be a personal piece, a news story, an essay or even a report always writes better. The language is more precise—because precise language is discussed in class—and the interest in the subject always shows in the writing.

This is just one example of how to teach writing to those who have never really written. More will appear in future posts, including a discussion of the important adage: the best writing is rewriting.

 

TEACHING AS EXTRAORDINARY CUSTOMER SERVICE

So here’s the deal. Someone promises to provide a significant life-changing service for you, but at the end of it you will be in debt for $50,000.

Imagine if you said yes, and then think about the level of quality and value and everything else you would demand of the service and the service-provider.

On the blogsite College Misery (yep, there is such a site) there was a post a couple of weeks ago about a student who had gone to a state university for four years and still needed a fifth year to finish. He had not started the fifth year yet and he had already accumulated $87,000 in student loans.

Yep, $87,000. And that’s not actually an unusual amount. According to a Fidelity survey the class of 2013's debt in government loans averaged $26,000. Graduates also had an average of $19,000 in private loans and $18,000 in state loans. That’s $65,000 and it’s just an average. Students who go to private colleges where yearly tuition and fees may be as high as $45,000 to $50,000 often have much higher loan debt.

Which all got me thinking.

Do we as professors ever think about the quality of service necessary to equal the incredible debt most of our students incur?

I know, I know. College is one of the only places where a person (called a student) pays or borrows incredible amounts of money for classes they often dislike, work they often don’t want to do, programs they don’t want to follow, and efforts they don’t want to put forth. And even though that often makes us profs cynical and acrimonious, it shouldn’t matter in terms of what I’ll call customer service.

Customer service in the United States is not exactly what it should be. When I have been to countries overseas, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, customer care in the service industries is truly at a level that this country has rarely experienced. But for $65,000 or $87,000 in debts, a student deserves the immaculate customer service in higher education equal to the best in any industry or profession.

A professor has to give students the best and most creative teaching, the best assignments, the best advising, and the most motivation and enthusiasm for education that can exist. Yes, students may go kicking and screaming into all that concern and all that effort and all that work, but if they did not want the profs effort and that debt then they should not have gone into the whole endeavor in the first place.

And students should definitely not remain in the debt-incurring situation if they too do not require incredible service for their investment.

It’s all a conversation that colleges and universities owe each student periodically, especially during their first two years.

Most of it is just economics. But all of us who teach and administrate should be aware of those economics and provide the incredible service and energy that those economics demand. 

PLAY WITH YOUR “PERFORMANCE”

A college course is not like a Broadway play.

In a play each performance should be identical. Each new audience should see the same play performed in the same flawless way. No variation. No drastic changes.

In a college course, each class requires something different. Because, unlike a play, the audience is always the same. Not new people, but the same people often watching the same performance, only with different content presented during each class.

Over time class presentations begin to seem to students like boring reruns. Even the most fascinating and creative forms of classroom engagement get old if they are done over and over.

A prof has to mix it up.

Change your style periodically. If you always stand in front of the class, then sit among the class now and then. Vary the room the class is held in occasionally. Teach from the back of the room now and then (having everyone turn their desk around) so that the back row becomes the front row. Do very different activities to get across key points.  Use technology differently. Make PowerPoints emotional rather than informational. Even bring in another professor to team teach a class with you.

Whatever you do, find ways to mix it up. Change your style. Keep it interesting. Keep it out of the ordinary.

A course is not a play. A course is a series of different “performances” for the same audience.

REVOLUTIONARY THINKING; GETTING BEYOND AVERAGE

Teenagers want to fit in. Teenagers are often the ultimate example of cliquishness. They want to do things just as their friends do things. They never want to be too different.

Lots of job situations are also like that. Everybody does things the same way. Some succeed a little more, but no one is really thinking or working outside the box.

But higher education teachers and administrators have to be distinctive. After all, we are not teenagers.  Sure, there has to be a certain amount of fitting in, of belonging. But there does not have to be a lot of doing things the way others do things.

In higher education there has to be a sense of revolutionary thinking, of individuality, of originality.

On September 27 author and entrepreneur Seth Godin wrote the following blog post:

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The merchants of average

They will push you to fit in, to dress alike, to use the same tools, to fit the format.

They are the high school English teacher in love with his rubric and the book editor who needs you to fit in with the program. "That's the way we do things around here." They are the well-meaning productivity guru who wants you to get faster, not better, and the social media consultant who is driving with his rear-view mirror.

The safest thing you can do, it seems, is to fit in. Total deniability. Say: Hey, I’m just doing what the masses do.

The masses are average. And by definition, we have a surplus of average.

Don’t be different just to be different. Be different to be better.

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Teaching and administrating on the college level is absolutely relevant to Seth’s words. Totally and unequivocally relevant.

In higher education there unfortunately is a surplus of average. Too often even a surplus of complaining and being disgruntled. And there seems to be a surplus of doing what everyone else does.

But that’s just wrong.

In higher education, because of the importance of imparting knowledge and shaping future generations, there should be a lot of excellent.

There should be a lot of being different to be better.

And there unquestionably should be a lot of insane commitment to doing things better in a different way.

BEING ACADEMIC ABOUT CREATIVITY

Can creativity be taught? Should it be something universities and colleges concern themselves with in an academic way? Can it be defined in a way that even allows it to be taught?

As part of an accreditation discussion at the last university I worked for it
was suggested that our program should be more concerned with the creativity of our students.  The accreditation coordinator suggested that there needed to be more creativity taught in our classes and more creativity demonstrated in our assessment reports.

Thus began a long and arduous discussion.

Our program, I should mention, was in communication and media. And there was great debate about what exactly teaching and evaluating creativity actually meant and how it could be accomplished. Part of the discussion obviously centered on whether creativity is something a person is born with or something that can be taught and improved? Is it a skill? Can reading about creativity make one more creative? Can practice make a person more creative?

There were ultimately more questions than answers. Some faculty were adamant that creativity could be infused into classes. They just weren’t quite certain how. Almost no one wanted to say that creativity could not be taught. Some obviously agreed it might be easier in an art or a creative writing course than a course in media storytelling.

Many higher education courses actually do have the word creativity or creative in the course title. Not because the course necessarily teaches creativity, but rather because the course topic requires creativity in the mastery of the topic.

Often creativity is seen as being original and surprising. It can also be viewed as asking new questions in different ways, having multiple solutions to problems and communicating ideas in innovative ways. The instruction in and evaluation of those elements is often very subjective and very ambiguous.

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Sir Ken Robinson, British author and international adviser on education, says: “You can be creative in math, science, music, dance, cuisine, teaching, running a family, or engineering. Because creativity is a process of having original ideas that have value. A big part of being creative is looking for new ways of doing things within whatever activity you're involved in…

A creative process may begin with a flash of a new idea or with a hunch. It may just start as noodling around with a problem, getting some fresh ideas along the way. It's a process, not a single event, and genuine creative processes involve critical thinking as well as imaginative insights and fresh ideas.

But creativity isn't just about coming up with new ideas; some ideas might be completely crazy and impractical. So an essential bit of every creative process is evaluation. If you're working on a mathematical problem, you're constantly evaluating it, thinking, "Does that feel right?" If you're composing a piece on the piano, part of you is listening to what you're doing and thinking, "Does that work? Is that going in a good direction?”

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Like many things, creativity certainly is a process. One that begins or reveals itself in the very early elementary grades, is too often beaten down in the later grades, and perhaps reignited in college. It can be improved by incorporating original thinking, brainstorming, different ways of examining and evaluating things, and practice in all those things. It probably cannot be taught from scratch, at least not in college.

As a university faculty too often we simply view creativity as a thing in a box that students should bring to college with them. There’s little thought or scholarly discussion of the specific word creative or the concept of creativity because those things are so amorphous and so rarely discussed. Yes, it is almost like everyone assumes that everyone else understands the concept of creativity. 

But a discussion is exactly what is necessary. It’s an important thing to have a “creative” discussion about. It’s important to consider the place of creativity and the concept of what might be creative in your program.

As academic professionals creativity is one more part of academia worthy of more discussion than it gets and perhaps worthy of more research than is done.

 

BE A CHAMPION. FORM A SKUNKWORKS.

 

Change is the hardest thing to bring about.

In higher education some say significant change in things such as pedagogy and/or curriculum and/or 20th century or even 19th century ideas takes so long as to make it virtually impossible.

But, it isn’t impossible. It can’t be.

So how can it be accomplished?

Through champions and through skunkworks.

Every new idea or concept or even, sometimes, brainstorm requires a champion to make it happen, or to put it on the path to happening. Management guru Peter Drucker defined a champion as “a monomaniac with a mission.” She is a supporter, a warrior, one who passionately believes and cares and is willing to take the idea by the hand and lead it forward.

And sometimes what leads the idea forward is a skunkworks. Developed by Lockheed Martin in the 1940’s, a skunkworks is a group of like-minded believers found and organized by champions.

In his classic Harvard Business Review article, "Controlled Chaos," James Brian Quinn writes, “every highly innovative enterprise in my research sample emulated small company practices by using groups that functioned in a skunkworks style.”

These ad hoc groups of turned-on innovators are what management consultant and author Bob Waterman, refers to in his book, Adhocracy. He writes “Adhocracy is any organization form that challenges the bureaucracy in order to embrace the new. It cuts through organizational charts, departments, functions, job descriptions, hierarchy, and tradition like a hot knife through butter...ad hoc organizational forms are the most powerful tools we have for effecting change.”

And as Tom Peters advanced the concept, skunkworks became groups that often worked at warp speed, accomplishing things quicker than normal procedures often permitted. They were the guerilla warriors of their organizations: working precise, working quickly, working behind the scenes.

Yes, change in higher education can be difficult. There are so many layers of bureaucracy, so many naysayers, so many committees and taskforces, and so little time to do any of this.

But a champion makes time.

A champion organizes.

A champion puts things and people together and proves it can be done.

Because change doesn’t happen in higher education by lonely voices grousing to the multitudes.

Do you have a change that needs to happen?

Then be a champion.

 

THE BEST THERE EVER WAS

 

In the excellent baseball film, The Natural, there is a moment of dialogue between the main character, Roy Hobbs, and a woman he knows.

Roy Hobbs: I coulda been better. I coulda broke every record in the book.              

 Iris Gaines: And then?

Roy Hobbs: And then? And then when I walked down the street people would've said: "There goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was in this game."

I have always been intrigued by the idea of “the best there ever was.” I do understand the obvious unattainability. And the fact that it is just a line in a book and in a Hollywood screenplay.

But, I think there might be more here than just an unreachable story point.

I think there's something that can be worth pondering.

Whether we have taught for 10 days or 10 years, haven’t we all seen the professor who simply doesn’t bring his or her A-game to the playing field? Whether it is because of age, repetition, boredom, incompetence, overwork or just simple lack of motivation, those faculty members exist everywhere. The cliché of yellowed notes and a monotone delivery are never far from the truth.

Those faculty drag down the esprit de corps. They drag down the students. They drag down all by their actions and attitude.

And their attitude is never even close to good, let alone the “best there ever was.”

So should we ignore those people? Of course we should, at least in terms of ourselves and our own growth. Their lack of whatever is not our immediate concern.

Our goal is the opposite: personal challenge, self-growth and, simply, bringing our A-game to the field every day. Every day.

As teachers we think of our own skills in various ways. Some things we are very good at doing. Some things we are okay or adequate at doing. And some things we constantly work at improving.

And we ask ourselves questions.

• What about the fact that it too often seems like I’m teaching to the few rather than the many.

• What about the fact that I have to teach the same class over and over?

• What about the monotony of grading and planning and day after day of what gets to be tediousness?

• What about learning new technology, new techniques, new information, and meeting new people?

Why challenge myself further?

Maybe for promotion, tenure, or self-esteem. Maybe to live and breath creativity, knowledge, and exposition. Maybe because we have a burning desire to do this.

YES. Exactly.

And if you think that’s all bulls#*t, then perhaps higher education is just not for you. (Yep, that’s a little preachy, but mostly true.)

Challenging yourself for any worthwhile and beneficial purpose is great. And we have to be in it for the long haul, not just the moment gratifying, self-satisfying, ego-boosting day or week of being really excellent.

There has to be motivation to be better and better for years and years.

How have I tried? I’m not calling myself any sort of expert, but every time I taught a class I tried to teach it a little differently. Every time I gave assignments I tried to avoid the same-old, same-old. I used the summers that I taught for experimenting with new ways to teach during the regular year. I read about my field, about teaching, about motivation. I watched others in my department or college who were better than I was. I tried hard and consciously to never stop learning and improving.

I never stopped trying. Even when my time was at a premium. I had a family. I had creative interests. But I loved the challenge, actually needed the challenge. And I made time for the challenge because it was my job.

The first four years I was an administrator, I sucked. Sucked really badly. So bad that I stopped for nine years. When I went back to it, I was markedly better, not only because I had matured a bit, but because I had consciously thought and studied how to be better.

In order to move academia forward in the many ways it has to be moved forward, it will take all of us to deal with constant self-challenge and self-improvement.

Can we get to “the best that ever was?”

If we don’t try, we will never even get to “as good as we can be.”

 

 

TECHNOLOGY OR NOT TECHNOLOGY?

 

Has the train left the station with no ability to return?                                       
Are we seeing something and ignoring it?                                                        
Are we confusing an Ipad or a Kindle with a book?

They’re students. 
They’re always on their phones.
They’re always on their iPads.
They’re always on their laptops.  
They’re always texting, surfing, gaming, listening, waiting.

And the higher education community has watched all of that and embraced those things as the future of learning.

It’s called e-learning, I-learning, iPad learning, podcast learning, online classes.

But is it all learning? Is it learning at all? The NRA says: “The only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

Can we say about education: “The only thing that will stop a bad learning situation is a good student with a computer or an iPad?”

Sometimes, unfortunately, the higher educational community does indeed say that. It sees technology as a savior of the uneducated, the genie in the bottle of student learning.

If you could use a typewriter, did that mean you could instantly write incredible, publishable stories? If you can use a video camera, does that make you a cinematographer? If you know how to operate a microscope, does that make you a microbiologist?

The tools of technology today are just that, technological tools whose function and use can help to make learning possible. Not necessarily more or less possible than the past. Just possible. Not necessarily better than in the past. It depends on the tool and the trainer.

It still takes a facilitator, a mentor, a—what shall we call this person—a…teacher.

No piece of technology will yet make any student a lifelong learner. Only teachers have the key to those doors.

There is no such thing as e-learning. There are only tools that may or may not assist the teaching and improve the final product.

 

 

SOLVING PROBLEMS, ROLLING DICE

 

“Always amaze yourself with what you can do.”

Should teaching in higher education be fun? Should college teachers actually be allowed to see view their classes as extremely enjoyable and gratifying? And except for sometimes endless grading, shouldn’t preparation for class and the actual execution of that preparation be the most pleasurable thing we do at work (except maybe for the NCAA basketball pool)?

OR

Should teachers envision themselves like Albert Einstein, pipe in hand, incredible
equations on the board, oozing knowledge and formality? We stand at the front of the class being the font of knowledge that we all know we are. Wearing a sweater or a coat and tie or a long-sleeved plain colored dress and just absolutely positively looking like a consummate professor. (Now I will admit that I always saw Einstein as a fun guy because of that hair. He had to have had a cool sense of humor.)

So let’s look at a few situations, things that can force us not to be professors, and also to think a little about making even the conundrums fun.

1. Problem. They (students) just don’t pay attention. They seem to want entertainment. They seem distracted. Here are a couple of suggestions. The first is the simplest. Just discuss the whole attention thing with ‘em. Tell ‘em anyone can pay attention to anything for 3-hours a week for 16 weeks. That’s what they decided to pay for and that’s what you promise to give ‘em. Your best.

Another thing, more brutal, is to literally divide the class in two. On one side should sit those students who want to participate, who are eager to learn and who, yes, want an A or a B+. We’ll call this the interested group. On the other side are the slackers who will get little attention, pay little attention, do minimal work and who may or may not pass. We’ll call them the less-interested group. Have students self select just to see who’s where. Trust me, you will always have students in each group. Also, explain to the class that after a few classes you will have the ability to move people into the interested group, or out of it. But point out that the goal is to get everyone in the interested group, even though everyone will probably not get an A or a B+. Then, after class, have those who self selected into the slacker group stay behind. Talk to them about dropping the class. Talk to them about motivation. And have each one of them email you that evening concerning the reasons why they chose to be in the slacker group. When they email you, reply to them instantly countering their reasons.

Is this technique mean and demeaning? No, it’s motivational and honest. It can show students who you are and that you expect the same from them as they should from you. And if they don’t want to buy in, you will give them less attention.

I have done this and it does work. I had three students who were in the less-interested group, by choice, all semester. They did everything everyone else in the class did, although if there were teams, they were their own team. I tried as hard as possible to be fair and objective toward them. (And to get them to want to be in the other group.) In the end, one got a C. Two got D’s. At one point during the term, there had been eight in the less-interested group.

Obviously this technique is not for everyone, nor is it for every class. But, it’s worth considering…and maybe trying.

2. Problem. Students don’t ask any questions. Many of them don’t answer many questions. They don’t want interaction. They want talked at and pacified. Solution. Simple. Refuse to play their game. Call it a game. Tell them you’re going to play a different game. New rules. Bring a pair of dice. Number students one through 12, using that sequence even if there are more than 12. Then make a discussion point and roll the dice. If it comes up seven, then the student(s) numbered seven must respond. Continue this until the class gets the point. Keep it all professional. Use the dice as simply a tool to get responses.

Another suggestion is to take some time and watch a YouTube series called “BetweenTwo Ferns” with Zak Galifanakas or any interview done by Stephen Colbert. These two, in character, are masters of the quick response and asking questions totally out of the blue. It’s like asking Bill Gates if he likes apples, or asking Warren Buffet how good he is at playing Monopoly.   

Teachers need to be this way too about their subjects. Not comedians, but quick with lots of questions asked in different (sometimes weird) ways in fairly rapid succession to generate responses and key points for further discussion. There’s a certain rhythm to this exercise, and it does get a lot of students involved. It encourages thinking and analysis and the idea that there are different ways to frame questions and answers. And it shows that creativity doesn’t hurt.

3. A final problem. But I’m teaching the same stuff I’ve taught for years. Why can’t I keep teaching that way? Why can’t I teach like I was taught in grad school? He just stood in front of us and talked. (Hey, it was grad school and he was talking to motivated doctoral students. You simply can’t do that. I was a teacher for, gulp, 40 years. And if I had taught in 2012 the same way I taught in 1978 (My gosh, was Jimmy Carter really the President? And didn’t I vote for Gerald Ford?) I would have never gotten promoted, never gotten tenure, never lasted. Students are very different today. Technology is over the top. Attention spans are about as long as a television sitcom without commercials (22 minutes). You have to figure out new ways to do the old things. My quick solution. Read this blog, of course. But also, get a copy of the book “What the Best College Teachers Do” by  Ken Bain. (Preferably an e-copy.) Read it quickly. Take notes. Then adapt what it says to what you do. Yes, it’s the best teaching book written  this century. It will help you. Guaranteed. And one more thing. Even if you’ve taught Psychology 101 every semester since 2001, each time you teach it, it should be a little different. Don’t use the same notes in the same ways. Don’t use the same techniques. Change it around. Both the teaching techniques and the content presentation. Yea, you can.

Is it fun yet? It should be. Teachers have fun because we are always in college. We never graduate. We get to forever interact with young, optimistic, determined and curious kids. Never do it for the summers off or the long vacations, Do it to shape the future, change worlds, be creative, teach passionately, and amaze yourself and others with the breadth of your abilities.

Let’s end with a quotation about walking.

"The most telling thing about a person coming in for an interview is how they walk. Do they move with purpose, or are they meandering? If they meander, they can't work for my company. Period." --Vanessa Nornberg, founder of Metal Magic.

 

SATURDAY HOTCHPOTCHES

 

WHY NOT, REALLY?

Whenever I had a guest speaker in my classes, student’s always applauded the guest at the end of their presentation.

Didn’t really matter whether the guest speaker was good or great or mediocre or poor; they virtually always got applause. Often it was the same for students or student teams who made presentations.

Always applause, applause.

The basic dictionary definition of applause is: Approval or praise expressed by clapping.

And my question to my classes often was: Why everyone else and not me?

Yes, you’re saying, pretty damn egocentric. Yes, you’re saying, applause is not the way it has ever been done in college classrooms, at least not for the actual teacher of the class.

And yes, my response is, why can’t that concept begin to change, at least a little?

A change like that may sound mundane, and a bit ludicrous, but not if you think it through. We, as teachers spend time, often hours, preparing profound, instructive, passionate, interesting, practical and just plain good or great classroom sessions. And at the end of a good or great class, why should we not be applauded?

No really, why not?

Maybe not every class, but some; certainly the great ones (of which there should be many).  It’s kind of, yes, a little measure of quality and/or approval.

And no, I’m not talking about the concept of applause as a way for students to suck up to the teacher. “Hey, if we applaud, we’ll get a better grade.” No, I’m talking about the genuine showing of approval or praise.

Think about it. Talk to your classes about it. 

Haven’t you actually been to a movie where the audience applauded the rolling end credits simply because the film was great?

Now that’s silly.

 

MANAGER, YES; LEADER, ABSOLUTELY

 

Academic leadership can be attained in four aptitudes.                                                                   Management involves more steps, but is easier.

Managing is all about caring for and feeding and watching the numbers, being concerned about the functioning, knowing and implementing the procedures, doing the evaluations.

It’s the analytical part of the job. It’s the intellectual part. Supervisors have to be good managers to succeed.

But managing is far from being effective.

Supervisors are bosses. In academia, supervisors have faculty and staff under their purview. And successful managing is not the heart of the skills they need.

But it is heart you need if you truly want to lead.

Leading is four things.

 1. MBWA. This is the Hewlett Packard/Tom Peters concept called Managing By Walking Around. It involves the daily (yes, daily) stroll around the offices of some or all of those under you. Not some days; every day. It’s having informal lunches, informal coffee breaks, and spontaneous conversations with those who work for you. It’s saying good morning when they arrive. It’s knowing them, understanding them, recognizing that they have lives, concerns, passions, challenges, successes. Does it look like I’m checking on them, you ask? If you’ve built that sort of relationship, then you’ve got the whole boss thing all wrong.

 2. Leadership is them knowing that you have their back. It’s those under you knowing that you are looking out for their best interests. Doesn’t mean everything will go everyone’s way. It’s instilling the confidence in them that they can count on you. How do you do this? Simple. Tell them.

3. It’s sweating the details. Not always delegating the details. But knowing enough about the details of day-to-day things that you are able to be aware and connected about many of them. And seeing that they’re accomplished, or fighting like a pit bull to get them accomplished.

4. Finally, it’s about being the soul of your group. I’m subjectively defining soul here as a strong positive person of intense sensitivity and emotional fervor. You are the core, the encouraging person, the one with an obvious sense of humor, a person who starts even a bad day with an upbeat let’s-move-forward attitude. When was the last time you shared a quotation, a funny story, a YouTube video or a heartfelt accolade? When did you last get your employees a book because you thought it would help them or amuse them? Or even a coffee mug that was just cool?

Most people can be managers without much thought or without much training. Few can be leaders without a lot of thought and conscience.

But every minute of leadership is worth hours of management.

“Great groups need to know that the person at the top will fight like a tiger for them.” --Warren G. Bennis