Higher Education Observer

I am now involved in a faculty learning community (first one) on TiLT. We had our first meeting today, with a great discussion between a business professor, an education professor, a mathematician, two  literature teachers, a biological psychologist, an instructional designer, and me--not sure how to define myself, mostly communication, some English, some social science, and mostly administrator. We talked about our first thoughts, to some extent skeptical, about TiLT, and where we hoped to take this.  I'm excited about it, because I'll be teaching a freshman public speaking class later this semester and that is probably where TiLT is most needed. Our misgivings were sort of around "hand-holding" and not letting the students experience complexity, ambiguity, and ill-defined problems, to "muck around" in an intellectual task. That's valid, but not entirely what TiLT is against. It's against vagueness, purposelessness (perceived), and detachment fr...

Reflection is something that hovers around experiential learning and high impact practices. Eyler, a scholar of service-learning, stated, “ there is reason to believe that reflection gets rather short shrift in typical service-learning experiences” (2002, p. 520). Either its origins and theorists are not understood, or its processes are not really applied, or we ask students to reflect in a way that is superficial or simply “evidentiary”, and what I therefore call “rhetorical.” I would like to explore these three points. My ultimate goal is to create a portable taxonomy of reflection, whether in-action or after-the-fact, that students can be taught. In reaching that goal, I want to make an argument that in our assignment of “reflective papers” we are not so much encouraging or guaranteeing reflection from students (who are not given to reflection naturally) as we are saying, “Prove to me you reflected in a way that I as the instructor am satisfied with your structure, argument, s...

Sometimes I just use this blog for reposting articles I find interesting. As I am reading Bored and Brilliant right now, just read Mary Ann Wolf's book on reading, and plan to read Sherry Turkle soon, I deeply "into" the digital media's effects on learning, brain processing, reading, and overall, human thriving. Here's just one rant, reflection, insight from a college professor   https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/12/theyre-abysmal-students-are-cell-phones-destroying-the-college-classroom/?utm_source=pocket-newtab This is reality, so what do we do? Expect more. Don't give up. Resist. It's not futile.