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. 

This rather simplistic article/listicle may have some wisdom: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/five-steps-to-become-a-better-writer?utm_source=pocket-newtab As obvious as it sounds, one cannot write better unless one writes A LOT. Too many people want to write the minimal amount. It is assumed that academics (or those who teach in college--not always exactly the same group) do write a great deal, publish a great deal, etc. Actually, most college instructors and professors don't write that much. We publish either because we have to to keep our positions; our positions are primarily about publishing; or we've found a way or angle that ensures we can get published.  Sometimes it's what the trends are, sometimes it's particular personal strengths. Getting an article or book chapter published is darned hard work, and most of us avoid it if we can. Most colleges are teaching institutions and don't expect the publishing to a high degree. Why do I say that? Because ...

I use this blog to share, mostly. Here's a neat article about the power of liberal arts in higher education.   https://gen.medium.com/my-semester-with-the-snowflakes-888285f0e662? I just taught a class to freshmen that was about the value of liberal arts. I'm sort of realizing that many of the other things that get taught in college are probably learnable on the job, whereas the liberal arts (arts and hard sciences) are not and require dedicated, focused time (assuming these subjects are taught correctly by people who know what they are doing). There are exceptions--some business courses--but we try to teach "people skills" in a vacuum. How does one teach business ethics without the liberal arts and history and other big subjects?

Reflection is the subject of my next couple of presentations, so here are my recent jottings. Hopefully a reader can make some sense of them;however, the whole point of this post is that reflection can follow a structure but will not necessarily create a structured record. The reflection record will need to be reshaped to be palatable for a "judge" or "critic" or "instructor." Reflection tends to be framed negatively. If we dig too deep we will only find bad stuff; if we reflect on teaching practice, we will focus on what failed rather than succeeded. Why? Assessment focuses on finding the nonlearners and changing to get more learners, but it ignores that most of the students did learn, so why were there successes? Leads to burnout. Boud & Walker’s idea of validation not well developed but relevant. It is most close to critical thinking—testing it against other knowledge, theories, internal consistency, other data (other learner’s data) Ref...

Maryanne Wolf: Reader Come Home - about how digital reading is changing our brains. I think this is extremely important in something I do, open educational resources, which are almost completely digital and which we are assuming are experienced by students just like traditional physical textbooks, only without the costs. They are not. I have a dog in this fight, having authored a successful OER ( http://www.exploringpublicspeaking.com ) Angela Duckworth: Grit  - about her extensive work on the "grit scale." I haven't quite figured out why this is so ground-breaking except that she has a lot of her primary research behind it. I was annoyed by her example of all these top-tier successful people. One can be successful without going to the Naval Academy, winning political races, or being awarded the Nobel Prize.  Ellen Langer: Mindfulness - not about meditation, but critical thinking and reflection. I liked it much better than I thought I was and need to revisit it. C...