Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
(Amy Kinch) You know, I think we're going to get started,
since we have such a small amount of time today
and I know it's going to be an interesting conversation,
so I know we'll have a few more people come in.
but, um, I’m Amy Kinch, I direct the Faculty Development Office,
and I wanted to thank you guys all for coming today,
I'm really excited about this topic
and I really want to thank our presenters:
Doug Dalenford, Dalen--Dalenberg?
(Doug Dalenburg) Dalenburg. Yeah.
(Amy Kinch) [chuckless] And Rafael Chacon.
Um, for taking the time to prepare for this and speak to us.
I'm just gonna pass around a sign in sheet,
if you don't mind just checking by your name or adding your name if you didn't RSVP.
Um, and there's evaluations, um, that you can hand in to me
at the end of the session
so feel free to get more food, too, throughout the event.
thanks again guys!
(Doug Dalenburg) Yep.
(Doug Dalenburg) So, so you guys have a chance to eat,
I'm going to talk for a few minutes and Rafael's going to talk for a few minutes
Um... First, I'm here for the same reason you're here.
I'm hoping Rafael will tell us some secrets
[laughter]
And there's free lunch, so we're good, mkay?
I had six points
and I’m just going to write them up there just to pace myself.
You don't need to write them down, they're just to help me.
Um, six points that I wanted to just briefly, briefly address,
tell you a story about a couple of them.
The first one, when thinking about teaching,
is 'your mileage may vary.'
No, it will vary.
What I mean by that, um, is twofold.
I'm gonna dr-- talk about some points.
These aren't research based.
These, some of them I have some research connected with them
but most of them are just my impressions.
I thought about doing an academic,
I could look at the research; I'm not going to do that.
I'm going to talk about my impressions. Okay?
Secondly, what works for you might not work for me. And vice versa.
at another institution I taught at there was a finance professor,
he's really good and he was teaching risk
and he gave students a series of quizzes.
And the first question on every quiz,
they got to make a choice for how much
the quiz cost, uh, was worth in their grade.
They were looking at risk and uncertainty.
I haven't ever figured out
how to work that into my stuff
but he took the topic he was doing
and put it right on the quiz and they had to live it.
My second point...
Less is more.
Um, this is especially true for new faculty, I think.
Uh, when I was new I tried to jam so much into each lecture.
And I really do think cutting back, doing less, is worthwhile.
There is a book by Robert Boice that I still read from time to time.
Advice for New Faculty Members.
The whole theme of the book is 'less is more.'
I don't agree, and you may not agree, with everything in here.
Dan Pletcher hated the part about research
where it says you’ve got to write a little bit everyday.
He was a big block person.
For teaching for new faculty it says you put too much time into your teaching.
Ooh, that kind of rubs me the wrong way but I see some truth in it.
So, it is just a resource that you can think about.
So less is more.
Problem with my less is more here,
this is item two and I said there's six, uh oh.
I'm shooting myself in the foot right there.
Number three.
Beg, borrow, and steal!
We've got all these great faculty on campus!
Go watch them!
Go see what they do!
In our department for the longest time, it keeps evolving, we had to go watch each other.
It's kind of changed now.
Now we have to watch the junior— senior people watch the junior people.
But I’ve done that a lot, and I’ve got some advice for you.
There's four potential problems that you need to be aware of if you're going to do this.
I have gone and I've seen everyone in my department.
I've seen Garon Smith in Chemistry, I've seen Wayne Freimund in Forestry,
I've seen Tobin now in History.
Um, so... it really helps me, but I’ve got to give you four caveats or warnings.
First, you really need to ask permission.
Just showing up is not a great idea. [laughter]
Sorry Tobin I didn't really mean to throw you there, but –
Um...
in our department there's supposed to be surprise for evaluation,
but you've got to find out if they're doing a test that day.
You walk into a test you're not going to get a good evaluation.
Secondly, you're faced with this problem,
if you go, the person is going to expect feedback.
I have a hard time giving feedback on their teaching.
When I'm watching Tobin teach I’m thinking
"ooo would that work for me,
Oh man he did that. Oh, oh but I can't really do that."
or "oh, I could borrow that"
I'm not really good at telling Tobin how to do it
I'm much better at; "does this work for me?"
What can I steal?
I also think it's a little easier
if you do it within your discipline,
although, it's been healthy to go outside the discipline.
Garon Smith. I've never figured out how to blow anything up in my class and connect it.
But, you know, those possibilities come to mind because we have that opportunity.
Um, another problem is what works.
You’ve got to decide, what is going to work for you?
Which of these techniques can you transfer?
So there are things other people do
that aren't your strong suit and vice versa.
And finally, an important caution, cause I'm still scarred by this.
Early in my career here a senior faculty member came to my class and he fell asleep.
(audience) Aw [laughter]
Do not fall asleep. Mkay?
Because I am still scarred.
Fourth.
There's a number of things we take for granted
that I don't think we should.
And we could generate a long list here, but there's two in particular I want to address.
Things that we take for granted.
One is how to.
How to do some things.
We expect students-- “oh I'm sure they know”.
I got to grad school and discovered I didn't know how to read a journal article.
Do you talk to your students about how to read the textbook?
How to read a journal article? How to read a primary source?
All of us read those differently.
We adjust our reading speed.
What happens when you face a difficult passage?
And we think, "well, students will know this."
But they don't necessarily.
Not all students are coming in with the same preparation, background, skills...
Just for fun, I'm reading
Plan of Attack by Bob Woodword.
On page seven, it talks about, um, the director of operations for General Frank
and he carries around a notebook.
I've started carrying around a notebook for several years now
where when I go to a meeting I take notes. Kay?
General Frank's director of operation
had this big, bound black vime where he takes notes from the meeting
and they called it “Book of Death” because there were so many things
he had to do to get ready for the war.
I learned that by watching my brother in-law
carry around a black bound notebook to all these meetings he had to go to,
he's a big wig in a non-profit.
And he has a record of what he does.
Nobody ever taught me that,
I wish somebody in grad school had taught me lots of different things
and I didn't get that.
Maybe it's just because I'm older and I've forgotten.
The other thing we take for granted is the why.
When the administration imposes something on us, what do we do?
We scream.
We impose things on students all the time,
without telling them why we are doing it.
So at John Carroll University where I taught for a few years,
there was a, uh, the Jesuit Brothers still taught
and there was a Jesuit Brother who taught
and when the bell rang he walked over and locked the door.
You could not come in late to his class.
I go “oh students must hate that.”
But I talked to students and they said no he had good reasons.
He laid it out the first day. He said, “here's why I do this”
and they were very accepting of it.
Another example,
I used to… for homework…
I used to say, "no late homework.'
And then i softened, and I said, 'okay, late homework is penalized.'
And with more and more students working part time
until things have changed over time,
late homework becomes an issue.
And I thought about it, and now I lay it out to them.
Alright, your homework is late when it starts to impose a cost on me.
It imposes a cost on me
as soon as i finish grading everyone else’s
and have recorded them.
Once I've-- once you've handed it in after that, you've imposed a cost on me,
Notice I'm sneaking in some economics?
[laughter]
And I'm saying, then, I have to find my key, I have to turn on my computer,
I hate grading, you're going to make me grade one more,
there's a psychological cost.
That's when I start deducting.
And... They accept that, oh there's why.
So, I do think it's important that we do give them the logic behind our actions.
Fifth is, I think, probably the most important one in my mind, although, some may argue for six.
Five is 'perspective and empathy.'
Teaching is really about a relationship.
And we need to build a relationship with the students
so we can see things from their perspective and have empathy for them.
And when I get away from that, my teaching goes downhill.
I have empirical evidence,
I... pay careful attention to my teaching evaluations
and I know that sort of feedback I get from other sources,
I've been... I've had two periods where I've been an outstanding teacher.
One was when I was a graduate student.
I was going to class and teaching class. I had an overlap in my--
and I would go to class and I'd say, "oh boy that was a p-- that didn't work"
and then I’d go teach class and I could put those things in...
The second period is when my kids were in college.
They were college age. I can talk to them
and I get their perspective; empathy.
It’s much easier for me.
So I really want to stress that.
And finally the last one.
Performance versus process.
I told my older boy I was doing this, "The Performance of Teaching."
He said, "Dad you're really boring"
[laughter]
And he's right, um, I am. I teach economics. I am really boring.
I'm very linear, and students like that I'm organized, but I really like teaching.
But I need to distinguish, in my mind-- it's like sports or music.
so, I like to play tennis,
I’ve played a lot of tennis in my life.
I have a son who plays the trombone, and we've had this discussion.
How do you get into flow?
That state where you're just really into it, time stops.
And for me in tennis, there's a clear distinction.
When I'm playing to try to win I will not find flow.
When I’m playing for the feeling of hitting a ball, I find flow.
My son talks about performing,
if he's performing in front of people and he's performing the music, he says “no flow”.
When he's feeling the music, oh, he gets that flow.
So there's that difference.
Performance is one way. Process is back and forth.
Process doesn't have to be verbal necessarily.
I'm looking at students, I’m trying to read them, they're reading me,
usually there's some conversation or dialogue going on as well.
So, when we labeled this "The Performance of Teaching,"
there's multiple meanings for performance.
If we think of it as performing,
I think we shoot ourselves in the foot.
That's too one-way.
We want to think of it as process.
So those are my –
I--
I broke less is more, kay?
And I’m not sure I have your perspective, but we'll work on that during the discussion.
(Rafael Chacon) Great! Thank you!
Um, I have a couple of bullet points here, too.
and I-- I passed the sheet around and, by the way, I didn't make enough copies for the group,
so, uh, Amy has very kindly offered to, uh, make this document available to you,
so just let her know if you want a copy
and she'll email it to you.
Um, and-- and Doug thank you
and, you know, we… we didn't, um, we didn't confer before
before, um, making plans here
so, uh, so it's-- it'll be interesting to see how much we overlap in our points.
And I think there are some, some, uh, some places where we do, in fact cross over,
and then a couple of variations and maybe even disagreements,
so that's part of the lesson here.
Um, and I have to say, this is a very strange forum.
This reminds me a lot of a previous, uh, president who used to meet with our faculty annually
and would provide lunch and then would just watch us eat the whole time.
[laughter]
Never touched a drop of food.
I didn't provide the lunch so I guess I'm not like the president,
Anyway, no, your points are all wonderful
and I-- I wish i didn't have to follow them up
because there's a nice, concise completeness to what you've delivered.
But, uh, so let's go through some of the-- some of the ideas that I have on this list.
And we've been teaching, I guess, for about the same amount of years right?
Twenty something years.
Yeah, so um, so this is kind of, it's nice.
this is the first time I’ve ever been asked to, sort of,
think about teaching in a retrospective way and maybe give some advice,
although I--- I suspect that here it's a little like preaching to the choir.
Uh, either you're already a good teacher, or want to be better,
or are a young teacher and, you know, building a craft here.
So, uh, so just, um, trying to see what other people have to say about what it means
to teach for a for a few... a few years.
So I-- I think of teaching as an art.
And I think of it as, um, that more like the, uh...
And actually, the title of this is interesting.
I mean you just finished talking about performance
and I think of it as both process and performance
because there is an aspect of teaching that, to me, feels like delivering a finished product to—
to students and that is--- that has always held true—
uh, over the last two decades, for me. So, there is uh there is a part of this
that feels very much like constructing a work of art
and then demonstrating that or delivering that—
that-- that-- that work of art.
But I think, in order to get there, we have to recognize that it's also a discipline.
So I think of it as, you have to be constant in...
and patient, and mostly with yourself.
I mean, we obviously have to develop patience with our students
because they're going to come and go
and they're going to come with all kinds of skills or lack of skills,
and they're constantly changing as— as a group, as a unit,
but I think we have to maintain a certain amount of persistence and,
and patience in-- in this process.
And that leads me to the second point
which is, uh, that developing a sense of self-awareness as… as teachers,
we’re constantly trying,
we’re supposed to be grading them, tracking them in their progress.
And yet, I think it-- one of the one of the best parts about teaching
is that it's a self-reflective process as well, and if it's done right,
you are constantly tracking yourself and grading yourself,
and I tend to do that after each lecture,
I mean I-- I literally walk out of the room and I say,
“Okay they’re here, how was I bringing them this little further along?”
or “how-- how...”
or “that was a complete fiasco and I know it was a fiasco.
Let’s see if next time I meet with them I can repair that or or do better."
So you have to develop a sense of awareness in relationship to your own teaching
and that’s part of the process.
It’s not just simply tracking them
but it’s tracking your own... your own progress in this…
Uh, change is inevitable
and that’s... that’s the third point,
and that is that I think that...
it’s not just that the student body is changing and evolving because of whatever preparation
or lack of preparation they’re bringing to you.
Uh, it’s that the entire field of education is in flux.
I mean, we hear this constantly, all the time.
Major changes are happening as we speak
and I’m not, I don’t have the data to prove that,
but I think it’s very much in the air and in the culture that we know
that education is changing
and it’s really, to me,
the most interesting area where it’s changing
is not so much at the at the university level
because we tend to be a lot more conservative in making change,
effecting change in our setting in our context,
it’s happening in K through 12.
And so I, you know, I uh make a point
of looking at what’s happening down there and attending conferences
where I have contacts with K through 12 teachers, high school teachers,
because that’s really were it’s pretty dynamic.
And this is, um, this is specific to my field,
what’s happening in arts education,
but I’m sure in every one of your fields
there is somebody out there writing...
Actually, there’s probably a lot of people writing about how your subjects are being taught.
And if we are, in fact, responsible to our-- to our disciplines,
to understanding where the research is in our disciplines,
we’re also responsible to where the pedagogy is in our fields.
How is your subject being taught today?
What are the best strategies, best practices out there?
And I do think that that’s-- that’s a responsibility,
it’s not something that we can let go
I think we’re only good teachers if we are able to meet the students where they are,
and to meet them, especially when they come to us from different, uh, educational settings.
Um, I think that the most dynamic changes in education
are happening in K through 12.
At the university level,
I think the most dynamic thing that’s happening
is that the way that we teach is being altered by media.
It’s the tail wagging the dog.
And so, increasingly I’ve found that,
that I have to be responsive to that, I mean, when I started teaching art history,
I was teaching with brittle yellow notes from graduate school
and thirty five millimeter slides!
My teaching is nothing like that any longer.
And it’s not because I wanted that or because I foresaw this huge change,
but the change is here.
People expect the PowerPoint presentation,
or they expect to have internet access in the classroom all the time,
I mean, I’m using Google Maps today more than ever!
To take, literally, take students to these places visually,
at least, visually take them.
So, um, so I think we have to be…
we have to embrace this change
rather than resisting it
and I think that, actually, that will make us better teachers as a result.
Don’t hesitate to ask, this is the beg, borrow, and steal portion of Doug's presentation.
Modeling is still the best, in my opinion,
is still the best, uh, of learning how to teach and the best way of teaching.
You model for them
and you model your teaching on your best experiences in-- in academics,
I constantly, I have my entire, not my entire graduate faculty,
I’ve blocked some of those really bad experiences.
[laughter]
But I have them as characters who live inside of me
and they live inside of my lectures, inside of my presentations
and, uh, and I honestly feel a kind of, you know,
psychic debt to these people.
Um, and it’s very much a part of the way that I teach
I look around at what my colleagues do and I, I use your strategies all the time.
I test the waters, and I fail miserably at it, and then I attribute it to them.
[laughter]
But you try and,
and ultimately, you also have to give yourself credit that
that none of us will become a perfect image of our best professors.
You will create your own best practices, and your own style,
and your own way of of educating the young.
And so, uh, give yourself some credit for that particular, you know,
make up of constellation of things
that you bring to the classroom.
Okay. My fifth point is, break it up.
We tend to be habitual in what we do
because, you know, we fall into these schedules, we have been trained to be habitual,
and to be constant, and to be fair and even from lecture to lecture to lecture,
and from student, to student, to student.
And yet, the way students learn out there today
has nothing to do with constancy and regularity.
And so, I think one of the big lessons
of teaching my subject over the last, uh, two decades plus
is that I’m constantly trying to shift gears and…
One, to keep things interesting and lively for myself,
but also recognizing that they don’t want to be talked to in this kind of hierarchical way.
The way that I was talked to and the way that I was educated.
And that they don’t want to sit there through a lecture
that is the same presentational mode time after time after time after time…
In fact, they almost expect change.
And I think that the most effective experiences that I’ve had is when I’ve, like,
shaken myself out of my own regular... out of my need for consistency.
And, uh, forced myself
and, uh,
to try something new, to shake things up.
To flip the the tables, so to speak.
Put them in teaching situations, put them in situations where they teach each other,
rather than where they expect me to do all the, uh, all the lecturing.
Uh, so I think of creative chaos in the classroom
as a positive thing, not a negative thing.
And finally, the last point is, when you wrote--
when you were writing perspective up there I thought you were going to put perspiration.
[laughter]
Because for me that’s...
performance is about, ultimately it’s about endurance.
And it is very much an embodied thing.
I mean, we don’t think about this because we’re academics, right?
But it is about maintaining stamina through a performance.
And uh, I’m glad there’s a person from theatre here because we can talk about this,
that we actually have to perform.
We have to be embodied.
And if we’re here for the long haul than this stuff better be interesting to us.
We better be comfortable in our bodies and in our forum.
So, um, so my philosophy has always been
if it isn’t fun I’m going to quit.
So try to make it fun for yourself first of all, above all, and it’ll be fantastic for your students.
Endases Dallas.
Questions?
Comments?
(Doug) Complaints?
(Rafael): Disagreements?
(male crowd member) Thanks to both of you for a really engaging presentation
and for the thought you brought to the room.
My question is about failiure.
You both obliquely refer to a time that it didn’t go well.
Can you be more specific?
What did you learn particularly from these failures?
if you're... you don't have to.
[laughter]
Well, I’ll give you a quick example.
I woke up this morning, laying in bed,
I was worrying about two things.
This presentation
And tomorrow in class I need--
I’m giving a lecture on something called two stage least squares.
It’s gone poorly in the past
[light laughter]
And I’m trying to figure out how to fix it
And I’m even a little more worried
because I realized, “Oh, maybe I didn’t set it up right.”
“Maybe I there not quite ready for it.”
So, it’s been cooking away in my brain.
"How am I going to go about attacking this?"
And I think you’re right, that’s how.
How failure affects me is, that’s what I woke up thinking about
because I’ve had this crash and burn before.
Um, I don’t have an answer for how I fix that.
Except, I do know, the same strategy as in sports, if it doesn't work, you change it, right?
Um, you don’t stick with a losing strategy.
So I’m trying to come up with--
(Rafael) Just don’t change the suit at the last minute though!
[chuckles]
(Doug): True. True.
And I-- I’ve got things to fall back on but I’m trying to think, "what --"
"What can I do? How can I make them see it differently?"
I think, um, to use pop psychology here, it-- it…
Failure is a part of the process.
And it happens all the time, I mean, I don’t think I, uh, I’ve ever had a semester
where every class has been sterling
and I walked out of there feeling like, “Wow I’m really at the top of my game.”
I mean I-- every class... every week!
at the end of the week, I’m thinking “Oh god that was a disaster”
“Oh man that really failed”
And one thing that I can tell you is that I have so many experiences
where something works with one class;
the next year, this perfect pedagogic paradigm fails!
And I’m like, “What happened here?”
Is it me? Is it my, you know, my mental state at this time?
Or is it this particular group of students?
Or is there something about the material or the way it’s been presented?
So it’s-- there is a kind of unpredictable nature to this,
and it...
I think, what I try to do is discard the, the idea that perfection is the goal.
Is that every lecture, every-- every meeting
is going to be absolutely ideal and perfect
and every student will be at a hundred percent.
Um, and if you... if you accept that,
then failure then is-- is not only possible, but probable.
And--and then you learn to-- you learn to work with it
and, you know, you refine your projects. You refine your strategies, and you change them.
Uh, I also think for me, Tobin, having a thick skin is important.
So in class, uh, I had a class last week. Seniors.
Twenty five seniors. And we had some time at the end.
So I said, "What are the characteristics of a good teacher?"
And I’ll share their list with you if you want,
but one of them said,
“Well, let me give you an example, from today, of what you screwed up.”
[laughter]
And I had them do a discussion.
He said, “You gave us no guidelines for the discussion.
You had us pair into groups, or, get into small groups.
You gave us no guidelines. I hate that.”
They’re absolutely right.
When I was a new faculty, I would have been crushed.
But now, we’ve failed so many times, "oh, I’ll take that into account!"
Yeah I can fix that. That’s something I can do better about.
(Rafael) Doug, you know, it seems like you have
this great, uh, ability to-- to engage your students about your performance, about your teaching
and I think that we often--
and I’m glad you mentioned evaluations,
because I think in my early years of teaching I waited to find out how I was doing
at the end of the semester when those evaluations came in.
And... devastating.
I mean consistently I would have, like, you know, breakdowns about these evaluations.
Last semester I…
I teach an introductory survey class. It has a hundred and sixty students in it.
I usually have a graduate TA assistant in that class
and we work really *** every piece of this course
because it’s a numbers game.
It’s managing a lot of information with a lot of new, mostly freshman students.
That... I feel like that class is so well honed.
And then, to get at the end of the semester evaluations that are just…
the bottom of the.. of the tank…
You know, I would normally freak out about that.
I mean, in my early years of teaching,
that would have-- that would have been the end of it, you know?
Um, instead what I try to do
is we try to build an evaluation all the way along the course
so that the students are, in fact,
used to giving feedback and you're used to receiving it.
So, building the thick skin.
And so, at the end when those devastating results come in you're not surprised!
No, when they come in, you understand why they’re there.
and I-- you know, I had to-- I remember distinctly,
three or four years after coming here to teach,
having to, kind of, re-assess my relationship to the evaluation process.
And I remember thinking, “God I hate this god I hate this god I hate…”
“I need these good evaluations today I need that promotion and I need that merit,”
or whatever.
And I remember thinking, "you know what,
I… I’m thinking about these things in the wrong way.
This should be an opportunity to get that feedback.
But if it comes cold at the end of the semester, it’s a real problem.
But if it’s a part of a process,
a true evaluative process, that’s happening throughout the semester,
then those results at the end should not be a surprise to you.
And, uh, so I think of evaluations as real opportunities, and I tell them.
I said, “When you do these evaluations, I’m going to leave the room now,
but remember that this is…
you're doing this for the benefit of next year’s class.
You’re doing this to benefit for my practice here.”
And um... You know,
I still get terrible evaluations.
In some classes. Some contexts.
But they don’t... they’re not as...
They don’t have the sting that they often had
and they mu-- more of an efficacious possibility
because I see them as chances to, uh, to improve the teaching.
(Doug Dalenburg): And I say that explicitly. I say,
"A: I will not look at the evaluations till after I’ve turned in the grades.
And B: "I will read every single evaluation."
And I do.
It’s painful every term, but I sit down with my evaluations,
I get out a piece of paper,
and I write down comments, and then I file them with my class.
and before I teach that class again,
I read through those comments.
It is really painful isn’t it? To sit down...
But I have those records.
And I can see how things sort of change over time, because I keep them.
But it’s a hard thing to do to read your, of course, evaluations,
but I tell them,
in addition to those two things I say, “I’m using this to improve my teaching.
I can’t see it from your perspective. I need this feedback.”
And they’re honest about it.
snd they’ll give me really good comments.
Really useful things.
(female audience member) I have a question about, um, less is more
and you and I have had these discussions,
(Doug Dalenburg) Yes
I’m relatively new to teaching and it’s the thing I struggle with the most.
Um, I teach at the law school,
and my instinct, of course,
is I want to teach them everything is all great and fascinating, right?
But I also find it’s the hardest thing to get feedback on
because the students don’t know the whole depth versus, you know, width
and um you know you can have a colleague come visit you,
but they don’t know either,
unless they’re teaching exactly what you're teaching,
which they’re not, we're a small faculty.
And other than trial and error,
is there some some-- some method that you’ve developed,
particularly when you’re doing a new class prep?
If I’m doing it the second time around, um,
I, I think I’ve gotten to where I’m pruning and pruning,
but this semester I’m doing a new class
and I’m already at that place where I can’t believe I asked them to read all that.
I really can’t!
[laughter]
So.. I, you know, I’ll start classes by, you know, giving them a lot of framework,
giving them allot of background, but I don’t—
is there any other way to do this but trial and error?
You’re shaking your head!
(Doug) Who’s going to bail us out up here? what do you guys think?
(male audience member): I think sometimes you ask, “Are there essential questions?”
“What the essential questions for this course?”
(female audience member): It’s all!
[laughter]
(female audience member) Yeah. Okay
(male audience member) And within that context how then do I…
Melt down, um, what I have.
You know, I’ve taught before where I’ve gone a mile wide and an inch deep
and I think you do that because well, you don’t feel real comfortable with your teaching.
So, one way to avoid that is to hide behind the content.
You are the content expert so hide behind it, you know?
But I think if you try to develop five or six essential questions for the course
and then ask yourself when you ask students to do something,
“how’s that related to the essential questions?”
“Is it-- is it really critical that they know this in order to...
to perform under these essential concepts?”
It’s an idea, I mean, it has worked for me.
It’s hard though.
(female audience member) Can I ask, do you publish that in your syllabi?
Do you say, “Here's-- here are my essential questions.”
And show them to students?
(male audience member) Yeah I’ve done that before, but not typically.
I mean, they’re my... They’re my essential questions.
What...
What they are are the objectives for the course, truthfully.
(female audience member) Right.
(male audience member) I mean there’s a gap, they are.
but I think, for that, you have to think carefully over "what are the objectives for this course?"
And that takes a lot of time to really, really think about those.
(Rafael Chacon) And it’s the course but it’s every single lecture.
It’s every single contact.
You have-- you’re...
You know, coming out of graduate school
you know the process of distillation, synthesizing.
You know what the important peaks are and the important points are.
And so I think that…
We all know that--
that students are expected to know a lot more and a lot more broadly than we ever were.
Uh, that’s just-- that’s just a reality.
They’re infor…
There is so much information that-- that is expected of them today.
The question is, how?
They obviously don’t have the skills to synthesize that
and to distill what is, in fact, important.
That’s our responsibility.
So I think you you have to pare down; reduce.
And, but that doesn’t let us off the hook.
I mean, we still have to know what’s behind this information,
because inevitably, there’s going to be the one student
who’s going to ask that question that will need the follow-up
or that--
that project is going to demand that--
that expertise and knowledge that, you know, the depth.
But I think that it is it is something you, uh, that you learn to do over and over time um…
Synthesizing, paring down; distilling…
I mean those are the terms that I tend to think about
when I, uh, when I prepare new lectures, when I prepare new courses.
(female audience member #2) I think there is also the difference now
in terms of the content of...
Because the way we were taught
we were expected to be able to name a...
recognize it, have a date, like in a lot of art history classes.
And you’re expected to know hundreds of paintings, recognize it.
The first saw write down the date along with the author and so on?
As of now I find that that is less and less important
because the students now have access to so much more information immediately
and I find myself thinking of, "they don’t really need to know."
'They need to be able to understand the material when they find it and know where to find it."
But knowing immediately, memorizing all of that, not important.
(Rafael Chacon) And how to contextualize it.
(female audience member) Yeah, it’s not important.
If they can understand it by the time they get there, that is what is important.
So I’m trying different things right now
because I realize giving them all that content doesn’t matter anymore.
They can find it in five seconds on Google.
(Doug) So, Alysha had a question that made me think of something
and I don’t know the answer to this, but I want to get your opinion.
You asked about how students have changed over time.
Because I’ve been teaching close to thirty years, and we talked about part time work.
And...
I see students dealing with more mental health issues today than in the past.
But I didn’t know--
Am I just more sensitized to that or is that an increased problem?
(female audience member) There’s more awareness maybe?
(Doug) It might be there’s more awareness.
It might be my own... you know...
things that I’ve been through make me more sensitive to it.
But I’m also wondering...
High school kids, the pressure on high school kids is going way up.
and I’m wondering if that’s contributing as well.
But I don’t know the answer.
I just wondered if any of you had a sense.
Was it always there and I was missing it, you think?
It could very well be.
(female audience member #2) I think helping individuals
be learners and critical thinkers but respectful at the same time
for diverse perspectives is one of the challenges
that I think all human beings, and that we as faculty, grapple with in our classes.
it’s easy to have a class where everybody nods their head, you know,
"Of course I agree with you!"
You know, 'your perspective is with mine and we’re all happy.'
But having to create those environments
where the risk taker is willing to ask a question that’s uncomfortable or awkward,
an alternative point of view which may or may not be that individual's,
they just want to raise it to-- to see how we as faculty and as students,
as a community of learners,
actually respond to those difficult critical questions.
And I think that’s one of the challenges facing
all of us as human beings and as educators today.
It’s very easy to be respectful when I already agree with you.
It’s harder to really listen with an open mind and an open heart.
To engage in that authentic human-to-human exploration in our democracy.
(Rafael) Yeah, we, I-- I had in my notes that--
that one of the big shifts in education is from hierarchical to communitarian models
and I think that’s precisely what I’m talking about,
that it used to--
when we used to assume that our po— our student population, was homogenous;
came from the same ethnic group, they came from the same homogenous—
from the same uh socioeconomic class, the same level of education.
When-- when those were givens, then hierarchical models could work
because you’d essentially give the same information to them delivered in the same way,
and the results then-- then-- then the grading was easy.
But today we’re-- where we’re talking about
a much more shared or communitarian model of education,
where you have to pay attention to particular--
the particularities, of the audience and the individual, um, make-up of that audience,
it's a little bit harder to do it.
It puts-- it puts us, in some ways, in a— in a more difficult situation, but…
Sensitivity, awareness of that, is, I think, the name of the game.
I’m not so sure I mean I-- I have a kind of internal battle about this
because I want to, on one hand, maintain standards
and I want to say that the standards that I’m using today
are the same standards I used 21 years ago when I started teaching.
But I know that’s not true.
I mean, I know that things have changed because the student body has changed.
In my opinion, substantially.
So
(female audience member) Can you list one example of how it has changed since then?
(Rafael) The obvious example that comes to mind is, um, writing abilities.
Abilities to express themselves through writing…
I grew up in a different universe when it comes to writing
than-- than most of my students today.
I mean,they grow up in a-- in a universe where everything is abbreviated,
everything is short hand.
Everything is in snippets of thoughts and ideas rather than full on essays and paragraphs and...
I mean my way of-- the way I was educated
is different from the way that they are being educated
because the media around them has shifted.
Um and I…
There is no going back by the way, there’s no returning to that kind of archaic world.
It’s, um, it’s impossible now.
But I think that-- that there are beauties and elegant properties to that way of learning
that we can instill in our students today and need to be preserved today.
Certain values that shouldn’t be discarded,
just because the student is different and the media they have access to is different.
So, um,
I try to work with those things as best I can
and still be responsive to the fact that students are learning in different ways today.
(Doug): And that gets me a chance to--
I brought this as a visual aide too,
Engaging Ideas by Being.
Which talks about integrating writing, and critical thinking, and active learning
across the curriculum.
I read it over winter break.
It’s got some fascinating ideas in it.
Um, I liked it very much.
And Beverly, you would have some insight into this.
One of the arguments it made was that,
especially for non-English people,
we tend to circle all the grammatical errors and...
grammar's not the first order problem. Ideas are.
And I’ve got to remember, “Ah the grammar...
They're still struggling with getting the ideas in order.
The grammar comes after that.”
Right?
(Beverly) Exactly.
(Doug) And for many of us outside of English that's...
It’s not where we naturally go.
It’s not the way, if you’re older,
we were taught either, right?
(Beverly) Right.
But that is the way we should approach it, I feel like.
I-- I’ve sort of turned the page on that,
I’m not going to be marking all the grammatical errors.
Amy had a session, uh, was it last fall?
Where you had students talking about writing and feedback?
Maybe it was last year.
That got me thinking along those lines
and this has pushed me further
(Amy) I’m glad you remembered that session, I thought...
That was focusing on revising as well.
(Doug) Right. Mhm.
(Amy) I think that’s--
That’s one of the harder things to teach in communication is revising.
You know, get something on paper or on the screen before it evaporates.
Shape the ideas; organize them
make sure you remember your purpose, and your audience, and your genre, the form.
And then work on the…
mechanics, the spelling and so forth.
Which of course should be correct but…
Otherwise they detract from the message.
But I-- I-- I’m interested in the concept of whether students are less proficient writers
or whether they’re growing up writing profusely.
They just don’t have the same conventions of academic writing that, in the past,
some students were raised on.
And that, therefore, they came to college, as opposed to not coming to college at all.
Because, from the early years of elementary school,
and hank you for complimenting the K through 12 teachers, really appreciate that,
because I think more and more people are reading and writing because of technology.
It’s just that they aren’t necessarily
reading and writing the same things or the same conventions, if you will,
that we expect in academic writing
and how do we build that bridge taking the students where they are?
With ideas, that they need to learn how to support them better,
Refute arguments better,
use sources, cite sources and so forth.
Uh, when they’re used to texting or, you know, emailing or...
So I-- I think it’s…
I think more people are reading and writing than ever before,
it’s just that their literacy is just a little different
than what we expect in an academic environment.
And even the world of business and industry!
[laughter]
So it’s something to think about,
because I know that everyone, you know, elementary through university,
is committed to literacy.
We just see them through different lenses.
I wonder too about access to information
you know, that we used encyclopedias, you know, literally bound encyclopedias.
I mean now, the world of access to information is remarkable.
What that does for, you know, for changing the student, you know...
I wonder if, in fact, ideas are-- if ideas are becoming more--
If students are more open to difference of... of opinion, difference of ideas,
or if, in fact they’re more polarized,
and more holding on to their ideas because this world is so contentious
and uh...
So , I mean, I don’t, obviously, have any answers to that,
but I-- I speculate as to whether, in fact, students are in a different place
than they were twenty, thirty years ago.
(Doug) Hey I have a question that I was hoping that I’d get the answer here.
Has anybody figured out a good way to blend the PowerPoint and non-PowerPoint lecture?
It’s a real practical question, I understand. But either you go PowerPoint or you don’t.
(male audience member) So, I lower the screen down half-way.
(Doug) Kay.
(male audience member) And the white board is under it.
(Doug) Kay.
(male audience member) And I just all of my PowerPoints are...
(Doug) Halfsize?
(man) 400 by 300, so…
(Doug) Oh!
(man) And it’s great, 'cause you can... because you want both.
(Doug) Yes, yeah.
(male audience member) You want to have the media up there but you, um...
in order to value the students' comments and where the class goes organically...
(Doug) Yeah.
(male audience member) You want to get stuff on the board
So, it’s funny and weird, but…
(Doug) But it works?
(male audience member) But yeah, it works great for me.
(Rafael) Yeah I-- you don’t know how many years I spent
banging my head against the walls for people who design rooms on this campus.
Because they typically put this-- look there’s the screen right above this.
so you can’t use them simultaneously.
Or they put it right above the board, so you can’t—
(Doug) Yeah.
(Rafael) It’s one or the other.
Just put the board next to it, so you can do this it’s…
(female audience member) Yeah I mute mine.
You know how you can mute now in some of the classrooms/
Just the screen, the projector.
(Doug) You project onto the white board then though?
(female audience member) Yeah.
(Doug) Oh, okay
(woman) A lot of times I'll project onto my board and then...
(Doug) Then you just mute it and then—
(Rafael) It’s also interesting how the pow-
PowerPoint has become more interactive, you know,
You embed links into it, you can put sound, you can put music,
you can put... all kinds of stuff into it.
So in some ways it can become a more dynamic board in some ways.
Uh, there... It has the potential for, um,
for being more like the old board.
Um, I mean I-- I still have brittle yellow notes in folders that I bring to class, you know,
and I still lecture from these notes.
Although, more and more, much of that content is now in on Moodle,
posted on Moodle or it’s now in the, you know, in the PowerPoints themselves and…
(Doug) Mark, what do you do in math?
'Cause I find math particularly difficult in PowerPoint.
(Mark) Math is difficult in PowerPoint.
(Doug) Okay, good [chuckles]
(Mark) Yeah, I’ve never actually written a PowerPoint.
(Doug) Okay.
(Mark) So there’s a math type-setting software called Laytec,
that's kind of the standard.
And a few years ago this computer science grad student, um,
wrote a set of macros called Beamer,
which allows you to mimic PowerPoint through Laytec.
(Doug) Ah.
(Mark) And so, now you can do a nice amount of...
(Doug) Do you do that or do you still write on the board?
(Mark) I.. do it for conferences.
(Doug) Ah.
(Mark) And I’ll do it occasionally in the class,
but it's really time consuming to prepare those…
(Doug) Yeah.
(Mark) For me, I like to sort of make the math come alive with the board.
And this way...
You-- I mean, you can do that with Beamer too,
but then it’s like you become a movie producer, practically,
You know, one hour of Beamer will take you a hundred hours to make.
But after college, you--
Just to pick up on your question,
one of our colleagues, Nick Prestrier, a faculty member here,
he has really mastered the technique of…
uh, sort of outlining his talk on the Beamer,
and in the math building we have our screens to the size...
[laughter]
(Doug) Good! Good! Good!
(Mark) But yeah, so he’ll have…
He’ll have, um, you know, bulleted points, not too detailed,
and then, when he wants to,um,
go through the proof, you know, like get-- get through it interactively,
that’s when goes to the whiteboard...
(Doug) Mhm
(Mark) A very good balance with that.
But it sounds so much like what you do… Uh…
I’m curious...
I’m curious to know a little bit about this group.
How many of you have taught over twenty years?
Ten years?
Five?
And one?
[laughter]
(man) Right on!
(Rafael) Interesting balance here.
Yeah.
Well that’s actually, that’s quite positive and optimistic.
It means even us old farts
are still interested in the subject.
(Doug) Libby, are you PowerPoint then?
You bring the young, you know, in this five years or less.
(Libby) I know, I’ve been uh...
we have an overhead projector in the classroom I teach..
[laughter]
(Libby) So like, I kind of like do a throwback day every now now and then
[laughter]
(Libby) ...so now, and so, it’s kind of funny that it’s there.
I think it’s kind of bizarre.
'Cause it's typically, uh, College of Forestry classes in there,
So I use that when I need the... to write on the board,
because in our classrooms it’s the same thing, it just comes right...
the screen comes over the white board.
But we have, uh, another complication.
Our white boards have failed, and so now you can’t erase on them…
(Doug) [laughs]
(Libby) And so, last year I said 'that's okay' and we started on the overhead projectors.
I get frustrated with the white boards.
But yeah, I, mainly PowerPoint though.
(Doug) Mainly PowerPoint?
(Libby) Yeah.
(Doug) And do you post your slides online for students or not?
(Libby) I go back and forth each semester.
I get frustrated with students, um,
not coming to class and just seeing if they're posted
And so I... I do a lot on Moodle, and other pieces of my class.
And so, I go back and forth depending on, I guess, my mood.
I have no-- I haven’t seen any affect one way or the other.
Posting versus not posting.
(Doug) We have debates, because in our department it's about half and half.
And, um, PowerPoint has some real advantages
but there are also some disadvantages. It can get very passive,
but it’s great for pictures.
And I think writing notes is actually part of the learning process.
(Rafael) Absolutely.
(Doug) The other thing I’m just reading
because I’m going to use it in class because I have to do PowerPoint, strangely enough…
Um, if you look at the NASA,
they were doing a follow-up on the Challenger example,
it’s a very famous example.
All the details, all the important information, when it got translated into PowerPoint, you know,
became bullet points and they lost all the important information.
(male audience member) I had a-- a student last semester
and, um, she invited me to look at Hessies.
Have you looked at Hessies?
(Rafael) Yeah
(male audience member) It...
(male audience member) It’s a little more animated.
A little more interesting than-- but the same problem...
(Doug) It’s the same problem, right.
(male audience member)You go to conferences and people stand up and read to you...
(Doug) Yeah
(man) It's like please, you know, put a fork in that.
[laughter]
(male audience member) So, you know...
I think PowerPoints tend to be overused in the classroom…
(female audience member #1) Do you know why…
(female audience member #2): I just was taking a media arts class
and I think the first day I got to class, um, the person teaching was a graduate student,
very young graduate student, at least it looked to me.
And he said, "Oh, we are not doing PowerPoint in this class.
and you guys feel stuck in classroom were your teacher do PowerPoint."
like if it was obvious that PowerPoint was the worst thing ever in teaching.
[laughter]
I was like, "wow this is…"
(Rafael) That’s when I would whip out the brittle yellow notes!
[laughter]
(female audience member #2): but that actually, it makes sense in that the environment
because, uh, it’s mostly media.
Everything that they're teaching is tutorials through media.
So everything is a Quicktime movie,
it’s certainly a little more dynamic, and there are some advantages, but…
That doesn’t mean it would work for everyone, especially when we have such a variety of fields.
But it does make you think,
“Oh wow, PowerPoint is really the past at this point, in our students minds.”
(Rafael): Mhm
(female audience member #2): It’s definitely not the future.
(male audience member): Well a few minutes ago you mentioned...
all the things you can do in PowerPoint.
(Doug) Yeah.
(male audience member): Which made me think, what you’re really describing is a web page.
Then it made me think,
“Well, if my students had a time to do that, what would I do with them in class?”
I mean if I had, in other words,
if they could cover the content that way, that I would no longer present the class.
What else could I do with them when they see me?
(male audience member) And it’s a thought. I don’t know the answer to that, but...
(female audience member #3) That was my question, why do students come to class?
[chuckling]
(female audience member #3) No I am very serious.
Why do they want to come to class?
(female audience member #4) Right.
(female audience member #3): Do they tell you when they don’t come?
(female audience member #4): Um...
(female audience member #3) What’s missing?
(female audience member #4): No. No they don’t, um, it’s...
I think, the same things that you would suggest,
they're tired, they’re sleeping in, or whatever.
Um, why do they come to class?
My guess is the things that they both hit on,
which was the performance, the, um, I think there is a…
they do gain something from having that face to face instruction.
(Rafael) The insruction—
(female audience member #2): The question is: why we do come to class.
if you ever have taken an online class,
I take the same class in person with a professor and online.
a photoshop to class to media arts.
No question my performance in the one normal classroom
is way much better than the online.
I find the online class excessively boring,
and I don’t feel that I do my best when I don’t see people.
I don’t see their project, I don’t see the teacher, but mostly because
I would feel really guilty of not doing the best on my homework if I know the teacher.
if the teacher is just a box on the screen, I couldn't care less.
Obviously, I wasn’t getting graded.
(Doug): Sorry, we have to wrap it up…
I think, right?
But…
[applause]