ISSUE ALERT
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March 2012 Article
Highlights
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Wednesday, February 29, 2012
University Business March 2012 Digital Issue!
Academic Impressions Online Course: MAKING THE SHIFT FROM CLASSROOM TO ONLINE COURSE DESIGN
MAKING THE SHIFT FROM CLASSROOM TO ONLINE COURSE DESIGN
October 1, 10, 19, &
30, 2012 :: 1:00 - 2:45 p.m. EDT
Learn the essential components of transforming face-to-face courses to
an effective online format.
Join
us for a four-session online course that will teach you the step-by-step
process of transforming a face-to-face course to an online delivery format. Our
expert
instructor will share information and advice on remapping your course,
organizing content, using Web 2.0 technology, and integrating learning design.
COURSE FORMAT AND SIGNATURE PROJECT
This
four-part program uses a blend of synchronous and asynchronous components to
model an effective online course. During the synchronous sessions, you will be
invited to contribute ideas, make decisions, and ask questions about the course
(re)design process.
Between
sessions, you will have the opportunity to practice the process through the
creation of a signature project that is specific to your work and your
institutional setting. Your project for this course will involve converting components
of one of your own face-to-face courses to the online format.
REGISTER TODAY,
SPACE IS LIMITED
To
ensure maximum interactivity and personal attention, enrollment will be
limited. Take advantage of this unique opportunity while space is still available!
Register
online or call 720.488.6800.
We have designed this
course for a single learner per registration. Included in your registration are
credentials for the online course site, as well as the ability to receive
customized feedback from the instructor on the assignments throughout the
course that culminate in the signature project.
UPCOMING CONFERENCES
Academic Library Planning and Revitalization
March 26 - 28, 2012 | Baltimore, MD
Using Student Data to Improve Your Academic Support Programs
May 21 - 23, 2012 | St. Louis, MO
Managing Copyright Use, Ownership, and Policy
July 18 - 20, 2012 | La Jolla, CA
UPCOMING WEBCASTS
Online
Accessibility for Students with Disabilities
March 28 & 30, 2012
Repurposing Campus Computer Labs: A Case Study
April 26 & 27, 2012
Academic Library Planning and Revitalization
March 26 - 28, 2012 | Baltimore, MD
Using Student Data to Improve Your Academic Support Programs
May 21 - 23, 2012 | St. Louis, MO
Managing Copyright Use, Ownership, and Policy
July 18 - 20, 2012 | La Jolla, CA
UPCOMING WEBCASTS
March 28 & 30, 2012
Repurposing Campus Computer Labs: A Case Study
April 26 & 27, 2012
Bronwynh on Education Blog: How to convince students to share their ideas on a blog
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Seated Woman with Blog, after Picasso by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com |
It can be interesting to find out more about the people sitting opposite you in class - what they are interested in and what they believe in. So it is a good way to get to know each other better. You will probably be pleasantly surprised to read about others' hidden talents. It is a good way to see things from different angles and reading what others have written helps you to do this. And to state the obvious, blogging really can help your writing, and your learning especially when your classmates give you helpful hints.
Posting on a blog can also help you to express the ideas you might be too shy to say out loud. It is good practice for learning to express your ideas too. It is really cool when someone reads what you have written and leaves you a comment. Just knowing others are interested in your thoughts is a real confidence booster.And of course, it is a great way for your teachers to give you feedback about your work, and to challenge you to think.
Sure it can be scary when you start to think that others will read what you have written, but it can also be addictive seeing how many people are reading your posts, and who is leaving comments. The more you do it the easier it is and the better you get at doing it.
The main thing to remember is to be respectful to each other when leaving comments, and it is a great way to show that you are interested in their work. By posting to a blog and sharing what you are learning, you are hopefully going to have fun and do some learning at the same time. So you can learn from each other if you share your work with the class as well as the teachers, and if your blog is open on the web you might even get some interesting people looking at your work.
It is also possible to set up a mobile blog where you can send texts, images and video directly to your blog....but that is another story, and one for you to explore. When you get really good at blogging you might even be able to attract advertising and make some money - lots of people do....but that is something for after class.
So what are you waiting for - lets get
started.
- Bronwyn hegarty
- I work as an Educational Developer at Otago Polytechnic to promote flexible learning. I am a Doctorate in Education candidate. My thesis is investigating the use of a Three-Step Reflective Framework to support the preparation of the evidence practitioners prepare for their professional electronic portfolios.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Inside Higher Ed Articles: February 28, 2012
New study finds that one-third of students attend at least two colleges. Their most common transfer destination: community colleges.
The Obama administration opposes a bill to repeal newly enacted rules on the credit hour and state approval, but how Democrats will vote today is unclear.
Study of one college's alumni shows those who received loans or scholarships donate less than do others.
A new national commission will set accrediting standards for schools of education, with the hope of producing better, more well-rounded teachers.
WIA Report: Women Have Closed the Gender Gap in Degree Attainments
http://www.wiareport.com/2012/02/women-have-closed-the-gender-gap-in-degree-attainments/?utm_source=Women+In+Academia+Report&utm_campaign=7c227805a5-Women_in_Academia_Report_6_14_116_13_2011&utm_medium=email
For many years, more women than men have been enrolled in higher education. Now, new data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that women have almost closed the gender gap in degree attainments.
In 2011, 30.0 of all women over the age of 25 had obtained at least a four-year college degree. For men, 30.8 percent of all adults were college educated.
There are 31,372,000 women in the United States who are college educated. Some 8.8 million American women have earned master’s degrees. Only 7.2 million American men have master’s degrees.
Men still hold a lead in professional and doctoral degrees. But 1,118,000 women have earned professional degrees and another 1,151,000 women hold doctorates.
Posted on Feb 24, 2012
For many years, more women than men have been enrolled in higher education. Now, new data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that women have almost closed the gender gap in degree attainments.
In 2011, 30.0 of all women over the age of 25 had obtained at least a four-year college degree. For men, 30.8 percent of all adults were college educated.
There are 31,372,000 women in the United States who are college educated. Some 8.8 million American women have earned master’s degrees. Only 7.2 million American men have master’s degrees.
Men still hold a lead in professional and doctoral degrees. But 1,118,000 women have earned professional degrees and another 1,151,000 women hold doctorates.
Campus Technology: U.S. Department of Education Asks Students for Education Startup Ideas
By Mike Hohenbrink - 02/23/12
The United States Department of Education is asking students to contribute ideas for a unique education startup as part of its National Education Startup Challenge going on right now.
The purpose of the competition is to encourage students to come up with solutions for helping fellow students enter college and the workforce more ready to tackle real-world challenges as well as to encourage students as innovators and entrepreneurs.
The competition is open to students across the United States, and entries can be made by submitting a business plan as well as a video pitch. Videos should introduce a unique, original idea for a startup venture covering one of the four challenge topics.
Challenge topics include:
- "Middle Grades Matter," covering ideas for helping students transition to high school and beyond;
- "Skills, Skills, Skills," for encouraging skill-building ideas;
- "Education Pays," which covers entries allowing students to pick affordable postsecondary education; and
- "Finish Faster," covering ideas to help increase retention rates.
The challenge competition is open students who have begun the sixth grade up through high school graduates and students continuing their education at the postsecondary level. The deadline for submissions is May 1, 2012.
Entrants and their submissions will be judged as part of three categories based on age including:
- Grades 6-8;
- Grades 9-12; and
- Undergraduate/postsecondary students.
Winning entries will receive national recognition and may be eligible for further honors and opportunities.
More information is available online at nesc.challenge.gov or at challenge.gov. Questions can also be submitted by e-mail to EDStartupChallenge@ed.gov or to scott.hess@ed.gov.
Information is also available by phone by calling Scott Hess at 202-245-7772.
TLT Group February 28, 2012
www.tltgroup.org
 Seventh issue, Volume five |
TLT Group TGIF 2.28.2012  |
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From TLT Group World
Headquarters
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Join us this Thursday as we "march" into March, boldly
revisiting the Roundtable! In our March Symposium, New Roundtables for Collaborative Change, TLT
Group presenters and participants will adapt and demonstrate an effective
planning and decision-making process designed for issues that require the
expertise and support of an unusual variety of key stakeholders within a
college or university - namely, the TLT Roundtable approach.
If you’re
interested in thinking with us about these issues and how to address them, if
you have relevant ideas or experiences, and if you want the experience of
participating in a “fishbowl” TLTR, you’ll be welcome to join us for this
three-session Symposium. Registration is free for TLT Group Individual and
Institutional Members. |
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Upcoming FridayLive!s...
What's Still Good about Lectures? Friday March 2, 2:00 pm EDT....Free to all.
There's an App for That
Navigating the Technology Tsunami
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"arguments had no effect on the practice until...their
nation had become objects of ridicule"
Toys like spy glasses and laser tag sets...could actually perform serious surveillance We're over-communicating and under-connecting according to inventor of email! Silent cinema (no voice! no text!) "gave an actor super-expressive power..." Is text without audio better for teaching/learning? Is voice without text better for T/L? |
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Online Institute
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It Takes Librarians and Faculty: Using Project Information
Literacy to Improve Student Research Skills
Tuesdays,
March 13 and 20, 20122:00 - 3:00pm EDT Leaders: Steven Bell, Temple University
The better our understanding
of the process students go through in conducting academic research and their
behavior as researchers, the better job we can do in helping them to become
better researchers, better writers and more critical in their approaches to
evaluating and synthesizing information. Whether you call it information
literacy or research skill building, helping undergraduates and graduate
students to become effective researchers is an outcome shared by librarians
and faculty. In this workshop, led by Steven Bell of Temple University, the
findings of research studies produced by Project Information Literacy will be
used as a framework to enhance our knowledge of student research behaviors
and explore strategies for helping them to strengthen those skills. Guests
will include Dr. Michael Eisenberg, co-founder of Project Information
Literacy (on March 13) and librarians who are using the Project Information
Literacy findings to reach out to faculty for collaboratively advancing
campus information literacy initiatives.
REGISTERThis workshop is free to TLT Group Individual Members. Check your institution's status here if you have your membership through an institutional subscription. |
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UBTech 2012: Unleash Your Inner Spielberg When Creating Online Lectures
http://www.ubtechconference.com/node/863
Unleash Your Inner Spielberg When Creating Online Lectures
As online courses and lectures become a more common practice in higher ed, educators have looked for the best possible ways to engage their students online.
Brian Klaas of the Center for Teaching & Learning with Technology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Heath, spoke at EduComm 2011 and shared tips on online lecture capture that have been influenced by his background in theater.
“Online lectures are a simple reality of university life,” Klaas said. “How you tell a story is just as important as what the story is...think about directing, editing and presentation.”
While many professors use Microsoft Powerpoint, Klaas said it can lead to unengaged lectures.
“Powerpoint is a trap,” he said. “The basic template that we're given in Powerpoint is 'title and bullet points' and that's not effective information dissemination and there's a lot of problems with it...Our obligation as educations is to present a compelling story and to present it in a compelling way.”
To make slides more interesting, Klaas recommends using higher quality sound and music, create a quicker pace that's broken into segments and remove heavy charts and images for stronger focus.
“Slides should be there to re-enforce what you're saying, not be the be all, end all...less is more, it's more effective and help students get what they need out of it,” he said.
Klaas concluded he presentation by noting the strong results these techniques have yielded: “Once we really work with faculty and show them the direct benefit of these techniques...they can see that it has a direct, measurable impact on student satisfaction and learning outcomes and find that the time they put in is worth the reward that comes out of it.”
Brian Klaas of the Center for Teaching & Learning with Technology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Heath, spoke at EduComm 2011 and shared tips on online lecture capture that have been influenced by his background in theater.
“Online lectures are a simple reality of university life,” Klaas said. “How you tell a story is just as important as what the story is...think about directing, editing and presentation.”
While many professors use Microsoft Powerpoint, Klaas said it can lead to unengaged lectures.
“Powerpoint is a trap,” he said. “The basic template that we're given in Powerpoint is 'title and bullet points' and that's not effective information dissemination and there's a lot of problems with it...Our obligation as educations is to present a compelling story and to present it in a compelling way.”
To make slides more interesting, Klaas recommends using higher quality sound and music, create a quicker pace that's broken into segments and remove heavy charts and images for stronger focus.
“Slides should be there to re-enforce what you're saying, not be the be all, end all...less is more, it's more effective and help students get what they need out of it,” he said.
Klaas concluded he presentation by noting the strong results these techniques have yielded: “Once we really work with faculty and show them the direct benefit of these techniques...they can see that it has a direct, measurable impact on student satisfaction and learning outcomes and find that the time they put in is worth the reward that comes out of it.”
Speaker:
Technology Focus:
Conference Year:
Mediasite by Sonic Foundry FREE Webinar: Is room-based lecture capture better for 21st century learning?
|
Is room-based lecture
capture better for 21st century learning?
Tuesday, March 20, 2012 at 1pm, ET
In 2009, the University of Michigan Ross School of Business
opened the doors to a new era of learning designed to enhance the digital
culture that defines student life. Every room in the state-of-the-art 27,000
square foot building – from the large auditoriums to the intimate
collaborative spaces – was equipped to support the most seamless use of
integrated technologies while becoming a model of student learning
efficiencies.
Now integral in every function of the school, room-based
lecture capture technology is used not only for recording traditional
classroom instruction, but also webcasting interviews with The New York
Times, faculty panels and even recruitment with prospective students.
Join Sean Brown, vice president of education at Sonic Foundry,
and his guest Edward Adams, chief technology officer at University of
Michigan Ross School of Business, for an inside look at the decision-making
process that helped the school get more faculty, classes and programs online
faster with room-based video streaming.
The presenters will take your questions live, and discuss:
Who will benefit:
Chief information and technology officers, academic deans and department heads, IT directors, facility managers, instructional technologists. Anyone may attend.
Critical
Insights. Timely Information. Free Registration
University Business produces web seminars on topics of special interest to higher education leaders. Moderated by UB's Web Seminar Editor, JD Solomon, each web seminar features presentations by higher education leaders and industry experts. These online events are underwritten by our sponsors so that you may view them for free. |
![[image: Register Button]](http://mail2.educatorsportal.com/response/redirect.aspx?muid=3994&cuid=f342efae-471f-4b9c-9833-a5e6a81ee0e5&linktext=IMAGE&au=http%3A%2F%2Fwww3.universitybusiness.com%2Fimages%2Fwebinars%2Fcommon%2Femail%2FTanButton.gif&al=%5Bimage%3A%20Register%20Button%5D&targeturl=https%3A%2F%2Fpromediagrp.wufoo.com%2Fforms%2Fweb-seminar-registration%2F){kind=small} Edward Adams - Chief Technology Officer, University of Michigan Ross School of Business. Sean Brown - Vice President of Education, Sonic Foundry. |
Reminder: Columbia University Teachers College Workshop @ DU Today!
A
Message from the Office of Student Affairs:
Columbia
University Teachers College will host a graduate school workshop Tuesday,
February 28, 2012. The workshop will take place on the campus of Dillard
University in Kearny West Wing from 11:00a.m. -1:00 p.m. There will be current
students, alumni, faculty members, and admission representatives present from
Teachers College. All Dillard students, faculty, staff, and administration are
invited to attend .
Thanks,
Dawn
Holmes
Coordinator for Student Affairs
Dillard University
Student Union Bldg. Suite 240
2601 Gentilly Blvd.
New Orleans, La 70122
504.816.4685 (Office)
504.816.4885 (Fax)
Monday, February 27, 2012
Campus Technology: Faculty Project Offers Free Online Courses
Udemy has launched the Faculty Project, a new Web site designed to offer free college-level learning to people from around the world.
The courses, available to students on demand, include discussion boards for interaction with other students and professors, videos, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, articles, and other resources. According to information on the project's Web site, "The content will be available for free, forever, to anyone who wishes to consume it."
The subjects covered were chosen by the faculty members teaching them. They include:
- Introduction to Business Strategy, taught by Michael Lenox of the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia;
- Introduction to Operations Management, taught by Gad Allon of the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University;
- Economics of Energy and the Environment, taught by Ben Ho from Vassar College;
- Budgeting in Accounting, taught by Ken Milani of the Mendoza College of Business, Notre Dame University;
- History of Modern China, taught by Pamela Crossley from Dartmouth College;
- Brazil for Beginners, taught by Marshall Eakin from Vanderbilt University;
- The United States Constitution: A Biography, taught by Robert Allison of Suffolk University;
- Public Health, taught by David Dausey of Mercyhurst College and honorary faculty member at Carnegie Mellon;
- Ancient Greek Religion, taught by Robert Garland from Colgate University;
- Perspectives on Contemporary American Democracy, taught by Jeb Barnes of the University of Southern California;
- Elixir: A History of Water and Humans, taught by Brian Fagan, retired, from the University of California at Santa Barbara;
- Classics of American Literature: T.S. Eliot, taught by Victor Strandberg of Duke University;
- Building Information Modeling for Sustainable Design, taught by Glenn Katz of Stanford University;
- Select Classics in Russian Literature, taught by Irwin Weil, Emeritus, of Northwestern University; and
- The Cognitive Neuroscience of Mindfulness, taught by Amishi Jha from the University of Miami.
"This project creates an incredible and unprecedented opportunity to share lessons that empower and inspire people to improve their lives and change their worlds," said Glenn Katz of Stanford University's Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and educational solutions specialist at Autodesk. "The Faculty Project brings together a critical mass of educators and topics that will help prove the effectiveness and demonstrate the value of this new learning approach, while providing valuable feedback and insights about how to enhance and continue improving it."
More information is available at facultyproject.com.
LaPrensa: 2012 U-M Women of Color Task Force (WCTF) Conference: 30 Years of Leadership, Legacy, and Change
www.laprensatoledo.com/Stories/2012/021012/wctf.html
DATE: Friday, March 2, 2012, from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm.
U-M Staff, Faculty and non-U-M Attendees: $100.00. U-M Students and U-M Retirees: $60.00 (Please visit our website for more registration information).
LOCATION: Michigan League, Rackham Auditorium, and the Modern Languages Building
Central Campus map: http://www.umich.edu/~newsinfo/ccamp.html
DATE: Friday, March 2, 2012, from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm.
EVENT: The WCTF annual conference is the largest professional
development event at the University of Michigan and will take place on Friday,
March 2, 2012 from 8:00 to 5:00 pm. This year’s keynote speaker will be Dr.
Johnetta B. Cole, director of the Smithsonian Institute’s National
Museum of African Art. The conference will include thirty-six (36) workshop
sessions, a networking luncheon, and a vendor marketplace featuring local
businesses. The workshop sessions will offer insight in topics such as
professional & leadership development, leadership, work-life
balance/personal development, and financial education. On average, more than
600 women and men attend the conference.
Dr. Cole is the immediate past
president of Bennett College, Greensboro, NC and was the first African American
woman to serve as president of Spelman College, Atlanta, GA. The topic of her
speech will be “The Business Case for Diversity & Inclusion in American
Higher Education.”
This event is open to the public,
but registration is required. You many register online at www.cew.umich.edu
or onsite the morning of the conference.
U-M Staff, Faculty and non-U-M Attendees: $100.00. U-M Students and U-M Retirees: $60.00 (Please visit our website for more registration information).
LOCATION: Michigan League, Rackham Auditorium, and the Modern Languages Building
Central Campus map: http://www.umich.edu/~newsinfo/ccamp.html
U-M SPONSORS: Center for the Education of Women (CEW), University Human
Resources, U-M Health System Human Resources Office, Office of the Provost.
CORPORATE SPONSOR: TIAA – CREF (Platinum – Plus Level)
WEB LINKS: for more information about the WCTF and CEW’s programs,
see: http://www.cew.umich.edu
Tomorrows-Professor Digest, Vol 61, Issue 5: The Power of Mindful Teaching
Working up five presentations for my September trip to Saudi Arabia in a few short weeks posed a challenge both exciting and daunting. In hope of saying somethings other than the usual tired, if valuable, thinking on the topics I?d been given, I started to review material I?d found especially exciting and thought provoking. So, I picked up my copy of Ellen J. Langer?s The Power of Mindful Learning (1997) and thought that skimming through my extensive underlinings would surely guide me toward some fresh ideas about ?critical thinking? and ?effective teaching.?
That didn?t work. Langer writes so fluidly and engagingly
that I couldn?t stick to my underlining. By noon I?d reread half the book and
emailed Langer saying, ?I?m not sure just what the focus might be at the
moment, but I?d like the chance to interview you again. Your books ignite
fireworks in my brain.? I?d interviewed Langer once before in 2003 after first
reading The Power of Mindful Learning and then eagerly reading her earlier
book, Mindfulness (1989). After a couple of email exchanges and one short phone
call, we set a date for a longer conversation after my return from Riyadh.
Langer, the first tenured woman professor of psychology
at Harvard, does a lot of interviews. Her thinking, her research, have more
than begun to reach a popular audience. A movie starring Jennifer Aniston (as
Langer) about some of her most provocative research showing the power of the
mind?s assumptions over the realities we experience is in development. When I
tell her how much I admire her books and how stimulating to my own thinking
they have been, she laughs and thanks me saying, ?flattery is always welcome.?
She?s being what I would call happily ironic. One of what she calls the
?one-liners? through which she encapsulates some aspects of her brand of
?mindfulness? is: ?If you don?t take the compliment, you?re not vulnerable to
the insult.? She does take the compliment of course, but only as something
pleasant, not as proof of anything. That?s what I mean by ?happily? ironic.
Langer?s skeptical detachment from common ways of looking at things has nothing
cynical, nothing negative about
it. She sees?and study after study she and collaborators have conducted
confirms?positive possibility in simply embracing the uncertainty that embraces
us and in continually questioning the implied answers and choices that
automatic (or as she calls it, ?mindless?) thinking commonly pushes us toward.
For good reason many regard her as the mother of the positive psychology
brought to prominence by Martin Seligman, professor of psychology at the
University of Pennsylvania and author of Learned Optimism and Authentic
Happiness.
So, what?s your bottom line?? Langer asks me as we begin
to talk. I tell her that I suppose if I had to boil it down it would be
something like ?the power of mindful teaching.? Her book on mindful learning
had debunked or at least seriously brought into question the validity of a
number of myths about learning. For example, that
? the basics must be learned so well that they become
second nature
? paying attention means staying focused on one thing at
a time
? delaying gratification is important
? rote memorization is necessary in education
? forgetting is a problem
? intelligence is knowing ?what?s out there,? and
especially that
? there are right and wrong answers
I'd written about this before (NTLF 12/2) and most of the
faculty I knew still bridled at the notion that most of these ideas weren?t
more fact than myth. Still, the conversation about teaching has been changing.
The effectiveness of various pedagogies other than traditional lecture and
fact-focused learning has begun to open up faculty thinking about the
possibilities for increasing student learning. If confronting sacred bovine
commonplaces had bruised faculty thinking, perhaps talking about some
fundamental processes of mindfulness as they might improve teaching could offer
the new health that college teaching is longing for.
The Central Myth in Teaching
Most all of us approach teaching with a variety of
assumptions both about learning and about its compliment, teaching. Some of
these, as experience shows, prove ill-founded, but it?s often hard to resist
commonplace, automatic thinking. In part because it is so commonplace, we see
it as true without thinking about it. I asked Langer which of these common
assumptions looming over teaching she found the most difficult to confront.
I think it?s the simple notion of fact,? she replied,
?for people not to realize that facts are situated understandings that a
particular group of people have at a particular time, and that when you add
back in this person notion, then people recognize that, well, the facts might
have changed, and that at the same time, if other people had been considering
the situation, they might have come up with something quite different.?
Langer likes to illustrate her points with stories from
her personal experience, stories that model mindfulness in operation and show
how homely and yet profoundly liberating this habit of mind, of simply
reflecting on experience rather simply accepting it unthinkingly, can be. To
illustrate her point about ?facts,? she recounts being at a horse event with a
friend who asked her to look after his horse while he went to get the horse a
hot dog. ?Horses don?t eat meat,? she thought, ?period.? The idea ?flew in the
face of the facts,? she thought. But then the owner returned with a hot dog and
the horse ate it eagerly.
And so the ?fact? was wrong at least today in this
context, and that prompted lots of questions in Langer?s mind. ?Which horses
[hadn?t eaten meat]? When? How hungry were the horses? What kind of horses?
[There are] a bunch of questions,? she says, ?that once we ask them, we see
that this information we?ve been given is probably probabilistic. Indeed,
research only gives us probabilities and we transform those probabilities into
absolute facts. When you know something is absolute then there?s no reason to
think about it anymore. But when you know something in this conditional way,
then it almost primes thinking of counter instances. There are hidden decisions
that go into any research program ? What breed of horse? What kind of hot
dog??and once you reveal these hidden decisions, you begin to see how situated
and contextual what we accept as facts actually are. One of the cultural myths
is a belief in the absolute nature of science, but science itself is based on
probability.
Probability, Possibility, and Engagement
It's this quality of engagement from students higher
education has been talking about wanting to cultivate, but has done with mixed
results. Perhaps the primary limiting factors have been attitudes toward certainty
on the one hand and uncertainty on the other. Students often find uncertainty
fearful and threatening. And faculty feel enormous pressure to convey accepted
understandings. Langer believes real learning gets lost somewhere in between.
She sees uncertainty not as fearful, but as an inviting canvas of possibility,
a learning adventure waiting to be had (as well as a fundamentally honest
appraisal of our existential condition). But how might faculty get there
without appearing not to know what students expect them to know and without
frightening students with such fluid notions of how protean knowing and
knowledge can be?
To go back to your original question,? Langer continues,
??How do you get a teacher steeped in these myths to teach more mindfully?? One
way would be for the teacher to begin most of his or her sentences with ?In my
view? or ?From one perspective.? By doing that they make clear to themselves
that this information is situated, which means it?s true sometimes but not in
all contexts and certainly not necessarily over time. And it also sets the
student up with the same understanding.?
In essence a mindful approach invites students to the
party. It tacitly conveys an honest picture of the known and the unknown that
implies respect for students as fellow (if somewhat junior) learners in an
ongoing saga of inquiry. Indeed, real learning is always a shared inquiry, not
a top down delivery of information. The insights often go both ways. While
beginning sentences with a conditional touch fully reflects Langer?s thinking,
she picked up the specific habit from a student:
I actually had a graduate student about 20 years ago
who, in our lab meetings, would begin almost every sentence with ?In my view?
and I thought ?Gee, that?s charming.? And when you do that even if you are
vehemently disagreeing with somebody it doesn?t have any harshness.?
Teaching, mindful or not, will never be easy, and mindful grading may be the most painful part of it. ?For me, from the beginning, it was the most painful thing. I would read their papers and based on information in a sense?that is, a sense that this is an A, this is a B and so on? [I?d come to one assessment], and then I?d read them again and think ?Well, for the student, this is an A,? and then reading them again I would think that this person is going to be devastated and not really helped with this particular grade and so on. I prefer giving qualitative responses rather than grades.
I think that if we change the whole business of the way
we teach, [grading] would be less of an issue. Right now we start off with the
notion of limited resources. If you have limited resources then you have to
figure out how to divvy up the ones you have. Whereas resources really aren?t
limited. Everybody can win. Then with that there?s less need to define people?A
students, B students, and so on.?
In short, mindful teaching engages everybody or at least
invites everybody to become engaged.
Things are always changing, says Langer, and while that means in some ways things are always uncertain, it?s our mindsets, she?s found, that cause us to see this flux at times as fearful. She?s optimistic about the future of education. ?I think that it?s going to evolve in spite of (it would be nice if it were because of) but in spite of the current modes of education because of the computer. Today?s kids are learning and having fun with what they are learning and being creative in ways that they are not getting and never did get from the classroom.?
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