Is Linking Learning and Work a Must Do for Faculty?

The latest white paper from the American Council on Education (ACE) is creating a healthy discussion about what is and isn't part of a faculty's responsibilities when it comes to their students. The ACE paper suggests that having students career-ready should be something that faculty should be doing. The paper's authors acknowledge that both community college and university faculty influenced the work. Working at a community college and teaching a course called College Success Skills (CSSK) may be influencing my opinion on this matter but in talking with employers, local chamber members, and students themselves, many see it the same way. Our CSSK course provides knowledge about the obvious college success issues (test anxiety, taking notes, engaging with faculty, study habits) but we also spend time on what some would call soft skills (communication, netiquette, time management, critical thinking). Having worked previously at a flagship research-intensive university as well as a regional doctoral university, I will be the first to tell you that each mission was different. But at the end of the day students are attending college/university to get a job. This white paper comes at a really important time as the financial support from government continues to shrink and the public seems to have lost their faith in a college degree. Having a constructive conversation to reset our priorities is a useful thing to do and I welcome your feedback on this issue as well.

Does Active Learning Work?

Dr. Donna M. Qualters uncovers some interesting information in her research study Do Students Want to be Active? Four important themes emerged from the analysis: the students had an overall positive attitude toward active learning; active learning was perceived to enhance their ability and efficiency in studying; active learning was perceived to improve the learning environment; and, active learning promoted their thinking about their learning and thus helped them to better understand their individual learning style. She also uncovered a few negatives that could easily be converted using the right interventions. She concludes by writing, "The most important need to be addressed is the inability of some students to deal with change. Many of these students come to higher education with expectations of very passive classroom experiences and those expectations must be uncovered, probed and altered. For some students it may go as far as the necessity to reframe what learning is: learning is not about covering material or gathering facts, learning is about integrating and using information in a meaningful way."

Providing Feedback That Will Be Used

You can always tell when the first round of assessment begins in the 16 week classes. That is because we always see a rise in the number of eLearning and accommodated testers in the Testing Center. In addition, after more than three decades in higher education, I know that having enough time to do all of the things we need to do for good teaching and learning is one of the tasks that faculty constantly struggle with. That is why a recent article that ran in Inside Higher Ed caught my attention. Dr. Deborah J. Cohen provides us with what she describes as a faster way to grade in 2020. She writes, "I came of age teaching when students picked up their graded work in boxes outside of professors’ offices. That also meant many students never came to retrieve their final papers after I had spent hours on tedious commenting. Some had graduated, and some simply did not care -- they were fine just seeing the final posted grade. It was as if I were writing long, involved letters to myself. I refuse to engage in that wasted work now. Whatever requires my feedback happens earlier in the semester, so that students have an opportunity to use the comments to improve their work. And on every syllabus, I indicate the following, which sets clear boundaries and places accountability squarely on the student: “You will get much more out of this course, and any course you will ever take, if you concern yourself more with the processes of how to think, how to learn and how to write than on the letter grades. In 10 years, you will probably forget the grade you got in my class, but I hope that what will stay with you are the learning tools and skills that you will acquire." I suggest you read the entire short article to learn more about her time-saving grading practices.

Is Your Teaching a Downpour or Drizzle?

Teaching occurs when learning happens. They are intrinsically connected and the relationship depends on trust, engagement, and respect. A recent Teaching Professor article uses the analogy of rain occurring as a downpour or a drizzle. Dr. Maryellen Weimer notes, "Storms come and go fast. When the downpour reaches the ground, the water runs away quickly—little gets into the ground. Drizzle offers a different image—fine, slow, silent, and yet penetrating. Drizzle soaks into the ground." She then poses the question to us wondering if our teaching is a downpour or a drizzle. Living in Louisiana, where it rains quiet often, we can certainly relate to this metaphor. While a good downpour is needed every now and then to clean off the roads and ground, we know that a good, steady drizzle is best for our plants, flowers, trees, and crops. Dr. Weimer writes, "Getting wet in a drizzle is a holistic experience. You don’t get some drizzle on your face but none on your feet. You’re in it, surrounded by it, unable to escape from it. Is education that kind of holistic experience? Not usually. If the work in multiple courses comes together, forms coherent connections, that doesn’t happen because we teach the curriculum as an integrated whole." So is your teaching more like a downpour or a drizzle?

Teach Students How Their Brains Learn

With all of the knowledge we now know about how our brains work best, why are we still ignoring the benefits of sharing this information with our students? You have probably noticed that I like to tweet about brain research on the CTLE Twitter account. We have also incorporated brain research into our College Success Skills course as we teach students how to be better at critical thinking. Looking back at some of the material we used initially reminded me of a good article by Dr. Judy Willis that appeared in 2012 (are we really 8 years removed from that?). In the article she writes, "Curriculum in schools of education has changed in response to changes in society, pedagogy and technology. As computer technology became an asset in classrooms, schools of education appropriately included that instruction in the curriculum. Many states made similar education program curriculum adaptations in response to multiculturism, increases in English language learners, and the use of the concrete-connect-abstract progression in math instruction. Now that the neuroscience research implications for teaching are also an invaluable classroom asset, it is time for instruction in the neuroscience of learning to be included as well in professional teacher education." Her words are just as salient in 2020 and we now know even more about how the brain learns. Spending some time in your classes dispensing this new knowledge will pay off for your students and help them to learn the information you are sharing. You can find information on this topic on this blog and on the CTLE Twitter page.