Teaching in Higher Ed

Cultivate curiosity in higher ed students

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CURIOSITY

Our son has a new habit. He points at something he hasn't seen before and says, “Whaaaaaaaassssshhaaaatttt?”

For many parents, I know this stage is frustrating. I also recognize that there may well come a time when I'm not amused by it, either.

However, I'm delighted by it now. It's interesting to see what captures his attention and what things are new to him. The whole experience also makes me wish I could bottle his curiosity and administer it, when needed, in the higher ed classroom.

Dr. Mark Carnes joined me for the most recent episode of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast (episode 21). He described how the role playing immersion game, Reacting to the Past, is transforming the way students engage in the college classroom. In Minds on Fire, his book on the same subject, he talks about his early experiences having students play one of the games.

He describes:

Never had students been so engaged and in such a weird way.

Someone piped up, ‘does anyone realize that class was supposed to end seven minutes ago?'

…We had lost track of ourselves.

Carnes seems to be describing students who are in what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls being in a state of flow. Their curiosity is heightened and they're thinking critically about the class content.

Carnes has found a way to bottle the adventurous nature of a toddler and sparked the curiosity of his college students.

Not all of us will be able to use a Reacting to the Past curriculum for a particular class. However, there are steps we can take to cultivate curiosity in our classes.

Direct students solve a problem

Probably the most influential person on my teaching throughout my career has been Dr. M. David Merrill, Professor Emeritus from Utah State University.

I used to work for a computer training company. We hired Dr. Merrill to do some consulting for us. I remember how vividly he altered my view of teaching.

At the time, I thought I was teaching computer application skills. What I realized was that I was getting people to follow a series of steps that I prescribed and only assessing them on their ability to do what I instructed.

Throughout Dr. Merrill's career, he has emphasized the importance of having learners engaged in solving problems. I'm only skimming the surface of Merrill's principles of instruction here.

Our classes in higher education will promote greater learning opportunities if we direct students to solve a problem and not simply get them to regurgitate facts.

Instruct students to give advice to people (or characters) involved in the situation

I've previously recommended using the podcast Planet Money in teaching about business. One of the most interactive sessions I typically see in my introduction to business students is when I ask them to recommend a solution to the currency problem experienced in Brazil's history.

I play the episode up until the point when they have described the challenges with an unstable currency and how difficult that point in Brazil's history was for them. Then, I press the pause button and ask them how they would recommend that they solve the currency problem.

Resist the temptation to be a know it all

If students perceive that we already know everything there is to know on a topic, we can inadvertently diminish their curiosity about a topic.

The other day, I brought in an example from the NBA for my introduction to business class. There's a running joke about my lack of sports knowledge in just about all of my classes. One student had lamented that I use Apple in my examples too often and he was hoping for more sports.

After receiving his feedback, I changed an entire section of my module introducing various promotion strategies that companies use to be centered around the NBA's promotional efforts.

I shared about a website that the NBA had set up in 2010 to use direct marketing to appeal to Hispanics. Candidly, I admitted that I wasn't sure what had become of the website, or what more current efforts they were putting in to attracting Hispanic fans. It was the best example I had found when I was putting it together late the prior evening.

My lack of knowledge opened the door for sports fans in the class to share their knowledge. One student talked about how players will wear special jerseys to culminate their Latin nights celebrations. Other students piped in with their examples and a few asked questions to extend the scenario a bit further.

If I hadn't resisted the temptation try to know it all, the students have missed the opportunity to apply their newfound knowledge to a topic they are passionate about.

[reminder] How do you cultivate curiosity with your students?[/reminder]

How to develop library research skills in college students

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This is a follow up to my post on how to teach seemingly boring topics. In this post, I provide some suggestions on how to develop library research skills in college students.

library research skills

After I posted on teaching boring topics, I received an email from a librarian who is challenged with only seeing students for 50 minutes a semester and trying to make the subject of library research come to life for them. Below are some ideas for how to approach this particular challenge.

While I use the library research skills topic as my example. the ideas could apply to other skill development work you are doing with your students. [Read more…] about How to develop library research skills in college students

Not a good week for gender equality

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I had the honor of interviewing Audrey Watters last week, for episode 18 of Teaching in Higher Ed. She cautions readers on her blog that she's the sometimes EdTech's Kassandra. She neglected to mention that conversations with her can get stuck in a person's mind and rattle around in there a lot.

genderequality

A few minutes prior to recording with Audrey, I had more than a few chuckles listening to Aziz Ansari define and discuss feminism on The Late Show with David Letterman. I wound up sharing about the clip during the recommendations portion of the show. It was one of those hopeful minutes when it seems like we might be moving to a better place when it comes to equality.

Let's just say that the week did not turn out to be a very good week for gender equality.

Audrey writes about the week in the last paragraph of her weekly update.

#gamergate rages on, as more female gamers have had credible threats of violence made against them, because of their speaking out on sexism. Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella decided that women should rely on karma for achieving equitable compensation.

I'm grateful for the way in which Audrey challenges us to do better on a number of fronts in her writing. It is arguably part of her personal brand to make us uncomfortable as we identify ways in which we are contributors to the problem.

Lest you think that this issue is only being discussed by a small minority of self-declared rabble-rousers, you should know that David Sparks, the host of The Mac Power Users podcast crafted a post on the subject, hoping to start a dialog with his community.

Anyone who thinks that this isn't an issue beyond the tech world might find the State of the Women in America report revealing.

About a month ago, I was speaking to a different Teaching in Higher Ed podcast guest about his recommendations for future topics or guests. He suggested a professor/researcher to speak on the subject of race in higher ed. I'm leaving the specific name of the person who was suggested out of this post, since I haven't reached out to the individual yet. 

It was particularly timely, since the topic kept popping up on my list of potential podcast episodes. However, the whole subject of racial and gender equality can leave me feeling completely inadequate.

The number of times I've not handled it well when students have used gender or racial stereotypes overwhelms me. It is hard to know where to begin. Such a fundamental shift of perspective has to take place in order for students to recognize the flaws in their heuristics and it isn't a mental change that can be forced upon them.

Despite feeling completely inadequate, we all must persist toward doing the hard work it takes to bring us to a new day. We must not be silent (as emphasized so well in this TED talk with Jackson Katz).

I haven't ever written a post on this topic before. I know that it raises far more questions than it provides answers. However, just like David Sparks, I can continue the dialog and invite us all to challenge each other to do more to squelch the voices that would suggest anything other than equality.

[reminder]What do we need to be doing more of as educators in higher education to move toward greater gender equality? How do we work to transform the minds of students who come from an entirely different perspective when it comes to women being equal to men?[/reminder]

How to make a seemingly boring topic come alive

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It's a boring topic, so of course the evaluations are going to be lower.

Make boring topic come to life

In evaluating the success of various courses, low course evaluations are often explained away by asserting that the faculty member was teaching a boring subject. I have heard this logic at more than a handful of institutions in my ten years in academia and am disappointed that some of us are satisfied with that answer.

I certainly had my idea about what subjects were boring when I was an undergrad. Now, as a lifelong learner, I can't find a topic that can't be made interesting by a teacher who has a passion for the subject and brings it to life.

Here are five ways to make a seemingly boring topic interesting.

Introduce an experience

Speaking of topics I found boring as an undergrad, science can definitely be among those topics that professors find challenging to generate interest in for many students.

Dr.Chrissy Spencer at Georgia Tech uses engaging and creative techniques to help her students actually experience the learning in her courses. This Active Learning in Biology video shows her “teaching evolution by turning her students into chili peppers.”

Despite the over 200 students in that large lecture hall, they are each getting to share in an experience that will help them remember the lessons learned for a long time to come. It is no surprise that she wound up winning a prestigious teaching award from Georgia Tech, based on her innovation in the classroom.

Bring in humor

My sales students were learning about how you don't want to present a solution to a client as soon as you think they know what they need, but to hold off until you explore the challenges further and understand their impact. The textbook author describes the studies done on children where they were given a marshmallow and told that if they waited for five minutes that they could have two more marshmallows.

I showed this video of kids who participated in the marshmallow study. It brought the reading alive in a new and humorous way. I also showed Stephen Colbert interviewing Walter Mischel, the author of a recent book about the marshmallow studies.

These humorous segments brought energy into the class and invigorated the discussion.

Invite some friendly competition

As long as it is done in a way that won't embarrass those who aren't understanding the material as well as others, competition can be a way of bringing interest and energy into the classroom.

Do a quiz using PollEverywhere, or play the HeadsUp game.

Have students create something new from what they have been learning and then have the students vote for their top three new creations. There are all sorts of way to invite a little friendly competition into your classroom.

Reinvigorate your own passion

Perhaps if the topic seems boring to you, it's time to invest in reigniting your interest in the subject. I've found that having a well-established personal knowledge mastery system set up helps to keep breathing new life into what I teach.

If your organization offers professional development funds, perhaps it's time to attend a conference or to start exploring some interdisciplinary teaching and learning opportunities.

Approach the topic from a child-like perspective

To keep my students from memorizing words that don't actually mean anything to them, I often have them explain something as if they were talking to an eight year old.

I also use ridiculous analogies for difficult to comprehend subjects, such as when I use a trip to CostCo to buy toilet paper in an example on the accrual method of accounting.

Astrophysicist Roberto Trotta was quoted on NPR [arguing] that we don't need jargon. In his new book, The Edge of the Sky, Trotta tells the story of how the universe was created without using complicated descriptions. In fact, he conveys his message while restricting himself to the 1,000 most commonly used words in English.

[reminder]What approaches do you use for making seemingly boring topics more interesting?[/reminder]

 

Creating micro lectures for blended or online courses

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I recently wrote a post for the Mac Power Users about my top ed tech tools. In the comments, someone asked a question about how I create pencasts with my LiveScribe SmartPen. I thought I would broaden the question a bit and share about how I create micro lectures, with pencasts being just one of the ways that task can be accomplished.

pencastdrawingMicro lectures for blended or online courses

Whenever we move to an online environment, we must be aware that our learners' attention spans will be shorter. While in a classroom environment, we might think about having a 50 minute lecture (though the hope is that we are actually not ever lecturing for more than 7-10 minutes without some kind of test for understanding or engagement, even in the classroom).

Online, that same 50 minutes might be broken down to five micro lectures with some means of assessment or reinforcement in between.

When I create micro lectures, my goal is twofold:

  • Keep them short, ideally less than ten minutes
  • Make them visual, with some memorable diagram that the students will “see” in their minds when they go to take the exam

Pencasts

The term, pencast, denotes that audio can be heard (like a podcast), only you can also see accompanying sketches and notes that are in sync with the spoken audio. I encourage you to check out some of the examples on the LiveScribe website to get a flavor of how they work.

LiveScribe Smart Pens

I have owned every version of LiveScribe smart pen since they were first launched. I have somewhat of a love/hate relationship with them.

pencastsample1Advantages

On one hand, it is incredibly convenient to record a pencast. You need the special notebook paper that is recognized by the smartpen and you need your smartpen. For the most advanced model of their smartpen, you also need to have an app running on your iphone/ipad to capture the audio (it uses the microphone on your phone, instead of having an internal microphone, like some of the earlier models).

I've regularly asked the students who earned an A in my courses what tools they found most helpful in their learning and pencasts come out on top every time.

I haven't ever come across a student in my ten years of teaching who has been taught about visual note-taking in school before, so it takes some time to get them thinking in this way. By watching the pencasts, I am effectively educating them both about the topic being taught, but also about how to take concepts and capture them visually.

Wesley Fryer, who blogs for a K-12 audience, has an extensive set of resources for visual note taking that are applicable to higher ed, too.

Disadvantages

The biggest disadvantage for LiveScribe pencasts has been that they have not been reliable in terms of playback/sharing methods.

Early on, they started by having playback occur via their proprietary system. It was not a reliable way for students to view them, because it was so highly dependent on what browser they used and what version of their browser they were on.

Then, they shifted to having the pencasts play from within Evernote. The same challenges persisted.

With their latest pen, they have PDF as the means for sharing pencasts, only the non-static part of the PDF can only be played/accessed either by using the website they have set up to play them for users, or via their mobile app.

It is hard to figure out why they haven't gone over to a more reliable sharing method, after all the time they have been at it.

Yet, I still keep buying smart pens, so they must be doing something right.

Other options

In answer to the commenter's question, I'm not sure if Notability has some of the same sharing limitations as LiveScribe, as I haven't had a lot of experience using it.

However, I have heard great things about the share-ability of the Explain Everything App.  Its output options include: save to camera roll (on your iPad), save to ouTube, and a bunch of other sharing options. Here's Stephanie Castle explaining how to use Explain Everything in the classroom.

If you want to stay away from hand-drawn micro lectures and want to use other options, Wesley Fryer has a host of tools to create micro lectures in other formats to explore.