Teaching in Higher Ed

Teaching

For Students: So You Say You Want a Reference?

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Reference

A student once asked me if I would provide a reference for her on a job that was her dream opportunity. She had always wanted to be an interior decorator and now had a possibility of working directly for a woman who had a large design firm in Newport Beach and learn from her first-hand. The woman was quite nervous about hiring a recent grad, since she had been burned by more than a few in the past. However, she was impressed with the young woman and wanted to at least speak to someone who knew her well.

I ended up spending an hour and forty-five minutes on the phone with this woman, talking about her needs for the position and giving examples of ways that I had seen the candidate demonstrate those skills and character traits in my interactions with her over the years. My background in human resources was helpful as we discussed her business goals and need for specific talents related to her firm. She ended up taking the risk and the young woman got her dream job… and the chance to gain valuable experience she would take with her throughout her career.

You will be asked to provide references on a pretty regular basis, during college and beyond. People you ask to be a reference for you are the individuals who will influence the decision makers about whether you should get that internship, go on that missions trip, or be offered that new job.

BEFORE

I hope some of you will be reading this post before the time you need a reference, because thinking about the aspect of building solid relationships in advance will have a big payoff for you. Here are just some of the ways that I’m influenced about the nature of any reference I will give for a student:

  • Do they show up on time and are fully present for classes?
  • Do they take responsibility for their choices and actions?
  • Are they curious?
  • What type of energy and passion do they show for learning and for life?
  • Are they respectful of the people around them?
  • How have they demonstrated that they want to help others succeed?
  • What is the level of quality of work that they submit for classes?
  • Have they gotten involved in organizations that help them learn experientially (such as SIFE or ASB) in addition to taking classes?
  • What level of maturity do they demonstrate on a consistent basis?

Along with any reference I provide for a student goes my reputation. I don’t take lightly the integrity that I think is crucial, anytime I talk about how effective I think someone will be in a given situation. I’ve been working, professionally in Orange County for over 15 years and have built a reputation for someone who knows quality people who will excel in a given job. Now is the time for you to start getting to know your professors and other professionals who can ultimately make a big difference in your ability to achieve your goals.

DURING

When you ask someone to be your reference, there are a series of questions you should answer for them in the process, so they can assess if it makes sense for them to be the person to represent you:

  • What is it that you’re pursuing that requires you to get a reference? Talk about the opportunity and the organization associated with the possibility.
  • What knowledge, skills, and attitudes are being sought?
  • What do you have to offer in terms of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes? Be specific in your answers and provide an example of how you’ve demonstrated that you have acquired the competencies thus far.

Occasionally, you’ll be asked to provide a reference before you have had an opportunity to build strong relationships with your professors at school. The better you do at presenting yourself and at addressing the questions outlined above, the more likely they will be to believe you’ll be a good fit for the opportunity.

AFTER

Remember that once your reference has agreed to help you, does not mean that his or her possibilities of influencing whether or not you get the job are over.

‘But email is so much more convenient,’ you might argue. Yes, that is true. However, you want that person to be willing to go out of his or her way for you, so it makes sense that you’ll go to the extra effort to thank thank them properly and sincerely. Not many people write thank you notes today, so you will allow yourself to stand out from the crowd and be noticed as worth someone’s investment of time.

I recently wrote a letter for a student who was seeking a number of scholarship opportunities. She sent me a thank you card that not only communicated her appreciation, but also indicated that she was successful in obtaining her scholarships. She specified how much money I helped her save by my investment of time in writing her the letter. Her letter will make a nice addition to my tenure application in the next couple of years and you can bet that I’ll be more than happy to help her however I can as she pursues her dreams.

Online Learning: Privacy versus Protection

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Cheat

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported this week that in a new 1,200 page bill before Congress “is a small paragraph that could lead distance education institutions to require spy cameras in their students' homes.”

Many are concerned about the privacy issues involved in such a measure and that somehow distance learning institutions would be treated with harsher anti-cheating requirements than traditional classroom-based universities.

I am still shocked at the extent students will go to in order to cheat on an exam.

The obvious question for this guy is “if you're smart enough to know Photoshop and to go to this extent to cheat on an exam, why not just learn what you need to know for the test?”

Students in my classes who were aware that I was going to run their papers through TurnItIn.com, an anti-plagiarism solution, have still used students papers from the previous semesters in the hopes that they won't get caught. Of course, some might argue that they were looking to get caught, when they made such little effort to conceal their academic dishonesty.

I hope the debate continues and that we seek to protect students' privacy while maintaining academic integrity and ethics. If we're not talking about it and fighting to keep the quality of our programs sound, the Coke can bottle guy wins and learning loses.

Two Basic Excel 2007 Tips for Grading Efficiency

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The upgrade to Excel 2007 brought with it some great new features to make managing data easier. When creating Excel-based gradebooks in the past, we would have had to do a lot of manual set up to create design features that are now just a few clicks of the mouse away.

I highlight two such features here, but encourage you to share other tips for grade tracking in Excel 2007 in the comments section.

AUTO TABLE FORMAT

Excel1

Excel has 44 built in auto-formats for tables. To use one of these great-looking formats:

  1. Sort your data (under the data tab)
  2. Highlight your data
  3. Choose format-as-table from the home tab and select your desired format

I find this makes the data more easy to read on screen, since each row is kept more visually separate. It also makes printouts much more appealing and professional.

CONDITIONAL FORMATTING

Excel2

Another great feature is the ability to see visually how each person did in comparison to the others. You used to be able to do this in Excel 2003, but you had to program in the conditional formatting (for example, you might have indicated that if someone scored below 70% that you wanted the font to be displayed in a red color).

Excel 2007 makes this much easier, plus you have far more options available in terms of your formatting.

Excel3

In my example, I selected the red/yellow/green arrow formatting, to quickly see which students scored the best and worst on the final exam. To create custom formatting:

  1. Select the collumn you want to format
  2. Choose conditional formatting from the home tab
  3. Indicate which custom formatting you wish to use

This only scratches the surface of what you can to in Excel to track data, but I know it is better to give information in bite-sized pieces. Give it a try as you set up this next semester's gradebook and feel free to share other tips in the comments section.

Wordle Makes Ideas and Concepts Visual

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Wordle

IMAGE: created using www.wordle.net

I just discovered Wordle, which is a free, web-based tool that allows you to make your ideas visual. You can paste in a paper you've written, a journal, an article, or even a URL to your blog. Wordle then takes all those words and analyzes which ones appear more frequently. The more often a word shows up, the larger it appears in your ‘cloud.'

The cloud above is from this very blog… but you can go and try it yourself with your own words.

Social Media and Pedagogy

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Socialmedia

We recently gave a class for a client on managing across generations. In preparation, I put together some trivia from decades past and present. It reminded me of how far we've come in terms of technology, but our educational models sometimes seem so far behind.

Students today won't tolerate passive learning. I suspect one-way teaching methods were never very effective, but generations past didn't fight against it in the same ways they do today. Now, social networking sites and blogs are becoming increasingly popular, but can be misaligned with a learning strategy when they are used purely as an attempt to be hip.

As teachers/professors, we can't just start using these ‘new-fangled' tools and expect students to learn any better than they are now. We have to utilize them in the right way… in alignment with what we are trying to achieve. We have to also completely change the way we're evaluating learners' progress in our classes.

The CommonCraft Show puts out these wonderful videos that take challenging concepts and make them easier. Check this one out on social media and consider how you might integrate this concept in to helping people learn. Also consider Common Craft's teaching methods and how they do eLearning different.

I'll be writing on this subject more in future posts, but would love to hear your best practices in the comments section.