Loaded Learning

I have been thinking about this for awhile now, but one thing I have wanted to do is have students fill out a survey about higher education and their feelings towards it. I’m not really even sure where to begin on this. So I am going to ask my blog readers to give me and hand on this.

What questions would you ask of students about their feelings towards higher education? I’m not looking to make this a survey where someone would take up a whole page writing a response, so concise questions would be good. What kind of format should this be in? Should there multiple choice, a scale (1 to 5, agree or disagree), some open ended questions?

I don’t see a problem with getting a students to fill it out, especially if you are offering free candy if they complete the survey. Maybe some of you professors would be interested in having students fill it out too, I don’t know.

So let me know what you think. Is this a good idea or bad idea? And if you like it what kind of questions and what kind of format would you like to see this in?

    Now that Joseph has stirred up the pot, and it is a pot that definitely needs to be stirred, I thought I’d do a little bit of a response at this late hour.

Right off the bat I think Joseph is right in saying that students don’t use what they don’t think they need. I see this apply to blogging a lot, if a student doesn’t see an intrinsic value in it they will not use it. For those skeptics it takes a lot of convincing that blogging is not really like writing a paper in a word document. I would also say what they have to blog about may make it harder or easier for somebody to write. I will even admit that I have been behind on my blogging for my Digital History Seminar because a lot of what I am doing for that class involves technology and I don’t really like writing documentation. But sometimes you just have to suck it up and do it. I am really looking forward to the idea of talking about solutions for these kinds of problems at Faculty Academy, like really excited. I see this also be connected with something Martha recently blogged about, along similar lines with the FSEM. Basically, I am excited hah.

Jeff also responded to Joe’s post with a lengthy comment/post, there is one particular part that stuck out to me:

Yes, I’m asking students to do something new, or to push themselves, or to think about doing something in a different way, and yes, that potentially takes away from their time to read (or learn) about those darn battles, but that’s a choice I’ve made as the creator of the course. That choice is based in my desire to balance the skills and content portions of my class (that’s an over-stated dichotomy here) to provide the best possible experience for the students going forward, not just in that course, but hopefully in others as well.

This goes back to something I have been thinking about lately. What exactly is the purpose of higher education? Is it about content or is it something more? I would like to think that it involves more than content, in fact I can’t stand the thought of purely a content driven education. Personally, at this moment I am not planning to teach history (my major), or work at a museum, or necessarily do something along those lines. I am investing in a college education because of the experience and the skills, the content is more a coating on the pill to make it go down easier. This is just my opinion, but I am guess that the majority of students are traveling down this same road.

There is more I want to say, but its is too late and I have to get up early. More to come.

I ask this question, “What is a student’s job?” Besides the obvious answer of “to be a student!”, I am curious to see what others think.

It seems such a fundamental question, but one that is hard to answer, or perhaps has varying answers.

There are some things that came to mind when pondering this question. What is college preparing student’s for? Is it to be academics? Skilled people for the work force? Contributing members of society?

For the most part it feels like college is training us to be academics, but I don’t think the college is really aiming for that, or should be aiming for that. Of course some people will go on to be educators and work in a highly specialized area of their major, but most likely the vast majority won’t. I will also say that besides content there are goals and themes that carry through college, being able to critical think, speak well, write well, etc. But at times college can really seem like k-12 redux where the content is just more in depth and the papers about the content are longer.

So is a students job to study a lot and pass tests? Or is it be creative and do something productive for society?

Don’t get me wrong though, students who don’t study all day long (har-har) are still being productive and creative. You know where it is happening though? Outside the classroom! Mostly in the form of clubs. At Mary Washington we have an active chapter of Students Helping Honduras that has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, a Young Womens Leadership Program that mentors middle school girls, and various other groups that get things done. And where is there for the most part a lack of interesting ideas and productivity going on? Inside the classroom! I see a disconnect here.

Of course everyone needs some base knowledge to actually be able to play in the “sandbox” and I am not saying every class on campus is useless. For example there is an Economics class that deals with philanthropic ventures and actually gives away money to a deserving organization. The students in the class obviously need some background in what the class entails and an instructor to help them too. I am also not saying that students don’t put hard work into their papers and other class projects, but for the majority of students, only the professor and the class will see their hard work. And what they accomplished might have little value for the future.

Student’s go to class after class, filling their heads with content, but seldom dealing with real world situations. There is so much untapped talent and creativity waiting to be unleashed on campus. Say for instance Admissions wanted to have a promotional video for Mary Washington, how easy would it be to have some students on campus do it? Maybe give them some credit for it or even money towards tuition! It would probably be cheaper than having a professional do it and it would be better because a student who understands the school would be working on it. It also feels more personal when you know a student worked on it and I wouldn’t be surprised if prospective students liked it more than what a professional could come up with.
Right now in my Digital History Seminar we are building projects that can be useful to people outside or class and even institution. It is exciting to think that what we are doing now could last well into the future. In these project we have encountered problems we couldn’t have foreseen and it has made us think and evaluate. It has been a learning experience more than a paper on digital history ever could be.

There are endless possibilities if people just took the time to think and dare to be innovative. Mike Caulfield blogged a few months ago about what would happen if students stopped working in silos and started working on real world situations, it has inspired me ever since I read it. Mike says, “In a networked information economy, failure is cheap. Production is cheap. And if you produce something worthwhile, distribution is free. “

So again I ask, what is a student’s job?

I was away this weekend, I’ve been busy, and I am tired. I have a whole bag full of excuses. Until I return I leave you with every cynics favorite comic, Calvin and Hobbes:
(click to get larger image)

I also choose to blame Bill who recently blogged about Calvin and Hobbes so I now am going through the complete archive.

When I take a second to put down the kool-aide every now and then I can see reality a little better. Lately I have been thinking about the culture I live in where school is not really cool and learning is great as long is its not taking place in a classroom (boring!). I would even argue that there is such a strong culture of anti-school among my generation. We are brainwashed to dislike school and sometimes for good reason. There just seems to be inherently a negative connotation built in with the word school. Rewinding my brain to just a year ago (it seems to be getting harder) I can remember the feelings of discontent with school, its lifelessness and boring tradition.

Lets be honest the University is competing for student’s attention and it is really an unbalanced fight. For freshman that are getting their first taste of freedom away from parents and the identity they have been living with most of their lives, it is a time to explore new ideas. There are also friends, clubs, parties, etc. Academics are going to take a back seat to these things most of the time. Combine this with the anti-school sentiment and it is plain to see that for most students being a student isn’t really the most important thing. And here is what I am really getting at, when there is no community built around learning, students will not be interested. I don’t believe cool tools or awesome professors could fully convince someone of the importance of learning. It would just be a blip on the radar screen in a sea of tradition, non-controversial, and rote schooling.

People have been trying to take steps towards building a better community through new emerging technologies, but they still face that same culture of anti-school. Even then you just aren’t going to get through to people and sometimes people aren’t that interested in “real school”. This doesn’t mean we should stop trying because their are people out there that do care and some people who don’t even realize yet that they care. A connected community of student learners has the ability to bring people in, but until this happens there will just be little silos of education surrounded by fields of “plain old school”.

I would not say this is a call to arms, a post to point out successes or failures, or even saying that this is an impenetrable wall. It is merely a social commentary of one student on the state of the learning community at an institution.

I started to take Physics in the fall of ‘07 as part of the gen-ed requirement for the school. I am not inherently a science/math person, I can do it, but its not what I am naturally good at. As the semester went on I found myself more and more fascinated by physics. The class is not a conceptual class really, we do a lot of math (mostly algebra not calculus, thank goodness), but still I felt compelled to commit time to actually learning what we were doing in class. It seems kind of silly of course because what else would students be doing in college if they weren’t learning (not that you’d really be surprised that some/most students aren’t).

This has carried on into the spring semester and as I reflected on this strange new love of science, I realized a part of it was the process. The way physics challenges me because it does not necessarily come to me naturally and the fact I have to spend time on it to really understand it. Even though not everything I am learning is applicable to what I will be doing in the future I know that there are connections being made and that science/math part of my brain that usually goes malnourished is getting some good attention.

Now, it might be because I am kool-aide drinking real school fiend that I’m starting to appreciate process (and dare I say using my brain heh). For me, the problem is explaining it to other students. I had a conversation with a friend a few months back and she was saying that a specific equation she learned in physics could not help her in her social science major (she also challenged me to directly connect it). I argued it is not always about making those direct connections. The problem with process is that is often an invisible process that is going on in the brain, making it hard to measure. It is not about knowing F=MA, but being challenged in class to remember back and say, well this is how I can also get to F.
Pushing the brain to make connections.
The brain is that much richer for having being pushed in a different direction. By taking the time to learn these things as you go along as a process, your brain is getting better at making connections. Cramming for the test the night before does not train your brain for much good at all.

I see I have rambled a bit from where I started. Not that ever really have a specific point to make to begin with, but I hope what I have said makes some sort of logical sense.

By way of CogDog, I heard about Al Upton’s miniLegend project. He is currently asking edubloggers to be mentors for his year 3 students (8 and 9 year olds I believe). Being the geek I am I think this is the coolest thing so I went over to sign up to be a mentor.

As it currently stands I will be mentoring a girl named Emili. I’m really looking forward to commenting on her blog and just seeing what she learns over the year. Something about these connections, ya know?

I’ve got to know, where does time go?

Why does it seem to speed by so quickly? Yet I distinctly recall moments where time stopped.

Always questions, will I have enough time? when is the right time? when will there be more time?

It makes me think about the larger picture, am I doing enough with my time? Am I spending my time wisely and what does that mean? There are so many equations for time, what one do I use?

For now I think it is time to sleep. I guess I’ll have to return to the problems of time, once I find the time to think about it again.

Today’s 100-word topic: Fire

The bonfire hypnotized us into silence those late nights in Liz’s backyard. We were savoring the last summer before we all went off to college and started our new lives apart. There was the usually chat of random nonsense that we had all grown accustomed to, and when we had stared long enough into the fire and our souls we imagined the future. Those late nights never accomplished anything.

We were on the cusp of a new beginning. Waiting for the time where we would rise up, like a phoenix, from the embers of those nights into an unknown future.

I’ve you haven’t heard of “This Date, From Henry David Thoreau’s Journal” blog, it is an interesting read. As stated everyday there is a blog post from a journal entry. In some ways it brings Thoreau back to life, more accessible.

Here is today’s journal entry from 1859, enjoy:

Sometimes in our prosaic moods, life appears to us but a certain number more of days like those which we have lived, to be cheered not by more friends and friendship but probably fewer and less. As, perchance, we anticipate the end of this day before it is done, close the shutters, and with a cheerless resignation commence the barren evening whose fruitless end we clearly see, we despondingly think that all of life that is left is only this experience repeated a certain number of times. And so it would be, if it were not for the faculty of imagination.