the tiny oases in the valley of doubt

This is roughly week 4 of my experiment with Trevor on coaching students through a junior-level, largely self-directed learning experience. The course is organized around a single project for improvement on a biomedical device and represents 50% of students course-load, meeting 12 hours per week, and 100% of their materials engineering education for this quarter. There was an institutional conflict this quarter, so that we are only meeting 9 hours per week, 3 hours are "on their own."

We almost entirely stopped lecturing. We do take course time to collectively check in, explain procedures or points of confusion. For the most part, 12 teams of 4-5 students are autonomously pursuing design improvement projects of their own interest. Each individual has the responsibility of learning the posted foundational content on non-crystalline materials and structural materials.

This is the point in the quarter where I usually fear that students are not learning enough.

Metaphor

I am wondering about the metaphor of your teaching. What is the fundamental frame or metaphor of your teaching? Thinking this way is based on a split in linguistics from the syntactic model in Chomsky to a semantic model developed by Lakoff and others.

As an example Lakoff analyzes the fundamental metaphors of the 'conservative' and 'progressive' political landscape. In this he distinguishes between a 'strict father' model (conservative) and a 'family nurturing' model (progressive). He has written a couple of books on this (that include reflection on the deeper structures of brain activity involved in animating such metaphors). There is also an historian and sinologist (Edward Slingerland) who has used this sort of method to explore non-action. He does an analysis of the basic metaphors of self when considering action and non-action.

The method of 'public humiliation' seems to me an expression of some particular frame. Certainly it seems to involve not only an assertion of objective reference to 'right' and 'wrong', but also how to procedurally go about teaching that. So I am wondering, what is your basic frame or metaphor for teaching?

Topsy Turvy

I want to be a good teacher. I want to use some of the concepts Daniel Pink writes about: Autonomy, Mastery and Meaning, and use contextual and emergent principles of learning. But it seems so easy for me to slip from a teacher that wonders with the students about things, to one who tells them the answer and gives assignments. Maybe these paradigms can exist together, but I am wondering. I have to say that since I have been participating in this learning initiative and hanging out with Linda and Roger, I have had a crisis in my teaching.

In some ways I am a good teacher. I use authentic projects often. I use active learning techniques in the classroom. I establish relationships with students. All of this has helped me get excellent students evaluations. All of this I now question. I don't know what to keep and what to throw out.

Yesterday in class I told my (graduate) students that they were very luck to have me for a teacher. I told them that developmental theories show that many do not make it to the "contextual knowing" (Baxter Magolda) stage of development until they leave school. They are lucky, because I make so many mistakes they know for sure I am not an expert and they must take nothing I say as fact. Luckily, I have a good respectful relationship with them and they laughed.

I guess this is exactly what I asked for....learning things with students, emergent and contextual.

scaredy cat exposed

It's been brought to my attention in various ways, that I am a scaredy cat. It is pretty evident that I am fearful to push myself outside of some invisible walls that I have made for myself. I have multiple examples to call upon:

Let's begin with my new workout routine: I sweat while working out, and have considered pushing myself to the limit, but was confronted by two events: a) I can push myself to the point of throwing up, which isn't an activity I associate with getting in shape, so I don't (it's about the lactic acid, nothing more. I promise I don't have an eating disorder.) b) a fellow gym compatriot that said I wasn't working hard enough if I wasn't sore or laying on the gym floor exhausted after workout. In other words, I am a sissy pants. Scared to go to the physical point beyond what I'm used to. Our conversation hung in the back of my might this morning as I shlepped heavy weights across the floor and completed my various workout routines.

what happens when you free students to learn

I was astonished by the depth and breadth of learning that the students brought to class today. Trevor assigned these 50-some juniors in groups of 4-5 to review a biomedical device implant case. The format was something called "grand rounds" in the medical profession. An individual reviews a patient case with salient facts and decisions and procedures administered. They were given the weekend to chose from among seven different cases, each approximately 100 words or less. We told them that after presenting the case (usually 1-2 minutes), they would be asked questions about their decisions in the case. Students from each group would be chosen at random to speak when it was their team's turn to present.

This is only the 6th day of class.  Without exception, each of the 11 presenters was able to answer a wide range of questions about the medical device that was implanted, the operating procedures, the post-operative risks, and the rational for their choices--using correct medical terminology throughout.  It was clear that they had freely researched far beyond the initial 100-word text to create a more complete and individualized understanding. They possessed a level of sophistication in their knowledge that was dramatically higher than in the past.

A big difference this year is that we have stopped lecturing at them almost entirely.

the humiliation method of learning

I've been thinking about what Pete and Liza said about learning physics since our meeting last Thursday.  They described it as the "humiliation method." They recounted the common occurrence of teaching freshmen physics: in every class, they experience a few "arrogant" individuals who believe they know physics when then in fact don't. The only way to "break" these students of this mindset is through "public humiliation," which Pete says is done in a playful manner. Pete asserts that this must be done in order to correct their misconceptions.

I keep thinking about this process. It occurs to me as violent. In fact, it is disturbing to me because it normalizes "humiliation" as part of the educational culture.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul...

...and sometimes Mary. I often feel like I'm doing this as a faculty member. Perhaps everyone feels this way. The last meeting with the collaborating faculty group reminded me of faculty's constant state of "insufficient time" as I watched Pete fall asleep in the meeting and heard Nina talk about waking at an early hour for her health.

I have a colleague at a university on the east coast who says: "Career, family and self...you can never have more than two of the three." I know this has been true for me, yet I've really been trying to see how it is that I'm creating this condition.

The Lurker Speaks

After briefly participating in the meeting today, I am finally contributing to the blog as I said I would.

Just a brief thought in response to a comment about "public humiliation" that was brought up. Rather than comment on the phrase I did want to say that it brought up in my mind the idea of what we think we might want from students in the classroom versus what would make our own lives easier in the classroom. I sometimes wish that the students would be clones of myself -- curious, thoughtful, willing to make a comment and, most importantly willing to learn. Of course, this would make my teaching life easier in so many ways. I could relate to students better, all my course preparation would make sense (and my lack of preparation wouldn't matter because they/I would obviously understand) and we could make lots of progress in the time together.

This is, of course, absurd.

Discouraged

I feel I am blogging too much!!! Roger encouraged me to state this openly. It is kind of funny, but there is some way in which I think if I blog, others wont. Well…doing it anyway.

Neal and I are considering a project to creatively develop a supply-chain and distribution systems for gleaning crops in the county. This project incorporates the (second) harvest of food and the distribution of this food to food-banks or other locations that service the poor in our community.

I met with Neal earlier this week and we determined that while our desire to collaborate is strong, it seems structurally unlikely this quarter. This is a bit discouraging for me as I want to begin learning how to work with faculty in other disciplines, but I guess I must learn something else first. I must learn something about what is keeping us from collaboration here at Cal Poly. Below are some of the structural issues (per my observation) along with what I assume were the initial positive intent.

in the classroom with a dissolving ego

I am one of two faculty "teaching" a junior-level course that meets for 12 hours a week. In the institutional way of accounting, it is 50% of both the students' and the faculty load for this quarter. I've only taught this course once in my career and its subject matter is on the periphery of what I would call any alleged expertise.

Trevor and I set up the class so that it will be a combination of guided self-directed learning and faculty-directed activities. This is of course quite shocking to the students; most of them are in courses driven by faculty decisions. I've noticed two remarkable things only after two days of "teaching" this course.