What I've learned about course design

Recently, as part of a continuing education certification, I was required to (re)design a face-to-face course for delivery as a blended course.  Same content, same student classification (MBA candidates)...one would think this would be easy, right?  Just substituting some online delivery for some of the classes; it's a piece of cake.

Here's what I learned in the process:

1. I'm a collector and a hoarder of educational "stuff."  This includes but is not limited to textbooks, popular books, scholarly articles, news articles, assignments used by others (with their permission), ideas I've read about, websites...you get the picture.
2. As a result of my collect-and-hoard habit, I have far more content for any given semester than I can ever use.  Which means I need to prioritize and make difficult choices.
3. I don't like eliminating any of my precious hoard, all of which is gold(en) and some of which has to be platinum.  This would be true of most academics, despite my tongue-in-check self-characterization.
4. None of that is about the students.  None. At all.  
5. Starting with the students and what they should know or be able to do because of my course (outcomes)--the starting point for all design--is far harder, 
6. The process of course design has an elegant simplicity, once I get past the hard part of articulating student outcomes, and provides an organizing schema that makes sense to me and, far more importantly, to my students.
7. It's easy to do this backwards.  (Worth repeating.)
8. Assessment can be a learning opportunity, not just a testing or evaluating checkpoint.
9. Less is ultimately more.  (With credit to Robert Browning's lovely "Andrea del Sarto.")
10. The better designed my course is, the more I am able to be spontaneous, timely, and embrace the delightfully unexpected.

One of the quiet truths of academia is that most professors are never taught to design any of the courses they teach. They teach as they were taught...or as they wish to learn.  See numbers 1-4 above.

What I sent to our vice provost

One of the reasons I enjoy my work is because I am often challenged to think.  That's a good thing.  So, having been challenged (asked) by our new vice provost for distance education about my objection to the use of "innovative technology" to describe our distance education strategy, I took some time to consider my objection:

There's a reason I am not in marketing, despite having been assured many times that I'd be "perfect" in that role.  I can understand why people might think I'd be a fit for marketing, when the reality is that I am a questioner, a challenger, and, when I believe in something, a persuader.  Marketing tends to be selling the sizzle, creating the buzz, etc.  It's important and brands are built that way, but it's not what I do best.  

Unless I'm overlooking something (or it's somewhere on campus that I haven't been), my university is behind in our pursuit of quality distance education.  That's actually the good news, because the innovators take the risks, make the mistakes, and blaze the path.  It's the ones who come later (second movers or those who adapt to survive) who can learn from the mistakes and offer a better product.  

I don't see innovative technology on our campus.  We have some of the basics (Blackboard, Skype, some pockets of other technologies, etc.) and some very large holes that even the two-year colleges within our system have filled better than we have.  So, from my perspective, only a marketer could describe our technology as innovative and cutting edge.  

But what we DO have are innovative ideas, innovative people, and a system-wide spirit of innovation to address the opportunity and challenge of the things you've articulated very well (below).  What I'd like to see us do is not simply copy or play catch-up with others in this space, but to step back, start without any pre-conceived ideas, and see what possible solutions our innovation can provide.  Innovative solutions.

One example:  Our system does not function as a system, but as disparate and, sometimes, competing entities.  That wouldn't matter, perhaps, except that the big losers are the students we are trying to serve.  If I am a student (traditional college age or older student who is seeking a college degree later in life), the system is a morass of conflicting and confusing offerings.  If I am fortunate enough to find one of the two-year colleges who offer me a mostly (or fully) distance/online schedule and I work diligently to gain my associates degree, then what?  The majority of the distance/online offerings at my campus are graduate degrees, which are of no use to me at all until/unless I complete two more years of online offerings (which could be blended and include some monthly or weekly sessions at my local high school or library).  Where in the system can I find the solution to my problem?  And why is that not one of the questions we are addressing?

Meet Seth

You and I may be the last two people who don't know Seth Godin.  But we've just changed that, haven't we?

I found Godin's self-described education manifesto last week while I was researching education and technology. Provocatively titled "Stop Stealing Dreams (what is school for?)"-- a choice which provides the first clue about Godin's marketing talent--the document is over 150 pages and worth reading...in its entirety.

In case I haven't convinced you, perhaps Godin will:

Large-scale education was not developed to motivate kids or to create scholars. It was invented to churn out adults who worked well within the system. Scale was more important than quality, just as it was for most industrialists.

The question I’d ask every administrator and school board is, “Does the curriculum you teach now make our society stronger?”

Transparency in the traditional school might destroy it. If we told the truth about the irrelevance of various courses, about the relative quality of some teachers, about the power of choice and free speech—could the school as we know it survive? 

This manifesto...well, I wish I had taken the time to write it.  But the more important contribution, perhaps, is reading it...and sharing it...and acting on it.

Dreaming in class

I wish I could take credit for it, but I think I just blundered into it.  Regardless of the genesis, what's happening in the classroom is the stuff that dreams are made of.*

The week before classes started, the new president of our state university system presented to our faculty his call for innovation**--specifically, in the form of on-line education within our state's higher-education system--and the virtual dominoes snapped into place:  What better illustration of the concepts and challenges of innovation, creativity, and change than one issued to the system in which students find themselves? Suddenly, having 11 graduate students from multiple colleges in an elective course on Innovation and Creativity appeared as the gift it is and the course was adjusted to incorporate a semester-long project revolving around online education.

So far:

• Students are applying concepts, theories, and models to a system they understand.
• We're all learning about the state around us (literally and figuratively).
• Business decisions about innovation are more easily understood or, at the very least, more easily discussed.
• Pre-conceived ideas (mostly negative) about online education are being replaced by facts obtained through research.
• Faculty from other colleges are lending support to the students in my class.
• Technology and instructional design colleagues are also lending support to the class.
• The faculty and staff who visit the classroom and/or read the material being gathered and posted on Blackboard are excited about the process.
• We are using tools and technologies seamlessly, both as tools and as research topics.
• I look forward to class.

One goal for the semester is to develop a sample of what quality online education, incorporating best practices and using the tools available.  The class has selected the subject matter and a sub-group is focusing on development of the actual product.  

Another goal is to create and deliver a presentation about our design process, the questions raised, and the students' recommendations.  My goal?  To fill the auditorium (literally and through technology) with faculty and staff.  To include others in the dream. To see where this leads. To wake and find at least some part of the dream.

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* Though I've used Carly Simon's lyrics, credit is also due to Shakespeare.  

**The text of the presentation is here, with a link to watch.


Related Ramblings:

1. Stay tuned for Dr. Seuss
2. Accounts receivable or accounts paid?

Things fall apart

Poets craft distillates of our existence and experience.  Take Yeats, for example, who wrote in his The Second Coming that "(t)hings fall apart; the centre cannot hold."  Though Yeats was writing in the aftermath of the war that could only be described later as World War I and he was, arguably, deeply affected by what he had experienced, his observation transcends space and time.  Things do fall apart, despite our efforts.  And perhaps that is as it should be.

We create, we quest, we seek, we strive.  Our possessions slowly take possession of us; our tools change us.  We journey to the center, only to find that it cannot hold, regardless of the intended destination.  I am as much a product of my culture as of my DNA, which may explain some of our Western lament that things won't stay where we put them.

I realize there is a fine line between fatalism and acceptance, largely because I dance all over it most of the time.  I can argue passionately (for those who've read more of Yeats, feel free to make your own interpretation) for preserving Knowledge (which assumes there is a known or knowable body of same) and doing so in my personal favorite format--the written word.  I love my books and, while I appreciate the benefits of technology and the vast stores of information available via the internet, I am loathe to part with my sacred (to me) texts.  

But I am aware that part of my love for books is the necessary boundaries they provide. Generally speaking, my tomes don't fall apart and they hold their center quite well, both literally and figuratively.  They provide a comforting illusion, perhaps, that allows me a respite from the realities Yeats captures so well.

So, I find it oddly comforting and disturbing that David Weinberger (co-director of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab and a researcher at Harvard's Berkman Center for the Internet and Society) has given this title to his latest book:  Too Big to Know:  Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room.

And the premise?  That "business, science, education, and the government are learning to use networked knowledge to understand more than ever and to make smarter decisions than they could when they had to rely on mere books and experts."

I can't wait to read it.

Iatrogenesis

Though I generally try to take both the high road and the optimistic perspective, it's harder some days than others.  As I begin my personal transition from several months of full-time project management back to teaching next semester, I am struck by the stark contrast between academia and what we'll just call The Real World.

The contrast is not just in my own line of sight, but also in the communication I receive from former students.  And it may the academic version of iatrogenesis.

Colleges and universities are both institutions of higher learning and institutions of hiring.  And it's the hiring part that seems somewhat quaint and curious, when compared to other employers.  In what may very well be a historical relic, colleges and universities strive to protect academic "freedom" through a process of granting a tenured or hired-for-life (essentially) status to those academics who devote themselves to studying and writing about their chosen discipline or subject.

The unintended consequence of a search for someone willing to start early, focus on a subject matter (researching, writing, publishing), and provide value to the university in return for the hiring investment is the early identification of potential tenured faculty members while they are finishing their own doctoral programs.  In fact, the last year of the doctoral program is understood to be heavily focused on interviewing with hiring institutions of higher learning.  And this is where the disconnect begins, I think.

The brightest doctoral students become the most-sought-after junior faculty members.  They continue to delve into their chosen fields, standing upon the shoulders of the learned who came before them, and adding to the body of knowledge through their research and writing.  And they are entrusted with teaching in their chosen field, the field in which they are experts.  They become specialists who teach what they have studied.

What seems missing in this equation is the practical application of a subject matter or expertise, since the majority of the students in a four-year undergraduate program will be hired by non-academic employers.  And it's those non-academic employers who are seeking problem solving ability, critical thinking, teamwork, innovation, and a nimble responsiveness to change.  Today, this does not appear to be a workable  model.

Calculating the odds that we'll figure this out...

Many of us remember the dark days before ubiquitous calculators, as well as the uproar when they were being incorporated into mainstream education. "If we let them use calculators, they'll never learn math!" was heard throughout the land (or at least that's how it seemed).  What was once feared has become an important learning tool, required for many junior high and high school courses...and beyond.  We teach students the requisite math skills, teach them how to use the tool, then weave both (the skills and the tool) seamlessly into educational delivery.  Though math aptitude is still a bell-shaped distribution, the assignments being completed with the new tools are far beyond what some of us were able to do in college, given our antiquated tools.  Were the concerns about calculator use unmerited?  Or did they actually help shape a better outcome?

So, what about ubiquitous social media?  From the July 2010 New York Times article about privacy issues, by George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen:

Facebook, which surpassed MySpace in 2008 as the largest social-networking site, now has nearly 500 million members, or 22 percent of all Internet users, who spend more than 500 billion minutes a month on the site.  Facebook users share more than 25 billion pieces of content each month (including news stories, blog posts and photos), and the average user creates 70 pieces of content a month.  There are more than 100 million registered Twitter users, and the Library of Congress recently announced that it will be acquiring--and permanently storing--the entire archive of Twitter posts since 2006.

The sheer volume of information being generated boggles the mind, as well as wondering who is viewing it.  A University of Southern Indiana doctoral student writes about hearing in her interview that her Facebook profile had been reviewed as part her social media internship application and found more acceptable than another candidate's page with a photo of eight shot glasses surrounding the candidate.  Her question in a social media guest blog seems fair:  "Why are today's students held accountable for not knowing how to use social medial professionally, yet they haven't ever been taught formally?"

We have recruiters and employers checking Facebook pages as part of the hiring process, personal information being shared without any (or with limited) awareness of the immediate loss of control over that information, and permanent records of what we create.  And, for the most part, we are not teaching students basic writing skills nor the proper use of social media tools.  We did far better with the calculators.

Education is the only place where students try so hard not to get what they pay for.

It's a bit long for a title, but Teddi Fishman nailed it with that comment during her recent presentation to our faculty.  Though her topic was academic integrity, she broadened the discourse (as any English professor would, by the way) to inquire whether "cheating" is the problem or a symptom.  And somewhere in the time she spent with us, she made the comment in the subject line.

I've seen steaks returned to kitchens, products returned to stores, service bills disputed, and a host of other examples that demonstrate the expectation of getting what we ordered, purchased, or otherwise paid to receive.  We don't even have to think about the concept of receiving full value for payment.  So, why would it be any different in education?

Once I started thinking about spending thousands of dollars for an education, then thwarting the process at every turn (which, of course, makes no sense...Teddi's point), I realized that we may not all be talking about the same students.  I want to teach students who want to learn.  And some of them do.  But what about the students who are getting exactly what they paid for--a degree?

Somewhere, we--educators, parents, legislators, business leaders, and administrators--have treated education and a college degree as fungible.  It's another variation of means versus ends and it's creating all sorts of unhealthy behavior.  And misinformed decisions. 

Part of our discussion of academic integrity touched on the reality of cheating.  Implicit in the behavior of many students is "Degree now; integrity later."  It becomes a far more interesting discussion when you remind students that the people who may hire them, recommend them, or be their coworkers are the same students with whom they are in classes...the ones watching the cheating.  I'm not sure most students believe that professional communities are virtual small ponds, shrinking daily with technology.  And while fellow students may have limited recourse now, that tends to change dramatically when the classroom becomes the workplace or the community.

If students are paying for education, the alarming declines in academic integrity (increased cheating, plagiarism, free riding) make little sense.  If students are paying for degrees, those same behaviors make much more sense.   But the more difficult question to face is who created the degree-for-pay market...and why.

Our evaluation system is broken

Being the Secretary of Education has to be a difficult job.  But Arne Duncan seems up to the challenge.  And, frankly, I'd love to be on the bus when he visits teachers in our state (as well as in seven other states), because he's not afraid to say the things that need to be said.  From his August 25 remarks at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock, here are my favorite quotes:

• In just one generation we have fallen from first in the world to 12th in the percentage of young adults with college degrees.
• As a country we will stop lying to our children and dumbing down standards.
• Nothing is more important and nothing has a greater impact on the quality of education than the quality and skill of the person standing in the front of the class -- and there is so much that needs to change in the way that America recruits, trains, supports and manages our teachers.
• Singapore selects prospective teachers from the top third of the class and in Finland only one in ten applicants is accepted into teacher preparation programs. They only pick the very best.
• The issue of teacher evaluation is especially important today for a number of reasons. First of all, everyone agrees that our evaluation system is broken.
• (T)he vast majority of teacher colleges in this country are doing a mediocre job at best.
• As a country we must stop highlighting only ballplayers and rock stars and start highlighting teachers who are our true heroes and role models.

Read the text of the speech, agree or disagree, chalk it up to politics, if you must.  But don't sit on your laurels, ignore the declines in our system, and decide that you can't make a difference.  The very least we can all do is to stay informed.  The most we can do is make conscious decisions to be a constructive force in our own sphere of influence.

I may not make a difference in my state, my country, or the world, but I make a difference to the students who sit in my classes, who ask me to serve as their thesis advisor, and who look to me as a role model for how teachers should teach.  I'm no Arne Duncan, but that's no excuse for overlooking the opportunities I have to make a positive impact in my small corner of the world.  That's my seat on the bus.

Maybe we should have left it as it was

John Basinger recites Milton's Paradise Lost--the entire 60,000 words--from memory.  He started memorizing the poem when he was 58.  (You can listen here.)  I can't decide what fascinates me more, that he started at 58, that he was able to memorize Milton's entire work (I have trouble with my grocery list), or that he learns something new (what he describes as "a delicious possibility") with each recitation of the 60,000 words.

So, when Newsweek reported (this month) the data demonstrating that creative thinking is declining in America and explained that "those who diligently practice creative activities learn to recruit their brains’ creative networks quicker and better," I wondered again why we've abandoned the rigor that shored up innovation.  Some of the highlights:

• A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future.
• When scholars gave creativity tasks to both engineering majors and music majors, their scores laid down on an identical spectrum, with the same high averages and standard deviations. 
• A lifetime of consistent habits gradually changes the neurological pattern.

And the last quote reminded me that I've written before about Proust and neural networks and the possibilities for change--change at a fundamental, personal, neurological level.  We can alter our own realities (we can debate the limits another time), far later in life than previously thought and far more rigorously in the service of creativity, education, and innovation.  The education of our grandparents and great-grandparents was largely rote memorization, which has been widely vilified in favor of more open-ended instruction.  Rigor and creativity are inextricably confounded; why do we persist in attempts to separate them academically?

Curious about what happens to curiosity

If curiosity were framed as a competitive advantage in the workplace, business schools would be in serious competition to develop curricula in curiosity.  Consider, if you will what might be taught in:

• Competing for Curiosity
• How Curious is Your Strategy?
• Curious Economics
• Curiosity Killed the Competition
• Accounting for the Curious
• Curious Markets I Have Known

A Google search on curiosity has 26,600,000 results.  Narrow the search to intellectual curiosity and the results shrink to 3,360,000.  Much of the accepted wisdom in the articles, news stories, and blogs is about how kids are naturally curious.  Which is why I'm wondering what has happened to those Curious Kids by the time they get to college.

Curbing the curiosity.  Is it the educational system?  Is it the demands of the job market?  Is it our parenting style(s)?  Perhaps some inextricable combination of multiple factors?  Whatever it is, I'm seeing classrooms full of students who diligently take notes, perform at (what they perceive to be) the minimum requirement to get the grade they want, and, more often than not, accept without question whatever lecture material is provided.

(Let me wander off the path momentarily to differentiate the all-too-prevalent "gotcha" students--the ones who exhibit the obsolete meaning of curiosity, which is exactness or accuracy--from those who have a desire or inclination to learn about or inquire into any subject.  The former are proliferating as rapidly as the latter are disappearing.) 

I have very little in the way of scholarly wisdom to impart; rather, I just miss having the equivalent of academic playmates who find joy in intellectual discovery of something not known at the beginning of a spontaneous episode of curious cavorting.  I make room for it in my class planning, I encourage it in my students, I demonstrate it (sometimes to the point of absurdity), and the joy of learning--for no other reason than the fun of it--seems hard to find.

What if the absence of curiosity--and the related joy of learning--is a symptom that we're teaching and studying the wrong things?

Are we taking the harder right?

"Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half truth when the whole can be won."  This quote from the USMA Cadet Prayer kept playing in my head after reading student responses to Employers Want 18th-Century Skills. 

Today, I'll let the student voices stand alone; they really don't need any help from me.

Senior finance major.  The comments posted at the end of this article are the perfect example of the problems inherent to this country’s educational system. The writer of the article used a title that he did not fully clarify within his writing and instead of having an intelligent discussion about how to improve education, the entire conversation is about what is meant by the title.

In my personal opinion, colleges should be a place of elitism. It is hard to go to college. It is expensive, it is hard work and it should not be a vo-tech school. You should be forced to read classical literature, forced to learn a second language, basic math in college should be calculus and a semester of study abroad should be required. You should work hard to get a college degree and it should give each student a general knowledge of all subjects.

Senior management major.  This is the problem in Japan too. Many people are good at doing what they are told to do. That is, they have problem-solving ability. However, they are not good at thinking critically and voluntarily; they don't have problem-seeking ability.

Senior finance major.  I agree with Mark when he states that businesses are looking for employees who can both write and communicate clearly. Let’s face it. Who wants someone who has to have someone revise and edit their e-mail before they send it out to their superiors or colleagues? Secondly, who would want someone who goes around the office speaking the language of SMS, using lols, and omgs? Furthermore, to comment on the tangents being produced throughout the comments about punctuation, and grammar, most of these were minor errors. But, I do have one question. With all the elaborate word usage and detailed demonstrations put into written words in each comment…would you honestly forgo your literacy training in college for a technology skill to be taken in its place?

And the technology, too

The Steelcase Learning Lab is the model for our beta classroom. The technology tools and infrastructure are the least of my concerns, however, as there are very capable people managing that project. What concerns me is how to use what's being provided.

I've not been an early adopter of any technology. Late to cell phones and computers, I do not use the full functionality of any technology; I use only what seems effective or efficient...or what I'm required (by someone else, of course) to use. Were I to be completely honest, I'd admit that the Learning Lab technology is more than a little intimidating. Using technology well is impressive; using it poorly (especially in the presence of Digital Natives) does not inspire confidence in either the user or the observer(s). I can learn the technology; in fact, I'll be provided the "opportunity" within the next two weeks. And it will remind me how it feels to be a novice. So why would I do this?

It's easy to teach students who love to read, who love to write, who love learning for the sake of learning...the ones we all want to be and the ones we all want to teach. But even when we find those near-perfect students, few of us have the luxury of esoteric discourse ranging from neural networks to computer networks, with a sidebar about The New York Times book review of Jonah Lehrer's Proust was a Neuroscientist (which I thoroughly enjoyed, by the way). I teach undergraduate business students at a state-funded university, students who are being recruited and hired for a wide range of abilities. I don't get to choose which ones I teach, I have very little time with them, and I need to reach them as quickly and as effectively as possible. Will the technology help? Teaching well matters enough for me to take the risk. And the willingness to learn--which is what we expect of our students-- does seem to require some willingness to risk.