Ill-defined problems

This semester, I have another capstone class designed to prepare seniors to use what they've learned in their degree program to tackle the reality of doing versus studying. We've completed job searches (to assess knowledge, skills, and abilities needed), completed self-assessments, and looked at the learning they've acquired from life and academic failures, all as foundation for the realities of doing.

Last week, we (and I use that pronoun with intention) embarked on a project for a stakeholder. The project contains opportunities to use and/or learn the knowledge and skills needed for the work the students want. And some of them are frustrated and angry. They want to be told what to do with the ill-defined problem we have at our disposal as a learning opportunity.

And this is what puzzles me every time I encounter it: Students who want responsibility, want to be hired, want to be promoted...and who want to be told how to do their work. I understand the frustration, as it's a natural part of learning. I don't understand being angry about the lack of a clear path to follow. Perhaps it's because we have not introduced our students to ill-defined or ill-structured problems often enough or early enough:

Education research has shown that an effective technique for developing problem-solving and critical-thinking skills is to expose students early and often to "ill-defined" problems in their fields. An ill-defined problem is one that addresses complex issues and thus cannot easily be described in a concise, complete manner. Furthermore, competing factors may suggest several approaches to the problem, requiring careful analysis to determine the best approach. (1)

There may be more than one best approach in some fields, but the "careful analysis" part is required regardless of the field or discipline. And the traditional approach to teaching (three tests and a final exam) rarely require careful analysis of an ill-formed or ill-structured problem. And those are the only real problems I have encountered in my years as an employee, a consultant, an executive, a teacher, or a parent.

In the language of design (or design thinking), the term wicked problem is sometimes used. Complexity may not always be synonymous with wicked or with ill-defined, but the only way to assess the complexity and the degree of (ill)structure or wickedness is to do the careful analysis.

Careful analysis is hard work. The pay-off for doing it well is usually large. The motivation to do it at all is what seems to be in question, but perhaps what appears to be a motivation problem is the fear of failing--because we clearly have not been consistently teaching students how to approach these problems.




(1) The use of ill-defined problems for developing problem-solving and empirical skills in CS1. David Reed, Department of Math and Computer Science, Creighton University.

Freedom vs. responsibility

There is a raging debate among the faculty on my campus.  Coalitions are forming, email debate is at an all-time high, and tempers are flaring.  The committee that provided a recommendation is being challenged in sidewalk conversations, meeting sidebars, and faculty lounges.  The topic?  Faculty responsibilities when students have excused absences from class.

Yes, you are reading that correctly.  The faculty at large is up in arms over fair and equitable treatment of students who miss classes, with the emphasis on those students who have university-sanctioned or other legitimate reasons for their absence.  To be perfectly clear, the concern is not whether we are being fair or how to be fair, but over whether faculty can be held to any consistent expectations regarding their behavior and their policies in the classroom.

The recent hullabaloo is over a proposed addition to existing policies and, in the process of voicing strong objections to the proposed addition, most faculty are taking issue not with the proposal, but with the existing and unchanged policies.  As these policies have been in place since (according to faculty who've been here far longer than I) 1999 and are publicly available online, this puzzles me.

What I have learned from observing this process is that most faculty (regardless of how many years they have been teaching or whether or not they are tenured, tenure-track, or the all-encompassing-and-convenient other) are unaware that (1) the university has a written attendance policy, (2) the university has a policy regarding university-sanctioned absences, and (3) none of this is about academic freedom.

What alarms me is the lack of understanding by people who hold the privileged status of tenure about the nature and the limits of their privilege.  We are a publicly-funded university. Our state board of education determines the number of hours required for a degree, the funding allocated to our institution, and policies about the number of classroom hours required for an online versus a face-to-face class.  Everyone who teaches for the university is expected to adhere to policies regarding travel, expenditures, and the academic calendar.

Faculty discussion, debate, and disagreement about policy are signs of an engaged and thoughtful faculty. Using the argument of academic freedom to be exempt from those policies is not one of those signs.

A still and quiet moment

The longer you teach, the more students touch your life. They make an imprint, graduate, and move into the next chapter of their own lives. Each beginning is fresh and new to the graduate, a time of pride for the family, and a moment of reflection for the faculty who are privileged to teach.

It's so easy to get lost in the number of papers or projects to grade, the grades to be submitted, the flurry of deadlines to meet, or the dance of grade disappointment.  What matters to me in this particular moment, however, is a different tally, the one that represents the reason we do what we do.

This semester's teaching tally is two undergraduate classes (34 students), two graduate classes (36 students), and two Honors theses.  And from that teaching, twenty-one graduate students receiving degrees tomorrow (a third of whom have traveled from Panama) and another 10 or so undergraduate students who've allowed me to guide them through running a retail business or writing a thesis or both.

While the students may not know how much they have challenged me to think, stretch, laugh, and risk, I am a better teacher for their brief sojourn here. So in this still and quiet moment before the Honors ceremony, the Graduate School graduation party, and the pomp and ceremony of commencement, I am thankful for the silent brush of butterfly wings on heartstrings.

Student frustration...revisited each semester

"You're frustrated in my class," I say.  The student agrees emphatically, telling me that he is not learning, not being given substance, not being given deadlines, not being given lectures from which he can learn.  And we have arrived at the point where learning may actually begin.

I ask him if he's read the syllabus...and he tells me that he has not.  I ask if he has started on the assignments due in the course...and he has not.   He tells me that he is seeking substance and does not believe I am giving him any, since the class is mostly "free time" during which he feels compelled to be productive...by working on assignments for other classes.

He does have a point about the lack of structure during the class period, as there is very little.  But the lack of structure is by design and I am learning a great deal about my students by watching (in a leadership class, by the way) how they approach unstructured opportunities to learn and to lead.

And I have, indeed, given the students a great deal of substance, if one considers the textbook, articles from MIT on leadership, and bookmarks to the material I research and read on a near-daily basis to be substantive.  All of this material--the substantive material this student has been seeking--is...guess where?  It's all hyper linked on the syllabus. The syllabus I reviewed and explained on the first day of class.  The same syllabus I've referenced several times since the first day of class.

So, now the time is ripe to tell the student that my issue with lecturing is that students don't listen until a need has been created.  For the most part, we filter out information that we do not perceive as useful.  But the student and I have now discovered a need for information, information that has been available (but ignored) since the beginning of the semester.

It really was a good discussion, once he believed that my goal is his learning.

Student frustration is (still) too valuable to waste.

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.

Some days are like living in a blender

Yesterday, it was Frank Deford on NPR, quoting former University of California, Berkeley chancellor Clark Kerr:

The three purposes of the University?  To provide sex for the students, sports for the alumni, and parking for the faculty.

Today, it was finding a forgotten electronic bookmark to Max Ehrmann's Desiderata and wondering how, in my youth, I missed this:

Take kindly to the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.  Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.  But do not distress yourself with imaginings.  Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Two months ago, it was a faculty retreat on excellence in teaching, where a colleague pondered how to engage students who do not wish to be engaged.  And for the past several weeks, it's been my walks across campus, observing the masses of students, reminding myself that each and every one of them is loved by someone (whether parent, sibling, or friend) and that very few of them are on our campus because they love learning.

And if that weren't enough to keep my mind occupied for a while, I've also been remembering a Mark Helprin quote from Winter's Tale:

(T)ime was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given - so we track it, in linear fashion piece by piece.  Time however can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once.

How, then, do teachers rise to the challenge of engaging hearts and minds, knowing full well the lessons needed, understanding the youthful resistance to learning, and realizing much we offer will not be embraced for many years (if at all)--all without giving in or giving up?  I wonder if each one of us who teaches (regardless of where or what) must struggle to find our own place to stand, one that provides enough distance to see it all at once and enough proximity to remain engaged.

Some days I get it in an instant; others, not so much.

Can those who do also teach?

It's another semester where I am not teaching and I find myself wondering why it is that I miss the classroom so much during these semesters 'off.'  Classes start a week from today and I already miss updating the syllabus, making revisions to course plans, and wondering (as I do each semester) how many of the names I'll actually be able to attach to the faces.  The specifics don't matter as much, I suppose, as the yearning.

What is it about the learning that I miss?  I've pondered this question a fair amount over the last few years.  And, in the final analysis (which, of course, we never reach) it seems to be the creativity, the lack of rote, the newness in the sameness.   Nothing seems to satisfy as much as the opportunity to re-invent--or to believe that we can.

When my daughter was younger and we had a near-steady diet of child-friendly fare, I realized how many stories deal with beginnings, with cycles, with birth-death-life.  Each day, each season, each year allows us to re-new, re-create, re-discover.  The resonance of beginnings, of the freshly sharpened pencil, the empty grade book, the chance to get it better, righter, different this time.

Whatever the reason, I miss being part of the preparations.  And I am counting the weeks until January.

Endings are beginnings

I just walked out of the classroom, down the stairs, and across the courtyard to the building where I office.  It was the final session of the summer for the Managerial M.B.A. program for full-time professionals.  It's the end of their two-year program.

I don't know how they do it, these students with jobs and families, many of whom commute from other cities for the Saturday classes.  It's not just the effort required to attend class, it's also the level of effort they put into their work, which translates to high-quality finished products.  These highly-motivated students want to be in school and want it enough to work hard.  They are a joy to teach.  And, as with the bright, motivated teams with whom I've worked, these students challenge me to work hard.  In some ways, it doesn't feel as though I'm teaching at all.

And the last sentence is the shadow side, perhaps, of this experience.  The students who need teaching the least are the ones who are the easiest to teach.  Instructors love the self-motivated high performers.  Part of why we love them is because they make us look good.

The structure of this capstone course means that I lectured very little and spent the majority of class time with small groups of students engaged in work; as a result, I was fortunate enough to be able to know them far better.  And I will miss them.

It's a lot like life

One of my early lessons as a student of taekwondo has stood me well, both inside and outside the kwan (school).  As I was struggling to learn the traditions, patterns, and language of the kwan, I looked around me for cues and models, noticing black belts in the same row, taking the same lesson, going through the same patterns. When I asked one of the black belts (who appeared both competent and intimidating) why he was in  a class with beginner white belts, his response is one I often share with students:  When you achieve the level of black belt proficiency, that signifies you are ready to begin again...at the beginning.

By the time children are ready to leave home, parents are figuring out how to parent.  By the time we finish a major work project, we are mastering the skills that would have helped us start.  And when we finish a class or course of study, we have the knowledge we needed to begin.

We live our lives simultaneously forward and backward.  It's an odd thing to advance in one direction while processing in another; moving forward while understanding backward.  It's not that we don't learn and take the wisdom or knowledge with us; we do.  But there is something in our make up--something captured in the differing languages of child psychologists and poets, some essentially human ability to think about thinking--that folds time, capturing both past and future in the present.

As each semester ends, I feel competent to begin, wishing I could incorporate what I've just learned into what I've just done.  In that way, as in so many others, each semester is--at least for me--a lot like life.

Accounts receivable or accounts paid?

This is the last week of classes for the spring semester.  Students have mostly checked out, instructors are wondering why they assigned all the work that requires grading, and everyone is counting the days until the semester is over.

In the graduate-level Innovation and Creativity class, groups are making presentations about innovations within the industry they chose. Today, a group of six, all of whom are graduating with a Masters in Accountancy, almost brought tears to my eyes.  For their presentation on "An Accountant's Guide to Creativity," each student wore a white t-shirt with one of the following in simple black letters: 

• Be Audit You Can Be
• Nice Assets
• It's Accrual World
• Filing Single?
• Straight Line Inebriation
• Let's Get Fiscal

They were well-prepared, proud to be part of the accounting profession, and full of the confidence, hope, and promise associated with youth.  As a group, they took a risk, stepped outside the expectations associated with their profession, and lampooned the stereotypes about accountants (including a video of John Cleese...how great is that?).

They hit a home run.  They rocked.  They made me proud.  And the photo they took of themselves and sent to me after their presentation?  Looking at it makes me smile.

Standing firm, awash in ambiguity

I'm beginning to get more questions about what my daughter wants to study in college.  The questions, you'll notice, assume that she will go. They also assume she knows now (well before her senior year in high school) what she wants to study.  And right below the surface is another assumption--that there is a direct correlation between college major and profession or career.  

And yet, from a recent New York Times article...

According to national surveys, (employers) want to hire 22-year-olds who can write coherently, think creatively and analyze quantitative data, and they’re perfectly happy to hire English or biology majors. Most Ivy League universities and elite liberal arts colleges, in fact, don’t even offer undergraduate business majors.

The article, a collaboration between The New York Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education, describes many business schools as the last hope for students who are unable to perform elsewhere and questions the rigor of the typical B-school education.  And it gives me pause, for reasons personal and professional.

My undergraduate education was obtained at a private liberal arts college. I was well-prepared for the career choices I've made, most of which had little to do with my undergraduate major.   In contrast, however, is a comment I overheard a student in my class make to a class-mate; he was indignant that his instructor "doesn't even have a Ph.D. in business."  This assumption that the undergraduate major is of more value than demonstrated ability (regardless of degree field) is intriguing...and flies in the face of reality.

We look for easy answers.  We assume a simple linear model, starting with high school subject matter excellence, then early career choice, selection of the college major aligned with that career choice, and a happily-ever-after model for success.  The only problem with this model is that it rarely works.  

I teach at a B-school in the hope that it matters.  Some days, I wonder.

  

Learning can be painful for the instructor

In the final stretch of the academic semester, the interest always builds.  Not in the content of the course, however, but in The Grade and what it will take to get The Grade by the end of the semester.  It's perilously close to the end of my first semester to teach innovation and creativity.  I am not happy with the method I established at the beginning of the semester for determining grades and neither is a subset of my students.

In courses I've taught before, I have a reasonably robust method of assessing student learning.  I've clarified the expectations, developed rubrics (where they are of benefit), and created assignments that measure progress toward course objectives...more or less.  Because I'm never completely happy with whatever process is in place to determine The Grade.

In the innovation and creativity course, my logic at the beginning of the semester was to assess completion (rather than quality) of assignments in the majority of the homework or in-class work.  Thus, there have been frequent, short assignments with low point value (10-20 points), so that students could be candid or creative or selectively omit assignments.  The total number of points earned (at least in some portions of the course) was left to the student.  The unintended consequences were a record-keeping challenge for me and a fallacy of composition for students.

I ended up monitoring submission and/or completion of numerous assignments with low point value for 35 students; some of the students chose not to complete early assignments (due to the low point value) and are now unhappy with The Grade.  The goal of allowing students freedom to be expressive, take risks, and manage their level of interaction has worked very well for some, well enough for most, and extremely poorly for the rest.

The easy solution is to limit the number of assignments and provide more structure relative to the content.  But since the easy solution seems to defeat the purpose of the course, I have more thinking to do about how to determine The Grade when I teach this course again.  And I intend to solicit as much input as I can get from my current students...particularly the unhappy ones.  At this point, I'll take any suggestions I can get.

A really good story, regardless of the ending

At the beginning of the semester, I wrote about student frustration as a valuable learning opportunity in our business simulation.  Today, one team hit the jackpot.  I watched in utter fascination as four students who have been struggling with their decisions--and, therefore, the performance of their company--stayed beyond the three-hours scheduled for our class...because they wanted to stay.

They were excited about the all-or-nothing plan for the next round.  They assured me that this plan will make them the story I'll remember and tell when I talk about business strategy. They reminded me that I have encouraged them to take risks in order to learn.  They laughed, they talked about how energized and excited they were, and they reminded one another what a great end-of-semester presentation their decision will make, whether or not they are successful.

Hearing the excitement and the laughter...seeing the smiles on the faces of these young men...knowing four students chose an opportunity to learn over an opportunity to play it safe...

They're right.  This is the story I'll tell.

We have come to equate erudite and obscure with competent and intelligent.

It's a note I scribbled on the back of a business card.  I don't remember why or when I wrote it, but the note has stayed next to my computer for several weeks.  I'm not opposed to big words, complicated theories, or the need for scientific-mathematical accuracy, but I'm frustrated by the tendency to confuse obfuscation with knowledge.

Distilling the essence of a thing accurately and precisely requires far more understanding than endless writing or talking about the fine points or meandering through the complications and details, until all hearers, readers, or followers are lost or befuddled.  Einstein's brilliance is represented both by the details behind and the summation of  E=mc².  The details of Einstein's theory may be difficult to grasp and follow, but the distillation hooks us, allows further exploration, and anchors what we do learn.

Stephen Hawking, the theoretical physicist, may be one of the greatest minds of my lifetime.  One of my favorite things about Professor Hawking is his ability--and desire--to explain his insights in language that most adults can grasp.  That, and the fact that he has chosen to author books for children.  Yep, he writes for children.  Stephen Hawking writes children's books.  So did Rudyard Kipling, T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis and a host of other competent and intelligent men and women.

Perhaps it's not so far-fetched, then, for me to insist that students be able to explain what they know using terms and words that a 12-year-old can understand.  To delve into a subject, wrap ones mind around the nuances, wrestle the subject matter into submission, then master it fully by explaining the subject simply and elegantly is the goal of education.  It's my goal, anyway, and I think there are adequate examples throughout history that greater thinkers than I have used this method of assessing mastery.

Erudition and obscurity are overrated; competence and intelligence are not.  We need the hooks that lead us to explore and the anchors that allow us to retain.  True genius lies in that direction.

Student frustration is too valuable to waste.

With this quote from the instructor manual for the business simulation used in undergraduate strategy, we are off and running. The instructor is also frustrated at this point...and my own frustration is too valuable to waste.

The premise behind the frustration-learning link is that frustration leads to problem solving and, eventually, to learning.  The learning is intended to be the fun part.  The solution, even if imperfect...the sense of accomplishment, even if wrong...the learning, even if painful.  I get it; I believe it; I don't have to like it.

When the University makes changes to the curriculum, the faculty (which, in this very particular case, would be me) is required to adjust.  As a proponent of change and flexibility, I am--at least in a theoretical sense--in favor of progress and the changes required.  As a flawed human being with my own sense of frustration, I am having a challenging beginning to the semester.  And I am reminded (again) how it feels to struggle with ambiguity.  Our Blackboard system is new, slow, and flawed.  Our class sizes have increased, with no increase in the size of the classroom, the support provided, or the length of the time required for mastery (by the students...and, if we are being honest, by the instructor).
 
So, after worrying about my own ability to learn the details of this simulation and make it work, I have decided that I can do this, I can teach my students to do this, and we will get through this semester together.  This particular frustration may or may not be valuable, but it certainly is motivating.  Welcome back.

Ancient history, scholarship, and deja vu

I find myself in the oddest--and most unexpected--places, of late, at least as far as my reading material.  A student sent me an article from The Journal of Higher Education (and how cool is it that a student reads the Journal?) on the use of technology in teaching; I wound up reading the referenced essay by David Pace on the history and scholarship of teaching and learning history.  And that essay from The American Historical Review is absolutely worth the effort to read and evaluate critically.

The essay begins and ends with the contrast in colleges and universities, "between the amateurism that we accept in our knowledge about teaching and the professionalism we demand in other aspects of our work."  It's not a secret that the rigor demanded of researchers is not expected of teachers, for reasons we love to debate ad nauseum, including the ubiquitous recognition and reward structure biased toward publication (regardless of value, whether to the classroom or to the community).  But lost in academic posturing and debate is the informed discussion of what makes good teaching:  

• How do we measure good teaching?  
• How do we teach the art and science of good teaching?  
• Shouldn't those questions--and their answers--inform not only how we teach but also what we teach?

The academic equivalent of throwing money at a problem is developing and teaching courses designed to address specific needs.  We create courses and assignments to teach collaboration, teamwork, ethics, diversity, and a host of other Real World Problems so that we can

teach students to evaluate claims critically, to see complex questions from more than one perspective, to understand how different groups can view the same situation in different ways, to recognize the long-term consequences of actions, and to master dozens of other subtle mental operations that are absolutely necessary for their success as individuals and for the very survival of our society.

And the method Pace proposes to teach those things?  It's history. But history taught well, informed by rigor, based upon proven methods, and shared in forums traditionally reserved for scholarly research.  Just imagine...

Who knew work could still be fun?

During the past week, I've taught myself to use Prezi (you can see my first attempt here), created a web site to use for a high school technology program, and installed Google Chrome (that was actually today).  The week before, I finally mastered the web cam I blogged about earlier and actually used the administrator rights for the Facebook page for that same high school technology program.  And it's all been fun.

Fun is not a word I hear my colleagues use very often. We tend to use more academic terms such as intriguing, useful, invigorating, stimulating, challenging, cutting edge, or (if we're really going out on a limb) refreshing.  All of those are swell words--really, they are.  But multi-syllabic words don't capture what you see in a girl's eyes when she talks about how much FUN she just had at the park...or what you hear in a boy's voice when he tells you how much FUN it was to go fishing.

Call me old-fashioned, quaint, anachronistic (if you must, but not in my hearing, please), but don't take the joy out of learning something, accomplishing something (I had to create the Prezi twice, thus, twice the satisfaction of finally getting it right), or finishing something.

Life isn't, can't be, shouldn't be all about fun.  But there are places for sheer joy--and learning should be one of those places.  If we allow the fun to flourish where it can, it is partial recompense for those inevitable places where learning is just difficult.  And I do love that Prezi...

Writing crap

In the world of online reading, it's hard to know where the road will lead. That happened today when I found Danah Boyd's post about the academic impact of what we--meaning, loosely, academics--write.  In a conference presentation to academics focused on research output, Danah (a researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society), calls it as she sees it:

If you didn't believe in the value of research, my guess is that you could game the system to maximize citations and publications. There are plenty of folks out there who do indeed write crap that they don't believe in so that they can stir up controversy and get people to pay attention to their work.

Impact doesn't necessarily have to be about the public, but it does have to be about the future. It is fundamentally about getting people to think and see the world in new ways. My hope is that we can find a way to get beyond discussing impact and generate research that does impact.

In this view of the world, impact includes writing for the public, which may actually make some research far better, more useful, more engaging.   Anne Davis writes about the unfortunate dichotomy between research and writing in her EduBlog Insights:

I have blogged very little since working on published research for the past two years. I can’t help but think all the published results would have been improved with input from the larger audience that would lead to better meaning making.

This isn't a new dialog; it's been around for as long as I can remember and all that's changed is the forum.  But perhaps a larger forum will generate more possibilities by blurring the line (for the better) between quantifiable research for the purpose of securing tenure and research that allows us to be better educators.  Or, as one of my students wrote:

(We) should be taught real world experiences from teachers (not researchers) with real world experiences. Researchers should be in educational walls, but in concert with teachers. Researchers provide a great foundation for the theory of the concepts used in the real world, while the actual teachers should provide knowledge of how to apply these concepts in real world situations. This would apply Bloom’s taxonomy by providing the knowledge, understanding and application from researchers and analysis, synthesis and evaluation from the teachers.