Tweet potato chips

If you'll pardon the unintended double entendre, there's a point to be made here. Seriously.  There is a plethora of research (trust me...or Google it) suggesting that the brain's response to foods high in fat and carbohydrates is to keep eating those foods even when we are full, not hungry, or know we shouldn't.  Thus, we are likely to have difficulty eating just one potato chip, regardless of who manufactures it.

Ditto with tweets.

I am again checking in with Twitter, trying to be open minded, and willing to embrace this tool if I can figure out how to manage (or ignore?) the barrage that seems part and parcel of the Twitter-verse.  There are individuals whose lives seem limited to the interstices of their tweets. How much of that can possibly be worth my time?

On the scale of technology comfort and expertise (assuming one exists; if not, it should), Twitter is at the not-all-that-comfortable and wow-I-feel-silly end of the continuum for me. The good news is that it reminds me how it feels to be a learner, a novice, a student.  The bad news is that I'm not climbing this particular learning curve very gracefully.

In discussions of Twitter as a teaching tool, there are teachers who use it to hone foreign language skills (the premise being that a 140-characters limit removes some of the anxiety of writing in a second language), encourage in-class debate at a speed and increased participation not offered by the traditional raising of the hand, and craft narrative stories 140 characters at a time.  (Some of the best resources I've found are at the end of this post.)

But without a strategy or focus for Twitter, it quickly becomes an exercise in trying not to eat the entire bag of chips, with a key difference being that the bag of tweets never empties, despite the rate of consumption.

Perhaps my Achilles tendency is Twitter-specific.

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Teaching with Twitter: 5 Resources for Getting Started
A Primer for EdTech: Tools for K-12 and Higher Ed. Teachers
Inside Higher Ed: Teaching with Twitter
The Guardian: Can Twitter Open Up a New Space for Learning, Teaching and Thinking?
A Point of View: Why I Don't Tweet

And for the really adventurous: Twitter Vs. Zombies: New Media Literacy and the Virtual Flash Mob

A million pounds of scrap metal

The conversation went something like this:

"We found close to 80 tires on 140 acres. And the scrap metal?  At the most recent price of eleven cents per pound....let's just say that's a whole lot of Coke cans."   

"Four old truck trailers--and another two in a separate location made of aluminum (which were used to store feed for cattle)--plus a silo full of corn (even mildewed) was $10,000 worth of corn."

"It's extraordinary to see someone's life come down to scrap metal"

How often do our lives amount to scrap metal? The things we didn't prize, didn't take the time to count, or assumed weren't worth the effort may be of more value than we realize.

A million pounds of scrap metal make a difference, even though it may not be the difference we intended.

Details are the devil

Details matter, whether in education, research, parenting, or sports.  And because details matter, they trouble the diligent in pursuit of excellence or in pursuit of completion, on less lofty days.

Today was devoted almost entirely to completing the blended course required for my certification of mastery in blended course design.  The deadline (Tuesday) for submission to the certifying agency is self-imposed, though prudent, given that the course is to be taught in April.

I am being reminded that the challenge of a well-designed course is in the be-deviling details of aligning the course objectives to each teaching unit and to every measure of learning...to what I teach in each week, each class, and each assignment...the details of a lecture versus a reading versus an in-class exercise or activity.

I'm convinced that many of the questions students ask about assignments, course expectations, and grading are more indicative of a lack of good course design than of student laziness, inattention, or boredom.  To my chagrin and delight (depending on my level of preparation), I have found that clear expectations, well-written directions (for assignments), and carefully planned lessons both decrease student questions and increase the likelihood of student participation--even when the assignments are not graded.  When assignments are planned well, it's easier for students to do them well.

Students from freshmen through graduate school will do their best to comply with course requirements if they are clear, well planned, and designed for learning.

It's not magic, nor is it manipulation.  It's taking the time (a lot of it) and the thoughtful planning (even more than the time) to design a course from which students will learn, in which they can be successful, and during which they see relevance to their lives.  That's what makes the difference.

The more attention I give to course design, the more I enjoy teaching and the more my students seem to enjoy learning.  The challenge is the time required to attend to the details, the details that differentiate lectures developed years ago to be delivered on auto-pilot from courses that invite students into a collaboration of learning.

It's been a long day and I'm tired.  But the details are coalescing into a course I will be happy to teach...and for which I will be prepared enough to focus on the students and what they need and want to learn.  The more I focus on the devilish details in the planning, the more I can focus on my students in the delivery.

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.

"You meet a university."

After the obligatory statements about the welcome received on our campus, a recent guest speaker expressed his belief that universities have a personality, that "you meet a university" in much the same way as you meet a person.  I very much liked his phrasing...and he's right.

I wonder how enjoyable we are here at my university...and if that varies by department or residence hall or support function.  

I'd like for people to meet a caring, supportive, curious university.  One where we remember the value of each individual.  A university where we are all on the same team and collaborate in the honorable pursuit of learning, whether we offer food for thought, spiritual food, or comfort food.

I'd like our faculty and staff to treat one another and our students with the utmost respect, even in the face of differences of opinion, poor performance, or philosophical breaches.

I'm certain that we treat our invited guests well.  But I wonder about the anonymous student, the less-visible support staff, the adjunct faculty, and the many who drive or walk our campus for the beauty of the trees and the architecture.

People meet a business or a university in many ways and over varying periods of time. When I teach about organizational structure and change, we explore the reasons why a CEO in a major corporation often has a very different perspective than the people in his or her organization.  We talk about the value of multiple perspectives on product or service quality, the working environment, and the customer experience; we also talk about the risks of overlooking the differences in those perspectives.

It's possible to meet a university and walk away charmed.  It's also possible for the outcome to be very different.  We shape the outcome every day, in ways large and small...and what we are teaching every time someone meets our university may have more impact than everything else we do.

Older than dirt

It would be hard to miss the ubiquitous references, headlines, and links; it's all about grit. We've managed to uncover the essence of what makes people successful, whether in an academic setting or at work.  It's grit. It's not intelligence or creativity or grades that predict success.  It's grit.

And this is news?

Consider this:

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.  Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.  Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determine alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. (1)

Or this:

In Eastern cultures...it's just assumed that struggle is a predictable part of the learning process. Everyone is expected to struggle in the process of learning, and so struggling becomes a chance to show that you, the student, have what it takes emotionally to resolve the problem by persisting through that struggle. (2)

Or any of the philosophies of education that espouse rigor, challenging material, high standards, and high expectations for students.

What frustrates me is not the focus on grit as the primary differentiator of success; I concur.  What seems wasteful to me is the research funding and mainstream attention given to something we already know. We should be refining the application of what we know and/or changing how we teach.

I suspect the new teaching would look an awful lot like what we've already done, perhaps more familiar to our parents and grandparents, because the only way to persistent through something challenging or hard is to be required to struggle with something challenging or hard.


(1) http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Calvin_Coolidge
(2) http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/11/12/164793058/struggle-for-smarts-how-eastern-and-western-cultures-tackle-learning

The dark side

It is a truism that many of us spend time and energy (re)learning lessons we resist, whether the lessons are academic, professional, or personal. One of my recurring lessons is the value of darkness.  I'm not a fan of the dark, whether the dead of night or the dead of winter. And when considering the darker side of our natures, I often struggle to reconcile it with the better angels.

The evidence from the last two times I spent with my camera--another trip to the local cemetery I visit often (to be fair, I pass it to and from work, so it's not quite as morbid as it might sound) and a recent trip to New York City--suggests that I remain intrigued with the dark side.  Three of my favorite photographs include a window in the lobby of The American Museum of Natural History and the shadow cast while my daughter and I contemplated the Statue of Liberty.

As with many things in life, the dark side is easier to appreciate as art, with the perspective gained by distance.  But I think a full and well-lived life requires that we appreciate the darkness while we are surrounded by it or walking within it.  Even when the darkness is large enough to obscure the very place in which we are standing.

This is going to be a life-long course for some of us.