Teaching Through the College Transition

In my three years teaching at UMass, I’ve had hundreds of students.  If you count my time as a teaching assistant, that number would be in the thousands.  In all that time, I only met one set of parents – it was move in week and we bumped into each other at a café. 

While secondary school teachers are in a game of chess, negotiating school administrations, unions, helicopter parents and students, College professors are playing checkers.  They have the distinct advantage of singular, content-based focus.  In other words, all they have to worry about is education.  But the singular focus, risks myopia.  College marks that strange, awkward (and now prolonged) transition to independence and adulthood.  It’s those very struggles that often enter into the classroom sideways – chronic tardiness, sleeping in class, plagiarism, generally being unprepared.  Which makes me think – is the single focus flawed?  Would a broader perspective help professors connect with students and teach their material?    And if so, what would that look like? 

UMass, Amherst’s Residential Academic Program (RAP) might provide a model:  Students live together in the same dorm and take three classes together – one in the dorm room.  It’s an opportunity for a small college experience at a big research university.  The class provides a bridge between college life and college responsibilities.  As an instructor, there is one big difference – it’s not just an educational environment, it’s a social environment.  While in my traditional classes, students hardly speak to one another before or after class, in RAP classes, I often had a hard time getting students to stop talking. 

On the one hand, it made my job more difficult – I had to balance a social dynamic in addition to class requirements and content instruction.  But on the other hand, it helped deliver a more meaningful classroom experience for the students.  Many of whom, stay in touch. 

But the parents – for better and for worse – are still absent from the picture.  I’m not suggesting that helicopter parents should make the trip to college.  But is there a presence of absence that should be acknowledge or considered?  And if so, what does that look like? 

Reading an Op-Ed in the Washington Post this morning by Michael Gerson reminded me that there is a complex social and familial dynamic – alongside the complex economic calculation – underpinning the college experience.  And professors would be crazy to think that that doesn’t creep into the classroom. 

Creating A Meaningful Classroom Experience

I reserve a lot of my class time for students to brainstorm ideas, reflect on assignments and share their work.  Last semester, a little past the halfway mark, we were shifting our focus to the final research paper – the classic 15 page college research paper, the kind that students put off until finals week and then, like an Octopus swimming in a sea of coffee, type 100 pages overnight in a caffeine induced frenzy.  I asked students to take out a piece of paper and fill in the blank: I am writing about x because I want to find out about y.  And then, I asked them to pose a question about their topic. 

I sat and watched the students write for a few minutes and then started the classic show and tell discussion…who wants to share?

But the first student who shared threw a curve ball.  We talked for a few minutes about her topic and then I asked, “what’s your question?”

“Will it be meaningful?” She replied.

That’s not really what I meant, but she struck at the heart of a major and often over looked question that students struggle with: what’s the point?

I remember when I was writing my Master’s thesis, I called up a friend who I trusted and admired and asked him to help read a section and help me think through a problem.  We had a long, creative and reflective email exchange.  But in his last note he wrote: I don’t know why you spend so much time on school, but I hope you find it meaningful. In other words, what’s the point?

At the time, I didn’t have a good answer. I had lots of ideas about how my work was “meaningful” that didn’t necessarily comport with reality…I’m changing the world #Obvi.  In retrospect, it had more to do with answering a question that pricked me.     

But back to the classroom.  So, what makes a paper meaningful? And what makes it meaningless? 

I threw the question back to the students and we launched into a forty-five minute discussion about college. I can’t say the conversation was on topic, but I learned a lot about the way students think about their role in the classroom.

Here’s some of the feedback:

1. A paper is meaningful if it contributes to a larger, local or national conversation.   
2. A paper is meaningful if the student feels like they have the opportunity to gain some mastery over topic or subject. 
3. A paper is meaningful when students have a personal connection to the question or the topic.
4. A paper is meaningful when students receive a good grade.

The irony, of course, is that if the students fulfill the first three items on the list, the last will almost inevitably follow.  While every student could point to a handful of classes or papers that met these criteria, the majority of classes fell short.  So what makes a paper meaningless? According to the students:

1. When the Professors are looking for a preset answer.
2. When they are trying to meet the professors expectations.
3. When they are assigned a topic (When every student writes on the same topic).
4. When they receive a bad grade.

As an instructor or a professor, it’s likely that you have an intrinsic (and possibly delusional) love of your work – how else could you have survived graduate school?  Regardless of your fantasies, it’s unlikely that your students feel the same way.  But that doesn’t mean they can’t learn.  Helping students find meaning in their work and in the classroom makes teaching and learning easy.  It means that students are more likely to meet deadlines, read assignments, write drafts and deliver quality “A” work. 

Using Prezi to Create Dynamic Content for Online Courses

The first time I taught an online class, I wrote and posted 26 lectures.  Originally, I had thought about filming virtual lectures (complete with laugh track).  But I lacked the time, technology and talent to create engaging stylized videos.  Instead, I came up with talking head videos that were more painful to watch than the Nyan Cat on repeat.  So I posted the lecture notes instead. 

This semester, in an ongoing attempt to break out of blackboard, I started to experiment with Prezi – the flash-based presentation software that allows the users to move in three dimensions.  While nothing can replace the face to face experience of the classroom, Prezi adds a dynamic, interactive and playful quality to the information…even more so than video. 

Traditional slide show software like Power Point, are poorly suited to online classes.  Slide shows that artfully incorporate images and key concepts can be great for large presentations.   But they are only ever a compliment to the presentation, not the presentation itself.  Flipping through slide shows without the presenter – even really good slide shows – feels too much like story time at the public library.

But Prezi actual stands in the place of the presenter and encourages the user to have a unique interaction with the content.  It allows you  to move back and forth between the details and the big picture.  It puts the user in charge and allows them to move through at their own time.  They can follow links, watch videos, listen to audio-casts, look at images or simply read the text.   

Rethinking Online Education

No doubt, the internet offers a unique educational opportunity.  From Google to Wikipedia, from the New York Times to Twitter, people have unprecedented access to knowledge and information.   But the internet can also be a barrier to education -- especially when it comes to online classes at the university.  Students struggle with technology, they can feel isolated in absence of face to face communication and content-heavy courses tend to drown students in text.

The online option often feels like a poor compromise: we exchange a collaborative classroom experience for the low-cost and convenience of the web.   I have taught a handful on online courses now through the UMass Continuing and Professional Education program.  Despite my best attempt to deliver a high-quality educational experience comparable to the classroom, I always seem to fall short. 

Possibly because I still use the classroom as the model to judge the quality of the class.  Why wouldn’t I?  That’s all I've ever really known. 

I am getting ready to teach American Political Thought online over the winter term (Click the link to check out my syllabus).  And I am determined to think about it differently.  Over the next few weeks I plan on investigating Khan Academy and Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in order to gain some new perspective on online education. And perhaps, discover a new model – other than the classroom – to follow next semester.

Have you ever taken online classes in the past?  Comment and share your experience.  Do you have any thoughts on what could improve online education?  I’d love to hear ‘em . 

Worrying About What's Next...

It’s a question that comes after class or at the end of office hours. It’s a question that comes by email at the end of semester after all the grades have been posted.  And often with the hesitancy of dog bite victim perusing the pound: “So… what kind of jobs can someone get with a poli sci degree?”

I’m not sure if students hesitate because past professors have snapped at them for asking the same question, or because they anticipate the worst: there are no jobs. 

Not surprisingly – wait, scratch that -- SURPRISINGLY, the jobs question is extremely controversial.  Many professors resist describing liberal arts education in terms of utility: Education is not a means to an end; rather, it contains intrinsic, aesthetic, moral, political and unquantifiable value.  In other words, it’s the journey not the destination.   And they’re not wrong.  Liberal arts education helps people enrich their life; excite curiosity; inform political action; expand the horizons of possibility; develop important analytic skills. But still, many students have more immediate concerns: excessive debt and imminent membership with the boomerang gang.

I am at that point in my career, where I am confronting this reality head on -- the students I had as freshmen are now graduates (AKA I’m getting old).   On Saturday, I met with a former student and a recent graduate to talk about a lot of these very issues.  He’s currently unemployed and frustrated that UMass didn’t do more to help prepare him to transition.  I felt frustrated at myself that I hadn’t/couldn’t do more to help.   We spent a long time brainstorming different professional options and opportunities.  And I have a lot of faith that he will find success.  But still, I really identify with his frustration -- perhaps, because I hear the same frustrations from other students, or perhaps because it resonates a little with my own college experience.

So how can the university better prepare our graduates? The current answer: career services, advising and internship programs.  But there has to be more.  Degree programs should require students to take courses that will help students transition to the workforce.   

This semester, teaching Methods and Interpretation, I find myself in the position to help meet this need.  A section of the class requires students to practice different forms of professional writing.  I know some of my other colleagues have done the same.  As a result, we've started to move the peripheral question of utility out of the margins and closer to the center of our Political Science degree program.

What does this look like in the classroom? Last week, we started to map the variety of job opportunities and possibilities open to students with political science degrees.   It’s irrelevant to talk about a “career path.” Instead, we focused on the web that links different careers together – it’s about a network.   We talked about the interrelationship between government, political, non-profit and corporate jobs and the different opportunities to pivot from one sector to another.  We’ll continue this conversation next week and students will prepare cover letters and resumes for different entry level positions. 

My hope is that these conversations will defuse their anxiety – it already has for some.  The economy sucks, but opportunities for success abound… however you choose to define it.  I like to think that college has the potential to help students align their definition of success with their own values.  And set them on the path to achieve it.

Leave a comment below: What’s one thing that you learned, or could have learned in college, that better prepared you for your current job? 

Twitter and the Art of Prolixity

If the great Will Strunk were still alive, the current state of the English language might render him mute.  #Twitter, Txt msgs, and Facebook reward brevity.  But they often mangle language, leaving sentences and words looking like plastic yard toys in a lawn mower’s wake. 

I love social media, but what happens when social media conventions creep into the classroom? Worse yet, what do you do when they pop up in students’ writing?  A year and a half ago I taught an Intro to Political Theory class titled: Investigating Democracy.   One evening, I received a short email from a student.  The message was in all caps, followed by a string of strange and angry emoticons: HELP >:o.  His final papers didn't look much different.  This student struggled with the material – in a good way – but he also struggled to communicate his ideas.  At first, I didn't know what to make of his writing style.   But then I realized if it had been a text message or even a string of tweets, it would have made perfect sense.   

I spent a good deal of time that semester marking up drafts and helping him to bring his writing in line with traditional conventions.  It wasn't till the end of the semester that I started to consider an alternative approach.  Rather than take traditional writing conventions as a starting point, what if I started with Twitter.  In other words, is it possible to find common with students to connect and talk about good writing? After all, the skills required to craft good tweets are at least as old as…well…Strunk and White’s maxims: Prefer the active voice to the passive; avoid unnecessary words; order sentences for emphasis, etc.

Good tweets jump like a fish out of the rolling twitter stream; they provoke laughter, disgust, empathy.  But more than that, they make you want to read more.  In other words, a good tweet has the same effect as a good title, a good topic sentence, a good lead paragraph. 

This semester, teaching Methods and Interpretation, I turn back to Twitter again and again.  Before students submit their final papers, I often ask them distill their argument into 140 character tweet…with one difference: they have to use pen and paper #OldSchool.

@EdwardErikson