Intro to Intro

I rounded the corner of the hallway and saw hordes of students standing, sitting, and slouching near the door to the lecture hall. For reasons beyond my ken the administration decided that classrooms in this building needed to be locked between classes, so I pulled out the shiny new key and held the door open while the students filed past. One asked me if I was her professor, and when I said yes she stuck out her hand and said “Hi, my name is [unfortunately I don’t remember it]!”

She was one of the 188 students in my Introduction to Psychology course. I know that there are universities with larger, even MUCH larger, Intro courses than this, but this was a first for my university. Up to this point our Intro courses maxed out at 35 or so. Budget cuts prompted our Department to think about how we could reduce the number of adjuncts we hire, and this large section saves us 5 or 6 hires. 

Of course I’ve taught Intro many times before, but it has been almost 10 years since my last go-round. So my appetite for challenge was met by teaching Intro again after this lacuna and the large class size, a new experience for me. Actually one of my first teaching experiences (in grad school) was teaching Intro with a class of about 50, and that course was taught in an auditorium in a science building, as this one is as well. 

Intro to Psyc is perhaps the most frequently taken classes in higher education outside of required courses in math and writing, so the resources available for teaching it boggle the mind. Many of these resources seem to channel instructors into a traditional lecture format, perhaps because Intro is taught so often by inexperienced instructors. Every publisher has not only a complete set of ancillaries, but now most have engaging online supplements to the text. So I could have reduced prep time and effort, and my anxiety, by adopting the Intro text my Department had already chosen by committee, downloading the PowerPoints slides and test bank, and (digitally) dusting off my classroom activities from 10 years before. But where’s the fun in that?

Instead, I decided that I was going to draw on my 20+ years’ experience in the classroom and the research about how people learn and design my class with the students’ learning at the center. This decision led to many hours of work and the familiar feeling of walking the line between fearless and foolhardy.  In the next series of blogs I will describe the design decisions I made, why I made them, and how they turn out.

Buckle up.

The problem(s) of participation in classroom discussions, and how to overcome them

I read a very nice book over the holiday break by Jay Howard, Discussion in the College Classroom. Howard is a professor of sociology (and Dean) at Butler University, and he’s

published a bunch of scholarship of teaching and learning on classroom discussion. So this book is based on solid research and nicely referenced. 

Howard describes two psychological phenomena that students experience when in classes where discussion is encouraged (or even required). One is called civic attention. Students quickly figure out that they do not really need to pay close attention to the lecture or class discussion, they only need to act as if they are paying attention. This means that they shouldn’t be looking at their phones (at least not too often), they should make occasional eye contact with the professor (but not too much), and perhaps even nod in agreement (at the right time). Other than that, they can be thinking of whatever comes into their minds. This norm of civic attention is established early in each class when students realize there will be no adverse consequences to this minimal level of engagement. Howard points out that, like every norm, once this norm is established it is very difficult to change. 

The other phenomenon is called consolidation of responsibility. In every class there are a small number of students that will actively participate in discussion no matter the topic, and no matter the relevance or insight of their contributions. These talkers not only take up the time and space that other students could use to contribute, but they also serve as a sort of safety valve: when the instructor asks for participation the other students can relax in the knowledge that the talkers will eventually speak up. Thus the responsibility for participation is consolidated in the few talkers. Howard’s research has found that while the non-talkers are grateful to be freed from this responsibility, they can also become annoyed by the talkers talking too much, especially if the talkers are not always on-topic or veer into personal revelation too often. Thus it is potentially damaging to classroom culture to allow this consolidation of responsibly to solidify, and like civic attention this dynamic is very resistant to remedy once established.

Fortunately Howard provides many solutions to these problems in the book. As you likely anticipate, many of these are designed to head these dynamics off before they start. He emphasizes the importance of the first day of class: if you expect student participation in class you better ask for it the very first time you meet. He also suggests that you have a discussion about discussion where you lay out your reasons for asking for participation (or better yet, ask them to come up with those reasons) and your expectations for participation. You could also ask them about their best and worst experiences with class discussion. They will have stories. 

Howard also reports on research about why students do not participate in discussion. He reports that confidence and preparation are important factors. For me this meant requiring students to write up analyses of the reading before coming to class. Howard also suggests that when asking tough questions you give students time to formulate their answers, perhaps with a one-minute paper or think-pair-share activity, before coming back to a class-wide discussion. That way students who are not as quick on their feet are not disadvantaged. 

I recommend the book. It was clearly written with a nice mix of scholarship and practical suggestions.

The sacrilege of job training in higher education, and what to do about it -- Part 2

To recap Part 1: funding for higher ed comes from two major sources, state governments and students (tuition), and both parties are increasingly interested in return-on-investment. We believe that a liberal arts education provides many skills and competencies that employers desire. But given the pressure from state government and potential students (and competitors) we must do a better job demonstrating (or documenting) the ROI of the liberal arts.

So how can we do that? First let's look at how we document what we do at this point. A college graduate typically gets a diploma, with associated transcript and GPA. As I said in Part 1, these credentials really only tell an employer that a student knows a lot about her or his major discipline, and perhaps in specific courses of interest. But nothing in those credentials speaks to the things that employers tell us they are looking for in employees, like communication or critical thinking skills. 

We can do better. The answer goes by several terms: badges, microcredentials, nanodegrees, and more. But the idea is the same: provide documentation of learning; in my case documentation of learning (and skill acquisition) other than disciplinary knowledge. 

Several organizations are pursuing this idea, notably the Lumina Foundation, but there are many others. In fact, the credentialing landscape is now so crowded that the Lumina Foundation recently held a conference with the goal of establishing an industry-standard credentialing ecosystem that would benefit students, employers, and faculty. Several learning management systems companies have added badging functionality into their systems. Companies like Portfolium are banking on the profitability of eportfolios. 

The idea is that documenting non-disciplinary skills and competencies that our students already acquire in our major can costs faculty very little, can help our graduates gain employment, and can communicate to stakeholders that economic value of a liberal arts degree. It really can be a win for students, employers, and higher education. A win that wide-spread is rare indeed.

Until the credentialing movement matures and a universal system is agreed upon we can move forward in-house. My department is currently creating non-disciplinary credentials that our students could earn in our existing courses. I'll update this blog as we progress.

The sacrilege of job training in higher education, and what to do about it -- Part 1

Like systems of higher education in other states, the flagship and regional public universities in my state of Kentucky are being slowly starved of funds by the state government. Not only has our Governor reduced state support for my university, he decried that future funding would be based partially on the university's performance on key indicators. Now, these indicators are being negotiated as I write this and of course the metrics will determine how well my university does, and thus how much of the ever-dwindling funds we receive going forward.

What we know at this point about the likely metrics is that the Governor has been dismissive of the liberal arts and favorably disposed to more applied education (the dreaded 'job training'). He even mentioned psychology majors as having poor job prospects (not borne out by the data). The point is that our future funding will (likely) depend on the employability of our graduates. By the way, the other significant source of revenue -- tuition -- is sensitive to the job prospects of graduates. With how expensive a college education has become we can expect that potential students will make choices with return on investment in mind. So we better be thinking about how to convince interested stakeholders of the value of a degree from our university.

Traditionally faculty have taken a dim view of the job-training aspect of what we do, and I've certainly held that attitude in the past. As a social psychologist, I teach courses that typically do not prepare students for a particular job; rather, I believe that learning about social psychology (or empathy) can improve your life in meaningful if not financial ways. This is part of the liberal arts ethos: learning that enriches life. The other part of that ethos often goes unstated unless we are pushed: a liberal arts degree not only reflects disciplinary knowledge but also non-disciplinary or trans-disciplinary skills and abilities, like critical thinking, communication, interpersonal competency, etc. Many times I've heard that our graduates can (and do) work in a wide variety of sectors of the economy, most of them never drawing directly on psychology knowledge they gained in our courses, but using the writing or communication skills they honed in our courses. Of course we send our share of students to graduate school in psychology and they (I assume) use both the disciplinary knowledge and non-disciplinary skills they attained here, but the majority of our graduates do not go to grad school. It is that group that I believe the Governor is most concerned with (the grad schools students often get training and licensure that make them readily employable). 

So what can we do to help the non-grad school bound students, and those interested in their plights? I believe we must take seriously this often unstated belief that we give these students non-disciplinary skills that are valuable. Fortunately, these skills and competencies match up quite nicely with the skills and competencies that employers say they look for in potential employees. I've done just a little research into this and found several sources that describe what employers are looking for:

Association of American Colleges & Universities (2015)	Recovery: Projections of Jobs and Educational Requirements Through 2020 (2013)	KCEP report (2011)	10 Things Employers Want You to Learn in College (2012)
Communicate orally Work in teams Communicate in writing Ethical decision making Critical thinking Apply knowledge Analyze complex problems Information literacy Innovate/creativity Stay current on tech Statistical reasoning Work with diverse others	Active listening Oral communication Reading comprehension Critical thinking Written communication Monitoring Coordination Social perceptiveness Judgement and decision making Complex problem-solving Active learning Time management	Verbal ability Make decisions Mathematical computation Maintains confidentiality Follow instructions Delegate Works well within a team Reading comprehension Time management Instruct/teach Critical thinking ability	Work ethic Physical performance Speaking Writing Teamwork Influencing people Research Number crunching Critical thinking Problem solving
https://www.aacu.org/sites/default/files/files/LEAP/2015employerstudentsurvey.pdf	https://georgetown.app.box.com/s/tll0zkxt0puz45hu21g6	http://www.workforceopportunityproject.com/PDF/Full%20Report.pdf	http://books.google.com/books/about/10_Things_Employers_Want_You_to_Learn_in.html?id=VBRPMnGw1PkC

Even a casual analysis of these lists reveals both considerable overlap across sources and with the list of non-disciplinary skills and competencies mentioned above. This is very good news and seems to confirm many faculties' beliefs about the value of a liberal arts education. But there's still a problem.

The problem is that, while we believe our students leave our hallowed halls with all the knowledge and competencies they will need in their future endeavors, the credentials we confer on them upon graduation only speak (explicitly) to their mastery of disciplinary knowledge. A bachelor's degree in psychology or history tells potential employers that a job candidate knows about psychology or history, and an inspection of a transcript (if that happens) might indicate certain specialization, but neither the degree nor the transcript will say anything about the items in the above table, the very thing that employers tell us they are looking for.

There is a potential solution to this problem, and several foundations and start-ups are working feverishly to bring this solution to the higher-education marketplace. But this post is already too long, so you'll have to wait for the solution in the next post.