course redesign

Reinventing the Wheel in Academia

Why is it that in academia we do not routinely adopt “best practices” created by other institutions? Why is it that we prefer to reinvent the wheel?

Maybe it’s the fact that to earn a doctorate one had to research and write an innovative, new, previously un-researched aspect of one’s discipline. The mindset that permits one to succeed in that environment may also be a mindset that prevents one from merely adopting another’s practices. Maybe it’s also the fact that each institution believes that its students and environment are so unique that what works for one institution will not necessarily work for another.

It is the latter belief in each institution’s uniqueness, that is the topic discussed in Beating the ‘Not Invented Here’ article by Josh Fischman in the Chronicle’s Wired Campus. In the article, the author summarizes a panel presentation by stating “There are plenty of good ideas, the two said, but colleges are reluctant to adopt solutions that did not arise from their own campuses.”

One example of that on our campus is student evaluations. At the end of each semester, students complete evaluation forms for every course taught by adjunct and tenure track faculty. Each college in the University has a different evaluation form and many of the forms were developed by a group of faculty within each school. There are commercial instruments available composed of validated, reliable questions-yet faculty choose not to use them because, in part, our campus is so unique.

Student course evaluations can have an inordinate impact on faculty retention and promotion. This is true whether the course evaluations are composed of rigorously tested questions or not. And, this is true even though students may not be entirely honest about their answers to the questions. In my post Another A Word-Course Evaluations, I talk about a study in which one of its findings was that students lie in course evaluations. Even though that is probably true, and it is also true that faculty can (and may have an incentive to) manipulate course evaluations, faculty committees and administrators continue to place inordinate weight on those evaluations when making hiring, promotion and tenure decisions. The point here is that if course evaluations are to be used to make such decisions, those evaluations should be based on reliable, validated questions created by experts.

The point of the example is that universities should embrace best practices that have been successful and universities should focus upgrading the wheel rather than reinventing it. That would be more efficient, more effective and permit faculty to focus on improving teaching and learning.

Downsides of Curricular Innovation

Does innovation mean dumbing down?

The National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT) urges institutions to develop low cost, effective methods to deliver course content and improve learning. Efficient uses of technology are integral to that process.

But what if the technology is a substitute for professors? That is one of the greatest fears of academics-that faculty will be replaced with professors in a box who do not “teach” and that instead serve as reviewers similar to instructors in correspondence courses.

In the article A Curricular Innovation, Reexamined, an Inside Higher Education special report on a for-credit set of courses organized by StraighterLine, the organization raised questions about the use of technology in teaching. According to the article, the courses are cheap (unlimited for $99 per month, $399/course, or 10 for $999) and are accepted for credit at some institutions. The report highlighted some positives-individual tutoring and the ability to self-test for improvement and some negatives–older course materials and significant numbers of errors.

I think that quality can be incorporated into online courses. The report reminds me that we need to be vigilant to be sure that online materials must be checked for rigor. The report also reminds me that face-to-face courses are seldom rigorously evaluated and should be subject to the similar oversight for quality.

Have you ever presented materials (PowerPoint slides, handouts, exams), that had errors? Have you ever said something in class that was wrong and later had to correct it? In a face-to-face class, the only people who know you made those errors are the students who saw the materials. Seldom do our peers review all our materials and note errors. In an online class, those items are memoralized electronically in the course and thus errors can be more easily identified. Since many faculty want to check online course materials more carefully, the errors become a basis for arguing that online education and materials are inferior.

So what does that mean for innovation? We must innovate and as faculty we should be integrally involved in oversight of face to face and online courses. We have to figure out the balance between academic freedom and evaluating quality, but some of the problems discovered in online courses are also equally evident upon review of face to face courses.

Let’s treat both with equal rigor.

Is Higher Ed Ready to Change?

Credit for this headline goes to Inside Higher Ed, an online newsletter. In the article Is Higher Ed Ready to Change? Doug Lederman, the article author, summarizes commentaries at several meetings of higher ed officials and notes that, although there are some institutions who have adopted changes, there are still many who are reluctant or slow to change.

The article lists a variety of reasons for the slowness. I’ve mentioned the reluctance to change in a previous posting. We are educators: informed, intelligent, engaged and articulate. Yet, as a group, we resist change just as many people do. Change in higher ed seems to occur at a snail’s pace. I think it is because, in part, we (faculty) prefer to analyze prior to taking action and because each faculty member must conduct that analysis independently, the cumulative effect is that little change occurs quickly.

I think of myself as embracing change, as embracing disruptive, transformational change especially, but I know that I also don’t want to embrace a change which harms my students or my discipline and its knowledge. I also realize that although I embrace change, I still do many things the same way, the way in which I feel most comfortable. Thus, for example, although I can include audio in my blog, I still tend to post written comments and fail to include pictures. Yet the audio and/or pictures could add a richness that may not be apparent from merely writing.

I embrace change, at least, I think I do…….(to be continued…..)

Cheating Using Publisher’s Test Banks-An Update

Part of course redesign includes re-evaluating test questions and re-evaluating the value of standardized tests, especially in online courses.

This blog entry notes that using publisher test banks made it easier for students to cheat. This is nothing new…I’m sure you’ve heard of frat house libraries where members of fraternities have access to previous exams. How do they get them?

1. Each frat member memorizes a couple of questions and copies them down

2.Each frat member removes one page of the test

3. Someone steals a test (e.g. when extra copies are distributed down the rows)

High tech versions:

1. Copying and pasting the test questions

2. Taking the test with 2 computers open (one to take the test, the other to copy the test questions)

3.Using cell phones to take screen shots

4. Using screen capture programs to take screen shots

5. Texting answers to each other

I am sure you can think of more.

Should we (instructors) function as the “cheating police” and stop this from occurring? My answer is YES! We should try to maintain as much fairness in test conditions as possible. In a later post, I’ll talk about some of the ways we can do that.

Teaching Backwards

I’m attending the Educause conference in Anaheim and listening to Gershenfield who taught a class called “How to Make (Almost) Anything” in which he asked students to come to class a build something. Student started the class with varying amounts of technical skill. He said the best time to get someone to “teach” something is when they first learn it. So, students who learned something that others’ needed to know would teach it over and over again, excitedly, because they were excited about what they had learned. At the end of the course, students had built projects.

What’s interesting about the conversation is the students learned as they needed-they didn’t start with a foundation of knowledge. Yet, they learned what they needed, and he used that methodology in places throughout the world. He asked the question whether MIT was obsolete. His answer: Not yet. Is that a question we should ask in education? And what can we do about it?

More information: Article How to Make (Almost) Anything (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/01/30/how_to_make_almost_anything/)

Sample class with the Fab Lab (http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.08/)

Learning (and Teaching) in the 21st Century

I belong to a reading group on campus that is reading Christopher Hedge’s Empire of Illusion (http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Illusion-Literacy-Triumph-Spectacle/dp/1568584377).

Thursday’s discussion focused in part on the differences in learning abilities now and what constitutes literacy. We discussed the public’s attendance at the Lincoln-Douglas debates to demonstrate the public’s literacy in the mid 1860s. That compared unfavorably with the nature and intellectual challenge of current political debates. One participant in the discussion noted that the Lincoln-Douglas debates are difficult to read and understand now and this participant considers himself well-educated.

That analysis was interesting. My only comment was to wonder what percentage of people actually attended the debates and we didn’t have the answer. However, on reflection, I have another theory about it. What if the reason the debates were well attended was because that was the way most information was communicated? What if so much information was communicated orally that people who were literate were those who learned best by listening and analysis. If you consider Socrates’ oral tradition and his methods of challenging students to complicated verbal exchanges, it would make sense that those who learned best would be those who learn from listening.

To continue with that thought, what if in the 20th century, those who learn best are those who learn through reading? Those who became professors learned much through poring through books, making connections from that reading and flourished in that system. The oral lectures supplemented that learning, but perhaps we learn best from reading.

Now, we are teaching a generation of students who seem to focus best on “sound bytes” and quick flashes of visual information. Video games manage to attract individuals’ attention to “learn” how to master a game. And many individuals are motivated to follow through on video games enough to analyze a complicated game and develop a strategy to accomplish the goal.

So what does that mean for educators? As educators do we need to change how we change? How do we do that? How do we get learners to maintain their curiosity about how life works? How to we get learners to develop that curiosity into a curiosity about multiple topics? How do we get learners to become as curious about learning as (many) are about videogames, social media sites and celebrities? That is our challenge.

According to a National Center for Course Redesign report, many schools have had success with redesigning math courses using math labs–success as measured by increased completion rates for math classes and cost savings. (The Course of Innovation: Using Technology to Transform Higher Education) Yet few schools have taken that success and used it to transform other courses within their institutions. Why is that? Why haven’t educators/administrators adopted innovative, technology based models for other courses? Is it the initial cost? Is it lack of knowledge? Is it reluctance to innovate? Aversion to change?