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Flashlight Evaluation
Handbook Table of Contents
When an instructor tries something new in a course, some students
may complain, "No other instructor makes
us work in teams (or work on projects like this, or work so
hard, or ...)" When can an
innovative faculty member do when some students complain
that the course isn't 'normal?' My stock advice has
been, "Don't be the only one pushing the students in your
direction. Instead, find like-minded colleagues who teach
other courses that these same students are likely to take,
and make changes together."
I've recently realized that there is another way to look at
the students' complaint, too: make the object of the
complaint into an experiment and enlist the students as
co-investigators to study that experiment. Is
this really a good (or better) way for you students to
learn? One goal of a college education is to 'learn how to
learn.' Let's take that seriously and study what (or how)
I've asked you to study.
This may seem a time-consuming response, but
perhaps this is what's needed. The need to take these
complaining students seriously -- intellectually seriously
-- was suggested, indirectly, by the 1987 videotape "A
Private Universe." [Click
here to go to a web page where you can watch this
streaming video, free.]
As "A Private Universe" begins, the bell is tolling in
Harvard Yard for the Class of 1987. Twenty-three seniors,
faculty, and alumni are asked one of two questions, "Why is
it warmer in summer than in winter?" or "Why does the moon
seem to have a different shape each night?" Only two answer
their question correctly. Yet they have been taught these
ideas repeatedly while still in school. For some, the
material was also covered in their Harvard education. Their
teachers "covered" it, but somehow the students never
learned it. Why not?
The scene then shifts to a good high school nearby. Ninth
graders, it turns out, share many incorrect beliefs with
graduating Harvard seniors and faculty. In fact, their
beliefs about summers and seasons are rather elaborate, if
not in accord with the latest scientific theory.
Then we watch as they are taught this material. The teaching
looks good: clear lecture, models, questions of the
students. But the instructor never tries to understand what
each student already believes about these phenomena, despite
asking canned questions and getting their canned answers.
She probably assumes that once students hear the truth,
their prior beliefs (if they have any) will be irrelevant.
Afterward, the students are interviewed again. At first,
their answers sound as though they understood the ideas.
They'd probably get an "A" on the test. But as the
interviewer follows up, it is obvious that their original
beliefs are still there, virtually untouched. In some cases,
students have actually been further confused by the
teaching. That's because they have used their hidden
preconceptions to (mis)interpret what the teacher was
saying. The students were never forced to become conscious
of their prior beliefs, let alone to test them against new
ideas.
I've known about that for years, but it has finally hit me
that many innovating faculty make the same mistake that
ninth grade teacher did.
Their error lies in assuming that their students have no
theories about how best to learn. Or else the instructor
assumes that, once exposed to a new, technology-enabled
approach, their students will abandon their old assumptions
about learning and enthusiastically adopt the new approach
instead.
But what if students come in to class believing that
academic learning is the responsibility of the teacher, that
good teaching consists of clear lectures plus assignments
with right answers, and that anything that's fun can't be
real learning? Will they abandon those ideas simply because
they are confronted with a different approach to teaching?
Everything we know from research suggests most of them won't
abandon those beliefs about how they are supposed to learn
in college.
Not all faculty make the mistake of letting students be
unconscious of how they learn, of course. Year ago, I sat
in on an interactive video course taught by the late Prof. Guy Bensusan at Northern Arizona University. He helped his
students actively try fresh theories about how they should
think and learn, all integrated with his "regular" teaching.
The course was not in education or psychology, by the way,
but in the arts and culture of the Southwest. Bensusan saw
it as part of his job to help his students
become college level learners, as an explicit and integral
part of the process of helping them master the content.
Similarly, you may have read several years ago in the Chronicle of
Higher Education about Prof. Jerald Schutte's experiment
with his social statistics students at Cal State
Northridge;. The course of 33 students was randomly divided
into two equal groups. One group met face-to-face five hours
a week during the semester, while the other interacted
almost entirely online, with minimal support from Schutte.
Students turned to one another for help.
Although Schutte's online students didn't much like the
experience, their test scores were 20 points higher than
those of the on-campus students. The best predictor of test
performance, off-campus and on-, was collaborative learning.
What I liked most was that Schutte and his students were
inquiring together into learning. In today's environment,
continual change in technologies means no one is an expert
-- not senior faculty, not junior faculty, and not students.
Learning together about learning seems a good thing to do.
There's a lesson in this for local evaluators and
researchers, too. Think of the students who you'd like to
respond to your surveys and interviews. Will your study
treat them the way most surveys treat respondents: like
objects to be manipulated? Or is this study going to help
each of them take more responsibility for, and control over,
their own learning? Is this study itself part of the
education of the students who respond to it and, perhaps,
who help you design it?
- Stephen C. Ehrmann
An earlier version of this essay appeared
as "The Student as Co-Investigator" in the first edition of
the Flashlight Evaluation Handbook, 1997.
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