The TLT Group
Steven W. Gilbert,
President

Home Page for
Diversity/Engagement/Technology

TLT-SWG     OLI Resources

TRIPLE CHALLENGE
[Triple Opportunity?]
Multicultural Diversity,
Academic Engagement,
and Technology

Workshop

Dallas County Community College District
Eastfield   Brookhaven

October 13, 2006

Steven W. Gilbert, TLT Group

Naomi Story (Bio1, Bio2,  Photo )

Exploring how we can use information technology as an excuse and a means
to improve teaching and learning; 
and build together:
Visions Worth Working Toward

www.tltgroup.org/DCCCD10-2006.htm

Thanks to
Carol Brown (President, Eastfield College),
Sharon Blackman (President, Brookhaven College),
Naomi Story (Director, Center for Teaching and Learning, Mesa Community College)

Workshop Goals     Workshop Schedule  Workshop Notes [Google Docs & Spreadsheets Document]

Visions Worth Working Toward        Questions        Principles        Examples  
Recommended Online Resources - Mostly Free
WORKSHOP SCHEDULE  

FRIDAY Steve Gilbert Face-to-Face and 

Naomi Story-Online!

9am  welcome, general orientation, etc.  Steve Gilbert

Introduce Naomi Story

[Confirm connection is working]

  • "How lucky we/you are to participate in this beginning..."

  •  "You are not alone!"  "I am not alone."  
    We are actively engaged!  Learning together!

  • We hope we're contributing, at least a little, to helping the world move in a direction that has become even more important - back from a precipice...

Review Workshop Goals & Schedule

 

I.  What do we mean by... Diversity, Engagement, Technology?

 

Orientation, Info Presentation:  "Triple Challenge"
- Steve Gilbert (and Naomi Story)

 

Small Group Activity -  What do we each/all mean by ... diversity, engagement, technology?

 

BREAK

 

II.  How can we apply the 7 principles?

 

Orientation, Info, Presentation - Naomi Story (and Steve Gilbert)

 

Small Group Activity - Apply 7 Principles to Diversity in Online Teaching/Learning

7 Principles of Good Practice for Undergraduate Education 
 - Chickering & Gamson … What is the 8th Principle?”

"Good practice in undergraduate education:

  1. encourages contact between students and faculty,
  2. develops reciprocity and cooperation among students,
  3. encourages active learning,
  4. gives prompt feedback,
  5. emphasizes time on task,
  6. communicates high expectations, and
  7. respects diverse talents and ways of learning.
    8.

"Apathetic students, illiterate graduates, incompetent teaching, impersonal campuses -- so rolls the drumfire of criticism of higher education. More than two years of reports have spelled out the problems. States have been quick to respond by holding out carrots and beating with sticks.

 

"There are neither enough carrots nor enough sticks to improve undergraduate education without the commitment and action of students and faculty members. They are the precious resources on whom the improvement of undergraduate education depends.

"But how can students and faculty members improve undergraduate education? Many campuses around the country are asking this question. To provide a focus for their work, we offer seven principles based on research on good teaching and learning in colleges and universities."

BREAK??

 

11:30 CLOSING ACTIVITY 
Naomi Story Departs 

 

III.  What can/ will we do next?  - Steve Gilbert

Small Group Activity 
Focus concretely and narrowly:  What can anyone do to make it more likely that participants in this workshop will begin to use and then build on what they learned  today?

  • Identify practical next steps that we might actually take.

  • Describe some elements of a comprehensible Vision Worth Working Toward.

  • Identify some resources that we can confidently recommend as worth our time... books, articles, Websites, people, etc.

12 noon Adjourn

 

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TRIPLE CHALLENGE:  
FIRST OBSERVATIONS, GUESSES

Cultural Diversity + 
Student Academic Engagement +
Technology

How can we deal more effectively and respectfully with this triple challenge?  Is it a "triple opportunity"?
Conditions, pressures, and options that are making it MORE IMPORTANT, MORE POSSIBLE, AND MORE DIFFICULT to deal effectively with cultural diversity in learning styles and working styles:

  • Cultural diversity has increased greatly for many colleges and universities during the past 5 years. 

  • Diversity has increased among students, faculty, administration, and other stakeholder constituencies.

  • Diversity has increased on many dimensions:  socio-economic status, cultural heritage, race, ethnicity, age, learning goals, teaching goals, familiarity with computing and other information technologies, beliefs about the purposes of education, experience in college, family traditions about advanced education, ...

  • TMI/TMO:  Too much information, too many options.  Most students, faculty, administrators have too much to do, too little discretionary time.  How much time, attention can ANYONE give to improving teaching and learning at all?  To dealing more constructively, respectfully, and effectively with this triple challenge?

  • Cannot rely on homogeneity to sustain good communication!

CENTRAL QUESTIONS

1.  Help wanted?
What kinds of help do faculty members want/need to more comfortably, effectively help engage culturally diverse students academically, esp. when using information technology?

2.  Constructive, civil actions/discussions?
How can anyone deal constructively and civilly with these interrelated challenges?  

  • Art Chickering's recent ideas about "authenticity"

3.  Identify differences and commonalities?
Isn't one of the most important first steps to enable the group to recognize, articulate, and respect their important differences and commonalities?  How can this be accomplished?  Who is responsible?

4.  Students' perceptions?
How are students' perceptions of course content influenced by their own cultural background?  By their teacher's?

 

5.  Newer faculty different?
Are newer (often younger) faculty members getting better at perceiving, respecting and dealing with differences in students WITHIN a traditional classroom? 

 

6.  Cultural differences online?
In what ways are differences among students and faculty more/less challenging in a purely online environment or hybrid course?

Language, Terms, ... Differences & Commonalities

EACH of the key terms we're using is loaded with different implications for different people:

Small Group Activity 
1. Cultural diversity
2. Student academic engagement -- [and Faculty Engagement?]
3. Educational uses of technology
[TMI/TMO - Too much info, too many options; can't keep up with the wonderful possibilities and the dangers!]

Don't try to write polished, entirely precise definitions.  Try to reach agreement about a few essential elements.

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Consider SOME of the following:

  • www.tltgroup.org/tlt-swg.htm

  • Adapting Classroom Assessment Techniques to Online Environments:  Classroom Assessment Techniques, by Tom Angelo and Patricia Cross, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1993.   Click here for excerpts

  • How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School Committee on Developments in the Science of Learning,  by John D. Bransford, Ann L. Brown, and Rodney R. Cocking, editors, National Academy Press, 2000 ISBN: 0-309-07036-8

  • Encouraging Authenticity & Spirituality in Higher Education
    by Art Chickering et al. - same Chickering as developed 7 Principles

  • Flashlight approach to CONSTRUCTIVE assessment

  • Fundamental Questions Activity

LTAs & Engaging Students

  • Use same technology for more active, deeper learning

  • Learn by doing, learn by teaching

  • Assign teams of students to create and use __________ 
    [e.g., blogs, online surveys ]; 

  • Assign students rotating roles, including responsibility for providing progress report to teacher
     

  • Low-Threshold Applications/Activities (LTAs)

 

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WORKSHOP GOALS

3 Parts, 3 Goals

 

A. Discover how optimistic/pessimistic are we/they about being able to put the 3 together usefully.
B. Offer some ideas for steps so small and modest (Low-Threshold-ish) that people might be able to take one of those steps sometime in the next few weeks.
C. Ideas for some steps and a "Vision Worth Working Toward" - a plausible goal participants can work toward and make "visible" progress on in the next 5-10 months.

 

I.  What do we mean by... Diversity, Engagement, Technology?

Acknowledge and reduce complexity.,

 

II.  How can we apply the 7(8?) Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education?

Specific ways of using technology to increase academic engagement among multiculturally diverse students.

 

III.  What can/and will we do next?

  • Identify practical next steps that we might actually take.

  • Describe some elements of a comprehensible Vision Worth Working Toward.

  • Identify some resources that we can confidently recommend as worth their time... books, articles, Websites, people, etc.

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Small Group Activity  
(Like Think-Pair-Share - see work of Barbara Millis et al. on Cooperative, Team Learning))

1.  Think individually.  .5 to 1 minute

2.  Discuss in pairs (3 or 4 ).  5 to 15 minutes

3.  Report to full group.  Summarize points of rapid, easy agreement AND points of surprising or interesting disagreement.

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"Web 2.0" TMI/TMO & Creating Blogs, etc.

Many wonderful new online resources – even their names - can seem intimidating and exclusionary at first glance: RSS Feeds, Blogs, Wikis, “FaceBook,” “Web 2.0,”  “Social Networking,”  XML Code,  Tags,  Feed2JS…   It’s too bad most of us have so little time to learn how to use some of these services – each of which provides a different way of creating, changing, or sharing information via Web pages.  Some of these tools can help improve teaching and learning and support scholarly work – and perhaps save time.  Of course, that depends on what you are trying to do that might fit with these new ways of supporting communication and collaboration. 

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Some useful online tools, resources - mostly free

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Anecdote - Diversity/Audience
Rebecca M. (middle-aged, white) is just beginning to teach a largish group of quite mixed age students - and mixed background - near Philadelphia. Included 63 year old accountant who has decided he wants to be a writer. In trying to help her think about how to get some of her students to be more aware of the characteristics of their intended audiences (rather than assuming that everyone in their audience is almost identical to themselves in most important ways) she described some of the steps she has taken to learn about them.  She asked each student to list 6 items they have recently read, and 6 items they would like to read. T

The lists she got were quite surprising to her.  She didn't recognize many of the items listed by her younger students.  She was fascinated by explanations of why some had difficulty creating these lists.

I think Rebecca M. was MODELING precisely the kind of behavior that might be helpful for her students to emulate in their own writing... learning about their audiences....

What can a teacher do to learn more about how students differ from each other and from the teacher? 
About what they have in common?  

Of course, there are interesting issues about boundaries between personal lives and professional lives, and what kinds of questions and info are appropriate to seek and explore.... but I don't see how anyone can deal constructively and civilly with this nexus of interrelated challenges without doing something(s) to enable the group to recognize, articulate, and respect their important differences and commonalities....

This line of thinking is taking me back BOTH to our work on Dangerous Discussions and our more recent work adapting the Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) to online and hybrid activities - clever, useful ways of getting FEEDBACK that can be directly and visibly and quickly USEFUL....

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REAL QUESTIONS

  1. Why are we here?  
    Instead of online?

  2. Why not just assign readings in books and give tests?
    Instead of using any other media, methods?

  3. What do we need to know about new Web-based resources? 
    What do we need to know about hand-held devices with Internet access?
    When will we be "toast" if we don't understand and use these things?  [And the next ones!?]
     FaceBook, MySpace, blogs, wikis, podcasting, feeds, MERLOT, social networking, Web 2.0 ...Flashlight Online...?
    Cell phones, iPods, digital cameras, GPS, voice recorders, PDAs,

  4. Whom do you trust?

  5. How will you know?
     Giving, getting, using feedback effectively:  the good kind of assessment.  
    See     Flashlight    !

  6. Whom can you thank?

  7. What do you most want to gain? [Regain?]

  8. What do you most cherish and want not to lose?

  9. More "Fundamental Questions"

 

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PRINCIPLES

  1. Nothing different is the same.
    Nothing is the same as being there.  No transmission, no recording!
    [May be better or worse - depends on purpose, .....]
    Also see #14 below.

  2. Try it.
    Trust your own observations, judgment.
    Don't trust those who have NOT "tried it."

  3. Voice is an important part of  identity.
     We don't understand why, how.   Note that highly successful computer animation movies use human actors' voices.
    "    Boudreaux goes to Paris"     "Detweiler on Shared Governance, Trade-offs, and Truth"

  4. Hybrids always win.
    Place, schedule, media, synchronous/asynchronous, responsibility, stage of expertise, authority, responsibility, role

  5. Using the Web is about controlling access, notification, viewing/hearing.
    All of the following are ways of controlling what we see/hear from a computer.  Each provides different ways of doing so.  Many appear to have been named and initially described in ways likely to offend or discourage the majority of normal human beings from trying them.  Don't be deterred - these can be VERY useful - and easy to begin using!
     Email, Google, Google Desktop, Feed2JS, feeds, Flashlight Online, Writely, Skype, FaceBook, MySpace, blogs, wikis, podcasting, social networking, Web 2.0 ....?
     Steve Gilbert's favorite info tech tools - mostly free, mostly easy to use - LTAs

  6. Lifelong learning isn't just for "them."
     Need universal, lifelong, hybrid professional development. 
    What resources are required?  Available?
    TLT Group's Online Institute - hybrid professional development
    Take advantage of LTAs!  (Low-Threshold Applications/Activities)

  7. "You are not alone!" - Collaborative Teaching
    Context for hope:  collaboration for professional development.
    "You are not alone!" - soccer coach.
    Collaborative Teaching:  Perhaps the most significant change - desirable, needed, difficult -  [e.g., MIT EECS "Cadre" model].  And "Collaborative Learning" - including team-based learning, isn't so easy either.

  8. Beware of those who most strongly advocate/reject "scalable" educational improvements.
    Don't expect a "Moore's Law" of human learning.   Don't dismiss/accept all educational research.
    See "Seven Principles of Good Practice for Undergraduate Education" [Could the 8th be "Caring"?]
    I    nformation technology revolution brings no easy, fast windfalls of efficiency for teaching/learning.
    No Educational ATMs.  Educational research can provide some useful guidance.  So can experienced teachers.
    Some educational improvements can be used by a wide variety of faculty.  Some faculty members have combinations of skills, attitudes, personalities, ...  that can be unusually effective in helping some students.

  9. Personalize Pedagogy!
     As much variety among teachers, administrators as among learners.
    Not teacher-independent "learning objects" - not just adding Betty Crocker's egg!
     Teach to Fish or Give a Fish?
    A course is not a pizza!

  10. We can't keep up.
     Too many attractive new options, too much info, too fast - can't keep up!
    Strategic Planning is changing. 
    "If working 24 hours a day isn't enough, you have to work nights." - James Moss, ca. 1985, USNA
     Overloaditorium        Keeping Up - Steven Bell

  11. All important, difficult decisions are political.  So is assessment.
    Many "Dangerous Discussions" topics can be handled civilly, constructively. 
    The best kind of assessment is really about giving, getting, and using feedback respectfully and effectively.
    See Flashlight!

  12. Class size matters.
    Covering vs. Sampling.

  13. Students can be educational resources - take active roles. 
    Some students, some of the time.
    Highly constructive assessment?

  14. Don't expect old models to work under new conditions.
     At least not the same way.
    - Dissemination of innovation - especially educational uses of information technology.
    - Strategic planning.
    - Professional development.
    - Shared governance.
     When conditions change, the same process cannot produce the same results.
    No leader can mandate the results of an inclusive, consensual planning process.

  15. Decide with uncertainty. [e.g., about "next step" in online education]
    - COLLABORATION, EXPERIENCE, ENTHUSIASM:  Favor collaborative groups of enthusiastic colleagues that include Compassionate Pioneers.  [Compassionate Pioneers are those who not only - reach beyond their own limits and lead the way in developing or trying new options, but who also encourage and help their colleagues to take the same path.] 
    Favor those who have "tried it" and still want to move ahead!
    - AUDIENCE & PURPOSE:  Favor project/programs/products that are clear about WHO they are serving, WHY, and HOW.
    - RESPECT DIFFERENCES:  Favor projects/programs/products that respect and address differences in learning needs and teaching needs.
    - CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK:  Favor projects/programs/products that actively solicit and use frequent constructive feedback from students and colleagues.
     - LTAs:  Favor LTAs and other ways of using resources that are already available easily, comfortably, inexpensively - esp. using students as resources!
    -     FLEXIBILITY:  Favor projects/programs/products that do NOT "lock people in" to their usage for more than a year or two.
    - SUSTAINABLE SUPPORT:  Favor projects/programs/products that are and will be well supported for the duration of the anticipated useful life:   when things go wrong, it is obvious how to get help, easy to do so, and no one will be made to feel like an idiot.  [NOTE:  At many higher education institutions the incentive system makes it unlikely that a faculty member will support for very long an educational innovation he/she has developed.]

  16. Improvements vs. Transformations
    Incremental change is often much more palatable, feasible, and realistic than "innovation."
    One person's change may/may not be another person's transformation!
    Some people like to be and/or be perceived as "innovators."  Others don't really want to be the "first on your block..."

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PROVOCATIVE EXAMPLES

  1. TLT-SWG

  2. FaceBook,  MySpace

  3. MIT OpenCourseWare
    A course is not a pizza!

  4. MERLOT
    "MERLOT is a free and open resource designed primarily for faculty and students of higher education. Links to online learning materials are collected here along with annotations such as peer reviews and assignments."
     MERLOT Editors' Choice 2005  "LangMedia" for many foreign languages - 5 minute intro/demo [May only work from IE]
     LTA #38 -- Becoming a MERLOT Member

  5. MIT iLabs
    Internet access to real labs for teaching/learning

  6. MIT EECS [Course Teams?]

  7. Swarthmore College's "Learning for Life" Program

  8. iVocalize [with TLT Group's Templates for Interaction, Sample Resources]

  9. Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education Collections(s)

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