HLC/NCA Part 9 – Active Learning On Display

The twenty-third and final session I attended in the four days taught me the most about teaching styles.  And it wasn’t even about that topic!  He was the only speaker I saw who didn’t use a microphone, didn’t have a handout, and didn’t use powerpoint.  He didn’t stand behind the podium and he didn’t talk about himself or the school he works at.  (So you get an idea of what the other 23 were like!)

Instead, he led us in a simple active learning exercise about assessment:  handing out a tape measure and a ruler to have individual index fingers measured.  What do I see?

• He is getting students (educators) involved.  
• He is standing right in the middle of the room.  The room is packed and he has everyone’s attention.  
• He uses stories, humor, no notes, pregnant pauses.  
• He asks for questions along the way.  When there are none, he prompts again, and we get an excellent question.

This 65+ year old educator has the room in the palm of his hand.  He’s trying to teach us one thing today:  principles for making assessment manageable.  And he’s getting it done.

In light of what I blogged about earlier on Active/Passive Concrete/Abstract learning styles, this was definitely Active and Concrete.  It’s rather humorous to watch middle aged ladies (they were the only volunteers!) walking around the room measuring index fingers.  And the teacher is standing at the front drinking coffee, hands in his pocket, looking around at the class with a smile.  Forty-five minutes ago, none of us knew him.  Immediately, he has all of our attention.

When class resumes after the activity, there’s still a little more talking.  That’s one danger of active learning . . . Once they get started talking, it is hard to get them to stop.  But at least they are talking about the topic.   

Getting the class to quiet down is one problem with active learning.  What are some active learning dangers you have seen?

(By the way, if you have a tape, measure the length of your index finger and the circumference of your finger.  You might be amazed at how close they are to being the exact same!)

HLC/NCA Part 8 – “Just in Case” vs. “Just in Time”

Another quote from Arthur Levine from this morning’s keynote (roughly paraphrased from my notes): 

“The half life of knowledge is getting shorter and shorter.  People today need to be regularly reeducated.  People will return to the university for assistance.  They will ask for a different kind of education. 

• In the past, we provided “Just in Case” information. (Teacher says: ‘I’m teaching you this today “just in case” you need to know it someday’).
• They are coming back now for “Just in Time” information.  (Student says: ‘I need to know this “just in time” for what I’m doing Thursday’).

Certainly, much of what we teach in Bible, General Studies, and Ministry courses is “Just in Case” information.  We have a reasonable level of confidence that they will need to know certain theological and historical truths, philosophical and literary issues, strategic and practical advice.

But how do you handle the “Just in Time” requests?  What I mean is, How do you let your students have some ability to interact with you at both the classroom and assignment level to learn the things they think they need to know?  Those will make a huge difference in motivating them to pay attention and put out effort.  And in so doing, they will hopefully learn the “Just in Case” information as well.

How has the “Just in Time” approach affected your classes, positively or negatively?

HLC/NCA Part 7 – Wrestling with Learning Styles

This morning’s plenary session was given by Arthur Levine.  (Read about him here: http://www.woodrow.org/about/president.php)

Check out this quote (best I could type): 
This generation is asking for a lot from us:  counseling, facilities, health, courses, programs.  But the biggest thing will be how people learn.  We can divide learning styles between abstract and concrete, passive and active.  Most of us (professors) in education are abstract passive learners.  But 69% of all HS graduates are going to College, and the majority of Americans are concrete active learners.  

So we have professors who are teaching in one fashion and students who are learning in another fashion. 

The result?  Professors complain that these are the worst students ever and the students say to each other “Do you have any idea what this is about”? 

The solution?  We need to make our pedagogy appropriate for the people who are coming to learn.  We need to have more active, concrete pedagogies.  That will put pressure on our professors to change, because our students can’t.

Now, I won’t take time here to have a philosophical argument about where students indeed CAN’T change.  I think he really meant that they can’t immediately change and they can’t change all at once.

Beyond that issue, my question for this post is a learning styles question. 

• Where have you seen an abstract passive teaching method that failed because the students indeed needed something concrete and active?
• And then, what is an assignment you have used for students that succeeded and is concrete and active?

HLC/NCA Part 6 – Finding Collegiality at Wrigley Field

Discovering that the Cubs were home for a game with the Brewers, Ron and I decided to spend the evening outside of the hotel for once.  So we planned to take the CTA Red Line to Addison and pick up a 7:05 Cubs game at Wrigley Field.

At lunch, we had a meeting with other Bible Colleges and at the end of the meeting, I mentioned in passing that it would be fun to go to a Cubs game with some of our Bible College friends.  So Ron asked David Faust of Cincinnati if his group would like to go and they were interested.  The site of five Bible College administrators walking the streets of Chicago, learning how to use the subway, and dodging street hawkers and scalpers must have been amusing to the locals.  We stuck out like five sore thumbs.

But in the five hours we spent together, we were able to develop something I hadn’t expected when I came:  collegiality.  Along the way, I spent time getting to know these fellow workers in the kingdom:

• Learning about Jon Weatherly’s time in seminary and ministry while he lived in Chicago.  An added bonus was the story of the time that he shared an elevator with John Dominic Crossan.
• Talking to Paul Patterson about growing up as a missionary kid in Zimbabwe.
• Sharing dissertation findings with David Faust.

Of course, sharing the culture of Wrigley Field was an adventure in and of itself.  But that I’ll have to save for another conversation.

The main point of this post is to remind us that we need collegiality with other faculty members.  We share more in common than we know, but we rarely spend enough time together at places like Wrigley Field (or any place other than the cafeteria).

So what have you done to find collegiality?  Have any strategies worked to build relationships with your colleagues at Central?  What do you wish you could do with someone (besides going to Wrigley Field)?

HLC/NCA Part 5: Faculty Development – Be Prepared

Today’s workshops have centered on the track of improving faculty performance in a variety of ways.  I am thinking through a comprehensive approach to faculty development at Central.

From one of my workshops today, here is a definition:  Faculty development is “a set of activities that engages all members of the teaching faculty in the kind of continuous professional development that enhances their ability to construct curricula and modes of instruction that more effectively fulfill the mission of the institution and the educational needs of students and society.”

To plan the “set of activities,” I need to get organized.  I’m looking for dimensions of development that you feel you need.  My goal is to make these dimensions somewhat comprehensive, but focused particularly on what fits at Central.  This applies to part-time and full-time as well.  I’ll start the ball rolling . . .

• I still feel a need for development on how to be balanced as a faculty member.  It’s a constant issue that everyone will face.
• I have been blessed by development in the area of having a seminar on grading student writing.  It tremendously helped me as a teacher.

So help me out.  If you’re a new faculty member, where do you feel that you need professional development to enhance your ability?  If you’re an experienced faculty member, what was an area where you were “developed” in the past that made a huge difference in your teaching. You can e-mail me or post it to the comments below. 

Posting in the comment has an added benefit. . . you can hold me accountable to the whole faculty if we don’t address it.

A visit to Moody: Students Talk to Strangers

After another long day that started at 7:30 am, I was ready to go to church. We looked and looked for a church with a Sunday night service, apparently a rare feature in downtown Chicago. But Moody Memorial Church (aka Moody Bible Church) did have a 5:00 pm service. So we skipped out of our last workshop early and even sacrificed a free buffet meal in order to go to church.

It was actually a very interesting service, but I’m not going to cover much of the actual church experience. We were hoping to hear Erwin Lutzer preach, but he had spoken in the morning service, so one of the other staff ministers preached a PM sermon on “God is spirit” from John 4:24. After church, we decided to walk back to the hotel (about 30 blocks), passing Moody Bible Institute (www.moody.edu) along the way.

One of our goals was to find Ryan Lannigan, a former CCCB student who transferred to Moody. Upon arrival, we walked in the front door to find a security guard, complete with badge, radio, and uniform. He was probably just a student, but he sure looked official. He called Ryan’s room for me, but Ryan was not available. So we decided to look around the campus a bit and try to pick the brains of a few students.

I’m not going to try to describe the campus, because it is so unlike Central that there’s no way to compare the two. [Suffice it to say that it fits in the landscape of downtown Chicago, all of the buildings being multiple stories and the whole thing fitting on a city block between LaSalle and Wells street at Chicago Avenue.] Our goal in talking to the students was actually very limited. We wanted to know if Moody students primarily thought of the school in terms of tuition-free education. More than that, it revealed much about MBI and the students themselves. We only talked to four students, two guys and two girls, so I won’t consider the following information scientific, but I value it as anecdotal. On a Sunday night at 6:30, these were the first four students we talked to. I had sketched out five questions, but our conversation drifted to other ideas as well. I was careful to ask the questions in the following order:
1. Why did you come to Moody?
2. What do you like about Moody?
3. What would you change about Moody?
4. How do you pay for Moody?
5. Where did you come here from?
Not one student mentioned their tuition-free program in those five questions. We had to bring it up with them. When we asked about the tuition-free program, they mentioned matter of factly: We don’t pay for our classes. We just pay for our room and board.

With that question answered, let’s look at what they did talk about and see if it gives us any lessons about Central. After all, we originally patterned the transition to Full-scholarship after the Moody model, including a visit to their campus. Seven years later, let’s see how we compare.

Why they came to Moody . . . It comes down to two big issues: the school’s emphasis on ministry and the student’s past connection through family members. They are there not for the scholarship, because as missionary and preacher’s kids, they know Moody will prepare them for that kind of ministry. One said it was the history of the school in training people for ministry.

Why they like Moody. . . One girl says it’s the best community of on-fire people for the Lord that she’s ever seen. Another girl appreciated the professors and their personal ministry experience (note: not their doctorates or publications). One guy loved the opportunities for ministry experiences that the students get in the Chicago area (I’m sure there are many available. In fact, at Moody Church, two of the girls leading the worship service are finishing up their yearlong internship as students from MBI.) The other guy said he loved living in Downtown Chicago.

What would they change. . .Pretty much, very little. I almost felt bad asking the question, because I didn’t really want them to talk badly about their school. The girls said “nothing major, just little things.” The guys focused on the cafeteria. Instead of a meal plan, they wanted a swipe card. That’s it?

Thinking that was too good to be true, we started probing a little further.
• How often do you have chapel? “Three times a week required, with a fourth time optional” No complaints.
• How do you keep track of attendance? “We cross our names off of a big list in the chapel.” Can people cheat? Most don’t, but some people do. No complaints.
• What’s the dress code? “No t-shirts in classes” No complaints.
• Can you watch R-rated movies? “We can’t watch any movies anywhere on campus.” No complaints.
• What happens if you break a rule? “We get fined $5 or more or else have to do campus work projects.” No complaints.
• Who assesses the fines? “Our RA’s can fine us on the spot without a warning and we have to pay right then or be assigned a campus work project.” No complaints.
• What happens to the money? “We use it for parties and activities on our dorm floor.”
• Do you have a curfew? “11:00 pm during the week, 1:00 am on weekends for all freshmen and sophomores.” No complaints.
• What if you’re late to dorm devotions? “We get fined $1 per minute late.” NO COMPLAINTS.

So I’m begging four students to whine and complain to a complete stranger who doesn’t even know their name and can’t possibly get them in trouble about a school which fines them ON THE SPOT for every rule infraction. And they have nothing bad to say?

Something’s different about these students, but more about that in a little bit.

How do they pay. . .All four work to pay the bill (it isn’t free, because they all live in the residence halls and that costs about $14,000 per year.) One of the four has a dad paying whatever he can’t afford to pay himself.

Where are they from. . . . The missionary kids are from Ecuador and Brazil. One guy is from Michigan and the other from Atlanta. All are planning to go into the ministry. In fact, 80% of the students will go into the ministry. As one guy says (and I’m sure this is just an estimate), “The other 15% are going to marry somebody who will go into the ministry.”

Quick lessons from the conversations:
1. Students who are grateful for what they are getting (not just free tuition, but ministry training in an atmosphere of spiritual commitment) will not complain about what they aren’t getting (freedom, fun, flexibility).
2. Students who are committed to preparing for the ministry are sufficiently motivated to pay for their education by working.
3. Students who know and are impressed by a school’s alumni have no problem coming from all over the country and the world in order to find what those alumni received.
4. Students will comply with rules when the penalty for noncompliance is simple, certain, swift, and relatively painful AND they are sufficiently motivated of the benefit of being at the school that they couldn’t imagine attending anywhere else.
5. Students will talk to strangers. A school that has done its best to treat the students well has no worries about what they will say.

This may have been the best 20 minutes of talking and one hour of writing I have spent all weekend.

HLC/NCA Part 3: Faculty Know Students Better Than I Do

A quote from the first workshop of the morning: “One of the many lessons from the Virginia Tech tragedy is the long awareness the faculty had for the potential of a tragedy and the disconnect between the faculty’s effort to engage this young man and the administrator’s ability to intervene.”

Faculty members have far more contact with students than I have. What do you know about your students that I need to know as an administrator? If you have seen the struggles our students are going through, email me privately, or share your thoughts here with everyone else. Please don’t name names, but short stories are welcome.

HLC/NCA Meeting, Part 2 – Requiring Library Work

Students may groan when they hear that an assignment will require the library, but I’m convinced we’re cheating our students when we don’t require them to use the library. One of the things that was shared in today’s meeting (among many helpful ideas) is that the level of library work should increase as a student progresses in education (very little the first year, more in the upperclass years, growing into graduate school and culminating at the doctoral level in mostly self-directed research). Juniors and Seniors need the experience using learning resources and integrating them into writing.

I’m all for making students use the library, but they don’t appreciate busy work. Coming up with “one more assignment” is a ticket to resentment by the student and actually more work for the teacher. Integration is the solution to this issue. Pick an assignment that you are already requiring and figure out a way that it can only be done through consultation with the library (or bookstore, for that matter). Perhaps before they write a reflection paper on a topic, they have to first find a book on the topic, scan it, and summarize the author’s approach to the topic. Or if they have to write a lesson on a topic, make it have to include an annotated bibliography with five sources consulted and described. This is the kind of work they should be doing anything, but if we don’t specify that it must be done (and make it part of the grading), it will be skipped far too often.

There is always a danger that they will run into resources that are either harmful or inapplicable to their topic. But this is a challenge that they will face the rest of their lives. What better place to navigate the usage of learning resources than when they have our tutelage and feedback to point them in the right direction.

So other than classic research papers, how are you forcing your upperclass students to use the library and other learning resources?

HLC/NCA Meeting, Part 1 – Thinking About Regional Accreditation

I’ll be blogging this week from the Regional Accreditation meeting in Chicago. They will be short (by necessity) and thought-provoking (hopefully).

8:30 am Saturday – Sitting in the opening meeting on initial accreditation, we are introducing ourselves to see what types of institutions are in the same phase as us. I see and hear the following scenarios described: An Indian from a tribal nation college is the president, dean, teacher, and business manager of his school. A new campus of the University of Minnesota at Rochester is just starting. A school of contemporary music is represented. A new college of osteopathic medicine. And then there’s ITT Technical institute, with its 90 campuses nationwide. We are sitting in the middle of the room and right in the middle of the pack. Some schools have never been accredited by anyone, some have been nationally accredited for years. Some schools are 90 years old, some just broke ground on their first campus and haven’t yet offered a class. One seminary has existed 30 years in a church at Detroit. One school has 9000 students, some have yet to enroll a student.

When it was my turn to introduce myself, I said that I was here 10 years ago and got scared. Now we’re back, and I guess we’re not so scared. The president of NCA said, “It looks like maybe you have grown up some since then.” I don’t know if he’s referring to my age or to the school. (Maybe both are true.) I do know that we are in a far better position today than we were 10 years ago in terms of enrollment, finance, and facilities.

Rick Fordyce is here with us, so I’m happy that all this weight won’t be on my shoulders! I’m fairly optimistic for our chances of success. I’ll keep you posted on what’s going on, so check back regularly.

Safety and Security in the Classroom

Many of you have been talking about what happened at Virginia Tech. What a tragedy. Any time we get a taste of such horrific evil in this world, it should call us to attention concerning the need the world has for Christ and how without Him, none of this can make sense (Revelation 6:8). I personally think we are blessed that this doesn’t happen more often in America. With the number of hurting people who have been desensitized to violence, I’m surprised it hasn’t taken place on many other campuses.

Which brings us to the discussion of this blog post. Lots of people have complained that the campus security and the president of VT “were cowards” and “didn’t do enough.” Is there anything that we could do on a campus like this if such a threat or incident happened? Specifically, what are your opinions on the following . . .

• Locking down the building.
• Evacuating the building.
• canceling classes for a threat of violence.
• Having armed security guards in the classroom if violence is threatened.
• Others?

I know, this is just a Bible College. But it’s not about our college, it’s about the world we live in. I know what my first thoughts are, but I would like to hear yours. And before you post a comment, say a prayer for the students who are injured and the families of those who lost loved ones at VT, including the parents of the shooter.

David