Turning Off Autopilot

by Guest Blogger: James Wadley

One of the challenges of teaching in the academy is that it is very easy to get into “autopilot” mode.  Lecture, lecture, lecture, and even more lecture reduces collegiate instruction to a mundane, bad repeat of a late night episode of “Knight Rider,” “Hill Street Blues,” or “MacGyver.” Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...   My passion for teaching propels me to call on sleeping students as if to actively engage them in the content of the course, and they sometimes offer a compelling response, but then I find them drifting off again as if my voice were a 19th century orchestral performance after dinner.   Perhaps I should take their sleeping in class as a compliment?

If students in our class fall asleep, their heavy eyes may be a function of our inability to connect with them with our instruction.  Most of us don’t have the opportunity to learn about differentiated instruction and curriculum development in graduate school because we are inundated with the content of our disciplines.   The ability to vary our teaching methodologies gives us an opportunity to meet the needs of visual, audio, and kinesthetic learners by using structured, semi-structured, and non-structured educational exercises.  Here are three of my favorite practices that increase the likelihood of meeting students learning needs (and keep them from falling asleep  LOL)! 

Quiz bowl and other games: Games of competition (e.g., quiz bowl, Pictionary, Hangman, $25,000.00 Pyramid, etc.) that require students to know course content and more can energize a classroom INSTANTLY!  Instructors would have to spend time preparing questions based upon readings, previous lectures and assignments, or additional student research.  While there exists the possibility of “winners” and “losers” in competition, those who do not find fortune during the game could earn lost points by completing a short homework assignment.  The short assignment gives everyone a chance to win and learn.

Collaborative learning opportunities: Sometimes our students feel isolated and withdrawn in class and yearn for an opportunity to share what they’ve learned but feel intimidated by our dry lectures or sharing in a large group format.  Collaborative learning opportunities like placing students in small groups (e.g., no more than 6 students), provide them with a more intimate educational experience and the possibility of  sharing more often than in large class discussion.  Instructors would have to remain cognizant of objectives for each small group and time management.

Smart/Cellphones: OK.  I know I may have touched upon a sensitive topic for some folks, but I implore you to hear me out….  There have been a few blogs/ commentaries about the utility of smartphones in the classroom, and I must say that I believe that smart phones can be skillfully used as a means of engaging students and advancing knowledge in the classroom. Instructors could issue students opportunities for inquiry where they must investigate course content, the relevance of what’s being taught, and the ease/difficulty of accessing the information, and the application/utility of what’s found in the search to their personal and professional endeavors.  Again, given the potential of students to become distracted and venture off to irrelevant and inappropriate sites, instructors would have to be clear about learning objectives, time management, and support needed for students who don’t have smart/cell phones (e.g., possibly placing students in dyads or triads; use of smartboard; etc.).

 So, before we automatically plan on lecturing to our students for another dry rerun, we should give ourselves and our students an opportunity to have an academic experience that reflects our passion and creativity as educators.

Critical Thinking in the Classroom

by Guest Blogger Nwenna Kai Gates

I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my 30 years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic -- it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.” --John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling 

One of my mentors told me once that you can’t teach a person how to think, but that you can only teach them how to ask the right questions so that the thinking process could be stimulated.

Critical thinking is disciplined thinking that is clear, rational, open-minded, and informed by evidence. (www.dictionary.com)

As an English professor, I struggle to teach my students how critical it is to ask the right questions and to think critically and holistically on readings and discussions in the classroom.  Often it is a challenge to hold discussions informed by logic and not by emotion. 

I grew up and was schooled in a system where critical thinking was imperative to one’s survival.  However, today our students are more distracted by mobile devices, social media antics, and shortened attention spans that often diminishes the richness of tackling concrete and complicated topics of interest with tactical evidence based solutions.  On top of the distractions, as professors, we do not always set high enough standards to maintain the space of such an environment in order to encourage our students to think critically.  Over the past 30 years, our educational institutions have become institutions where students are taught to obey orders as opposed to institutions where students are encouraged to think independently.   

What this world needs now more than ever is a generation of critical thinkers especially in the African American community. 

Because who is going to solve the complex problems of the justice system, the high incarceration rates of Black men, the sub-standard education and poor reading and writing levels of Black children, female-headed single households, and high rates of poverty. 

We need critical thinkers for these issues, not citizens who obey orders.

So the question comes to how can we as professors nurture our students to think critically?

This is what professors can do:

•  Encourage students to read The New York Times, The Wall St. Journal, The Washington Post as well as stay informed by global news outlets such as the BBC and RT News;
• Find ways to create relevant lessons plans in all projects and assignments (An example of this would be in my public speaking class we are conducting debates where students are required to conduct heavy research and formulate evidenced based arguments on topics such as should drugs be legalized);
• Encourage games and short activities that stimulate the thinking process and that speak to human nature (For example: The Red/Black Game; see http://www.users.csbsju.edu/~lziegler/redblack.html for more information on how to play);
• Choose readings and books that will provoke heated discussions and provide a larger context for what the world we live in;
•  Go back to the basics and teach students how to read critically, how to study, how to listen, and how to take notes.

Overall, critical thinking is imperative to the survival of individuals, educational institutions, and communities at large because complex problems require complex analyses solved by critically thinking people. 

Nwenna Kai Gates, a former restaurateur and TV producer is an adjunct professor in the Modern Languages and Literature department.  She teaches screenwriting, public speaking, and English composition courses.  She runs a wellness educational company called The LiveWell Movement and is the author of the book, The Goddess of Raw Foods.   She lives in Philadelphia with her family where she home schools her 3-month old daughter when she is not at Lincoln University.  Other than that, she loves Bikram yoga, green smoothies, preparing vegan meals, and teaching the students of Lincoln University. Visit her website at www.nwenna.com.

Taking Note of Note Taking

by Linda Stine

What role does note taking play in student learning and retention? This is an issue I keep changing my mind about. 

In my early days of teaching, at the beginning of each semester I would show my students the Cornell method of note taking: write the notes in the main part of the page, highlight main topics/key words in the left margin and save room at the bottom of the page for summary and application. I preached the SQ3R gospel (survey, question, recite, reflect, review). Then after  awhile I went with the “don’t divide your attention by listening and writing at the same time” approach, encouraging students to focus on hearing and understanding and  participating, just jotting down a few main points if they needed to and using available technology to record the rest for review if they felt that was necessary.  Then, with the growth of PowerPoint, I found myself printing out lecture slides for students or posting them online, again thinking that it made more sense for students to watch and listen and think and participate than to spend their time and energy scribbling down verbatim what I could provide them either in print or digitally. Then, with an increased focus on active learning and workshopping, note taking did not seem to be needed; retention came with the doing rather than the recording.

In an article in the Teaching Professor blog, however, Maryellen Weimer suggests that students learn two important skills from note taking: learning to listen effectively and being able to make the material their own by translating it into their own words.  She lists some small steps teachers can take to encourage good note taking:

• Identify key concepts in the day’s lesson specifically, telling students when you get to it that what follows is important and should be written down;
• Challenge students to retrieve things from their notes to add to the present class discussion;
• Pause after giving a definition and tell students to write it in their own words, not yours;
• Give students a few minutes in the beginning of class to review the last class’s notes and have a few summarize;
• At the end of class have students trade notes with somebody sitting near them discuss what was similar and what was different
• When a number of students miss an exam question, ask them to find what they have in their notes that relates to the question and compare their notes with those of a student who got the question right;
• Tell students they may use notes during the next quiz and talk with them about how that changes what they write down.

What are your thoughts about whether students should take notes in class, how they should do so, and what role, if any, you might play in helping them to learn this skill? Has technology changed the way you think about note taking?  Has the new world of active learning and “flipped classrooms” eliminated note taking, at least within the classroom setting itself?  I’d love to hear your thoughts on this issue. 

Technology and Caring: One “Digital Immigrant” Crosses the Border

Guest Blogger:  Catherine DeCourcey

The role of caring in higher education appears in conversations regarding student retention and satisfaction – think of the Academic Advising workshops with Mrs. Kenner, or administration’s urging faculty to mentor students. For over a decade, researchers report that today’s students value relationships with faculty; they perceive accessibility as an attribute of caring (Mangold, 2007; Thomas, 2002). Concurrently, these students who populate our classes expect, even crave, immediacy. Prensky (2001) observes, “They grew up on ‘twitch speed.’ … They’ve been networked most or all of their lives.” How do we, as faculty members, communicate caring to this generation of students in a manner meaningful to them?

Previously in Teaching Matters, Leaman(2009) noted removal of phone access in class to maintain a sanctuary of sorts.  More recently, the question was posited regarding cell phone policy for the university (Kwame, September 21, 2013). However, the use of technology has also been lauded. Donohue (2014) discussed the use of Jing to promote communication with students. Snider (2013) highlighted technology available for students and teachers. These blogs might provide insight into the generational differences in perceptions of technology. 

Like many other professors, I have policies regarding technology use in class. I am a digital immigrant, as described by Prensky (2001:technology is an add-on that occurred after I was an adult. However, I recognize that my students live, sleep, and eat with their technology, most notably their mobile phones. I decided to take advantage of that resource. 

Thus, I shared my mobile phone number with my classes. Aware that boundaries are an important consideration, I provided a few guidelines: No phone calls between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m., emergency calls only please. Conversely, they were welcome to text me as needed.

After the first month, I had to change my mobile plan to include unlimited texting.

Freshmen who were adjusting to university life would reach out with questions – clarification on content, guidelines, procedures, and such. Sometimes they just seemed to need to know that someone was there. More experienced students would check in regarding assignments. Students who were going to be late or absent would let me know. (I strive to make attendance about knowing students are well and engaged, thus request the courtesy of being informed in advance should they be late or absent.) In return, I would respond – providing academic and/or affective support.

As the semester progressed, small conversations would be shared. For example, a freshman texted late one night about a doctor’s note and missed class.

CD: “Did you read your Lincoln email?” [It included a reminder about times for phone use.]

Student: “I just read it sorryyyy! [sic]”

CD: “Not a prob. Am up listening to the DNC speeches.:)“

Student: “LOL so am I, I have to write a paper on it”

That seemingly inconsequential conversation provided a faculty connection for the student outside of the immediate classroom setting. Those connections are key to retention, key to student success. Face-to-face conversations with students reveal that the accessibility afforded through technology makes them feel cared for, which enhances the probability that they will remain at the institution.

Of course, one might worry that texting fails to provide documentation of communication. There’s an app for that! Yes, there are applications available that log and record text messages. The application that I use sends logs to my gmail account. Thus, the communication with the chronically late student—it’s documented. The texts exchange regarding assignment deadlines – it’s documented.

Over the two years that I’ve implemented texting as a communication tool, students have used it for academic and affective support. 

Finally, from my personal experience I feel compelled to acknowledge that caring is not a one-way street, even in higher education, at least not with our students. Last fall, when my father was dying, students used texts to check in, share prayers, well wishes, and finally condolences during that difficult time. Those texts were gifts for which I remain grateful.

Technology indeed can be a tool to demonstrate caring. Even “digital immigrants” like me can use it to cross borders to communicate effectively with our “digital natives” - today’s students.

References

Donohue, W. (2014, January 17). Teaching with Jing. Teaching Matters at LU.

Kwame, S. (2013, September 21).  The use of cell, mobile or smartphones in the classroom. Teaching Matters at LU.

Leaman, M. (2009, October 2). Cell phones and chatty students. Teaching Matter at LU.

Mangold, K.(2007). Educating a new generation: Teaching baby boomer faculty about millennial students.  Nurse Educator, 32(1), 21-23.

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9 (5). Retrieved from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

Snider, B. (2013, November 23). Tech tools for students and teachers. Teaching Matters at LU.

Thomas, L. (2002). Student retention in higher education: The role of institutional habitus. Journal of Education Policy, 17(4), 423-442.

In Praise of the Humble Comma

As we return from midterm break, not yet ready, perhaps, to think deeply on difficult pedagogical matters, I thought that that you might enjoy the following brief essay by Pico Iyer, first published in Time Magazine June 24, 2001, entitled "In Praise of the Humble Comma."  (And if you want to comment on why it seems to be so hard for our students to keep that simple "red light, yellow light, stop sign" concept straight, or share ways you've developed to help them control punctuation, by all means please do!)  --Linda

The gods, they say, give breath, and they take it away. But the same could be said -- could it not? -- of the humble comma. Add it to the present clause, and, of a sudden, the mind is, quite literally, given pause to think; take it out if you wish or forget it and the mind is deprived of a resting place. Yet still the comma gets no respect. It seems just a slip of a thing, a pedant's tick, a blip on the edge of our consciousness, a kind of printer's smudge almost. Small, we claim, is beautiful (especially in the age of the microchip). Yet what is so often used, and so rarely recalled, as the comma -- unless it be breath itself?

Punctuation, one is taught, has a point: to keep up law and order. Punctuation marks are the road signs placed along the highway of our communication -- to control speeds, provide directions and prevent head-on collisions. A period has the unblinking finality of a red light; the comma is a flashing yellow light that asks us only to slow down; and the semicolon is a stop sign that tells us to ease gradually to a halt, before gradually starting up again. By establishing the relations between words, punctuation establishes the relations between the people using words. That may be one reason why schoolteachers exalt it and lovers defy it ("We love each other and belong to each other let's don't ever hurt each other Nicole let's don't ever hurt each other," wrote Gary Gilmore to his girlfriend). A comma, he must have known, "separates inseparables," in the clinching words of H.W. Fowler, King of English Usage.

Punctuation, then, is a civic prop, a pillar that holds society upright. (A run-on sentence, its phrases piling up without division, is as unsightly as a sink piled high with dirty dishes.) Small wonder, then, that punctuation was one of the first proprieties of the Victorian age, the age of the corset, that the modernists threw off: the sexual revolution might be said to have begun when Joyce's Molly Bloom spilled out all her private thoughts in 36 pages of unbridled, almost unperioded and officially censored prose; and another rebellion was surely marked when E.E. Cummings first felt free to commit "God" to the lower case.

Punctuation thus becomes the signature of cultures. The hot-blooded Spaniard seems to be revealed in the passion and urgency of his doubled exclamation points and question marks ("¡Caramba! ¿Quien sabe?"), while the impassive Chinese traditionally added to his so-called inscrutability by omitting directions from his ideograms. The anarchy and commotion of the '60s were given voice in the exploding exclamation marks, riotous capital letters and Day-Glo italics of Tom Wolfe's spray-paint prose; and in Communist societies, where the State is absolute, the dignity -- and divinity -- of capital letters is reserved for Ministries, Sub-Committees and Secretariats.Yet punctuation is something more than a culture's birthmark; it scores the music in our minds, gets our thoughts moving to the rhythm of our hearts. Punctuation is the notation in the sheet music of our words, telling us when to rest, or when to raise our voices; it acknowledges that the meaning of our discourse, as of any symphonic composition, lies not in the units but in the pauses, the pacing and the phrasing. Punctuation is the way one bats one's eyes, lowers one's voice or blushes demurely. Punctuation adjusts the tone and color and volume till the feeling comes into perfect focus: not disgust exactly, but distaste; not lust, or like, but love.

Punctuation, in short, gives us the human voice, and all the meanings that lie between the words. "You aren't young, are you?" loses its innocence when it loses the question mark. Every child knows the menace of a dropped apostrophe (the parent's "Don't do that" shifting into the more slowly enunciated "Do not do that"), and every believer, the ignominy of having his faith reduced to "faith." Add an exclamation point to "To be or not to be . . . " and the gloomy Dane has all the resolve he needs; add a comma, and the noble sobriety of "God save the Queen" becomes a cry of desperation bordering on double sacrilege. 

Sometimes, of course, our markings may be simply a matter of aesthetics. Popping in a comma can be like slipping on the necklace that gives an outfit quiet elegance, or like catching the sound of running water that complements, as it completes, the silence of a Japanese landscape. When V.S. Naipaul, in his latest novel, writes, "He was a middle-aged man, with glasses," the first comma can seem a little precious. Yet it gives the description a spin, as well as a subtlety, that it otherwise lacks, and it shows that the glasses are not part of the middle-agedness, but something else. 

Thus all these tiny scratches give us breadth and heft and depth. A world that has only periods is a world without inflections. It is a world without shade. It has a music without sharps and flats. It is a martial music. It has a jackboot rhythm. Words cannot bend and curve. A comma, by comparison, catches the gentle drift of the mind in thought, turning in on itself and back on itself, reversing, redoubling and returning along the course of its own sweet river music; while the semicolon brings clauses and thoughts together with all the silent discretion of a hostess arranging guests around her dinner table. 

Punctuation, then, is a matter of care. Care for words, yes, but also, and more important, for what the words imply. Only a lover notices the small things: the way the afternoon light catches the nape of a neck, or how a strand of hair slips out from behind an ear, or the way a finger curls around a cup. And no one scans a letter so closely as a lover, searching for its small print, straining to hear its nuances, its gasps, its sighs and hesitations, poring over the secret messages that lie in every cadence. The difference between "Jane (whom I adore)" and "Jane, whom I adore," and the difference between them both and "Jane -- whom I adore -- " marks all the distance between ecstasy and heartache. "No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period put at just the right place," in Isaac Babel's lovely words; a comma can let us hear a voice break, or a heart. Punctuation, in fact, is a labor of love. Which brings us back, in a way, to gods.