Saturday, September 17, 2016

What is Lincoln Excellence in Teaching and Learning?


I find myself throwing around terms like “advancing the legacy” and “Lincoln Excellence” every now and then, especially when I’m trying to convince funding agencies that we are deserving of their attention. The word excellence is even part of the title of the office that I serve; The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.

I feel like I have a good grasp on what legacy means; it is the mark that Lincoln has made on the country and world through all its graduates. If we aim to advance the legacy, we simply (or not so simply) keep graduating students that succeed in their disciplines and intentionally work for positive change in their communities and in the world. This can be quantified and measured by the success of our alumni.

Lincoln excellence on the other hand – what is it? Excellence is “the quality of being outstanding or very good” according to Merriam Webster. Are we outstanding in our teaching practices? How do we know? What do we do to be outstanding? Part of me is convinced that we practice excellence in many things that we do in the classroom and beyond. The indirect measure of our excellence is the success of our students past Lincoln. But how can we measure excellence directly? What does excellence in the classroom look like? Is it our ability to engage students and help them learn? How do we know that what we individually consider excellence translates into learning that makes a difference for our students? Does your excellence look similar to my excellence? Are we aiming to educate students that show performance excellence or mastery excellence - the former being the ability to perform well on exams, while the latter includes the ability to use learned material to succeed in life.  Is excellence in a Visual Arts class the same as excellence in a Health Science or Math class? I am intrigued by Lincoln Excellence because I know that we produce outstanding graduates who go on to successfully pursue careers in government, the arts, music, accounting, law, science, medicine etcetera, but if somebody asked me for the recipe for how exactly we do this – and do it well – I would not be able to tell them. Can you?
I would love to read your thoughts on Lincoln Excellence in the classroom and beyond.

How do you practice excellence in your classroom?
Share your thoughts here or in this quick survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PJRY9HW

I will share any survey results in a future blog.

5 comments:

  1. I think you have put your finger on a peculiar problem. It it has to do with the use of words which are undefined and, hence, subjective or, worse, ambiguous or, even, vacuous. "Lincoln Excellence" or even "academic excellence" tends to be puffery or a "feel-good" term that, often, means everything or nothing.

    Safro Kwame

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    1. I agree that these terms are very nebulous, but I wonder if we, communally, can come up with and even agree on a few practices that describes excellence in classrooms across campus. If nothing else, it may make for good topics of discussion at future faculty circles or brown-bags - and we may even be able to learn a thing or two from each other.

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    2. You are right, Anna. We can. My suggestion and example are in the survey.

      Safro Kwame

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  2. I agree that excellence is almost impossible to define. Even the indirect evidence that Anna mentions - the success of our graduates - is difficult to use to define excellence. For example, each year we welcome 30 to 40 freshman who want to become physicians - last year, six of our students were accepted into medical school. Is that excellence? I think we should just continue to do what most of us already do - put effort into preparing and teaching our classes, find ways to engage and encourage our students, and help them find the motivation to succeed in achieving their goals. If we are good at that, excellence will follow and most likely be recognized by people outside of Lincoln before we agree that we have achieved it.

    Dave Royer

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    1. So maybe excellence is something that we continuously need to strive for. What I'm curious about is what that looks like. When you have figured out how to deliver the perfect lecture or engage the students using a particular learning technique what comes next? Do you keep it to yourself or do you share it so that others can benefit from your teaching experience? Is shared excellence greater excellence? We may never be able to define excellence, but we may be able to give a snap-shot of what classroom or teaching and learning excellence looks like right now at Lincoln. I'm hoping - probably naively - that such a snapshot may lead us all to be curious about what others are doing - and maybe even encourage us to learn from each other.

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