Mobile Learning

by Susan Codone

Mobile learning is a fast-growing phenomenon commensurate with the pace of mobile phone growth and other communication devices with Internet connectivity.  Originally, distance learning occupied this landscape, then e-learning, and now mobile learning is coming as a worthy successor.  Wikipedia defines mobile learning, or M-Learning, as any sort of learning that happens when the learner is not at a fixed location, or learning that happens when the learner takes advantage of the learning opportunities offered by mobile technologies.

Yi-Shun Wang, Ming-Cheng Wu, and Hsiu-Yuan-Wang, writing in Investigating the Determinants and Age and Gender Differences in the Acceptance of Mobile Learning (British Journal of Educational Technology, 2009), say that mobile learning is the delivery of learning to students anytime and anywhere through the use of wireless Internet and mobile devices, such as mobile phones, PDA's, smartphones, digital audio players, handheld computers, MP3 players, and notebooks.  Wikipedia states that the term covers "portable learning" that is accessible from virtually anywhere; it is also collaborative in nature since sharing is almost instantaneous among learners using the same content. Instant feedback is another characteristic.


The Great Divide in Mobile Learning

Sanjaya Mishra, in a 2009 review of Giasemi Vavoula's book Researching Mobile Learning (British Journal of Educational Technology, 2010) writes that mobile technology can help us achieve the last mile of access to the Net and to a vast range of learning resources in digital form, and create digital bridges for access to education.  In contrast, David Caverly, Anne Ward, and Michael Caverly, in TechTalk: Mobile Learning and Access, write that there is a serious digital divide with mobile technology.  As the graphic shows, there is disparity between access to resources and the literacy required for using mobile technology.  But, this kind of gap existed when distance learning began and then when e-learning began to take over the marketplace.  Given time for the technology to develop and for users to find their way, this divide will shrink as the others did in the past.

Caverly, Ward, and Caverly report Morgan Stanley's research that 60% of the world's population had access to a mobile phone in 2008.  They go on to say that Internet-connected mobile phones are the primary means of wireless access for 68% of English-speaking Hispanics  and 65% of African Americans.  By 2020, Morgan Stanley predicts that mobile phones will be the primary connectivity device for the Internet, surpassing desktop and laptop computers.

Mobile Learning in Real Life
So now that we know mobile learning is growing fast, what's an example of how it works in real life?  Consider this scenario, adapted loosely from Are You Ready for Mobile Learning by EDUCAUSE.  On the way to work, a student listens to a podcast of his professor's lecture on his mobile phone, which also serves as an MP3 player.  When he arrives, he receives a text message on his phone from a fellow student who has questions about the class.  He replies, and realizes she is currently copying the text of the instructor's lecture off the course website to her USB drive to plug into her tablet computer.  They text each other about the question, then text the professor, who calls the student to answer the question.  Meanwhile, the first student Googles a term from the lecture on his mobile phone while talking to the professor.  He texts the other student with the answer, and then goes inside to start his day.  This is learning, but via mobile technology, always on the move.

Mobile Learning Pedagogy

The pedagogy for mobile learning is a bit different from that of the classroom.  Mobile learning requires that the professor use almost any means of pushing content out to learners and allow the learner to easily communicate with him and other classmates.  There no longer is one place for learners to go to get content or to be taught; multiple outlets for content exist so that learners can acquire it using the technologies that pace their lives.

There are two main considerations, pedagogically speaking, in mobile learning: content and communication.  Course content may be posted on a course website, perhaps hosted by the university or an instructor, or it might reside inside a learning management system, or LMS, that learners can reach online.  Sometimes mobile content may be placed inside a social networking program like Facebook -- a class could have a Facebook group, and classmembers can contact each other and the instructor within that group.  Or, content may be aggregated into an audio or video podcast, hosted on a website, in an LMS, or even iTunes.

Once the content is available via multiple outlets, the communication component kicks in.  The instructor may use a web meeting program like Webex with voice over Internet protocol and video feeds so that all learners can talk, be seen, and share documents and websites with the class.  Or, Facebook may be used for class communication.  Text messaging can be used to take attendance or do "exit slips" where learners text a summary of what they learned to the instructor.  Email and telephone are also used for communication.  So, there is a constant loop of content being pushed out to learners and communication via various devices and services to tie in learners to class activities.  Just as e-learning took learning away from the classroom, mobile learning is taking learning away from a fixed location.  The goal of mobile learning is to let learners interact with course resources while away from their normal place of learning, like the classroom or their desktop computer.

Limitations of Mobile Learning
There are some limitations to mobile learning.  Connectivity is sometimes a challenge; in addition, mobile phone screens are small, and they don't usually have much memory or processing power.  Input is sometimes slow on tiny keyboards, and limited memory and battery life sometimes force users to stop using technology for a time.   But since the key to mobile learning is using multiple devices to access course content, learners can usually find a way to maximize their resources.

Conclusion
Mobile learning is the newest and most exciting development in learning. By providing so many options for both learners and instructors, mobile learning greatly expands the canvas on which we teach and learn.  It's a foregone conclusion that it will continue to grow as technology develops more connected devices.  Morgan Stanley may be right; by 2020, phones may indeed be the most common way to connect to the Internet.  It will be interesting to see where mobile learning takes higher education in the next ten years.

Recommended Reading
1.  Are You Ready for Mobile Learning?  By EDUCAUSE
2.  International Association for Mobile Learning

Dual Coding Theory and Teaching

by Susan Codone

Allan Paivio initially proposed Dual Coding Theory in 1971 to explain his view of how we remember pictures and words.  The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes Dual Coding Theory as one of the most influential theories of cognition in the 20th century. Paivio states that his theory of cognition has roots in the practical use of imagery as a memory aid going back over 2500 years (Dual Coding Theory and Education, 2006).  In fact, he says that memory is crucial to Dual Coding Theory because it is the basis of all knowledge and thought.

Paivio argues that there are two ways a person can elaborate on material.  One form of elaboration uses verbal associations; the other form creates a visual image to represent a picture or word.  Paivio says that pictures result in better memory and the potential of imagery is a more reliable predictor of learning than words.  Dual Coding Theory proposes two independent memory codes which together increase the chance of successful information retrieval.


Teaching with Dual Coding Theory
Richard Mayer, who has proposed the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning, borrows the concept from Paivio that the learner possesses both a visual information processing system and a verbal information processing system (Richard Mayer and Roxana Moreno, A Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning: Implications for Design Principles, 2005).  Both he and Paivio apply their theories in teaching by saying that whenever you teach a concept with words, pair it with an associating picture in order for your students to more easily transfer it from working memory to long-term memory.  For example, the two PowerPoint slides below illustrate this principle; the first is text only, while the second uses the most important text along with a relevant picture of what is being taught.

We all know that text-only slides are not as effective as a slide with text and a relevant picture.  In teaching, though, our use of pictures and text goes beyond teaching efficiency; by offering students both mediums, we open two channels into their working memories, thus laying down more solid neural pathways and making later retrieval much easier.  We make it easier for them both to learn and to recall information later when we use two channels of presentation.

Take a look at this screen grab from a medical e-learning course from Interact Medical.  This particular screen displays text on the left with an explanatory picture, including labels, on the right.  Now, medical education is very dependent on pictures, but this slide is actually more efficient than most; the text on the left "primes" the user to understand the picture on the right, and the picture confirms the message of the text. In the event the student looks at the picture first, the opposite effect occurs -- one pathway is laid down and the student next associates the text with the picture.  Both the visual and verbal information processing systems are invoked in the learner and the message of the text and the image both go together into working memory, linked by association as they eventually move into long-term memory.  The learner can then more easily retrieve the message by recalling the text and the picture, because both are linked by association in long-term memory.

Paivio says that images are more effective in both encoding into memory and retrieving from memory because an image provides a "'second kind of memory code independent of verbal code".  Mayer, in his research on multimedia and cognition, builds on Paivio's work by offering several principles of multimedia learning, the first of which is that it is better to present an explanation in words and pictures than solely in words.  Mayer says there is a multimedia effect consistent with a cognitive theory of multimedia learning because students shown multimedia explanations are able to build two different mental representations -- a verbal and visual model -- and build connections between them.

If you don't know what a kangaroo is, which picture is better?

Dual Coding Theory has great implications for teaching and learning.  Essentially, we do our students a favor when we offer multiple presentation modes to them while teaching -- we make it easier for them to acquire the  information, make associations, store it in working memory, transfer it to long-term memory, and then recall it later.  As professors, we can be better informed by the use of this theory, and our students will benefit.

Self-Regulated Learning

by Susan Codone

As professors, we’ve all seen the problem of underperforming students in our classes -- students who could do well cognitively and behaviorally but do not for a variety of reasons. We know the phenomenon of high D/W/F courses, especially those in math and science, where large numbers of students fail to meet requirements. In a 2009 article on concept mapping, Kyo You Lim, Hyeon Woo Lee, and Barbara Grabowski (British Journal of Educational Technology), say that college students are required to process a great deal of information, but simple access to this information doesn’t guarantee the creation of knowledge. Barry Zimmerman, who has written widely on self-regulated learning, wrote in 2002 in Becoming a Self-Regulated Learner: An Overview (Theory in Practice) that few teachers actually prepare students to learn on their own.

Self-Regulated Learning

One solution to this age-old problem is Zimmerman’s work on self-regulated learning (SRL). Anthony Artino and Jason Stephens, writing in an article about adaptive and self-regulated learning in the summer of 2009 issue of the Journal of Advanced Academics, say that theories of SRL are used by educators and educational psychologists to better understand how successful students work and how they improve their learning. These authors call SRL “Academic Self Regulated Learning”, saying that self-regulated learners are active participants who efficiently control thoughts, feelings, and actions to improve learning.

Zimmerman (2002) states that SRL is self-generated thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are oriented to attaining goals. SRL involves more than knowledge of a skill; it involves self-awareness, self-motivation, and behavioral skills to implement learning appropriately. Joanna Garner of Penn State University, writing in a 2009 issue of the Journal of Psychology, compared executive functions of planning, impulse control, goal setting, self-monitoring, and motivational drive and found that when intact, these executive functions predicted cognitive strategy use, metacognition, and academic effort regulation – all tenets of SRL (Conceptualizing the Relations Between Executive Functions and Self-Regulated Learning). Garner visually described SRL this way:

Garner believed that self-regulation consisted of metacognitive strategies that lead to academic effort, and more affective elements that lead to motivation and volition to succeed.  Yet Zimmerman (2002) says that SRL is not a mental ability or an academic skill; instead it is a self-directive process by which learners transform their mental abilities into academic skills. Zimmerman lists three phases of SRL:

1. Forethought phase – where our interests lie
2. Performance control – where we apply cognitive and learning strategies
3. Self-Reflective – where we assign cause and effect to our actions

Zimmerman believes that these phases are what we all go through as we identify our interests, manage our cognitive efforts to learn, and identify causes for our actions.

Applying SRL In the Classroom

Theories are sometimes hard to apply in the classroom. Zimmerman and colleagues conducted an experiment in 2010 to investigate a semester-long classroom intervention designed to enhance SRL processes in at-risk math undergraduate students ((Zimmerman, Moylan, Hudesman, & Flugman, Overcoming self-regulatory deficits of at-risk math students at an urban technical college: A self-regulated learning intervention. Presented at the 2010 Research Conference of the Institute of Education Sciences). After the intervention, significantly more students in the SRL treatment groups passed the math course than did those in the control groups. Three interventions were used:

1. Instructor modeling of error correction

2. Guided self-reflection opportunities as part of formative assessment

3. Incentive system to reward subsequent attempts at learning

Here’s how Zimmerman and his colleagues implemented SRL processes in the at-risk students. First, the teachers purposely made errors in their content presentation and then modeled techniques to solve problems. Students were encouraged to come to the board and talk aloud their solutions – verbalizing the problems, their detection of the errors, and the way to solve them.

Every 3-4 days the students took a 4-5 question quiz. Before answering each question, students estimated their confidence (their self-efficacy) in solving the problem.. They solved the problem, then estimated their confidence that they had solved it correctly (their self judgement).

The quizzes were returned along with a self-reflection form; on it, students could explain what they did wrong and needed to do to solve the problem correctly; then if they solved a similar problem correctly, they were given partial credit for the quiz (called incentive points). They also compared their self-efficacy and self-judgement scores on the basis of how they solved the problem. Questions were discussed in groups, and students practiced describing math strategies and procedures.The experiment was successful in proving that equipping students with SRL processes will help them succeed.

Not all of us can go to the depth of intervention that Zimmerman's experiment did, but we can implement methods to better equip students with SRL processes.  We can expand the amount of reflection that students do; we can let them estimate their readiness for tests and other academic challenges, and we can use class time to collaboratively explore areas that are difficult.  We can remind students to plan, organize, and manage their study efforts; we can explicitly model learning strategies that will help them succeed, and we can allow them to redouble their efforts to understand why they failed to succeed.  Self-regulated learning may not be a single skill, but it is teachable, and it is worth trying.

Real College Teaching

by Susan Codone


Everyone has a favorite teacher.  I had two in college.  Both professors were always prepared, passionate about what they taught, and eminently practical.  Both were a great model of what a teacher should be and I adored them.  In fact, I've patterned much of my current teaching philosophy on their styles.  After I graduated, I sent one of my favorite professors this quote from John Dewey -- I felt it really captured his approach to teaching and I wanted to remind him of his importance to the world as a teacher.  During my college preparation, he was always engaged; he was always dignified; and I believe that he, and all of us who teach, is a prophet, bringing in the kingdom of God in the lives of whom we teach.

Maybe you’ll agree with Stanford Ericksen of the University of Michigan, who wrote that the public stereotype of a good teacher is a charismatic spellbinder who arouses listeners.  In his 1983 article Private Measures of Good Teaching in Teaching of Psychology, he says the other extreme is the mental disciplinarian who requires hard study and rote memorization for success.  I had professors of both stereotypes in college, but I remember little about them or what they taught me.

In 1993 another professor, Philip Tate, of Boston University, described two "worlds" of teaching that exist in our educational system.  The first world is made up of college professors and the second of elementary and secondary teachers.  Both approach teaching so differently that Tate assigned each a separate "world" of practice.  Tate, in The Two Worlds of Teaching (Journal of Education) describes professors as disciplinary specialists with a top-down instructional style whose only instructional mode is the direct transmission of knowledge.  He believed that knowledge was made up of large ideas held outside the mind.  In contrast, Tate says that secondary teachers work within an ethic of caring that rises above intellectual concerns.  They place their relationship with students just above teaching, which involves a very practical approach using a varied repertoire of instructional methods that they switch between easily. 

Tate contrasts professors with secondary teachers by saying that the latter are more "teachery" in nature.  Should college professors be more teachery – more instructionally varied?  More caring? Tate goes on to say that no one, college professor or high school teacher, who teaches without thought for how the students are learning will be successful, despite how teachery they are.

Much study has been devoted to effective teaching, especially at the college level, and organizations like the American Association of Higher Education and Accreditation and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching exist to further improve the field.  In 1987, Arthur Chickering and Zelda Gamson published seven principles of good practice in higher education -- a landmark list that has been studied and cited repeatedly by authors writing about good teaching.

Furthermore, in 1989 Kenneth Feldman published a meta-analysis of studies on student ratings of teacher quality in Research in Higher Education and identified 17 dimensions of teacher behavior that rated highly with student achievement.  Clearly, instructional behaviors and skills lead to effective teaching.  So, in short, there is research, lists of techniques, best practices, evaluation instruments, meta-analyses of research, and recommendations for good teaching that are readily available.  With all this research, what do we know about what makes a good teacher?  What defines a real teacher?  Why aren't there more really good teachers?  Why do most of us remember only one, or maybe two?

Peter Seldin, from Pace University, says the following in Improving College Teaching:

“…the argument has been raised by some that we still lack the final answer to the question of what constitutes effective teaching.  That may well be true, but the key ingredients of effective teaching are increasingly known.  We have no reason to ignore hundreds of studies that are in general agreement on these characteristics.”

As Seldin says, are all our questions answered?  Do we really know what makes good teaching?  In my experience, one issue is still unresolved.  Parker Palmer, in Good Talk about Good Teaching  (Change, 1993) talks about the privatization of teaching and says this:

"No surgeon can do her work without being observed by others who know what she is doing, without participating in grand-round discussions of the patients she and her colleagues are treating.  No trial lawyer can litigate without being observed and challenged by people who know the law.  But professors conduct their practice as teachers in private.  We walk into the classroom and close the door -- figuratively and literally -- on the daunting task of teaching.  When we emerge, we rarely talk with each other about what we have done, or need to do.  After all, what would we talk about?"

Technique, skills, motivation, relationships with students, content mastery, teaching skill repetoires -- all matter and are important because they prescribe effective teaching.  But we have to admit – we are a private profession, which can sometimes negatively affect our instructional effectiveness. 

What do I remember about my two favorite teachers?  I remember openness. They taught with the doors open, and their office doors were always open.  They were open and reflective with us on their teaching, and they knew when we were learning -- and when we were not, they changed course.  Their openness led to personal relationships with many of us, and the ability to observe them not just as professors, but people, and to remember what made them great.  I hope that I remain open as a professor, and that one day my students may remember me.

Instigators of Academic Student Engagement

By Susan Codone

If you are a typical professor, you probably try different pedagogical techniques to try and activate and maintain student engagement.  Engagement is known by many descriptors.  This article focuses on academic student engagement -- that state of being that students reach when they are fully involved in an  academic task, rather than student engagement outside the classroom, as often talked about by college administrators and measured by the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE).

Let’s be clear; we’ve all seen engagement, and  we know it when we see it.  Anyone who has watched a teenager play videogames or a college student post a new status to Facebook has seen some indicators of engagement – total attention, a suspension of time, an immersion into the event.  For professors, the difficulty lies in getting those students who are so easily engaged in other environments to engage in the classroom.

Some see engagement as the integration of intense pedagogical techniques designed to coach students to lose themselves in a task.  Some writers link student engagement directly to active learning, like Jo Williams and Susan Chinn, writing in 2009 in the Journal of Information Systems Education.  In their article, Using Web 2.0 to Support the Active Learning Experience, these authors say that teachers are paying more attention to the crucial relationship between engagement and active learning in the classroom and are rolling out a variety of pedagogical methods, including technology, to stimulate engagement. 

There are so many definitions and descriptors of student engagement that it would be difficult to catalog them all.  The graphic on the right lists descriptors pulled from multiple sources that describe academic student engagement.

To cut through those descriptors, focus instead on three major instigators of student engagement that appear ubiquitously in the literature:  intense pedagogical techniques, deep learning, and social media and networking technologies.

Intense Pedagogical Techniques

Chen, Lattuca, and Hamilton (2008) say the apex of engagement is full and unbroken immersion in demanding activities.  What kind of activities cause such immersion?  Many professors rely on active learning and other cognitive techniques to spur students into engaging with course content.  Techniques such as reading, writing, discussing, metacognition, solving problems, systems thinking, constructivist thought, meaning-making, engaging in higher order thinking, and working in Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development all can influence engagement.

But by themselves, not one of these pedagogical techniques instigates engagement automatically.  There must be a mental toggle into a state of immersion, and acceptance on the part of the student to think differently about the content.  Colin Bryson and Len Hand, in their article The Role of Engagement in Inspiring Teaching and Learning (2007) in Innovations in Education and Teaching International, say that the perception of the student regarding the teacher and the content is a precursor to any form of engagement.  They also say that a positive disposition in the teacher makes an enormous difference in students' ability to engage.

Higher order thinking, deep information processing,  active learning,  proximal development, systems thinking, constructivist thought, meaning-making and other cognitive factors are all important in getting students engaged – but ultimately, students must agree to buy into the academic task in order to become engaged.  How else can we get them to do that?


Deep Learning With Technology and Social Media

One way is to use the drawing power of technology to pull students in and make them lose themselves in the learning process.  Van B. Weigel, in his book Deep Learning for a Digital Age: Technology’s Untapped Potential to Enrich Higher Education, makes a push for a radical infusion of technology into the classroom.  Written in 2001, Weigel’s book predates such tools as sophisticated learning management systems (LMS's), easily-created websites, and social knowledge and social media.  His argument, though, is that technology can be used to create communities of inquiry in which conditionalized knowledge and metacognition can develop – which is his definition of deep learning, and thus, engagement.

Building on Weigel, the website Learning and Teaching Info goes further to differentiate deep learning from surface learning, describing deep learning as

•          linking prior knowledge to new knowledge
•          focusing on significance
•      relating information across courses
•          relating theory to everyday experiences
•          organizing and structuring content
•          emphasizing the internal learner

But again, like pedagogical techniques, these deep learning strategies will only encourage “deep learning” or student engagement if the student accepts the task and builds internal motivation to accept it. Is deep learning a precursor to engagement, or a result of engagement?  Or both?  How else can technology be used to engage students?

Social Networking Technologies

The recent phenomenon of social networking is lauded for its universal appeal, ability to draw young people in and allow them to openly display their lives, and its supreme networking service that even reminds you of your friends’ birthdays.  Are college students engaged when on FaceBook?  Miikka Salavuo, writing in the Journal of Music, Technology, and Education (2008), notes that social media is an excellent platform for learning. In Social Media as an Opportunity for Pedagogical Change in Music Education, she recommends that social networking platforms like FaceBook, Elgg, MySpace, and Ning be used as an alternate to LMS's because they offer increased participation, presence, and ownership, as well as the ability for students to use the expertise of others, create lasting connections, and network widely.  For example, Sarah Palin's Facebook page is noted as an example of a social media content repository; using the FaceBook Notes feature, Palin writes political articles and posts them on her page for her Facebook fans.  In the same way, professors could generate written course content and use Facebook Notes to post this content for students to read  and comment on -- while they're already in Facebook perusing other pages.

Then, of course, there is the excellent means of social networking provided by FaceBook and other applications that can allow students and professors to create online communities of practice, with regular dialogue, posted material, and other media such as video and photographs.  While the technology and tools recommended in Weigel's Deep Learning will likely continue to change regularly, the era of social media is on us, and will evolve but probably not be totally replaced. The evidence is in; we know that students can become engaged using technology like social media applications; why not use it in and outside of the classroom?


In a June 14, 2010 email correspondence with Dr. David Jonassen, Distinguished Professor of Education, Director for the Center for the Study of Problem Solving, and eminent cognitive science researcher at the University of Missouri Columbia, he responded to these questions.

"What happens cognitively when students engage in the classroom? What are the indicators? What are the precedents?"

His answer:

"That’s a complex question. Neurologically, the cerebral cortex lights up, especially the caudate nucleus. Motivationally, students engage and persist on task. Why do students engage? Personal relevance, necessity, curiosity, etc. There are no really valid measures. Only behavioral.

While we may indeed need more research on which neurological switch to throw to instigate engagement, in the meantime we know we have tools.  Intense pedagogical techniques, deep learning with technology, and social networking encourage students to engage.  All are complementary tools.  All can be used simultaneously or as single powerful tools.  All require professors to step out of their traditional pedagogical training and teach differently.  All, ultimately, depend on the student's intrinsic motivation for success.  Finally, all can encourage engagement, making it less elusive and much closer to reality in our classrooms.

Eyes

When I walk into the classroom, I look at my students and smile, but as I’m doing so, I’m performing a closer assessment of the state of their eyes.  I don’t really look at their expressions, but instead focus on their eyes.  On the first day of class, my quick scan of their eyes usually tells me that they are ready, interested, and willing to maintain eye contact – at least for the first few minutes – if I don’t blow it!  Throughout class, I constantly scan their eyes so that I can know instantly how and if they are paying attention.

This is what I hope to see:

• Bright eyes
• Upturned eyes
• Focused eyes
• Eager eyes
• Receptive eyes
• Eyes that follow me across the room

When I see this, I know I need to make an immediate change:

• Downturned eyes
• Eyes focused elsewhere
• Eyes unfocused and empty
• Glazed eyes
• Sleepy eyes
• Droopy-lidded eyes
• Tired eyes
•  Eyes carelessly looking around the room
• Eyes looking at each other

Or, when I see this, I immediately respond!

• Eyes focused on texting
• Eyes focused on their laptops for a long time (Facebook and email!)
• Closed eyes

Eye states change quickly.  Bright eyes can suddenly change as the students quickly assess the appeal of your material and change how they feel about how class is going.When I see a drift in the eyes of my students, I know I have lost them temporarily, and I make an intervention to get them focused on me once again.

Intervention

To intervene, I change my tone and volume, walk toward them and through the classroom, change the screen if I’m projecting, quickly assign a group project, or change the topic if it’s time. When I get their eyes back, I resume instruction in the new manner.  Sometimes I just say “Look at me!” while other times it takes a more subtle approach.  Sometimes a change of course happens every ten minutes; if I’m doing well, I can keep their attention for twenty before making a change.

Strategy

Assess eye states when you come into the classroom, when you open your lesson, and as often as you can after that.  Use your assessment to determine if most of the students are with you or if you are losing them.  Eyes will tell you more than anything else if a student is with you.  Eyes will tell you the degree of interest, the extent that they are listening, and even how much they are processing (if you look closely).

One Exception!

Once I had a student whose eyes were almost always closed from the time he sat down until class ended.  The progression would be toward his chin tilting up and the back of his head dropping down, and then his mouth would fall open in a giant O.  Now this was obviously way past my ability to just watch his eyes and detect his degree of tiredness.  My favorite technique in this case was to take a few textbooks and drop them in front of him and he would jerk to attention.  No matter what I did instructionally, though, he fell asleep like this every class period for the entire semester, and predictably, failed.  In this case his closed eyes were a clear signal!

Watch their eyes – and watch your instruction come to life!

Why do Students Cheat?

Why do students cheat? Is it because they didn’t study so they steal answers from someone who did? My belief is that most cheating today is plagiarism, not someone covertly looking at someone else’s paper in the hopes of seeing an answer they need. Actually there are many forms of cheating, but in my experience, plagiarism is the most common.

One year ago, three very bright, promising students turned in a written assignment in my class. When I looked at their work, I could tell immediately that it came directly from Wikipedia. I can zone in on Wikipedia prose very easily! So I went to Wikipedia, looked up their topics, and naturally found word-for-word answers on Wikipedia without any citations in their written work. As a professor, I don’t even consider Wikipedia to be a scholarly source! And they cheated anyway, never thinking that I might catch on that their writing skills had suddenly improved!

Those students went before the University’s Honor Council, which assigned penalties to each of them based on the amount of Wikipedia content copied directly into their assignments. Penalties were assigned, and all of them failed that particular project. To their credit, they expressed that they understood what they had done and would never do it again. I hope so!

About three years ago I did a group writing assignment, and groups peer-reviewed themselves. This peer review was important and had a deadline. Each group was to write a memo to the other group describing what they found along with recommendations for improvement. One group inexplicably forged a memo from another group saying that the peer review was complete. They cheated because they had run out of time and rather than ask me for an extension, they resorted to forgery, signing other students’ names to their paper’s peer review. Because I have a basically simple mind, I could not get my head around the fact that they had not only cheated, but they had lied and forged signatures as well. I could not believe it! Those students also went before the Honor Council, and again, penalties (this time more severe) were assigned. Were my disbelief and the reaction of the Honor Council enough to ensure that they would never act in that way again in an academic environment? I’m just not sure.

Recently I had a student for whom English was not his first language. He turned in an essay in which the writing style ranged from very, very poor to exceptional and then very poor again. Once again I suspected plagiarism, and visited a few websites that I knew he had surveyed for this assignment. Large blocks of his essay were copied directly from these websites with no citations at all. I gave him a zero for the assignment, and then sat down beside him and explained, in depth, what plagiarism is and how to avoid it by properly citing references in your paper. I thought he understood. The next assignment was a research paper – a significant project in regard to the amount of research and writing required. Once again his paper contained large blocks of very well written text, surrounded by paragraphs of much lower quality. I visited his references online, and found that once again, he had simply copied large amounts of text and pasted them throughout his paper. I gave him a zero for this assignment as well, and talked with him again about plagiarism. I truly don’t believe he understands what he has done wrong in these assignments, and I imagine he’ll do it again in another class.

So why do college kids cheat? Laziness? A failure to study extensively enough? A lack of understanding about references and citations? For some reason I always take it personally, as a personal affront that they would cheat in my class when I give them so many opportunities to do well. After 8 years of undergraduate teaching, I’m pretty sure that cheating will continue.

Hopefully I can divert some offenses by spending more time teaching about plagiarism and writing honestly. I just want them to learn, and to do it honestly!

Relevance & Undergraduate Teaching

This semester I have developed a new understanding of the importance of relevance to undergraduate students, particularly freshmen.

To teach engineering ethics to freshmen students, we often turn to engineering disasters. These case studies often involve ethical problems that contributed to the disaster, such as the epic struggles between engineers and NASA managers over the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Those ethical problems, added to the spectacular stories of the disasters, usually make a compelling lesson.

Usually!

A few days ago I prepared a lesson using the Teton Dam collapse as the primary case study. I prepared the case study and even found a great website with moment-by-moment pictures of the leak that turned into the collapse of the dam. I even found a picture that showed a tiny speck coming down from the top of the dam toward the leak – it was a bulldozer sent down in a futile effort to stop the leak. Moments later the leak opened into a huge hole, swallowing the bulldozer. I felt certain my students would be fascinated.





After I presented the case and the pictures, I expected questions (sometimes I find myself expecting applause for particularly great lessons) but I received mostly blank stares. One student from the back ventured, “Katrina?” With that one word, I suddenly understood. The Teton Dam collapsed in 1972. There is no good video of the event on YouTube. The collapse only killed 11 people and the flooding was not extensive. In their minds, not only was this disaster quite old, it was out of their personal experience range and was therefore not relevant. Katrina, on the other hand, they knew about. It was relevant because they witnessed it in 2005, when they were 13, and they felt the extent of the tragedy. It was relevant to them because it was huge in scope and garnered an international response.

These students were born in 1992. The Space Shuttle Challenger is not part of their experiential understanding. Neither is Three Mile Island, the Ford Pinto explosions, or Chernobyl. I know where I was when the Challenger exploded. The defining moment for these students is September 11. They were 9 years old and it was the first extraordinary event they witnessed that was not part of history, and now they will compare every event like this to their experience in 2001. These students understand why terrorism is now considered an emerging technology.
So the challenge is to make historical issues relevant. Just conveying the information, even with the addition of media, is not enough. Spectacular stories aren’t enough. We have to connect to their prior knowledge and experience so that they can create new experiences and new meanings.

I am learning this as I go, making mental notes to consider relevance before I deliver any lesson. I am reminding myself that just like them, I knew where I was when….it’s just that we know different events on different timetables, making relevance a factor.

Teaching Freshmen!

Teaching undergraduates is one thing, but teaching freshmen is quite another. I recently gave my freshmen students a research paper assignment on ethics in emerging technologies in engineering. We had studied ethical theories such as utilitarianism, duty ethics, rights ethics, etc, and emerging technologies such as nanotechnology, stem cells, neuroenhancements, biomass & energy, and genetic modification. These freshmen engineering students are majoring in mechanical, industrial, biomedical, environmental, electrical, and computer engineering and are pretty smart to have made it into the School of Engineering.

I believe these students should study emerging technologies because by the time they reach mid-career, these will be real technologies the world is using. I believe they should study ethics so that they can protect themselves from problem situations when they enter the work world.
But, some things I just do not understand. One student chose to write extensively about the ethical concepts promoted by Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to give to the poor. (We had not studied Robin Hood in class and I doubt I could find him mentioned in any scholarly articles on ethics). Another student wrote about neuroenhancements being used to treat bipolar disorder, stating it is also called maniac-depressive disorder. Another student wrote about computer networks, with no mention of ethical implications and no description of it as an emerging technology. Another student’s paper bounced from really bad writing to really great writing, back and forth until the conclusion; it was like riding a roller coaster. All of his references consisted of urls, so I checked. He copied and pasted most of his paper from professional articles.

Sigh!

Finally, all the A’s and B’s went to students sitting on the left side of the room, while all of the C’s, D’s, and F’s sat on the right side of the room. Now, did the smarter and weaker students self-select into their own groups and their own side of the room, or was this random? Interesting. Maybe I should mix them up!



Our last class is Wednesday, and then the final exam later. I’m tempted to ask about Robin Hood and maniac-depressive disorder on the final!