Montclair State University - Teaching and Learning Resource Center

Ken Bain, Vice Provost for Instruction and Director


CHSS TEACHING DISCUSSION GROUP MEETING - MARCH 7, 2007 TOPIC: BRUSH STROKES: STRATEGIES FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING MEETING NOTES/TALKING POINTS Attendees (11): Bob Whitney, Elgin Klugh, Neeraj Vedwan, Jean Alvares, Tete Tetens, Peter Siegal, Meredyth Appelbaum, Linda Roberts, Aditya Adarkar, Ken Bain, Julie Dalley Dance Professor Linda Roberts opens the discussion by introducing one of her “brushstrokes” for teaching dance movements to new students. She uses a form that causes the student to break the dance down into specific steps and movements, as well as analyze their performance. Thus the form acts as a guide and reference tool. It requires an interactive participation. The outcome is that students create the dance as part of a process - with the goal to improve their writing and to be able to form an opinion. Professor Bob Whitney (English/Grammar) uses a “confrontational” strategy to “call students out” when they fail to follow written prompts or understand expectations of assignments. He confronts the students with the thought process that went into their writing. Asks, “Why aren't you making connections between the reading and the analyzation? Whitney observes that students have difficulty writing about self and the world in general, that they experience each as separate entities rather than connected elements. They are not “building a bridge” between the self and the world. Tete Tetens observes that asking students where they believe the professor failed in giving good direction may take the “blame” off the students; his style is not to “attack” the students. Meredyth Appelbaum adds that there may be a “discipline bias” in which students were trained to separate the notion of self and world and not guided into making connections. Aditya Adarkar notes that confrontation could be useful if it “wakes the student up from complacency without attacking.” Ken Bain related a story from the Northwestern Research Study on teaching and learning, outlined in his book “What the Best College Teachers Do”, where he had the chance to observe a teacher that used confrontation with great success. He related that the teacher used confrontation selectively and was not a confrontational person in general. The teacher would confront the whole class on issues, and cause them to rethink the class strategy and commitment to learning. Professor Elgin Klugh, Anthropology, talked about how he introduces kinship to his students, and has his students study cultural change within the family (student, parent, grandparent). For example, describing their own education experiences, and then interviewing their parents for their educational experiences and finally the grandparents…to trace how educational opportunities have changed over time and its impact on culture, society and the family. Klugh asks his students to support their findings with statistics from each time period, but finds that a majority of papers are turned in with little or no outside sources. Students seem resistant, perhaps subconsciously thinking that “first-hand knowledge is superior to second-hand knowledge” and thus needs no outside support. Ken Bain talks about how to make students shift from deductive to inductive learning. Neeraj Vedwan (Anthropology) spoke of trying to underscore the cross-cultural element of studying anthropology - in that some characteristics of cultures are shared, because of the shared existence as human beings (human nature). An example would be economic greed, but also political systems and class stratifications within cultures (causes/comparisons). Jean Alvares illustrated his approach to introducing The Odyssey, by Homer. He asks his students to take a character from The Odyssey - such as Telemachus, Odysseus, or Helen and compare that character to them. They must use the text to support their comparison. This strategy allows students to identify with the material. The talk shifted to a discussion of the book “The Freedom Writers Diary,” which was more recently made into a movie called “Freedom Writers”, about a practice teacher named Erin Gruwell. The discussion was about how to inspire students, especially the disadvantaged. It was about making connections such as Gruwell did when she first introduced The Diary of Anne Frank to her students and then had them start their own diaries to make the connections to their own lives. Peter Siegal discussed introducing Archaeology (which everyone is interested in!) by giving a quiz on the first day of class that asks students what comes to mind when they hear the word “archaeology”? Examples are dinosaurs, digging, Indiana Jones. This allows Siegal to segue into talking about what Archaeology is (slide of the Flintstones - humans and dinosaurs did not live together!) and to make the material more appealing - “livens up dry material.” He uses a lot of humor to that end. He also likes to address the relevancy of the discipline. Meredyth Appelbaum spoke of her experiences teaching statistics and psychology - and the difficulties in teaching a required class because of the need to counter negative attitudes. She uses several ways to show how statistics are important in everyone's daily lives and the historic use of statistics. Census, wars, taxes and feasibility factors. She shows a video on Domino's Pizza that illustrates how they use statistics to generate ads, new products, and enhancing quality. Thus the role of statistics, the meaning of methods such as random assignment, and how a study is designed, is explored. The discussion then focused on how each professor was telling their students why their Gen Ed class was important, which may overwhelm the student because they then realize that there are too many necessary things to know. This may cause vital knowledge to lose importance in the minds of the students - if everything is important, then nothing is important. Adarkar submits that Gen Ed class could be considered to be less restrictive, and allow for more creativity on the part of the professor. The qualities of meaningful courses was outlined (often these qualities are difficult for the professor): 1. challenges the student, is demanding 2. follows a process where the student tries, fails, receives feedback, then tries, fails, and receives more feedback 3. Process is separate from assessment (grade) in that feedback is not in the form of a grade The discussion culminated with the description of process, and not product. How to make students shaft their thinking to process. Adarkar shares that one way to show that a professor cares about the process is to be actively involved, individually, with their students. He meets individually with each student to discuss their process and is available to students.

The Teaching and Learning Resource Center at Montclair State University - Montclair, New Jersey, 07043, USA
| 973-65-LEARN (655-3276) | teach-learn@mail.montclair.edu | Ken Bain, Director