The PowerPoint by Leone Hinton does highlight some fantastic facts about CQUni graduates. The points about transition and persistence are very brief and do seem to be accurate, but there is really no discussion on them. It is what we do with those points that is important. Many, varied aspects and I think that CQUni is starting to deal with most of them, at least in some way. The Careers and Employment section, counsellors and program advisors, orientation, mentor program, scholarships, CLC, MLC, library and ITD all do so much to support the academic experience of the students. The sense of belonging and social aspect… well that is always an area of concern, especially with a large flex cohort, but that is looking to improve all the time.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Gen Y - mis-management
Ronald Paul Hill, 2002, Managing Across Generations in the 21st Century: Important Lessons From the Ivory Trenches, Journal of Management Inquiry, Vol. 11, No 1, pp 60-66.
Interesting comments about the confusion of input and output with the Gen Y students and that stemming from over praise the effort they put into things as children, not the end result. That does seem to conflict with the outcomes based university courses rather than effort based. From my point of view as Gen X, if you can do it, great! Who cares how much effort you need to put in. Yes, we’ll go the hard yards if needed, but if not, we won’t. We want the end result. Maybe coming from all those video games with the aim on the final score or beating your mate! So we do need to show why the outcomes are important not just the effort that is put in, but without stopping the will of the student to still put the effort in.
Self paced work and lack of deadlines probably contributes to this problem. If there are no deadlines, then students will not learn to be able to deal with deadlines. Employers need to keep the employees happy and pander to them instead of the other way around. I guess this is saying that Gen Y don’t ever have to do it tough!
Gen Y has been raised to value their own personal development, that just needs to be channeled such that the company’s benefits are in line with the personal development.
They are saying that there is a lack of intrinsic motivation for Gen Y to follow their passions due to those careers not earning them enough money. That is indeed interesting considering that these students are used to doing what they like in a way and timeframe that suit themselves.
Gen Y have been pushed into so many things by their parents that the focus was not really on enjoying any of them, but just going through the motions. Well that explains why they are not motivated to work but are still willing to do it to achieve pay even though they are not passionate about it. Also, with the time management, doing so many things and not really focusing on outcomes could be why they have unrealistic expectations of how many courses they can do at once and they are used to just doing many things and filling all their time with different activities. Just a pity that they never really get any outcomes from any of them because time is just too pressed!
The article does raise issues of teaching Gen Y. What it doesn’t consider is teaching Gen Y right alongside Gen X and Baby Boomers and everyone in between. If we meet the issues of Gen Y, then for sure, someone else is going to have a lesser experience!
Gen Y - getting the job done
Not quite sure what this power point is supposed to mean. It is a very stereotypical view of a Gen Y student. While yes, they may have several things on the go at once while studying, that doesn’t mean they get less out of studying that anyone else. Perhaps… it helps. No, bear with me here. I sit down to read a paper and I get bored really easily, even though it is most relevant and actually quite interesting. It is the concentrating on one thing for too long that is the problem. Now, at the moment, I am sitting in front of TV and watching an interesting episode of Law & Order, Criminal Intent. Yes, yes, I read that article on how much longer things take when multi-tasking, but I could just be sitting here watching interesting TV and not doing the work as well because I am prone to procrastination about going into the study and focusing solely on the article. I know I’m not Gen Y, but doing 2 things ‘at the same time’ is meaning I’m getting the work done.
Does that mean that I would do all work in front of TV – no :)
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Stories
Now, back to the paper by Bowser, Danaher & Somasundaram: Stories as perspectives and interests: Approaches and issues in conceptualising student attrition and retention at Central Queensland University
This was certainly a view of attrition different from most. The analysis of a conversation to find out what people’s ideas and definitions are is a good idea because it can capture things that are not captured when people are simply writing a scholarly article.
Analogy 1 – that university study is like a medical condition, or surgery. Doctors take an oath to try their best to treat everyone, so I don’t really see the analogy. If there is a 50% chance you won’t get through a degree, then isn’t there something more we can do? Doctors don’t give up on patients from the beginning if there is only a 50% survival rate!
Analogy 2 – that university is like a parent. That is quite a demeaning way to look at the students – as children needing to be guided into adulthood. Yes, it might be true for some students, but with such a large proportion of adult learners at CQUniversity, I don’t think this analogy is very accurate. It is like saying that a student and a lecturer are never on the same level. It doesn’t respect other types of knowledge and abilities that students bring with them, but instead says, ‘I have information, you don’t, therefore I am superior’. In fact, the information or knowledge each has is just different.
Analogy 3 – like unemployment, some amount of attrition is acceptable. I do tend to agree with that. There are always going to be students whose personal situation changes and they are unable to continue studying, or at least studying at that time. Serious illness, new job, having children. Part time students can take more than 15 years to complete a degree – things happen. It is how the student feels when leaving that is important. The institution can do a little bit there. Yes, as said, it might be negative for the students involved, but if the uni says, ‘oh well, things happen, good luck’, then what is the student going to think? What about, ‘that is unfortunate/exciting/wonderful and here is how we can help you stay in touch with the university community so that you are still involved and can come back when you are able/ready’? Would that be more positive for the students involved? The question, however, of attrition to maintain academic standards… well that is just rubbish and egotistical. There quite well maybe some students who are not capable of doing a degree they have been accepted into, but that’s no reason to cast them out either, just for the sake of academic standards. I don’t think I want to work for an institution with that as its underpinnings.
Perspective 1 – definition of attrition: at the gate or after they are in? What’s the university’s obligation to the community? With the demographic that we draw from, a person’s past may not reflect their ability. I believe that CQUniversity is wise enough to have recognized that. There is, however, still a ‘gateway’ with enabling programs, so we don’t just say that, “we’re not prepared to risk you”.
Perspective 2 – attrition as a problem or way to boost the uni’s GPA and graduate performance. Oh please don’t let it be the second! Again, how egotistical. So is targeting categories of students if they are to boost the uni’s performance or ‘image’. Yes, every student who leaves must be considered, and yes, sometimes it is for the student’s best interest. We don’t need to lower academic standards to keep students here, we might just need to optimize the transition as is mentioned.
Interests – I really hope that we don’t keep students at uni for less than altruistic reasons. In my line of work, I certainly know that we do what is in the student’s best interest. We do, however, dig to the bottom off each issue. While it is waste of time and money if a student is coerced to do another course even though they might still drop out afterwards, it might just be worth that shot at another course, and they might make it through, hence not making waste of the time and money they spent on the previous courses. I would not put ‘inevitable’ with any terms related to study.
The paper is saying – work out what attrition is, what it means for the uni and the students and see what we can do about it. Talk more, pin down more, do something.
How flexible and for whom?
Palaskas and Muldoon
Flexible learning – “providing a range of learning approaches to suit student diversity… educational experience… more closely matches the needs of the learner”.
There are now closer ties between on-campus and off-campus students through technology and the library.
The finding was that communication technologies such as Blackboard can be used for both on-campus and off-campus students, but that academics need a fair amount of support to use these with best practice pedagogy and teaching and learning techniques. They discuss taking the good aspects of class and online teaching in a blended approach.
At CQUniversity, we already have Moodle established. I don’t know to what extent it is being used for blended learning, because I still hear on-campus students saying they don’t go into Moodle much because there is nothing for them there. I know other courses require all students to do online work.
Online learning is said to increase flexibility and autonomy in the students. It does allow for a more personalized approach to the timing of the work. However, the paper does say that blended learning, where there is a mix of class and online delivery is better than either. Sometimes, this is just not an option, so perhaps there might need to be innovative ways to overcome this?
The list that this paper gives from McCombs (2002) is interesting. It is certainly a good list to go by when designing an online course. In particular, emotional safety and creativity are two aspects that are often overlooked in the design of courses. I like the creativity aspect in that maybe an essay can be substituted with some other form of composition for assessment submission.
The authors do go on to talk about online aspects such as discussion boards, and having resources online. One thing that is anecdotally extremely common at CQUniversity is that students like to print out resources and have them as hard copies. This then leads to a conundrum… academics like to put more online because it is easy and can link to so many more resources, webpages, and papers, but students then feel like there is more to print out and get frustrated with the volumes and cost of the printing. The authors point out the use of integrated note-taking features of technology. I know I myself struggle a little with that and even now as I type, I have the paper open on the left half of my laptop screen, and this document open on the right half. If I had the luxury of dual screens like I do at work, it would be even easier. So I’d say that lecturers would need to be careful with what they direct students to, and if the students might perceive it as something to print out. Online interactive activities, on the other hand, are harder to print – this means that the students might focus more on the doing, rather than the keeping… but I have been asked for summaries of lessons – my guess is to print out because they are always available to go back to online.
One of the strategies mentioned in this paper is to provide a “media-rich environment”. This, I believe, is paramount to student engagement. When was the last time you saw Discovery Channel show a documentary that was text appearing on the screen with an intermittent picture every now and then? BORING! Discover Channel is exceptionally interesting, but (don’t tell the kids) it is educational!
Yes, this might take a little extra effort on the part of the academic. Having, however, just rewritten my Physics study guide, THAT was a lot of effort too. So next time I think about rewriting it, I might do something a little different – more interesting – definitely. Of course, you might ask why I just rewrote a boring study guide? Well, as I said, many people work best with something printed out in front of them!
Ah, preparing the student – comfortable and familiar with the technology. Here is a major crux. We have Gen Y students who really don’t need, or want, to be hand-held through technology guides, and we have non-natives to technology, having only just owned their first computer 6 months ago when they started their enabling course, and everyone in between. We need to have a system (or several) that can put everyone on a level playing field right from the beginning of the course. Academics need to engage in the orientation of their students, not only to university, but to the technology. On some of our campuses, it is lecturers who do take the new students through Moodle during orientation week and that is excellent as they know exactly how the students are going to be expected to engage with the systems. If only more academics would realise that an extra 2 hours in orientation, means that all their students will be ready from day 1 of term, and there will be far less time wasted with questions such as, ‘How do I log in to Moodle? Where is that reading? What do I do in an online forum?’
There is a long way to go and there will be a constant need to update both students and academics to fully utilize online technology in teaching.
More on 7 Principles
McConnell’s paper on Conceptests was extremely relevant to my work. It explains the activity that I wish to do in my Physics course. The comment, “Effective conceptests are not simple content-based multiply-choice questions… Instead, [they] assess student understanding of the principal concepts underlying the lecture material” precisely describes what I would want the students to gain from my activity as a lesson in Moodle.
The authors go on to describe features of the tests which I do agree with. The problem I see, however, is that my course is basically all online and self-paced, so the discussions that were described are rather more difficult to undertake. I could put a forum there, but with the nature of the timing the students choose, would be rather ineffective.
This article has made me think about refining the lesson to include some sort of “discussion” or promote some sort of “thinking” from the students. This could be along the lines of if they get a wrong answer, not simply to say, “It looks like you have forgotten to convert units” but more to suggest that, “Something wasn’t quite right, what do you think it could be?” and then give a range of possible causes, such as “unit conversion” or “rearranging the equation” or “mistyped into calculator”.
The authors suggest that students achieve 35-70% correct responses and that is what leads to the discussion. Given the learning situation of my material, I would ramp up. I would want the students to get a few questions completely correct to start with to build their confidence. I have said before that I believe doing that with a conventional test is not necessarily beneficial because it is not really assessing the outcomes you really want the students to achieve, but in this lesson situation, it will really help to build up to the higher level outcomes, without taking anything away.
Smith’s paper, in a similar way to McConnell’s, was written regarding classroom based interactions between students. One comment I find intriguing is that, “Problem-based learning is suitable for introductory sciences”. I would beg to differ at that. The author’s reference to it being used in Medicine is something I have followed up with, but it is useful for graduate medical courses where the students have some knowledge of basic sciences first.
I can’t hope to believe that if I told my students to solve a problem such as given a car crash, estimate how fast each car was going, or the roller coaster didn’t make it up the hill in the first trial, analyse why this could be the case, that my students would get anywhere! They don’t even know what speed means, don’t know what mass really is, let alone a force. So I’ll leave problem-based learning to higher levels of engineering, where I think it is really useful – all the more reason to make sure the students understand the basic concepts before leaving my class!
The paper by Chizmar & Walbert was written in 1999 when the web technologies were not very advanced. The types of online activities they talk about are quite static.
Interesting that the ‘web-based learning environment’ is still done face to face but in a computer lab.
They really use the web to find data that they can then analyse in class through computer programs on the computer. They then use a forum to discuss a concept – this was new technology when the paper was written, and nowadays, much research has been done on forums and students comfort and confidence in using them.
The ‘one-minute paper’ was designed to give feedback and promote interaction between the students and the lecturer. This could be done totally online, but with the students and lecturers not being forced to see each other every few days by having lecture or tutorial times, there is less obligation on the lecturer to need to respond.
The web-based labs seem good. The students are required to do things such as analyse data and conduct simulations. This could be done completely over the web, but with the basic technology the authors describe, some updating of the processes would need to be considered. Also, the authors describe that the students work in teams, using the forum to discuss the possible solutions. This works for students all at the same point in the problem as each other – as described in the paper that online students work asynchronously, and that online learning was significantly less effective. They did not describe any solutions for overcoming this.
The authors describe how hyperlinking and posting of detailed answers online are ways to provide quick feedback. This is now common practice, but the quality of the feedback probably still needs consideration. It’s one thing to say to a student, you answered the question wrong – and link to page 45 of the textbook, and another to be able to determine why the student went wrong and provide customized, individual feedback immediately. This can be done though considered lessons in Moodle.
The authors use the internet for the students to post forums outside of class hours. I’m not sure how this emphasizes time on task, because students were not required to use the internet outside of hours and they do not report on how it improved learning.
The authors use rubrics to communicate high expectations. Yes, that does communicate high expectations, but it also communicates the requirements needed to ‘just pass’ and students who are pushed for time might use that to determine ‘minimum effort’. They also attempt to communicate high expectations by saying they will be publishing the papers on the web at the end. Firstly, the premise they base that on, “that every student likes to see their name in print”, I would like to see evidence of that today in my class before I did it. Secondly, forcing students to publish on the web would have to be clearly stated in the course profile. Blogging can, at least, be kept password protected if desired.
The lists in the last paper by Panitz were quite a bit more of the same as already been presented. A few interesting points though:
Brigham Young University – “Work with student affairs staff on issues related to student extracurricular life and life outside of school.” Working in that area myself, I can’t stress enough how much academics should be doing this!
- “Student orientations with faculty, academic and social.” This I just can’t stress enough!
Northern Essex Community College – “Demonstrate a can do attitude.” Many lecturers can seem quite unenthusiastic about teaching, having to teach, or even having to spend time doing prep for class. Academics may have a lot to do, but this can come across to students as a bad attitude.
At the end there are a lot of examples from Winona State University. What this demonstrates is that lecturers have to devote a very large about of time to their courses, especially in they are online. If lecturers were expected to respond in such personal, in-depth, extensive manners as those in the paper, that would be nigh on impossible with several classes of 100 students or more.
References
Chizmar, J. F., & Walbert, M. S. (1999). Web-based learning environments guided by principles of good teaching practice [Electronic version]. Journal of Economic Education, 30(3). pp248-259.
McConnell, D., Steere, D., Owens, K., et al. (2006). Using conceptests to access and improve student conceptual understanding in introductory geoscience courses. Concept to assess and improve understanding. U.S.A: National Association of Geoscience Teachers. pp61-68.
Panitz, T. (n.d.). Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education implementation ideas. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from http://home.capecod.net/~tpanitz/7ideas.htm
Smith, K., Sheppard, S., Johnson, D., & Johnson, R. (2005). Pedagogies of engagement: class-room-based practices. Journal of Engineering Education, January. pp 1-15.