Proposals — A Road Map for Learning

Several undergraduate students have come through the Writing Realized labs this week asking the big question, "How do I write a research proposal?"  Professors in the social and applied sciences will be well-versed in the basic components of a research proposal because they spent several years in graduate school learning how and practicing that skill.  Undergraduates, on the other hand, are just getting their feet wet, even at the senior level.  These students are just learning how to dissect journal articles for things like independent and dependent variables, methodologies, and statistical significance.

Now you give them a topic, or allow them to choose one, and tell them, "Write a proposal."  That's it.  that's all the direction they have.  Holy cow!  What do they do now?  If they look up information on writing a proposal or use the examples they have explored for your class, they see the list of basic components and choke.  "Do I need a section on methodologies?  Am I supposed to do an experiment?  Do I need to have null hypothesis or an operational alternative? (psst...what are those?)" 

It is easy to forget how overwhelming such a task can be for beginners, especially if they don't know if they are writing a "concept" proposal or an applied research proposal. 

It all comes back to the instructor writing the assignment well.  If you do not give your students specific information, they cannot give you what you want.  They all have the basic idea of a literature review by now.  But what separates a proposal from a literature review?  Many of your students cannot answer that.  When you tell them to "write a proposal," what exactly are you expecting of them?

The Writing Specialists don't have those kinds of answers. And the professor cannot assume that the "ideal structure of a proposal" has been taught to undergraduates even if they are in your senior seminar.  When it comes to a concept proposal, some of the specifics are particular to the professor or to the department.

A proposal is an amazing opportunity for students to learn not only about the content, but about how they think.  Give them the tools to guide that thinking to a productive end.  This is where the students learn about research, about ideas, about the impact of exploration and writing to learn as well as finally formulating an interesting perspective on an issue.  That is the goal, right?

So I will offer a few suggestions:

• If your department expects students to write specific types of proposals, put together some guidelines and examples and post them on a department website or wiki.  This would give students a location for important information as well as lend some consistency to departmental expectations.
• Give your students a hand-out that explains what is expected for the assignment.  You might list necessary headings, length, required components, etc.
• Forward your assignment to the Writing Specialists in the Writing Realized labs so they can better assist your students.

Remember that your students are here to learn.  They have a destination in mind, but it is up to the professionals to help them chart their course and collect what they need to arrive there safely. Give them a road map.  They still have to fill the tank with gas, follow directions, and take in all the sights on the way there.  Sure, they may have to fix a flat tire somewhere along the way, but at least they will know where they are supposed to go.

Writing Prompts

As teachers, we ask our students to write for all aspects of learning (at least we should)—processing information, exploring research and its implications, applying new concepts, and of course, evaluation. With all the constructs and content in our own heads, sometimes it can be difficult to step outside of ourselves and see the assignment from the students' point of view. Here are few things to consider as you compose a writing assignment, big or small.

1. What do you actually want the student to do with this writing?  Is this something that will help him in learning or assimilating the information or applying concepts?  Or is it for your benefit, so you can learn something about the student and/or his process?  Or, are you going to evaluate the writing for specific, critical objectives?  Your goal should be clear to the student for several reasons.  Not only will it set the tone for the student's writing, but it will also help you and the student achieve the outcome you are looking for. 
2. What are the stakes? Does the student have a clear idea of why he is writing?  He should have opportunities for exploration and writing to learn with no significant risk to his grade.  If a student has a clear sense of purpose, he will have less anxiety about the process whether it is a formal essay for a grade or exploratory notes for his own learning.  But make sure he has ample opportunity to use writing as a tool not just a performance and be clear about what is at stake.
3. What are you asking the student to tell you?  When you are writing a prompt for your students, it is easy to fall into the teacher-brain spasm mode.  You know exactly what you are looking for in the response, but you may not have actually indicated that to the student.  If your prompt is formulated too generally, sometimes your students can't decide what you want. Students can sometimes be overwhelmed and paralyzed by a prompt that is too general or vague.  On the other hand, if you truly just want the students to offer anything they can support, be clear about that as well.  Let them know that there is no "right" answer.  Is there an implied "master text" that you will hold their responses to or are you really looking for anything they have to offer?  Keep in mind where your students are coming from in terms of their knowledge and experience and be sure that your questions give them enough direction to satisfy your goal for the assignment.
4. Have you set a clear context for the writing?  Do your students have a point of reference from which they can launch their writing?  You may have to set up a sample scenario or a little background information to put them in that place and give them a sense of audience and purpose.  You can reference a common experience or something specific from class.  While the actual topic may not be familiar to them, the point of origin should be.  Be clear about what is "prompting" this writing.  Perhaps they are sharing notes that other students should be able to read and follow logically.  Maybe they are writing a brief personal essay just to give you a sense of their skills and experience. Or maybe they are exploring a new concept and trying to apply it.

I have heard many teachers complain that their students did not give them what they asked for.  It is possible that nobody was paying attention, but more than likely the prompt simply was not clear enough to the students.  The more they understand about what is expected, the more comfortable they will be with tackling the problem and the more willing they may be to take risks and go beyond the basics and break new ground. 

Writing should not be punishment, but that is how a lot of students feel.  Most of the writing they have done is for assessment, which usually spells out where they have failed more than where they have succeeded (no matter how many positive notes you wrote on their paper).  Let students look at writing as a tool, as a means to an end rather than the end itself, as a way to express themselves honestly and confidently.  The next time you sit down to create an assignment or a writing prompt, think like a student who wants to do good work.  Give them what they need to succeed.  And remember the basics:

• Audience
• Purpose
• Expectations
• Stakes

Facebook...a Learning Network?

Our workshop topic this week was actually reflective writing, but our conversation ultimately ended up at the same questions we ask every day:  "How do we get our students to take charge of their learning and become an integral and active part of it?" 

We talked about modeling the behavior for them, incentives that will encourage them to do the work, and all those things that seem to have little impact on the already less motivated students.  And yes, even grades won't motivate everyone. With the advent of the internet and the super-connectivity it has spawned, learning seems to be more a matter of "connecting" than it ever was before (literally and figuratively), so let's take advantage of that.  Okay, so some students refuse to blog or participate in a discussion thread because it's too daunting or confusing or time-consuming...now what? What about meeting them in a place where they already feel comfortable and empowered?  Yes, I'm talking about Facebook.

Facebook has over 500 million active users.  The average user creates 90 pieces of content a month (comments, links, photos, etc.).  And 50% of those users log on every day.  Talk about a meeting place! Most of your students are probably already online and on Facebook every day.  And now, students of all ages are beginning to use social networking as a part of their formal education.   Check out 100 ways to use Facebook as part of the learning process here. 

Imagine.  You create a profile and a course page.  You friend every student in the class and engage them in conversation by posting comments, links, pictures, notes.  The possibilities are staggering. The point is, FB is easy to set up and infinitely accessible.  The party has already started; you're just opening up another room to party in. 

Worried about privacy issues, feasibility, cyberphobia?  I'll tackle that in the next blog entry.

Writing with Purpose

In our workshop this week, we discussed the use of rubrics.  Some teachers hate them because we tend to be harder on our students when we use them and they lack a proper nuance that accounts for aspects of writing that are less quantifiable.  However, a rubric can also help the teacher formulate their assignment more clearly for the students.  If we pay close attention to the purpose of the assignment and communicate that clearly to our students, we may get more readable results.

Putting aside grammar issues, students come to us with a broad variety of educational and life experiences.  Some colleges attract the most academically prepared students while others serve a population that has had far less rigorous preparation.  Let's face it, just because they are in college doesn't mean that they understand how to learn...but they want to.  The QEP mission is to enhance learning through writing and technology, and part of that mission involves helping our participating faculty design clear and meaningful assignments to enhance learning.  To do that effectively, we may have to set aside our preconceived understanding of what our students have brought to the table.

Those with a strong academic background have internalized the unwritten/unspoken expectations that usually come with a college writing assignment.  There may be no specific audience mentioned and only general guidelines as to what should be included, but these students understand how the assignment works because their brains have been through this exercise before.  Think of it as muscle memory.  They've done it before, and now they can stretch it to the college level.

Students who come from a "looser" academic tradition (for lack of a better phrase) may have the ideas, but they have no real concept of how to express them or even what aspects of the issue are appropriate for the assignment.  They have no understanding of structure because they have never been asked to work that way.  Though we hate to admit it, some have managed a "seat of your pants" education prompted by the pressures of NCLB and its manic "teach to the test" mentality or simply by poorly run or ill-equipped schools.  They may have learned how to take the test, but have they learned? The reality is, these are our students too.

If the assignment asks a student to "discuss" a topic, does the student really understand how to do that? In some cases, no.  They might have a basic sense of what "compare and contrast" means or know what it is to summarize, but the more subtle modes of exploring a topic may not be in their toolkit.  As higher level educators we may take this for granted at times.  So while our assignment parameters are perfectly clear to us, our students might need a little more explanation to help them succeed.   

Practice, structure, and conversation.  We can set our expectations high and we absolutely should or we are doing a disservice to our students. Those with less rigorous academic experience need to learn the structures, practice them, and talk about all of it with peers and professionals.  It is a process, not a punctuation mark.  By giving these students more opportunities to develop their learning skills as well as their writing skills, we prepare them not only for academia, but  for the world after college.

Authentic Learning, Collateral Knowledge and the Importance of Audience

As a teacher, I've given a lot of thought to making learning meaningful and relevant for my students over the years.  I say "learning" because that is really what I hope I am teaching them—how to learn.  Of course making the content relevant is part of that process, but it's not always as easy or obvious as it sounds.  Whatever the content, there needs to be a sense of active, authentic participation for the students that will help them truly internalize the concepts and make it part of their own system of knowledge.  There is plenty of literature, as well as debate, about authentic learning, pedagogy, and assessment, but I want to consider just a few brief points.

AUTHENTIC LEARNING TASKS

After an extensive literature review of educational scholarship on "authentic learning tasks,"  Jan Herrington, Ron Oliver, and Thomas C. Reeves identified 10 key characteristics of authentic learning activities.  I am going to cherry-pick a few that really seem to meet the mission of the QEP program at ASU:

1. Have real-world relevance. Are ill-defined, requiring students to define the tasks and sub-tasks needed to complete the activity.
2. Comprised of complex tasks to be investigated by students over a sustained period of time.
3. Provide the opportunity for students to examine the task from different perspectives, using a variety of resources.
4. Provide the opportunity to collaborate.
5. Provide the opportunity to reflect.
6. Can be integrated and applied across different subject areas and lead beyond domain-specific outcomes.
7. Allow competing solutions and diverse outcomes.

In general, students engaged in these sorts of tasks are looking for answers, not "the one right answer." They are actively participating in the process, which makes the learning not only more authentic, but more personal.  Moreover, they are asked to collaborate and reflect, which gives them the opportunity to connect to other learners and share information as well as building their own meta-cognitive skills, which better prepares them for the reality of life after academia. This is how people continue to learn and work after school is over. Will there be someone out there to always give them the right answer if they get it wrong?  Will they know how to look for the answer or explore the possibilities and narrow it down to the reasonable answer?  Not if we don't practice it.  Life is not a bubble sheet.

COLLATERAL KNOWLEDGE

I don't know if anyone has used this term before, but it seems to fit the phenomenon that accompanies good teaching strategies. In the NCLB panic that has left school systems across the country diving into into the CYA bunkers of the war on illiteracy, collateral knowledge has been sacrificed in the name of self-preservation.  Yes, thanks to vague language and misguided implementation, NCLB has lead many educators to "teach to the test" rather than to facilitate learning in order to cover their asses and get satisfactory numbers on the standardized test. But have the student's really learned anything through that approach? Or have they simply been drilled on certain facts and constructs that will evaporate ten minutes after the test is over?  In one particularly horrific example, a school system has mandated a "concept education" approach, which strips a course like English Literature down to a cataloged list of naked concepts taught out of context.  Students may read a chapter of THE GREAT GATSBY only as an example of some theme, but they will never read the novel as a whole.  Once they have written a paragraph about the dangers of wealth or the demise of the American dream, they move on to something else without ever really seeing the concept at work.  It's a meaningless blip in a catalog of disconnected terms.

If the learning is authentic, the knowledge is permanent. If you look at the really good teachers who have continued to facilitate learning in the classroom and use creative, student-centered approaches, the students will learn the content and they will perform well on the tests.  A good case in point is an interdisciplinary course taught by Carl Rosin and Paul Wright at Radnor High School in West Philadelphia.  While the course was not labeled as an AP course, Rosin and Wright encouraged their students to take the AP Language and Composition test simply because they realized that the course material seemed to be compatible with the test.  They did not teach to the test, but offered another application for the knowledge the students would gain from taking the course.  They scored exceptionally well across the board.  That is collateral knowledge at work.  It is sustainable and transferable.

AUDIENCE

No matter what the content area—science, social studies, English—students must write.  It's a life skill and an integral part of the learning process itself.  However, many writing assignments come to a student, laid out with all the do's and don'ts and word limits, etc., but fail to clearly identify the audience.  The reasonable assumption is that the audience is the teacher, and the teacher alone.  One way we can make these learning tasks more authentic is by defining and utilizing a variety of audiences.

To  get a feeling for how my students think and write and to learn a little more about their life experience, I asked my ENGL 1102 students to write a "This I Believe" essay for NPR.  Their audience with the NPR audience, not just me.  I encouraged them to get personal and shared some examples from the NPR website.  I was amazed and thrilled with the essays I received.  Not all of them were beautifully written or well organized, but they had guts.  The students had used writing to face issues that were tough or funny or uncomfortable or sad.  They still had to follow some basic grammar guidelines and word-count restrictions, but they explored.  Themselves.  After I handed their papers back, I read aloud my own "This I Believe" essay, which I had written the day before.  That simple act transformed the classroom.  It changed my students' attitudes, just a little, towards writing and literature and perhaps even why they were there.  We went on to examine the relevance of great literature like HAMLET and "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and other challenging pieces and they saw something personal in it.

Oh, I'm guilty of assigning those essays that assume the teacher is the only audience too, but over the years I have tried to pay more attention to that and offer more meaningful parameters.  Having students teach each other is a powerful strategy.  You might have them write a children's book about a topic (a very difficult task, indeed!).  One business professor asked his students to write up a business conceptualization.  Students could contact an existing business or make up their own business and write up a plan to maximize profits, quality, service, efficiency, etc.  In the science room, you might give them a conference to write for or a demonstration to a specific group of people.  Invite the outside world into the process and give your students something authentic, something real, something personal. Something sustainable.

Flipping the Paradigm

Our QEP staff meeting today focused on three primary issues:  Connectivism, JiTTs, and Flipping the tradition classroom model.  All three of these elements mingled together for some fascinating insights into the potential of a fully realized learning experience for both students and teachers.

We chatted a little bit about what QEP is trying to accomplish and immediately dove into applying some of these questions to an actual class syllabus.  We brainstormed together and came up with a lot of ideas to integrate JiTTs into the coursework and "flip" the class from a professor-led lecture model to a professor-facilitated learning model. This is the truly exciting part of re-imagining the nature of the classroom experience.  Flipping puts the onus on the students and holds them even more accountable for their own learning while actually encouraging a much broader and more practical understanding of the content.

One of the major points of contention from the resistance to this strategy is the question of student motivation.  How do we get them to do the work?  I know all too well the proportion of college students who rarely open the book or attempt the homework.  They figure if they show up to class (sometimes), listen to the lecture (maybe take notes), and regurgitate what they memorized, they are learning.  They cram for the test and write the major papers the night before they are due.  And that is what comprises the bulk of their grade. Is that real learning?  Or is it simply adding and shuffling note cards in a vast catalog of information?

It got me thinking about our particular students and why they have chosen college. Is it to fulfill a dream and become x, y, or z?  Is it because their parents said it was that or the military? Is it because they simply can't get enough knowledge?  If I posed the question to them, I imagine a fair number of them would shrug their shoulders and say, "'Cause..."  Period. Well, perhaps I'm not really that jaded.

I guess one JiTT idea I might attempt the first week of class would be to ask the students to write (in a blog or discussion thread) about why they came to college.  Why are they here?  What do they expect to get here?  Where will they go when they are finished?  If they are honest and offer more than a knee-jerk, superficial response, we can find out quite a lot about our students, and this is where we connect.  Why is education relevant to ME?

You don't have to be a science major for biology to be relevant to you in some way.  You don't have to be a writer for literature to resonate with you.  But we are all learners with a variety of personal experience and knowledge that we bring to every subject. And what really makes content relevant?  How we put it to use.  When we wallow around in it, splash about, trip over it and fall face first in a big fat mistake.  And there is the professor, at the ready with a life-preserver in hand.  If we are really only "experiencing" content outside of the classroom, who is there to guide us?

If we flip that model, the student is gathering content information and reflecting on it outside of class.   It's when he comes to class where he has a chance to manipulate it and apply it with the guidance of his professor that he really comes to understand its meaning and relevance. Now the professor can guide the student's active experience with the content, connect with him in the process and even expand his own understanding.

Back to motivation:  If we make the students more responsible for their learning, shouldn't we put more grade-weight on it too?  Of course JiTTs cannot be graded as "one-right-answer" assignments, but they can be evaluated for their level of participation and depth of exploration.  It's an interesting premise, and one that will most likely take some getting used to.  But it does seem that in the current situation, we are asking for a different kind of mastery when we give a student a grade based solely on 3 essays and 2 exams.  What is he mastering—the card catalog or the content?  I don't think essays and exams are wrong, but perhaps the structure and timing of their administration as well as their prescriptive value is not as effective as we have come to accept.  Obviously we need some way to assess knowledge and expertise.  As a society, we need to know if a doctor is competent or an engineer is qualified, and that is another discussion.  But it may be time to re-think what we mean when we say "learning."

Problem Finding

As a teacher of gifted students, I prepared my class every day by offering them opportunities to find problems.  I did not give them a question to answer or a list of problems to solve.  I gave them a spark, an uncomfortable idea to ignite that relentless itch that wriggles under their skin and begs for attention.  It was up to them to find the problem, articulate it, attack it, and explore the wreckage of their onslaught.  That may sound a bit dramatic, but gifted learners are particularly adept at and drawn to finding problems as much as solving them.  What many educators may miss, however, is that almost all learners, gifted or not, retain far more content when they have to find a problem and truly experience it first.

Many of us grew up in the tradition of lecture, notes, test, essay, and reams of questions laid out for us to answer.  All hail the Scantron sheet!  If we were lucky, we resisted the temptation to doodle or write notes to our friends while the teacher spewed his vast catalog of facts and homework questions and we wrote down what we thought was important in order to memorize it later and vomit it all back up on our beloved scantron sheets to earn a passing grade.

Ideally, however, grades are not the motivating factor, particularly in higher education.  We would all hope that learning is the goal, though the reality of our students' mindsets and social/academic pressures may suggest otherwise.  For now, we'll leave the issue of motivation for another post.

So how do we break away from the old receptacle notion of students as empty vessels into which we pour knowledge?  This is the point in such conversations when I often launch into pointing out the Latin roots of the word "educate" and remind everyone that we are drawing our students "out" rather than filling them up.  But let's start with shifting our perspective a little.

• Invite them to find problems

Okay, who read that as invite problems?  Raise your hand... Now take my hand and don't be afraid.  Problem finding does tend to be what pedagogical theorists like to call a "higher order learning skill" but why not at least try it with all of your students. When I taught Ayn Rand's THE FOUNTAINHEAD to gifted high school juniors, I often started class by posting a quotation from one of her many controversial texts and asking them to free write for 15 minutes or so.  These brilliant nuggets of philosophy often addressed difficult ideas like morality or love or selfishness.  The students had to respond to it from wherever they were in their intellectual evolution.  Then we discussed what they came up with, which mostly involved their own questions as well as the answers they came to.  Now we were ready to tackle the text.  The true learning had already begun.

• Promote Experiencial Learning

You may be familiar with the educational models of David A. Kolb, Maria Montesorri, Jean Piaget, and Rudolf Steiner.  They all looked at learning as an experience rather than an event.  It is a process that takes its roots deep inside the student and continues to grow as long as it is fed and nurtured. Both writing and experimentation are activities that engage a student with the topic.  By writing, I don't mean jotting down notes from a lecture.  I mean truly thinking on paper, manipulating ideas, possibilities, questions, problems in new ways that make the topic more meaningful to the learner.  Those who teach hard sciences rely on lab experiments to solidify information or problems presented in lecture.  But consider using writing to launch their inquiry instead of reserving that solely for grade assessment.  Even mathematics is primed for experience and questions.  Reflecting on their initial ideas and early attempts at finding and solving problems nurtures those concepts and keeps the learning growing.    

• Model it and never underestimate the power of a question

No matter how basic a student's initial perception of the subject is or how simple his questions may seem, that is his starting point.  You have to allow him to find himself in the problem. So you may present them with a situation or a statement to consider, but you can also ask a question to get them thinking.  But it is a particular kind of question: ONE THAT HAS NO RIGHT ANSWER.  This is how learning happens.  It's not a plug-in to keep the operating system moving; it's writing the software and hard-wiring the real knowledge, the experience. 

As a QEP Writing Specialist, of course I encourage educators to use writing to facilitate learning.  Asking students to find problems and write through their experience not only teaches them about the course content, but it also teaches them how learning works.  It invests them in the process and makes it more meaningful to them by allowing them to work from the inside out. 

If we use writing only as a means of evaluation, then we are wasting its tremendous potential as a learning tool and it becomes nothing more than the hammer that pounds another nail in either the coffin or the scaffold.  Research has shown that writing is an integral part of the process of learning, yet many educators continue to use it only as a measure.  Consider it as the essential tool that helps students find problems and truly experience their learning, which sows those seeds of knowledge we really hope will grow.  And that, after all, is the whole point of education.