You Can’t Make Me Drink the Kool-Aid: Part One

Unless you make me want to drink it.

You are a new teacher at a small liberal-arts university of approximately 4,000 students. Your task is to teach English 101. Yes, welcome to academic Hell. Before the class begins, you hear about a fantastic solution from the university’s Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies. The solution is a free, community-wide blogging site. The first day of classes, you explain the system to your students with great enthusiasm.

“You’ll be BLOGGING your ASSIGNMENTS!”

You glance around the room. A couple of students are about to jump for joy. A couple more look like they’re about to drop the class. Overall, the response is melancholy, nonchalant. It’s the loudest “ho-hum” you’ve ever heard.

What went wrong? Why do two people love the idea, while another two are considering suicide? How are you going to engage the vast majority of your students who just don’t care?

I don’t know, exactly. I’m not a teacher. It’s ultimately your job. But I can tell you some things I do know about this sort of thing. I’m not expecting to blow any minds here, I don’t have a “miracle solution,” and any teacher is going to have dissenters, no matter what. I’m only telling you what I’ve seen from four years at this academic institution.

Students Don’t Use What They Don’t Think They Need

Most students wouldn’t be able to define “organizational need” if asked, but I’m consistently amazed at how privy college students (especially freshmen) are to the concept, if subconsciously. Students as a whole will fundamentally reject things they don’t feel they have a need for. Working people usually don’t have the freedom to make the rejection. That is, “I don’t need all that crap, I’ll take a different section,” to “Use the BlackBerry, or you’re fired.” There’s not a whole lot of wiggle room in scenario 2; a student can slack off in some areas and make up for it in others.

That in mind, I’ll tell you about another good example. In middle through high school, we had binders. A lot of binders. A binder for every class. You know what? Fuck binders. I had 5 binders for 5 classes when I could’ve used 1 binder for all my classes. But we HAD to have them. And if a teacher was really, truly horrible, he/she would have a graded “binder check.” I failed my binder checks, because I gave my teachers the big “fuck you,” and I didn’t care. Everyone failed the binder checks, because everyone knew they didn’t need the binders.

There’s another very similar group to students in terms of needs assessment. The elderly don’t like technology, either. It’s not that they think it’s hard to use. An older person who says “it’s too hard for me to learn” says so because they are either astoundingly ignorant, or, more likely, that they just don’t feel like putting in the effort to learn how to use it. Why would an older person use a cell phone when the rotary worked fine for 40 years?

I’m not trying to say that the institution should shy away from experimental learning, in any way. I fully believe that if an educational option looks like it’s going to be viable, it should certainly be explored, at least evaluated, and teaching faculty certainly have a say in this process. If I were a professor, however, I would very thoroughly consider the needs of my class before selecting a potential option. If playing Half-Life 2 looks like the best possible way to explain interactive narrative to a course, so be it, but I really need to be able to explain exactly why this is the best option, or my students are going to be anything but engaged.

What happens when the professor sets up a class blog for the sake of class blogging? First of all, most of the students don’t really care. They are not engaged, and they don’t feel like doing the work. This aggravates the professor. The professor becomes disengaged in the students. But it’s much more frustrating to me, because I see (and there are those who share this opinion with me) that it is totally, blatantly wasteful. Wasteful of class time, both mine and the professors, and wasteful of my money. The time spent learning how to do the work could’ve been used to do the work, for a lot less hassle. Now, obviously, if I’m taking a computer science course, or XML writing course, there needs to be time in class to learn how to do the writing, but I shouldn’t have to blog (as an example) reports that I could’ve done much, much more efficiently in Microsoft Word.

Speaking of “organizational need,” don’t even get me started on Tablet PCs, the biggest waste of university funds in human history.

Tomorrow I’m going to finish this post, with some more encouraging ideas, including how to get students to actually want to use information and instructional technology by creating mutual incentives. This is a process, I feel, that is both engaging to the professor and students.

Stay tuned.

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You’re currently reading “You Can’t Make Me Drink the Kool-Aid: Part One,” an entry on I Can Has Blog?

Published:: 03.07.08 / 12am

Category:: Uncategorized

jmcclurken 03.07.08 / 7am

Joe, I’m looking forward to part 2….

Gardner Campbell 03.07.08 / 11am

I see you have some strong opinions on this subject, Joe. Can’t say I’m surprised.

There’s merit in what you say. But I need to ask some questions:

1. Do you believe students always know exactly what they need in order to learn?

2. If so, what’s your most compelling evidence?

3. If students do not always know exactly what they need, what should happen if the professor says, “in my view, blogging is an essential part of the course and will reinforce and foster your learning in uniquely powerful ways” and the student says, “I disagree”?

4. I guess another way to ask that question is to ask what you see as the role of the teacher in a course of study. That’s a real question. Perhaps you’ll be answering it in part two.

I confess I’m skeptical about some of your argument above, partly because it seems to define the criteria for successful schooling in terms of immediate student acceptance. Where’s the space for pushing the students outside their comfort zone?

I hope you’ll write another post sometime about Tablet PCs. My perspective there is different from yours, and I’d be interested to know why you think them such a waste,

Serena 03.07.08 / 11am

I know I said this to you already, but I’ll say it here for Jeff, who wanted to know my opinion.

I’ve heard a wide variety of reactions to UMW blogs, ranging from unintelligible squeeing to shrugs to sarcastic comments and rolling eyes.

I think the students who like it the most (by and large) are either the ones who are already intensely passionate about the course and learning or the ones who are fairly shy and rarely vocal in class discussions. For the latter, blogging is a way to express ideas and reactions that they might be afraid to voice in class. As for the former, they’re not really the ones professors are looking to help, are they? If class blogs are an effort to get students interested and involved, then how do professors ensure that they’re reaching the students who aren’t already enthusiastic? Can they?

Let’s see what Joe says in part 2

Quick note to Serena: I always try to reach the students who aren’t passionate about the course and learning (in my mind this isn’t “help” so much as it is “invitation to engagement”), but at some point the student simply has to decide: am I committed or not? If the answer is “not,” I’m not sure why the student is in the course, or in college for that matter, but I can do little but move on, keep hoping, and keep trying oblique strategies to realize my hopes.

Note that I’m not talking about students who are having trouble learning. If a student is having trouble but is passionate and committed to the course and learning, I’ll do whatever is humanly possible to help that student.

And if a student disagrees with me, so long as respect and civility exist between us–and yes, that goes both ways–I’ll do everything I can to help our differences be part of the learning, too. This can be quite exciting, actually.

But if a student has made the decision “no passion for me, no commitment from me,” then I think that “student” may be the wrong noun. “Attendee,” perhaps, but not “student.” I do my best to get my students involved and enthusiastic, and I’m always eager to learn new strategies, but it ain’t all up to me!

Jeff, what’s your view?

Jerry 03.07.08 / 11am

Accomplishing real learning is hard. It is hard for students, and it is hard for instructors. It is work. It is pain. It is commitment - on both sides. If you simply try to boil this down to what is most efficient or easy, I contend that is not a good formula to achieve real learning.

While I think an instructor would be wise to address your “Students Don’t Use What They Don’t Think They Need” argument, I’m wondering what gives students the ability to know what they need and the best way to achieve that - especially the English 101 class that you refer to.

I agree that technology for technology’s sake is never a good thing, but it is another thing to blame the technology when something goes bad. How many PowerPoint lectures have you sat through where instructors just read the slides? This is not the fault of PowerPoint - it is just not good use of it.

Similarly, UMW Blogs is not a magic bullet that makes teaching or learning easy, or even easier. But it has the potential to make the learning amazingly better when used well. But it is also like any instructional tool (even binders or Tablet PCs) - when used poorly, it doesn’t help much.

joseph 03.07.08 / 12pm

Real learning is hard. Undoubtedly. It’s never all up to one person, or a professor. I truly feel bad for professors who have students who just don’t care at all. It’s a very difficult place to be on both sides.

I’m presenting myself as a student who is trying to think like both a student and a professor, it’s been a challenge.

jmcclurken 03.07.08 / 8pm

I asked others for their opinions on this piece and now Gardner’s called me out on this as well, so here goes.

I would say that blogging (or wiki-ing, or any assignment, technology-based or otherwise) needs to be created with a purpose. I suspect that all of my colleagues have a goal (or often multiple goals) in mind when they create an assignment. What do I hope to accomplish? What form should it take? What sources do I expect students to engage with? How creative/analytical/exploratory/argumentative do I want students to be? How much freedom should they have to shape their own assignments? The list goes on and on.

For me the question about the use of technology is integral to every assignment I create. [Of course writing your papers on lined note pads is using technology. But Joe's raising the point that for some of these assignments the technology is transparent and well known, allowing students to focus on the content (their argument, their research, their style) without having to spend time figuring out to create a new page, while for others the time spent (in and out of class) figuring the tech out distracts from the focus on content.] I get that. As a result, it’s a conscious choice (one of many that I make when creating an assignment and a class) when I ask students to learn a new technology in order to complete my course. [And frankly I try to always make my thinking on the goals of assignments transparent to students (regardless of the tech involved), although not always at the beginning of the class -- sometimes having them struggle a bit on their own is part of my process.]

Where I think I really have an issue with your argument here is with the notion that students are losing out on content by spending time learning a new technology. First of all, every course I create leaves out much, much, much more “content” than I can possibly cover in a single semester. So, each class is a series of choices I have to make about what gets left out. Are students disadvantaged by the material I leave out of my US History Survey on the battles of Revolution so that I can focus on the popular culture of the time? Maybe, but since I can’t cover everything then I have to focus on the areas that I think are most important in creating a general student experience of learning about the past.

I’ll give you another example with even more of a parallel: I could probably cover those Revolutionary battles if I didn’t spend a third of class time engaged in class discussions of primary sources about the Revolution (and other topics), but instead lectured every class period. Lecturing is an incredibly efficient way to dispense content, though fairly problematic in terms of learning content and even worse if you want to build more skills than just passive note-taking and oral processing. I choose to leave out historical content in order to encourage a set of academic skills that I think are useful beyond the classroom (reading primary documents, understanding context, placing yourself in the past, contributing orally to an ongoing discussion, connecting the words of people in the past to the modern perspectives).

For me the use of (newer) technology fits this category as well. Yes, I’m asking students to do something new, or to push themselves, or to think about doing something in a different way, and yes, that potentially takes away from their time to read about those darn battles, but that’s a choice I’ve made as the creator of the course. That choice is based in my desire to balance the skills and content portions of my class (that’s an over-stated dichotomy here) to provide the best possible experience for the students going forward, not just in that course, but hopefully in others as well.

[I haven't discussed engaging students directly here. I would simply echo Gardner's perspective on this in his comments above, adding only that by being as transparent as possible about my thinking with my students that I'd like to think I've been fairly successful as engaging a sizable percentage of them over the years.]

This is now an obscenely long blog comment, and one that I think I may republish on my own blog in case it doesn’t make it through Spam Karma 2 or you decide to ban me from posting.

Mary-Kathryn 03.08.08 / 1pm

You wrote:

“What happens when the professor sets up a class blog for the sake of class blogging? First of all, most of the students don’t really care. They are not engaged, and they don’t feel like doing the work. This aggravates the professor. The professor becomes disengaged in the students.” (deleted rest)

I have to question your assertion that most students don’t care. I sincerely believe they do. What you may interpret as lack of engagement may just be a bit of apprehension. I know I’ve felt that way before when a Prof. gives me something that is very different. The students I’ve been around, for the most part, want to try and want to give their best. Are there a few who put on the “see-if-I-care” act? Yes. , But I believe even these students want to learn–it’s just buried for some reason.

As for not wanting to do the work–who doesn’t feel this way sometimes? Again, I’m looking deeper than the surface of “I’m bored and don’t care.” If I don’t get it, doing the assigned work is very difficult. At the end of a long day, with kids and their schedules and laundry waving at me, it would be very easy not to care. However, as an adult student I tend to reach out to my Profs when class confuses me-sometimes alot. I believe students, who don’t feel like doing the work, may have other things going on -stressed out, time mangement, learning difficulty in the class…

As for the Profs…I’ve never experienced a Prof who is not passionate about his vocation as a teacher. Disengaged? I don’t accept that. Sure, they are human as the rest of us and I’m sure they go through life with ups and downs. Classes aren’t easy but I’m still at it because of Profs who have this unlimited fire for what they teach. I always end the class carrying a small spark of their passion with me.

I’m not very familiar with technology (I’m typing with 3 fingers here) but I do approve of blogs. When one sits down to write, everything you couldn’t say in class, spills out onto the blog. The shyest person can get involved and the most vocal can have time to reflect and go deeper. Blogs open up an honesty that can connect students-to the learning-to the Prof. Voices can stand alone and intersect while thoughts merge and challenge. I have trouble speaking in class, but I do alot of thinking and writing about what I learn. Turning it into a conversation with others, would be a great opportunity

joseph 03.08.08 / 5pm

I’m not saying that professors aren’t engaged by teaching. All of the professors I’ve had contact with have loved teaching, which is pretty amazing. I’m saying that professors aren’t going to become engaged in technologies they don’t understand.

Maybe my experiences have been the exception to the rule, but I see an awful lot of it. From what I understand, we had several meetings concerning how we could get students engaged in a technology conference at school, and nobody, including myself, had a particularly good or practical answer. At the very least, melancholy students are a problem at this institution. It’s not even necessarily a problem of wanting to learn, I’d say it’s more “I want to learn about what I read in the course description, not about how I can set up my own blog, this is unnecessary and wasting my time and I could be doing this with Microsoft Word just as easily.”

Blogging is indeed a wonderful opportunity, but there are times where a classroom application thereto is brazenly unnecessary.

Chris L 03.11.08 / 11am

I’d suspect that– if you really think you can do the same thing in Microsoft Word just as easily, which indicates that you are seeing writing in a closed application for an audience of one or two vs writing in a social context– then your instructor definitely has not done their job in making clear the difference.

That being said, I completely agree that there are times blogs– like any other technology– are applied without sufficient thought. If the differences between writing in a blog, thus creating a social object and writing in a word processor, and so creating a paper product are negligible then the choice to use either is suspect!

I’d also throw this into the mix– there are not only melancholy and reluctant and busy students, but there are also students who take great pride in their independence and/or their firmness of opinion, to the point that it hinders their learning… learning is an act of (sometimes) calculated vulnerability. It can mean changing one’s mind, being persuaded, being contradictory in one’s own position. I don’t know you, so I don’t claim you are that way. But I do know that staking a claim too vociferously can almost by self-definition make it much harder than it should be. A favorite phrase relayed to me recently in this area “strong opinion, loosely held.”

Keep on, this is great stuff!

Pin the Technology at The Fish Wrapper 04.30.08 / 11am

[...] student aide, Joe, blogged last week about the difficulty in getting students to buy into the use of technology in the classroom (and by [...]

mikecaulfield.com » Blog Archive » (Don’t) Pin the Technology 07.07.08 / 7am

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You Can’t Make Me Drink the Kool-Aid: Part One

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