1. Because some students were unhappy with the lack of faculty involvement in their marking and feedback, I added a layer of faculty marking to all ‘essay outline’ (one page) assignments, such that students received three peer assessments (50% total) together with one faculty assessment (the remainder);
2. Further, I developed software that would pre-identify around 15% of students who received the most in-coherent set of assessments (i.e. in the 19 binary rubric assessment assertions) on the major (2,000 word) essay, pre-enrolling them in a faculty assessment layer, again taking up 50% of these student’s marks;
3. Next, I added an online Topic ‘opt-in’ stage, so that the peer allocation system would ensure that assessors didn’t mark the same topic as they submitted (thus addressing a particular gripe of the high-fliers who, in 2014, took the rational strategy of submitting vague or incomplete minor assignments so that other students wouldn’t ‘steal’ their ideas for the main essay!);
4. Finally, we tweaked the rubric to make it clearer and reduce further any ambiguity.

 

 

Arc de Triomphe lit up for the final stage of Le Tour De France. Image Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/loic80l/9347603724

We started by looking at radical innovation and one example in my own unit of how this can play out in the field. Last time, we drew some conclusions from the experience, in particular, looking to the peculiar nature of educational innovation.

Here, I provide some reflections on what an innovative context needs. These thoughts are not exhaustive, but are given as a starting point for discussion.

Stability. Stability. Stability. -- Innovation thrives in a stable context. What this means is that a faculty member is given a commitment that they can teach a unit or course over a multi-year period. This immediately signals to the educator that they have both the time to try out and modify new things as well as the longevity to enjoy the rewards of their labours. Chopping and changing the teaching roster is the worst context for innovation.

Learning from others -- I stressed above the slow learning cycle of Educational innovation. One way to short-circuit this is to learn from others successes and failures. We can encourage this in concentric circles: individual faculty members being encouraged to look to the educational literature to build skills; faculty members teaching and training others in new innovations; faculty members getting to educational conferences (yes, educational conferences ..) alongside their scientific conference trips; and larger institutions exploring systematic trials of innovations across their offerings. All of these methods speed up the innovation process.

Funding innovation -- whilst it is standard practice to fund (internal, faculty, university, and externally) scientific innovation, it is far less common that money exists for funding educational innovation. Innovation costs time and effort, money enables the educator to augment their own time with teaching- and research- assistance to get the innovation off the ground.

Educational innovation as Creativity -- now the golden calf. Most serious institutions have strong and binding incentive mechanisms around encouraging scientific creativity in their academic staff. And so they should. These mechanisms create an implied culture of esteem towards the creative scientist, rewarded for their ground-breaking scientific ideas. But educational innovation? Presently, educational innovation is seen too often as a home-spun activity on the side of the 'real game' of scientific research. Junior staff are warned against spending too much time on their teaching. Departments bifurcate between serious research staff and educational staff. All of this speaks to a culture which doesn't value educational innovation as a creative activity in itself.

When I innovate in the classroom, I use the same tools, thinking and creativity that I use in my scientific research. But strangely, often only when I bend my creative skills towards science do I feel the warmth of academic praise on my back. Far less so when I score a success in the classroom. The situation is objectively baffling. As an economist, I'll again say that kind word around educational innovation count for little.  What matters are material changes to the incentive structures. Only then will a serious shift in thinking and culture come about. If we esteem educational innovation as a valid form of creative endeavour, faculty members will allocate time to it, seek funding for it, and collaborate to achieve it.

Measurement -- finally, there's a pressing need to develop ways of measuring innovation in the classroom. Presently, scientific creativity is measured by journal publications of the highest quality. This seems a reasonable proxy for where any idea today sits within the infinitely lived ideas-map of humankind. But what of educational innovation? Should we require every innovator to write-up their innovation and get it published? Isn't the success confirmed in the experience of the students? What of unit evaluations -- unfortunately, these only capture the experiences of a single cohort, what matters, surely is the change in the educational experience over time, how would you measure that? Is there an index of 'lives-changed', of 'career-altering-moments', of 'ah-ha! moments per head'? .. We have some work to do.

Some of the ideas above are relatively simple to put in place. Stable staffing approaches, contingent on wider timetabling demands, should be achievable for most academic departments. Funding educational innovation is often of the few-thousand-dollar kind, not the hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollar kind, and so, again, should be achievable even for a relatively small faculty or department.

Others require serious reflection and change. In my nearly ten years as an academic educator I'm happy to say that I've received strong support from my superiors, and I've tried to be an agent of change in my own department. However, I recognise that I have an innovative educational tendency which would probably survive a more austere context. More generally, I see a lot of work to do to develop our thinking on the merits of educational creativity.

Like most things in life which are worth the effort, success will take time.

The Highs and Lows of the Educational Innovator: of cobbles, haircuts, and flipped assessment Part Three by Dr Simon Angus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. ← show less

Arc de Triomphe lit up for the final stage of Le Tour De France. Image Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/loic80l/9347603724

We started by looking at radical innovation and one example in my own unit of how this can play out in the field. Last time, we drew some conclusions from the experience, in particular, looking to the peculiar nature of educational innovation.

Here, I provide some reflections on what an innovative context needs. These thoughts are not exhaustive, but are g... read more

Chris Froome competing in the Vuelta a Andalucía, February 2015. Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/106253394@N02/16547689506
 

In Part One of this article, I shared a bruising experience on the road to educational nirvana. I'd introduced, during 2014, a radical change to the assessment of within-semester essays in my unit: I'd decided to flip the assessment and put the students in charge. I implemented summative Peer Review.

Despite the hard work in setting the system up, about a third of the students objected to the system, ultimately flicking mud at the unit altogether. The crown had slipped.

What to do?

Well, as I'd noted last time, since my unit's fortunes seemed to be mirroring Chris Froome's Tour De France highs and lows over 2013 and 2014, I realised that despite crashing out in 2014, Chris Froome had healed, re-grouped, and re-committed himself to be on top of the podium again in 2015.

I figured I better do the same!

On balance, I’m convinced the learning benefit of Peer Review is the right one to pursue. There’s gold in Peer Review. In my nearly 10 years of teaching, I haven't deployed a more promising critical thinking and learning moment for my students.

Summative peer review flips the tables. Students have to come at the work infront of them with the eyes of a domain specialist. They need to thoroughly understand the marking criteria, the principles and ideals of the strong assignment, and above all, they need to find a voice of constructive, encouraging commentary and feedback. All of this pushes the learner into a place of high-level synthesis. The student becomes the educator. This is why I want to see Peer Review thrive.

But after 2014, I felt that I needed to show the next cohort of students that I’d learned too. Peer Review 2.0 had to be a substantially better model than 1.0.

To this end, I’m in the middle of the next iteration: I’ve tweaked the binary rubric; added an automatic faculty assessment step for the high variance peer review cases; committed to a faculty assessment alongside the peers for all of the initial, minor assignments; and implemented a topic screening step to protect against idea stealing in the review step (a minor issue for some high-fliers).

But more importantly, I took the decision to walk the path of honesty with the present cohort. I wrote extensive posts on Moodle to air the main issues in 2014 and what I’d done to address them. In a word, I wanted the system to have maximum credibility, which must include honest appraisal and transparent redress. 

Whilst it is too early to tell if all my changes will have patched the problems of 2014, the experience has certainly lead to more reflection on the nature of educational innovation. Let me share some reflections.

First, educational innovation is risky in a way that research innovation is not. What I mean by that is that if I try out something new in my research and it doesn't work, then I simply write it up in my logbook and move on to the next idea, safe in the knowledge that I won't need to look down that corridor of knowledge again. I've wasted some time and resources, but these impact me only.  But in educational innovation, the testing of the idea has consequences -- we bring the new approach into the classroom and students experience our successes and failures first hand. There is no 'lab' or 'logbook' of educational innovation. It's all live trials.

Second, because of the amplified risks of educational innovation, we should expect it to be under-provided by the faculty. Just like scientific research, educational innovation can be modeled as taking draws from a distribution of more or less successful projects. For the same standard economic reasons as occurs in research, a risk-averse educator (or faculty) will seek to minimise the down-side risk. In other words, we'll see less educational innovation than would benefit our students. As just discussed, the problem will be even worse than with scientific research because the down-side risk of educational innovation is magnified.

Third, as with my experiences, educational innovation isn't a one-shot activity. That is, you can't try something out in one semester and leave it there. Educational innovation will need refinement of the model over time -- and because of the nature of most units, this may mean you only get a feel for the success of a modification at the rate of once a year. That's a slow learning rate by any measure.

So taking the above together, if we want to encourage educational innovation, then faculty managers and educational leaders need to think about creating an innovative context.

I'll explore some ideas for creating this context in the next post released April 15th ...

The Highs and Lows of the Educational Innovator: of cobbles, haircuts, and flipped assessment Part Two by Dr Simon Angus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. ← show less

Chris Froome competing in the Vuelta a Andalucía, February 2015. Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/106253394@N02/16547689506

In Part One of this article, I shared a bruising experience on the road to educational nirvana. I'd introduced, during 2014, a radical change to the assessment of within-semester essays in my unit: I'd decided to flip the assessment and put the students in charge. I implemented summative Peer Review.

Despite the hard work in setting the system up, ... read more

The Highs and Lows of the Educational Innovator: of cobbles, haircuts, and flipped assessment (Part One) by Dr Simon Angus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

  ← show less

‘How it works’. Image credit to xkcd.

As teachers, we all kind of hope that what – and how – we teach matters. We hope that students will journey with us through our classes and by the end of the journey, perhaps think a little differently about the world. I teach in the discipline of International Relations, so I have taught large survey courses on theory, and smaller courses on peace and security, international law, international organisations, and so on. And as a feminist, even when I’m not ‘teaching feminism’, I hope that my students will think a little differently about the ways in which gender matters in and to their everyday lives when they have finished with my classes. 

I want my students to appreciate the work that gender does in organising global politics: how the assumptions we make about bodies and behaviour inform how we think about power, legitimacy and authority in local, national, and international contexts. Consciously or otherwise, for example, white Anglo culture associates white Anglo middle/upper-class men with authority and legitimacy. In turn, this means that bodies which perform these identities can access certain spaces and be heard while their many others cannot. Consciously or otherwise, white Anglo culture associates women with maternalism/nurturing and life-giving, which means that women who take life or perpetrate violence are problematized as women and made into a spectacle (even when the violence is state-sanctioned, e.g. women in the military) in a way that male perpetrators of violence are not.

I want my students to examine these assumptions and all the other assumptions and associations that are usually left unexamined and therefore are rendered invisible in the study of politics and international relations. I want them to develop these critical insights because I think that learning how to examine what we take for granted is a profoundly powerful political force in the world – and I think gender is one of the most ‘taken for granted’ categories that we use to think with (Judith Butler rather more eloquently described it as the ‘founding interpellation’ that in very material ways renders us human). 

In my teaching practice, I find a dual approach helpful: I include a week on feminist theory (how to think with gender as a concept) to give students a framework to use; and I ‘mainstream’, by making sure that each ‘topic’ week has feminist work in the required or supplementary reading. I think that the worst approach is to ghettoise feminist work in the last/penultimate week of the course in ‘the week on gender’. In a chapter I co-wrote on this topic, my colleague and I argued that teaching is about engendering curiosity and that we need to include (‘mainstream’) strategies to facilitate the development of curiosity about how gender works. Having ‘the week on gender’ is problematic not only because it encourages students to compartmentalise gender, but also because it is so often relegated to the latter half (or even the final week) of the course and therefore is represented as marginal.

The question remains, though: how much of what we teach challenges students to think differently about our subject matter? For me, in International Relations, how much does teaching feminist work destabilise or decentre the disciplinary canon? There is definitely a feminist canon in my discipline (and I am thinking here of the works of Cynthia Enloe, Ann Tickner, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Marysia Zalewski, Christine Sylvester; I consider their scholarship canonical because I cannot imagine teaching without making reference to it) and I teach it, because starting from Enloe’s ideas about militarism and masculinities and Zalewski’s ideas about theory as a verb enable really interesting discussions about gender, power and knowledge. 

It is important to teach the disciplinary canon, but it is important that the canon is subverted to teach feminist work as well. One way to do this is to read Mary Wollstonecraft alongside classical texts on liberalism, to read Ann Tickner alongside Hans Morgenthau. And we need to choose our textbooks carefully as well. Using a textbook that represents gender as an ‘add on’ to a predetermined field of International Relations – for example, through only making reference to feminist perspectives in a chapter entitled ‘Postpositivism in IR’ – is troublesome for scholars seeking to devise good pedagogical practices, both because it is inaccurate and because in its inaccuracy it perpetuates the idea that feminist work is either new or marginal or both.

Feminist insights do change the nature of our discipline; they fundamentally change how we think about global politics. Following Christine Sylvester’s (1994) formulation of International Relations as relations international creates space for recognising other kinds of relations such as gender relations – which also enables nuanced discussion of power (because students can usually acknowledge that gender is a power relation, they can then more easily interrogate international relations as power relations). 

In a discipline that values theory-building and modelling to generate general principles, feminist scholarship is sometimes critiqued for not providing a general theory, which I don’t understand. ‘Gender makes the world go round’ seems like a pretty robust theoretical statement to me, and it certainly helps me make sense of how the world works. Whether I’m teaching feminism, or just teaching while feminist, this the idea that I try to explore with my students, to encourage them to think differently about how gender matters not only to international political life but to their own everyday life experiences. 

Teaching feminism/teaching while feminist by Laura J Shepherd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. ← show less

‘How it works’. Image credit to xkcd.

As teachers, we all kind of hope that what – and how – we teach matters. We hope that students will journey with us through our classes and by the end of the journey, perhaps think a little differently about the world. I teach in the discipline of International Relations, so I have taught large survey courses on theory, and smaller courses on peace and security, international law, international organisations, and so on. And as a feminist, even w... read more

Click here to read Part One and Two of this article

How useful is the online lecture? Used wisely and sparingly, online lecture can be used effectively to add another dimension to the classroom lecture. The students can view the presentation repeatedly either for revision or to get better understanding of the process. This is a great way to add value to the classroom teaching because very often the time to cover even the important aspects of the course is very limited. It is advisable that each online lecture be limited to 10 minutes. For a longer lecture then you can divide it into a few 10 minutes segment.

I’m teaching science and technology subject (food science/technology) – a subject which requires practical approach. While many food science/food processing concepts can be learned in a classroom they can be greatly enhanced by reaching beyond the walls of a lecture room. One cannot teach a course on food processing just by showing the flow chart and perhaps some pictures. Likewise, it is not sufficient to explain the principles and the step-by-step procedure in certain analytical method. In an ideal situation, it is best to teach a principle or concept by hands-on approach or by a direct demonstration. Imagine teaching a student about Lane-Eynon titration to determine reducing sugar. Being an empirical method and the reaction is nonstoichiometry, strict adherence to the procedure is critical in order to obtain good results. A video recording of the whole experiment can be made and critical steps of the titration can be highlighted. This would avoid students making unnecessary mistakes or systematic errors in carrying out analytical procedure. Similarly, when teaching food processing operation (e.g., extraction and refining of vegetable oils), each step of the process can be recorded in visual form and combined with narration. When I teach about production of snack foods, I can explain the sequence of the process and showing the picture and video clip of each stage of the process. These examples represent a different form of pedagogy (teaching methods) that can be fully utilised for effective teaching and eventually will greatly benefit the students.

The bottomline? Regardless whether it is ‘chalk and talk’, PowerPoint, Prezi, Twitter, or a group discussion, the most effective teacher brings out the best in every student at all times with all kinds of methodologies in order to motivate the students in every way. Period.

So let's embrace technology but don't forget the low-tech but time-tested chalk and board! 

Chalk and Talk or Technolody. Do I Have a Choice? by Dr. Abd Karim Alias is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. ← show less

Click here to read Part One and Two of this article

How useful is the online lecture? Used wisely and sparingly, online lecture can be used effectively to add another dimension to the classroom lecture. The students can view the presentation repeatedly either for revision or to get better understanding of the process. This is a great way to add value to the classroom teaching because very often the time to cover even the important aspects of the course is very limited. It is advisabl... read more

Click here to read Part One of this article. 

Much has been written about integrating technology into a classroom. The question that is usually asked is, is it really necessary — is it really useful? In my opinion, the traditional approach of chalk and board still has its place but I strongly believe that educational technology could offer myriad of pedagogical benefits. Technology today, in various forms, have grown tremendously and have permeated all areas of our lives. Similarly, students today are connected in ways that previous generations could never have imagined and this has a direct implication on how they learn and impacted on how teachers teach in a classroom. So it makes sense to connect with our students in ways they are already familiar. It is incomprehensible if educators today are still reluctant to use technology in teaching and learning activities or still perceive technology negatively. Of course, as most things in life, we should be cognizant of the shortcomings and over dependent on technology. Too much of a good thing also runs the risk of becoming ineffective. Technology should always be used in tandem with sound pedagogical principles. It's NOT THE ONLY thing, but it will add value. It would never replace good teacher!

How can traditional modes of classroom instruction engage and inspire students when life outside the classroom has changed so dramatically? I believe in leveraging technology available to enhance educational experiences of my students. Although I teach a full time course (face-to-face), I also supplement some topics of the lecture in the form of online (virtual) lecture. This is done to further enhance understanding of certain difficult concepts or to discuss more examples which otherwise not covered in the classroom due to time constraint. Preparing some lectures as online lecture also serve a few functions: (1) I can ask the student to view the lecture before the class (normal face-to-face lecture) so that I can use the class time for more discussion and interaction; (2) student can review the lecture at their convenience.

The online lecture is done in the form of PowerPoint presentation (converted into Flash format) using my favorite rapid authoring tool, Articulate Presenter. Flash format is essential because the file size is much smaller than the native PPT file – this is important for fast access and to cater for slow internet connection. A software such as Articulate Presenter (which is part of Articulate Studio suite) is called “Rapid Authoring Software” which allows non-techie like me to develop e-learning course easily – and rapidly! In most cases the lecture is combined with narration and sometimes including the “talking head”. To be honest, preparation of good online lecture is strenous and time consuming. It involves preparation of the slides, script for each slide, recording and editing the video, recording the audio and finally combining everything into a single presentation. However, with regular practice, the process of preparing online lecture would become easier and faster.

Continue onto Part Three of this article. 

Chalk and Talk or Technolody. Do I Have a Choice? by Dr. Abd Karim Alias is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. ← show less

Click here to read Part One of this article.

Much has been written about integrating technology into a classroom. The question that is usually asked is, is it really necessary — is it really useful? In my opinion, the traditional approach of chalk and board still has its place but I strongly believe that educational technology could offer myriad of pedagogical benefits. Technology today, in various forms, have grown tremendously and have permeated all areas of our lives. Similarly,... read more

"If we teach today's students as we taught yesterday's, we rob them of tomorrow"

— John Dewey.

Image credit: katrinalopez on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Recently I shared one article on the Facebook (FB) group, Learning innovation Circle (LIC) and asked for comments from the members. The article, “’Chalk and Talk’ Might be the Best Way to Teach After All”, sparked the idea for this brief article. 

The article I shared on FB described the ‘finding’ of seventy teachers from the UK who visited Shanghai to investigate why Chinese students perform so well in international tests such as PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS. Upon their return, the teachers reported that much of China’s success came from “chalk and talk” approach, rather than the much hyped ‘student-centred learning’ and the collaborative form of learning where students take greater control.

To those champions of student-centred learning, including yours truly, the conclusion of the observation came as a shock. Should I be dissappointed or celebrate this ‘finding’? The first thought that came to my mind was, hmm…well, maybe I will take this with a pinch of salt. My first thought was, what do PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS actually measure? Do these tests sufficiently measure the overall intelligence as well as other skills and values that good education system should impart in the student? In my humble opinion, these tests are not necessarily good estimates of the value of teaching, simply because they are less connected with what is actually taught and the way in which it is taught. I’m of the opinion that no standardised test can ever test real world knowledge and skills--that's a myth!

Let me quote some of the thoughful comments posted in the comment thread.

“Malaysia needs to be concerned about its poor results, and those results are likely because of a reliance on an educational system that favours chalk and talk and teacher-centred environments that do little to teach students to think critically. The Shanghai/Pisa situation is wrought in controversy and results are seriously biased by the Hukou system that is still practised. Shanghai and China have very unique characteristics that must be considered before drawing any conclusions about their 'effective' teaching practices”.

“Firstly, let's think about what we could mean by "chalk and talk"? Isn't this about teachers using the black/white board, electronic board, flip chart, slides, videos, etc? This is where the "teaching" of concepts need to be effective and teachers need to help students master the concepts or else.... If you have watched Khan Academy videos, you will see that they represent the "chalk and talk" that we need. Learning happens after good teaching. Chalk and talk is usually first, followed by other approaches to engage the students.”

“I agree that we need to look at what 'Chalk and Talk' means but it generally is associated with the traditional teacher-centred approach where teacher is telling. Khan Academy is a lot of Chalk and Talk but they definitely are not the panacea of effective teaching strategies. The flipped learning, collaborative learning, and a plethora of other strategies are definitely what is needed I think. I also think that a bit of Chalk and Talk might be necessary but the problem is one of balance. In every single one of the public classrooms I have been in in Malaysia Chalk and Talk is the order of the day. And it doesn't serve our students well”.

This is my own input to the discussion which lead to the title of this article:

“Yes, chalk and talk is still prevalent. I would like to reiterate that we can strike a balance with multitude of instructional strategies, blending the traditional approaches and technology. The bottomline is to achieve effective learning while fostering high order thinking. It takes a lot of effort though, for teachers have to put a lot of thought in the effective instructional delivery”. 

I believe a 'good' teacher builds a repertoire of practices that suits individual learners at different times, which is why teaching well is exhausting. There is not just one way to teach. The "one size fits all" approach in regard to individuals and subject matter is not conducive to effective learning or teaching. This is where the role of technology can help to add value in engaging and enriching learning experiences of our students. Notice that I used the keyword “add value”. Many so-called disruptive technologies have promised to revolutionise education, but so far none has. The reason is simple —technology is a tool — “a fool with a tool is still a fool”. Technology is not a silver bullet. We still need good teachers trained and guided to use technology as one of the tools to add to his/her repertoire. There are many other ‘non technological’ ways of engaging students—demonstration, practical exercises, discussion, debate, storytelling, etc. The bottomline is, the role of teacher is even more important in student centred learning environment, i.e., as a facilitator and as a learning designer.

*Continue onto Part Two of this article. 

Chalk and Talk or Technolody. Do I Have a Choice? by Dr. Abd Karim Alias is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. ← show less

"If we teach today's students as we taught yesterday's, we rob them of tomorrow"

— John Dewey.

Image credit: katrinalopez on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Recently I shared one article on the Facebook (FB) group, Learning innovation Circle (LIC) and asked for comments from the members. The article, “’Chalk and Talk’ Might be the Best Way to Teach After All”, sparked the idea for this brief article.

The article I shared on FB described the ‘finding’ of seventy teachers from the UK wh... read more

There is often a mismatch between how we want our students to be changed in our courses, and their expectations of those courses.  This tension can be particularly acute for first year university students or high school graduates taking a MOOC whose expectations about education are based on how they experienced high school which privileges marks over deep learning and individual performance over working collaboratively.

This article considers the expectations high school graduates might have about education and then suggests some strategies to alter student expectations so that they become more focused on deep learning and the true objectives of the courses they undertake.   

Course objectives and student expectations

As teachers our objective in running a course is ultimately to change our students.  These desired changes typically occur at several different Bloom-style levels of cognition.[1]  At the lowest level we usually want our students to know certain facts, and at higher levels we want them to think like engineers, to be skeptical, to be able to analytically design, to be confident problem solvers, and so on.

Higher-level changes are particular important in tertiary, professional, and adult education.  However they can be difficult to bring about.  This article considers one factor which contributes to this difficulty - the (often unhelpful) expectations our students have at the start of our courses - and suggests ways to deal with the difficulty created by those expectations.

In my first year computing classes the students newly graduated from high school have the following characteristics, the first four of which pose challenges and the last four of which provide opportunities:

• They are very concerned with marks and their final grade.
• They view their classmates as rivals rather than as colleagues.
• They are expecting to game the system – to best devote their time and energy to maximise their marks for minimum effort. 
• They view learning as predominantly acquiring knowledge to echo back in examinations, rather than as changing the way they think
   
• They are excited to be starting university and embarking on a new adventure.
• They are unsure what university will be like, what their experiences and feelings will be, but they are optimistic.
• They are worried about forming friendships and hopeful of creating a strong social network. 
• They are thinking about their future, what their life will be like, what sort of person they will be.

I discuss below two significant mismatches that arise from the above expectations.

First, high school graduates tend to view education as being more about low-level outcomes of knowing and understanding facts and mastering difficult practical skills than about high-level skills.  Further, they regard the marks achieved at the end of a course as being at least as significant as the actual learning they acquire in the course.  In many cases they see being able to get high marks for an activity or difficult topic without having to fully engage with the activity of topic as a victory rather than as a problem.

For example at the start of my large CS1 computing course I ask students to identify what they hope to get out of the course.  This year 75% of the responses spoke only about specific knowledge and skills (eg “Learn [the programming language] C”) and 61% mentioned getting a high mark or passing.

It is not surprising that my students have low expectations for their education.  In my state of New South Wales, Australia, the last two years of high school education culminate in an intensive series of examinations at the end of which each students receives a number – their “ATAR” – which is used to determine entry into university.  Amongst students and teachers the purpose of those last two years, and by implication the whole of the 11 years of education leading up to them, is seen as being to get that mark.   It is the mark, not the learning, that is important.  The external pressures on students, teachers and schools to maximise their ATAR are inexorable.  My students report that it is common for high school teachers to respond to curious students' questions with things like “don't worry about that – it won't be in the exam”.

The second significant mismatch I find with the expectations of high school graduates concerns team-work and competitiveness.  It is essential that engineering students learn to work effectively in teams and MOOCS are most effective when students form engaged collaborative learning communities.  However my students report that in high school their collective learning activities were often not a pleasant or productive experience, and so they are initially hostile to undertaking further collective learning activities in my courses.  It seems that high school group work is performed under the shadow of the need for individual marks to be reported at the end, so conscientious students feel they have to perform extra work to cover for freeloading group members, and overly controlling group members can place stressful emotional demands on more relaxed group members.  These problems seem to arise from the tension of working collectively for a collective outcome and yet being assessed individually.  

Whenever there is a conflict between acting in a way that benefits the group and acting in a way that benefits the individual my students have been trained in high school to act individually.  It is telling that collective work at high school is typically called group-work rather than team-work.  The nature of the ATAR calculation process in New South Wales further undermines co-operation and collaboration – the ATAR computation is complex but in summary half of the final score is determined by how many of their immediate classmates a student outperforms in the pre-exam work – and simple game theory shows they can improve their final score by harming the results of their peers, and are at risk of hurting their final score if they help any of their classmates.  One has to question what notion of education was held by the inventors of this system...

So in summary the learning objectives of my courses involve undergoing high level changes in thinking, learning deeply, and working effectively with others,  yet my students expect to be mainly working alone to learn low-level content and then to be quizzed this individually at the end of the course.  This is a dilemma which extends far beyond my own courses, indeed read Taubman's Teaching by Numbers [2] for a compelling survey of such problems internationally. 

What can teachers do?

There are a number of ways a teacher of high school graduates can design and teach their courses so that these unhelpful learning expectations do not become an impediment.  

1.  Focus on high-level learning over marks

2.  Focus on high level changes in thinking not just on recall of facts and methods

3.  Encourage students to collaborate with peers in a team rather than as a collection of self-interested individuals in a loose group.

These are expanded below:

1. Focus on learning over marks

• Students need to understand the nature of the learning you hope they will experience, and to value it.
• Ask students to reflect on the reason they are taking the course and the ways they hope to change as a result of taking the course.
• Be explicit and honest with students about your goals and objectives for their learning.  View students as collaborators and assistants in your quest to change them, rather than as experimental subjects to be manipulated, coerced or controlled.
• Have the students explicitly think about where they want to be in the future, so the course learning is seen as essential, and course marks are seen as secondary.  In my own courses I do the following:  first, invite back former students who are now successful to address the class; second, share the successes of current classmates; and finally I ask each student to write themselves a letter about what they hope to be doing in the future, with such to be placed in time capsules and delivered in the future.
• Limit the amount of time space and predominance you give to marks and discussions about marks.

2. ​Focus on high level changes in thinking not just on recall of facts and methods

• Provide authentic learning activities which align with (and use!) the high-level learning objectives, so that students see and experience the benefits of working towards these objectives.  Eg in a course on Entrepreneurship have students design and market an actual product. 
• Expose students to authentic and compelling role models who share and have benefited from attaining these high-level objectives.  E.g. guest speakers, case studies, successful former classmates.

3. Encourage students to collaborate with peers in a team rather than as a collection of self-interested individuals in a loose group.

• As much as possible remove mark incentives from the product of the group activity and instead expose and evaluate the process.
• Build and create community.
• Model care and respect for others in how you interact as a teacher.
• Create a culture of students helping students.
• Draw on real world examples of successful teamwork. There is an established and valued culture of teamwork in many sports you can refer to and which some of your students may well play or follow.  Other exemplars are the teamwork culture of successful organisations (eg Google, NASA), families, heroic responses in times of catastrophe and war, service professions, the scientific community, internet communities such as wikipedia, religions, friendship groups, and families.
• Identify, praise, and showcase examples of successful teamwork in your course.
• Have open and ongoing reflection about community and collaboration, as well as help given and received.
• Use a learning platform such as OpenLearning built around community rather than one focussed largely on a personal learning experience.

In summary students can come into your courses with counterproductive expectations about how they will act and approach their learning, often as a result of their experience in earlier education, and high school in particular.  However these expectations can be overcome and replaced with more positive expectations, provided you recognise them and make explicit plans to deal with them, including being open with the students about what you are trying to do.

In all of these case it is much easier to bring about a change in students' thinking and expectations at times when they when they are most open to change.   For example at the start of a course, and, even better, at the time they first start university, or first commence online education.  

Finally it is important that the change be complete and comprehensive.  A half-hearted change applied inconstantly over the activities of a course is unlikely to be successful.  

If the strategies I have discussed above for course design and the corresponding changes in teaching practice seem daunting to achieve, I suggest you form a community with peers and support each other, and further that you observe the teaching of those who have already successfully brought about the changes you are aiming for.   For example, in order to learn abut how to bring about change in general, I find it inspirational to watch the teaching and classroom management practices of successful kindergarten teachers, who are masters at altering the expectations of their students.

[1] Benjamin S. Bloom, 1984. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Book 1: Cognitive Domain. 2nd edition Edition. Addison Wesley Publishing Company.

[2] Peter Maas Taubman, 2009. Teaching By Numbers: Deconstructing the Discourse of Standards and Accountability in Education (Studies in Curriculum Theory Series). 1 Edition. Routledge.

This article was written for OpenLearning’s recently launched online publication, The Educationist. The publication aims to build a community of diverse individuals sharing ideas, opinions and academic work on education discourse.

We hope this will enable in-depth discussions on current trends and complex issues, encouraged by sourcing articles from authors with proven credentials and expertise. Click here to view The Educationist.   

Do Your Students Have Harmful Expectations (Part 2) by Richard Buckland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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There is often a mismatch between how we want our students to be changed in our courses, and their expectations of those courses. This tension can be particularly acute for first year university students or high school graduates taking a MOOC whose expectations about education are based on how they experienced high school which privileges marks over deep learning and individual performance over working collaboratively.

This article considers the expectations high school graduates mig... read more

Yesterday I was speaking with one of my colleagues, a new aspiring lecturer and we moved on to the topic of online courses. My colleague noted that “one cannot truly connect with students online.” I definitely beg to differ and I asked my colleague “have you attended a class with a lecturer in flesh where that lecture failed to connect with students?” He replied, “yes!” We both agreed that the most essential ingredient to connect is the lecturer herself or himself. Delivered with the right tools, an online learning experience can be as effective or even more effective that a traditional lecture.  

Last year I offered a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that focuses on developing success habits and Emotional Intelligence amongst engineering students studying at Taylor's University. I opened the course to whoever wants to join online and the course was a great success with few thousand students from more than 130 countries participating. One of the main features of the course is a daily activity that is called "Brain Rewiring."

Although the human brain seems to be hard-wired to respond to negative stimuli as a survival necessity, research shows that the brain is a plastic organ and repeated deep practice of a certain thought pattern can literally generate new neuron connections, rewiring the brain. To impact this wiring process positively, Brain Rewiring required the students to report 5 things that they are grateful for on a daily basis. This is done online on the MOOC platform and is meant to develop self motivation, optimism and adaptability.

Few weeks into the courses, students starting reporting amazing success stories of their experience with it, especially the "Brain Rewiring" component. My on campus students reported that they were able to appreciate their parents more and have more positive relationships with them. Online students also reported inspiring stories ranging from being able to come to terms with the loss of loved ones to being able to convince their children to eat broccoli! 

The success of the "Brain Rewiring" activity when offered within a MOOC can be attributed to the fact that the MOOC allowed the creation of a supportive learning community in which students encourage and inspire each others to see the positive side of life.

When we measured the growth of different traits of Emotional Intelligence among the students and compared that to a control group (students who did not take the Emotional Intelligence course) we were pleased that our MOOC students exhibited a significant growth in Emotional Intelligence. The real surprise was that the control group, a similar group of students, exhibited decline in different Emotional Intelligence traits over the semester were the measurement was done.

This was a step in a life journey to develop emotionally aware engineers. Many of the lessons learnt while running the course are reported in my book "Think Like an Engineer" which outlines how we can educate a generation of graduates who are emotionally intelligent and able to think systematically. The MOOC is now self paced and you can still join it and start your journey of Brain Rewiring at http://openlearning.com/courses/Success

Brain Rewiring and Success by Professor Mushtak Al-Atabi is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. ← show less

Yesterday I was speaking with one of my colleagues, a new aspiring lecturer and we moved on to the topic of online courses. My colleague noted that “one cannot truly connect with students online.” I definitely beg to differ and I asked my colleague “have you attended a class with a lecturer in flesh where that lecture failed to connect with students?” He replied, “yes!” We both agreed that the most essential ingredient to connect is the lecturer herself or himself. Delivered with the... read more