Speed Learning

I recently read about an interesting classroom activity- speed learning.  The idea is similar to speed dating, but it involved students http://laufenberg.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/speed-learning-a-classroom-activity/

Students sit across from one other student.  They take turns coming up with questions and answering them.  A worksheet like This One from "A History of Anything," is helpful.

A quote from this blog:
"Outcomes of such an activity include: students become more conversational with their topics, students become more conversational with their classmates (on academic topics), an increased probability of connection with others and their learning, foster a more robust ‘thinking’ process with their own work and every voice is heard."

The great thing about this material is that it makes everybody responsible for the material, and even in a large classroom, no one gets to hang back and just listen.  Also, everyone gets practice in participating in an academic discussion.  I think it's a brilliant idea, and I can't wait to try it. 

FlipBoard in Education

I'm experimenting with a clever app, FlipBoard.

It is basically a way to easily create a magazine of content. It is snazzy, and easy to use on an iPhone or tablet, though magazines can also be viewed on the web.

I've found it to be a wonderful way to curate web-based articles and images. I could see the app being used as textbook replacement or even better, a student-authored text supplement.

Here is a video explaining how the app works:



And here are a couple screen shots of a sample magazine I started creating while preparing for a class session focused on Mozart:

It's an easy way to add interesting pictures or articles that you may not have time to discuss in depth in class, but provide complementary material.

It is easy to add contributors, and so students could also add relevant material to the class magazine. Some college courses have certain aspects of the class that are student led- for example in our course "Creating the Critical Listener," there is a standard body of works that is covered each semester, but as the course progresses, the students are encouraged to bring in their own musical selections for the class to analyze.  That material then becomes fair game for exams, etc.  Therefore, the course content changes each semester based on what music students bring into the classroom.

Flipboard would be a wonderful way to create a "text" for this aspect of the course, and would allow students have ownership in the course content. I could envision other students jumping on board and collaborating, posting links to additional material and engaging even outside the classroom.

The Rise of Free, Online Education, and why the Lecture Hall Still Matters

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Students today can learn so much without ever leaving their dorm rooms. They can watch lectures online from so many sources. In fact, when I am preparing to give a lecture, I often go to exactly these types of sources to refresh my memory and hopefully learn something new or get ideas about what works in a lecture.

But the fact that my students can learn the same material in the same way without coming to class means that something else should be in the classroom that they can't access themselves with an internet connection.  Asking students to sit and listen to information they can access themselves online is a waste of their time.

What the lecture offers that these wonderful online resources cannot is Face-time. It's the ability to engage, to discuss and exchange ideas. It's a chance to search out connections between the course material and its relevance to the lives of the students.

I once took an Ecology course, and the professor had us get up and physically move and represent Hadley Cells.  To this day, I remember what they are and how they move because of this lecture, and in a way that I wouldn't had I not experienced that interactive lecture.

Even though my course is a large enrollment course of 60 students, I am still going to try and bring an interactive element into our classroom next Friday.  We are covering two composers, and two operas, one a French Grand Opera and the other a German Romantic one.  I divided the class into 6 groups of 10, and each is responsible for enacting or presenting either the Composer, the Opera, or the Genre in a creative way next Friday.  The groups are already working on their assignments and seemed enthusiastic about the idea. Because they are performing, I am quite sure that they will more closely read their text regarding these subjects.  I think this probably just as good of a way of holding students accountable for the material as a quiz.

Data Analysis from Google Doc Study Guide Experi

I analyzed some of the data from our exams in 2301 to see if utilizing Google Docs (as a way for students to collaboratively prepare their own study guide) had any affect on exam scores. We have two sections for the course- one section was given a link and one was not.

 

Students who were given a link to the online study guide scored on average 5 points higher compared to those who were not, which may or not be statistically significant.  The sizes of the sections are different, and a number of other factors may have been at play. 

 

What is interesting is that people who were demonstrated to be "active users" of the collaborative guide (i.e., the ones who did the bulk of composing the guide) scored an average of 12 points higher than the overall average. I did this by keeping a log of those who signed in through Google.  Many users who used the guide logged in, but did so anonymously, so I only have this data for students who actually signed in. 

 

I thought that it may just be that the students who collaborated more were students who were simply high performers. So, I looked at their scores from the first exam, for which no online guide was provided to anyone.  I found that high scorers on exam 1 did not comprise the majority of interactive users of the online guide (perhaps because they felt their methods were working already). Within the group of "active users" who signed into Google, several failed the first exam but earned a high C or low B on the midterm.

 

This seems to indicate that the collaborative, student-authored guide is somewhat helpful overall (if not overwhelmingly so), and is most helpful to average students who interact with the guide to the highest degree.  It also indicated that it is not merely access to a study guide that improves performance, but rather the degree of interaction with relevant materials that is important. 

 

The thing I think is most interesting about the idea of a student-authored, collaborative study guide is that it puts the responsibility of the study guide on the students themselves, and hopefully curtails the idea that they "just" need to know what's on the study guide.

 

Because it did seem to be a helpful tool for students, both sections now have a link to the collaborative guide, and students are already actively creating the final study guide. I will also analyze data from the final exam and see if exam scores rise again amongst study guide authors. 

Contemplative Practice in Higher Education- Chapters 3 & 4

One take away point from these chapters is that although many scientific studies empirically demonstrate the effectiveness/positive of meditation practices on things like attention level, ability to focus, stress reduction, etc., and although people generally do not challenge these findings, a good portion of academics consider the integration of meditative practices into the classroom as "new agey" or "out there."   Yet, both students and educators benefit from an attentive, focused, low-stress teaching environment.

I think those hesitant to integrate contemplative practice are well-intentioned, and want to ensure that the limited face-to-face interaction between educators and students is not "fluff."

So then, where contemplative practices are integrated into a class meeting, it should be thoughtfully done, with intention and purpose.  Barbezat and Bush both give interesting and applicable examples from their respective fields of how they each have incorporated practices into their teaching in the subjects of social work and economics.  I will give an example from my own experience.

I would not have called it a contemplative practice at the time, but now I realize that what I did was exactly the type of meditative practice encouraged by this book.

We were studying the music of Madagascar, and the piece of music on the syllabus that day was a fishing song from that country.  Before listening to the piece, I asked the students to close their eyes and imagine they were a fisherman.  I told them to imagine what it was like to be a part of that culture, to imagine what they would feel at the end of a long day that began before sunrise and ended after a day of hard manual labor out at sea.  To think about what it would feel like to come home and pick up a kabosy.  And then we listened.

I feel quite sure that framing the piece in such a way and asking the students to focus their attention prior to listening was a much more effective approach than simply rattling off facts about Madagasy music and then saying, "And now we will listen."

Another example in the book took place in an English Comp. classroom.  The professor was faced with the challenge of teaching freshmen how to become effective writers.  In one exercise, students were asked to free write,  beginning each paragraph with the words, "Here and Now..."     They were then to describe things which were going on in the moment.

I think this exercise could be adapted to most fields which require a term paper, particularly in freshman classes.  Many of our students have never written a research paper, and they've never had someone show them to do it.  Having just gone through 50+ topic proposals, one consistent problem I see is the use of passive language.  There is an awful lot of has, had been, was and were going on there.   I think spending a few minutes of class in a "Here and Now," exercise would be much more effective than saying, "And please refrain from using a passive voice in your writing."  It is not unthinkable that many of my students may not know what that meant, anyhow.

Contemplative practices need not be fluff or new-agey.  They can be focused, effective, and helpful in doing just what they've been scientifically demonstrated to be, and that is to create people who are attentive, focused, and engaged- and as a result more receptive.  Who wouldn't want more of that in their classroom?

Dan Asia Lectue

Last week, I attended a lecture by Dan Asia regarding the future of musical education in this country, particularly education on the subject of music history. A colleague described the lecture as being about "how we are failing our students," in our teaching methodologies.

The first part of of the lecture started well; Mr. Asia spoke about the need for deep listening and about the tradition of the university as a place where people sought to learn about truth and justice and beauty.

He asked the audience to participate in a deep listening exercise in which we closed our eyes and listened to a few minutes of a composition, "Blacklight," which he composed.  He later asked us to repeat the exercise, and to notice what different things we noticed on a second hearing.

I think these sorts of exercises are valuable, and in fact our university offers an entire course based on a similar goal of nurturing deep listening.  We do this by exposing the class to a wide breadth of dissimilar music and ask them to critically analyze music using parameters like sound, melody, rhythm, harmony, and growth.  We also ask them to consider 3 questions-  who's playing, who's paying, and who's listening.

So, I share Asia's view that deep listening is a skill that we need to cultivate in our music students.
I could not bring myself to agree with much of what else Mr. Asia had to say.

He made the argument that the way we are failing our students is that we are not telling them with authority what great music is and what music is truly of value.  In his view, the music which ought to be taught in a university is music of the common practice period.  Harmony, if I understood Mr. Asia correctly, is the sole parameter by which great music ought to be judged.  Music of John Cage, for example, is rather rather worthless by Mr. Asia's view, while the music of Mozart, well, that is deserving of our time and study.

I sat there and listened to Mr. Asia dismiss many world music traditions by name, including mariachi, gamelan, and pop music, the latter of which he described as being ultimately immoral in its focus on banal subject matter.  It may have sociological significance, he argued, but little musical value.  He went on to say that he would rather see universities do away with courses on rock and roll, jazz etc., in order to focus on music that is truly valuable.

This argument was rather shocking to me, as I have watched and listened and participated in a variety of musical traditions outside of the Western European Classical tradition and found these musics to be quite complex, beautiful, and profound in their composition.  Generally these art forms that I am familiar with (music of Ghana and other regions of Africa, Indian music, flamenco)  place priority on rhythm over harmony, but in my view this makes it no less intricate or compelling or emotive or worthy of study.  I can't understand how he dismisses Jazz- as a pianist who did not grow up reading charts, I often find jazz music more complex in its harmonies than, say, a Mozart sonata. The knowledge that a great jazz pianist has to possess regarding scales, etc.-  it's enormous.  I've never heard anyone seriously try to argue that Western Classical music was "better" than jazz... Mr. Asia noted that part of the problem with curriculum today is that we are afraid of making value judgements.  But how can you say geometry is better than algebra, or that European history is somehow more worthy of study than the history of Asia.  Ridiculous.

But when things really went South was when he began to eviscerate the culture of today's young people.  The people who came to hear him speak.  The people who he wants to buy his music.  The people he is trying to convince to listen to Puccini.

He stood there in front of them and said they had no direction, that they had no ability to focus, no conception of what it means to work hard.  That they had no academic curiosity and were only interested in receiving an "A."  And on and on.  That it was our responsibility to "show them the way," i.e. the way of some dead European white guys.

Now don't get me wrong- I love the music of those dead European white guys.  But hearing Mr. Asia speak about todays young people- it was disheartening.  I can't help but think this is how we are failing them.  This generation has heard so many times that they are distracted or lost or in whatever way inferior to previous generations- is it any wonder that maybe some of them believe it?

It makes much more sense to focus on commonalities. To judge music within the parameters of the framework of the priorities it was created within.  And to encourage tomorrow's scholars, not belittle them.

Contemplative Learning in Higher Education

I started reading Contemplative Practices in Higher Education  by Daniel P. Barbezat and Mirabai Bush earlier this week, and I've been very impressed so far.  The book has also impressed upon me how important teaching is, and what great responsibility comes with it.  

Even the first paragraph of the the forward is provocative and challenging.  With any university proposal, Parker Palmer say we should ask ourselves, "Does this proposal deepen our capacity to educate students in a way that supports the inseparable causes of truth, love, and justice?"  

He questions the wisdom of a structure of education that sometimes produces graduates who go on to do heroic noble things, but has also produced well-educated leaders involved in malfeasance in industries ranging form health care to business, finance, even education.  

Palmer notes that we have too often created a divide between a subject and the individual, and this creates an ethical gap.  "Contemplative" practices has unfairly been associated with the mystical and therefore deemed unsuitable for an academic realm.

But this was not always the case-  historically, some of the most well respected scholars rooted their scholarly study in contemplative practices.  Consider, for example, the monastic schools of the Middle Ages, or the philosophers of Ancient Greece.  Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."