Professionalizing college instruction: IHE article

[polly_mer]

Apparently, people don't know what discipline-based education research (DBER) is because it is focused on the field, usually at the intro level, and is not the educrap of learning styles or generic outcomes out of education department.

This is really a thing in physics and other parts of STEM education (although engineering is farther behind): https://stemeducationjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40594-017-0076-1

Physics in particular has done a lot in this area and my time involved with the American Association of Physics Teachers was well spent on learning what we know about how people learn (or don't learn) physics.  Merely knowing physics is not enough to teach it well and that was one of the fun parts of interacting with the workshops and ongoing social media discussions.

If you think that the crap workshop out of the teaching and learning center was somehow indicative of DBER, then you aren't professionalized as sufficiently.

If you claim you don't have time to do the good teaching, then you also aren't professionalized because a true professional will quit instead of doing a subpar job.

[marshwiggle]

Apparently, people don't know what discipline-based education research (DBER) is because it is focused on the field, usually at the intro level, and is not the educrap of learning styles or generic outcomes out of education department.

This is really a thing in physics and other parts of STEM education (although engineering is farther behind): https://stemeducationjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40594-017-0076-1

Physics in particular has done a lot in this area and my time involved with the American Association of Physics Teachers was well spent on learning what we know about how people learn (or don't learn) physics.  Merely knowing physics is not enough to teach it well and that was one of the fun parts of interacting with the workshops and ongoing social media discussions.

If you think that the crap workshop out of the teaching and learning center was somehow indicative of DBER, then you aren't professionalized as sufficiently.

I can't recall if it was on the old fora or here, but there was some discussion about grade inflation as a bigger problem in the fields with the least objectively quantifiable measures of performance. (If you can't objectively and definitively assess performance, then it's harder to hold the line on standards with all kinds of pressure to make people happy.)

[polly_mer]

It occurred to me that I neglected to post any links to the Physics New Faculty Workshops that are held twice a year by AAPT to help new physics faculty learn about the teaching side of their job: https://aps.org/publications/apsnews/202012/faculty.cfm

People may also be interested in the Physics Education Research Central Clearinghouse that brings together PER materials from the major initiatives: https://www.compadre.org/per/

Anyone is welcome to share resources like this from their fields and their professional societies.

[mahagonny]

If you claim you don't have time to do the good teaching, then you also aren't professionalized because a true professional will quit instead of doing a subpar job.

I don't claim that. If anything I put too much time into it, and I'm not even sure it's getting that much better towards the end of the work, but I'm having fun at it. What I do claim is this situation exists among very low paying teaching gigs, and alongside it are administrators who implement these gigs and get rich doing it, and this neglects and cheats the students. And further I will claim that these administrators who are thinking they should be able to expect an instructor to quit because they, the stewards of the institution, have given up on making college teaching job decent jobs, are refusing to understand the older-than-dirt adage 'you get what you pay for.'

[apl68]

[snip]
As someone in a field that actually studies learning and memory with, you know, real science, I have to agree. I am sworn by a solemn oath to my field to explain there aint no such thing any time someone starts talking about "learning styles" among other things. This makes me an annoying person to the "education experts".
[snip]

This summer, I was required to participate in a training in which we had to 1) identity our own learning styles, 2) talk about how we would use the insight into our own learning styles to teach our students, 3) discuss how our students' learning styles would affect their learning in our classes, and 4) identify how we would adapt our classes to reach students with diverse learning styles.  I discovered that they are still teaching "learning styles" in our education department.  It was crystal clear to me that it would be inappropriate to bring up the complete lack of empirical support for "learning styles" during this training, given that empirical support apparently was not a requirement for anything discussed in the training.  Thus, I finally just started giving my answers regarding "learning preferences" rather than "learning styles" to get through the training without saying anything that would get me fired..

Learning styles are still supposed to be a thing, huh?  Oh boy.

I remember posters on the old Fora talking about encounters with students who had been told that they had this or that learning style and informing their instructors that it was the instructors' job to engage their learning styles before they could be expected to accomplish anything in class.

[Sun_Worshiper]

Nothing will change as long as scholarly productivity is the coin of the realm for academia. Training in good teaching ought to be a mandatory part of any doctoral program that supplies, or thinks it supplies, college instructors. But it's not and won't be.

This.

[mythbuster]

I am very aware of Discipline based Ed research. This summer I attended my disciplines virtual teaching conference. About half of it I did not pay attention to because I already know what active learning is and how to use backwards design for learning objectives. This is the main reason I had not bothered to attend in the past. I would look at the schedule and too much of it was things I had already tried or for someone totally new to the ideas of modern pedagogy.

The statement that they all focus only on intro is entirely valid, at least in the Biological Sciences. I'd love to see the study that follows cohorts of students through their entire college career and see if active learning, particularly at the intro level, really leads to better student knowledge or success in upper level genetics, for example. If it's been done, it's likely at such a small and selective school that the results would not be applicable to my students.

I work in a department that prides itself on being teaching focused. But that doesn't mean we have unlimited time or resources. We are an urban compass point public institution with a large number of transfer students and over 80% of our students work at least part time while attending. I have learned over time what works for these students. Not group projects, and less "active learning" that many eduwonks would like. Wholesale buy in to the all active learning approach is great in theory, but bombs when half your class are transfers and haven't learned those skills as a freshman. Not to mention at best piecemeal buy in among the faculty in the department.

[marshwiggle]

I am very aware of Discipline based Ed research. This summer I attended my disciplines virtual teaching conference. About half of it I did not pay attention to because I already know what active learning is and how to use backwards design for learning objectives. This is the main reason I had not bothered to attend in the past. I would look at the schedule and too much of it was things I had already tried or for someone totally new to the ideas of modern pedagogy.

The statement that they all focus only on intro is entirely valid, at least in the Biological Sciences. I'd love to see the study that follows cohorts of students through their entire college career and see if active learning, particularly at the intro level, really leads to better student knowledge or success in upper level genetics, for example. If it's been done, it's likely at such a small and selective school that the results would not be applicable to my students.

To the extent that knowledge is a pyramid, then a more solid foundation should always improve the opportunity for higher level learning. I can't see any reason to avoid using the best practices possible in first year simply because the best practices for upper years haven't been clearly established.

I work in a department that prides itself on being teaching focused. But that doesn't mean we have unlimited time or resources. We are an urban compass point public institution with a large number of transfer students and over 80% of our students work at least part time while attending. I have learned over time what works for these students. Not group projects, and less "active learning" that many eduwonks would like. Wholesale buy in to the all active learning approach is great in theory, but bombs when half your class are transfers and haven't learned those skills as a freshman. Not to mention at best piecemeal buy in among the faculty in the department.

Eduwonks aren't the people to listen to; peers in the discipline who have demonstrated superior learning in a similar course are. And it's often not all-or-nothing; finding something that can be incorporated to help with a unit in course without an inordinate amount of work is a win, even if the course hasn't been completely redesigned.

[Hegemony]

Our doctoral program has a lengthy component of training in teaching for the grad students. However, given the complete uselessness of the lengthy training in teaching for the profs, I'm skeptical about how much good it's actually doing. I guess at least it gives students something to start with.

[AmLitHist]

[snip]
As someone in a field that actually studies learning and memory with, you know, real science, I have to agree. I am sworn by a solemn oath to my field to explain there aint no such thing any time someone starts talking about "learning styles" among other things. This makes me an annoying person to the "education experts".
[snip]

God bless you, Puget.  I'm just a dumb old English prof, so nobody listens to me when I say it.  But that doesn't stop me.

This summer, I was required to participate in a training in which we had to 1) identity our own learning styles, 2) talk about how we would use the insight into our own learning styles to teach our students, 3) discuss how our students' learning styles would affect their learning in our classes, and 4) identify how we would adapt our classes to reach students with diverse learning styles.  I discovered that they are still teaching "learning styles" in our education department.  It was crystal clear to me that it would be inappropriate to bring up the complete lack of empirical support for "learning styles" during this training, given that empirical support apparently was not a requirement for anything discussed in the training.  Thus, I finally just started giving my answers regarding "learning preferences" rather than "learning styles" to get through the training without saying anything that would get me fired..

One More Year, there are lots of things I don't like about my job (mostly the Admin and their edicts), but one of the best things about being in my 17th year here, I'm not only free to say "Oh, BULLSHIT!" when somebody starts in on learning styles--usually in a reverent tone, like Moses bringing down the tablets from the mountain--most of the people in the room turn towards me to see how long it takes me to actually smile sweetly and burst forth with that comment.  :-)

Learning styles are still supposed to be a thing, huh?  Oh boy.

I remember posters on the old Fora talking about encounters with students who had been told that they had this or that learning style and informing their instructors that it was the instructors' job to engage their learning styles before they could be expected to accomplish anything in class.

My late office-mate used to get these students all the time (he taught more dev ed than I did).  His response was, "Go stand across the room.  Let's see how me lobbing this textbook at your head really works for a kinesthetic learner like you."  (I miss his sarcasm and dry wit every day.)  I get this kind of students a lot more in the past 2-3 years.  Something must be creeping back in the BA-Ed programs and making its way into those teachers' students' ears.  I point out that "learning styles" were debunked many years ago, and besides, the point of being in college is to learn to do new things, so suck it up, buttercups.

ETA:  the good Jesuits at my grad program in English wouldn't let us near a classroom until we'd passed the Teaching Methods or Philosophy of Teaching class.  They were right.

[Puget]

[snip]
As someone in a field that actually studies learning and memory with, you know, real science, I have to agree. I am sworn by a solemn oath to my field to explain there aint no such thing any time someone starts talking about "learning styles" among other things. This makes me an annoying person to the "education experts".
[snip]

God bless you, Puget.  I'm just a dumb old English prof, so nobody listens to me when I say it.  But that doesn't stop me.

Well, much of the time no one listens to me either-- if we've learned anything this year, it is that data is often no competition to compelling anecdata, and some non-science academics do not seem immune to this.

In particular, it is hard to convince people that a *preference* for learning one way does not mean that students actually learn *better* that way, in fact often quite the opposite. Students often resist active study strategies that are proven to work (e.g., retrieval practice, aka self-quizzing) because they are effortful, and prefer passive ones that don't work, but feel easier (re-reading, highlighting).

And don't get me started in Meyers-Briggs, which I was horrified to discover our career center was still peddling. . .

[AmLitHist]

Ha!  Funny you Meyers-Briggs--my mind went there in the same breath with "learning styles" (sorry for the screwy metaphor). 

When I was dept. chair a decade ago, I was one of the first participants in our brand new Chancellor's Leadership Academy (complete joke and waste of time and money, but they were blowing the exorbitant money for the off-site resort for the week anyway, so I went and caught up on my reading and sleep).  The first day was the MBI, which we proceeded to live and die with for the following days in every session ("So, you're an INTJ, which means you have to do thus and so.....").  Yikes.  Same thing at the first year of the Chair Academy, too.  At least that was a whole week in two consecutive summers, and it was held in a much cooler and less humid city, all on the Dean's nickel.

[mythbuster]

I am part of a leadership program this year at my uni. They have moved on from Meyers-Briggs to the DISC assessment. It's like Meyers Briggs on steroids, complete with graphs of your tendencies. We are getting "debriefed" next month on our results. This is when I'm thankful that on Zoom I can turn off the camera in order to relieve the desperate need to eye-roll.

[Cheerful]

Ah, but you haven't truly lived until you've experienced the enlightenment that is "StrengthsFinder!"  For awhile, some student affairs folks were listing their alleged "strengths" in their email signatures.

[apl68]

I've taken the Meyers-Briggs before (and gotten a rather odd score on it), but have never worked for an employer that made us take any of these tests.  It must be strange to have to take something like that as part of your work.