Deep Learning through Deep Reading

In spring and summer of 2012, I facilitated two groups of faculty and staff at UD in reading and discussing Nicholas Carr’s book, “What is the Internet Doing to Our Brains: The Shallows.”  The book is a powerful look at how our minds are being influenced in subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle ways by the use of computers and the Internet.  In particular the act of reading using technology promotes skimming and a more cursory reflection of the texts meaning ("the shallows").

This is happening to all of us since we are immersed in a digital sea, but it should be a special concern when we realize that education relies heavily on reading.

Here are some suggestions that surfaced from the discussions within the reading groups that could help students master the ability to hold attention, become more reflective and to seek “delayed gratification”:

1. Talk to students about the impact technology has on improving communication and broadening access information – but it also can distract from reflection and deep learning
2. Promote student metacognition (thinking about thinking) to help self-regulate their learning approaches
3. Online searches promote the idea of quick discovery of information… but learning involves making connections through reflection (we should promote both skills)
4. “Surfing” promotes shallow reading… so look for ways to slow down for deeper reflection/learning
5. Carve-out time for quiet reading and reflection – by developing good habits for studying
6. Utilize writing activities as much as possible to create those moments of quiet and reflection
7. Be aware of social pressures and their consequences which marginalize reflection (including drinking, drugs, gaming, irregular sleeping habits etc.)
8. Practice “time-out” sessions disconnected from the net… and help your friends understand why (maybe they’ll do the same thing)
9. Promote the creation and use of quiet spaces for reflection
10. Understand the importance of environment in shaping our abilities to think (i.e. quiet places for deeper thinking)
11. Model the way… demonstrate what deep reading and reflection looks like in the classroom
12. Keep reminding students of all the above, since they are immersed in a culture rich with distractions (they must master the ability to hold attention and “delayed gratification”)
13. Carefully use the emerging artificial intelligence technologies – let them be aids, not replacements for making personal reflections and discoveries
14. Also take care not to rely on the Internet as an external memory – again, let it be an aid
15. Consider keeping a journal or blog (“commonplace book”) to enhance reflection and memory-making
16. Share the joy of deep reading and to “stretch” comfort zone to read long-form literature
17. Consider curricular and pedagogical reform that focus on skill-building for the information era (information literacies)
18. Help students become more conscious, reflective, and critical of the impact of new technologies
19. Utilize oral story-telling in class, as a means to create engagement for students, to build interpersonal skills, and to build skills in alternate means of communicating (not just electronic-based)

Revisiting the Course Redesign Process in Ohio

Although blogs tend to reflect current events, I would love to share four postings I made to a separate blog several years ago.  The posts were made to share news back to faculty colleagues in Ohio of the work being done as part of the National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT) - a series of initiatives to create scalable models for developing more effective college courses that are also of lower costs to the institution.  This redesign process is well documented by many around the world and around the web.  Starting with the NCAT web site at http://www.thencat.org/ will give you a sense of this extensive effort to help improve higher education.

The following four posts were made to http://ohiocourseredesign.blogspot.com/ in 2008:

Ohio Course Redesign

The State of Ohio (USA) is a significant leader in the course redesign movement. I hope to share news, resources and insights into the course redesign process with this blog. It will have an Ohio perspective to further catalyze innovations within higher education in the State of Ohio, that can help lead to improved student learning and lowered costs.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Welcome - An Introduction to this Blog

The State of Ohio (USA) is a significant leader in the course redesign movement. I hope to share news, resources and insights into the course redesign process with this blog. It will have an Ohio perspective to further catalyze innovations within higher education in the State of Ohio, that can help lead to improved student learning and lowered costs.

Although many faculty in higher education have participated in curriculum revisions generally focused on updating course content, the course redesign process should be seen as a more dramatic shift (think "extreme makeover") for a course to meet emerging needs. Now more than ever before, we have pressing reasons for improving education at our colleges and universities.

The champions of the course redesign process at the national level is an organization known as The National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT). I will describe more about their Web site, and NCAT-related funding activities associated with Ohio in a later post.

NCAT provides effective models and best practices for redesigning courses to improve student learning while lowering institutional costs. Technology is a key component of the redesign process. For faculty and instructional staff working on single sections or multi-section courses, these approaches offer a powerful mechanism to create change. NCAT is also a strong believer in sharing lessons learned from those already involved in course redesign. The bottom line is that it works!

For those folks in Ohio interested in the course redesign process, The Ohio Learning Network (OLN) is the essential partner in forwarding the ideas and best practices promoted by NCAT. OLN is a consortium of 81 colleges and universities in Ohio with the mission of using technology to expand learning opportunities for Ohioans.

So stay tuned! I may not be a frequent blogger, but hopefully these posts will contain something of value and be useful to faculty, administrators and various instructional and technology staff within and outside Ohio by promoting the resources and best practices emerging from NCAT, OLN and other groups and individuals as we build more effective courses.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

New to the Course Redesign Process?

This blog should resonate with anyone in the field of higher education that asks the question… “How can we make learning more effective?” I leave this question purposefully general so that it could mean both helping students become better learners, but how to deliver an experience that is also more cost effective. The National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT) has always promoted the vision that you can do both… improve learning and lower costs!

For an individual faculty member reading about such things, this may seem daunting – but please continue your investigations of the redesign process. Although significant course redesign needs broad participation of a number of individuals at an institution, it’s also true that smaller scale changes are possible and probably desirable as pathfinders for greater change. NCAT and many other groups (such as OLN in Ohio) can help both large and small-scale redesigns off the drawing board.

Larger institutions have faculty development resources or processes to aid course redesign. A hallmark of faculty development is the sharing of “best practices” (tried and tested approaches) – so you should be able to turn to some group locally that can help you get started. Right now, we have many people around Ohio trying great things, so we can learn from each other across institutions as well!

With this idea that exchanging best practices is a powerful method for fostering change, NCAT has organized a consortium of institutions and systems, called the Redesign Alliance. OLN and several Ohio institutions are Redesign Alliance members.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Epiphanies at the Second NCAT Redesign Alliance Conference

I am writing from the second Annual NCAT Redesign Alliance Conference in Orlando, Florida. This three day conference (March 16-18, 2008) is a gathering of higher education professionals that have received NCAT funding in the past, who may have just begun an NCAT-associated course redesign or who are generally interested in the redesign process. This is the place to be if you are interested in the large-scale course redesign process promoted by NCAT, although the best practices being discussed would be suitable in both large and small scale course design.

Who are the conference attendees? There are over 400 people here! There are faculty, administrators, instructional and technology staff, student affairs professionals and even a number of folks from publishers and software firms.

There are thirty individuals from Ohio institutions, including representatives from Lorain Community College, Central Ohio Technical College, Hocking College, Miami University of Ohio, Ohio State University, University of Dayton, Cleveland State Community College, Columbus State Community College, and the Ohio Learning Network. Maybe next year we could see more?

Since this is only the second annual conference of the Redesign Alliance, it may be inappropriate to draw generalizations, but an emerging trend is to send teams of individuals from an institution. That’s especially true of Lorain County Community College. Under the very capable leadership of Karen Wells (Provost/VP), Lorain has 14 individuals here!

The teams from Ohio and elsewhere represent diverse backgrounds. There are IT folks, librarians, student affairs, registration, learning support etc. So here is the first epiphany of the conference: It takes a team effort to foster significant course redesigns.

This team-approach can be challenging for some faculty who consider themselves as the sole planners of the educational experience. Yes, they may be content experts and represent their profession, but the learning enterprise is woven from the expertise of many individuals. Significant course redesign calls on the skills of everyone involved in higher education.

During the conference I noted that the institutional teams were not only learning from other attendees, but they took time out to connect within the team. It turns out that it is difficult for team members to meet on their own campus. Taking time to do so at the conference makes sense – because they need to exchange ideas and develop plans collaboratively.

So another important idea to emerge from the NCAT process I feel is the importance of time for the team members to work together: Create ways to build community and foster dialog amongst course redesign team members.

It’s interesting to see the breadth of disciplines present. All disciplines are amenable to redesign. Science and math courses are popular choices… perhaps with the most to gain. Social science courses are another substantial presence at the conference. But humanities are growing in presence too. English and language course redesign (e.g. Spanish) are growing in number and were represented by several successful implementations. But regardless of the subject, the redesigned courses were primarily in the top 25 highest enrollment courses. Since they impact so many students, typically in the first year or as the first step into a major, it makes sense to make these courses more learner-centered. There are some folks considering graduate level courses, but the majority of the people at the conference (representative of NCAT funding), are associated with undergraduate program at both 2 and 4 year schools.

The reasons to make changes are becoming ever more obvious. The keynote speaker was Kati Haycock, the president of the Education Trust. Her compelling presentation demonstrates that we have seriously failed to support the learning needs of many children in K-12 and students in higher education. Despite the rhetoric associated with prominent programs designed to support minority and socioeconomically challenged populations, her data reveals that education has become increasingly stratified. We need to do much better to meet the needs of our increasingly diverse student populations.

At a much shorter presentation, an equally compelling reason for rethinking higher education came from Tom Meredith, the Commissioner of Higher Education for the Board of Trustees of the Mississippi State Institutions of Higher Learning. Tom gave the broad context in which our graduates must compete in a global economy and that we need to do much more to stay competitive. This used to be something discussed in business classes, but now we all have to be concerned.

So another take home idea from the conference: Identify the compelling reasons for making course redesign. The reasons may be driven for a desire to build a more internationally-relevant curriculum, or to address Drop/Fail/Withdrawal (DFW) rates – but this is a critical step in creating faculty and administrative buy-in to the change process and ultimately frames the process of setting goals.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Final Thoughts from the Second NCAT Redesign Alliance Conference

We have just completed the third and final day of the Annual NCAT Redesign Alliance Conference in Orlando, Florida. What a great treat to see so many individuals passionate about learning and teaching! It’s also inspiring to hear about the increasing numbers of course redesigns underway or in the planning stages. In my own journey of discovery at this conference, I had already identified some themes emerging at this conference (or “epiphanies” from my perspective). Here are some more!

Technology is a critical enabler of change that extends the learning environment beyond the classroom to more fully engage students. Interestingly, in earlier presentations and publications coming out of NCAT the idea of technology as a major conveyor of learning was revolutionary and at the forefront. At this conference, technology was pervasive but was not overly dominant. Perhaps this reflects the maturation of our thinking about technology and that many attendees are currently delivering or participating in Web-enhanced or online courses.

Many conference sessions revealed the hallmarks of a successful redesign implementation. For redesigns to work, one of the biggest factors for success involves faculty buy-in. Faculty must buy-in to the process by taking ownership of planning, implementing and maintaining a redesigned course. The list of issues that could trip up the process is dominated by concerns, biases or inaccurate assumptions made by faculty. For some faculty this would mean giving up their long-held assumption that their job is to act as a gate keeper by allowing “bright” students to pass to the next level and filtering everyone else out. We seriously need to rethink this position and consider our role as helping as many students as possible to progress through college. How can we help students succeed? The Statistics redesign at OSU, as presented by Dennis Perl at the conference, nicely illustrates how a course can offer new possibilities to match pedagogies with learning styles. What a great example of a course redesign!

Faculty may see redesigns as a danger to department faculty lines, as comparatively inexpensive adjuncts or graduate assistants are favored to deliver redesigned courses. However, successful implementations have allowed cost savings from introductory courses to be reinvested in the staffing of upper level courses. Also, I have not seen a redesigned course that did not have significant and continuing involvement with full time faculty. Faculty also worry about increased class sizes and the attendant increase in workload. Again, the case studies from NCAT indicate that if the models are applied correctly the staffing adjustments and judicial use of technology are meant to more evenly distribute the workload even if students are participating more than traditional courses. Staffing changes associated with course redesigns should be made to leverage and grow faculty as disciplinary experts while off-loading routine tasks to more cost-effective positions.
Although faculty are clearly a vital part of course redesign (in taking ownership of the process), I walk away from the conference with a deeper respect for how encompassing this change process is. Course redesign demands strong and reflective leadership and participation from the many academic, co-curricular and support units. From the library to student information services, changes demand flexibility and collaboration from a wide variety of our campus units – not just the core academic divisions. We have to help these folks understand how to make changes with this new “student-centered” agenda.

I was impressed that one of the most unifying themes of the entire conference was the importance of assessment. As with the first Redesign Alliance Conference in 2007, Peter Ewell (vice president, National Center for Higher Education Management Systems) made a compelling argument for making decisions grounded in research. Faculty should resonate with this notion of research-driven decisions, but they need to see that gathering and analyzing data is critical and not “busy work”. Appropriately targeted assessment can help build momentum for change, can be used to build consensus and can help document successes or areas needing more work.

Luckily the NCAT Redesign Conference Web site has many of the individual presentations from the 2008 conference – so you will find many more useful ideas than I have written about in this blog. You can also see the presentations from the 2007 conference. If you attended the conference and had additional or different perspectives, please chime-in with your thoughts.

We are being called to make significant changes in higher education (see the Spellings Commission Report). My strong impression is that the NCAT redesign models offer a compelling and tested means of making some of these changes happen. The conference demonstrated that redesigning courses (especially high-enrollment introductory courses) can be a powerful means of improving the quality and effectiveness of higher education courses. We see that redesigned courses are improving student retention and promoting academic success while saving money.

(c) David J. Wright, 2008

An Introduction

Lets get started...

My name is David J. Wright - and I work at the University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio USA.  I am a faculty member teaching biology classes, a faculty developer and an IT director.  So I wear three hats, and perhaps this blog will reflect a crazy mix of those three threads of my work life.

Although there may be no such thing as a typical blog, this site may be both a place of reflection but also a shared memory of the things I find fascinating.  In a sense this could be my experiment to see how best to keep memories threaded together as our digital lives get ever more cluttered.

Although I hinted at the three threads to my life, the one thing that may unite much of what I will write is a sense of hope in looking to the future.

I could explain more... but isn't that the whole point of the blog - to let it speak for itself?

Here goes...