Decision Matrix

What kind of chocolate chip cookie do you like?

Some are crisp and dip well into milk. Some are gooey. Some have molasses, some have a nutty flavor from browning the butter. And then there's the chocolate! Dark, semisweet, milk. With all of these possibilities, how do you decide which is the best overall?

That's where a decision matrix can help.

To teach this lesson, I bring to class a variety of mass-produced cookies. The students come up with the qualities to compare, and they sample the cookies to determine the scores in each category.

I ask them to use a decision matrix when determining their recommendation for their formal reports, and this is a fun way to help them see how it works.

Substituting

I taught two composition classes this week for a teacher who is ill. I'm not familiar with the teacher's normal practices, so I was somewhat stressed preparing for the class. Their assignment for Tuesday was to bring their homework and two historical artifacts, and the assignment for Thursday was to read.

There were several surprises in store for me, but the biggest was that this class rarely uses small groups. Most of their classes are large-group discussion.

I depend upon small groups, especially in composition class. They enable participation from a wider range of students, they teach teamwork, and they help students make personal connections--which to me is just as important as the first two reasons.

Based upon this and a few other discoveries, I suspect that the students are not producing high-quality work. They aren't preparing well for class, they don't know to read the syllabus, they're confused about the assignment, and they don't know each other.

What I'm really wondering: Is my grade distribution higher than normal because I utilize a wider range of pedagogical approaches?

The dangers of lecture

This past week, I took a risk in my Workplace Writing class. The lesson concerned accepting constructive criticism, and it seemed to me that the most useful way to model it would be to let them criticize me. I put the students in groups and had them come up with a criticism jointly, so they would be more daring.

Only three groups of five were able to come up with anything. One criticism was that sometimes my voice is too quiet (something I wondered about with the room's weird acoustics), and another was that sometimes on Canvas the assignments are hard to find. The third was that they want to spend more time going group work.

From my perspective, they do group work ALL THE TIME. Every day there's an active learning activity, either individual or group. To clarify, I asked, "so it seems like I lecture a lot?" And the way they said yes made it seem like that should be obvious.

As I'm lecturing, I stop and ask the class questions, or have them ask me questions. From my perspective, that feels less like lecture and more like discussion to me, but it may not for them.

It's also possible that I've fallen into one of the dangers of lecture: getting carried away with talking. It's important to stop talking sometimes and turn control over to the class. Not just for a minute, but for ten or fifteen minutes at a time.

My goal for next week is to begin with a group activity to make sure there's enough time.

Striking a balance

The beginning of the semester is incredibly important, as it sets the tone for the rest of the semester.

The first thing that has to occur is showing your students that the class has value. This makes them willing to work and more patient with the educational process. The way I do this in Writing for the Workplace and Technical Communication is beginning with a lesson about email. Many students use it poorly or too informally. Interestingly, as texting has replaced email for informal communication, student awareness of email as professional communication has increased, so it's possible I will need to change tactics.

In a writing class, the second task is to establish community. The students will be providing feedback to one another and working in project groups, so it's vital that they get to know each other. I accomplish this through group work such as asking composition or literature students to share their favorite quote from the text with one another.

Neither of these projects is complex or mentally demanding, and there lies the danger. If too much time is spent on them, students may start to think they don't have to work.

As I was talking to my Workplace Writing students today, I noticed that none of them had their book out. Few even had their computers open. That had to change. When I put them into groups, I gave them a task requiring the book, and for once I didn't project the book onto the classroom's screen. I'm always urging students to be self-directed, which means I had better stop babying them!

I titled this post "striking a balance" because a successful educational environment must be comfortable but not TOO comfortable.

In-class collaboration with Google Docs

BLUF: Google Docs is useful for collaboration and community building. 

Today each of my composition classes created a chart using Google Docs. Based on the "Writing in the Disciplines" section of the Writer's Harbrace Handbook, they compared standards of writing in the humanities, in the social sciences, in the natural sciences, and in business. I asked them to compare the purposes for writing (such as interpretation or solving a problem), tasks (like summary, description, literature review, laboratory steps), sources of evidence, and some conventions. Here is part of one class's chart: 

I assigned this task because their first paper asks them to evaluate "truth and knowledge" in a discipline, which is a broad, vague topic that must be refined and limited to be successful. I argue that examining standards of writing is one way to approach the types of claims and evidence valued in a field. 

After discussing their findings, each group created an entry for "truth and knowledge" in their discipline. Here is what they found: 

• Humanities: Truth is subjective. Truth is an abstraction. Knowledge is valuable for its own sake. Knowledge is facts and theories, history and perspectives. Reasoning is very important. Complex claims are most valued. Argumentation is valued to hone reasoning skills and for leading to better understanding.
• Social Sciences: Truth is observable/replicable and evidenced through research/experimentation. Truth is objective. Knowledge can be proven and should be shared. Knowledge contributes to the conversation in the field and can be expanded on by other professionals. Derives something concrete from broad, observable phenomena
• Natural Sciences: can only disprove or fail to disprove a “truth”. truth is what you observe and what can be reproduced. quantitative data are valued more than qualitative data when it comes to what is knowledge. extensive background knowledge of particular field required to get as close to truth as you can get. unarguable, empirical, fact based truth and knowledge. what can be seen and tested
• Business: Truth is often dependent upon the situation. Most truths are based on facts. However truths are commonly portrayed with bias leading to misconceptions. Knowledge is based upon truths paired with past experiences. Knowledge is more valuable as the genre requires the individual to be have a certain drive for the business or idea to be successful.

I'm very pleased with their thinking. They're gaining confidence and depth as they discover avenues for exploring the topic. I'm especially pleased with the community-building that occurred in each class as a result of the collaboration.

I enjoy using Google Docs in class because it's fun. It can have a large number of collaborators at any moment--20 seems to be a reasonable limit, based on past experience--which made some chaos inevitable. Sometimes one student would be writing a sentence only to have another edit it right behind them. The anonymity of logins makes it a challenge to discover who the culprit is! They laugh at the login-handles: animals like the loris or elephant. The laughter makes the task more enjoyable, encourages them to relax, and brings them together as a group. 

One further advantage of this task is that they'll have this document to look back on for the rest of the semester. 

Frustrated learners

It's very humbling to be bad at something.

I'm trying to learn to hula hoop. I have NEVER been able to do this. Not as a child. Not now. I want to do it because (a) it looks like fun and (b) I want to prove something to myself, that there's nothing wrong with me and I really can do this.

Obviously, there's a lot of psychological baggage tied up with this. It comes from watching everyone else do something and making it look so easy.

Is this how my students feel who tell me they've never been good at English? For some of us, language just clicks. Like someone who succeeds at hooping their very first time, people who are "good at English" probably enjoyed playing with words at an early age, took pleasure in their sounds and variety. And it came "naturally." Of course, "nature" depends on a lot of factors, like how much their parents read and their early teachers.

I suppose there was a time when language wasn't easy for me. I remember in kindergarten, my teacher asked me to summarize the story of the three little pigs after we had just watched a film on it, and I was embarrassed that I couldn't do it. There must have been other struggles before that. But it was so brief and so long ago.

Some of my students, though, have been stuck at the same skill level for years. They learned to read and compose their thoughts up to a certain level, and didn't progress beyond it. And it's terribly frustrating. If they feel anything like I felt tonight at my hooping class, they sometimes want to cry.

I think it's important to recognize that learning can be an incredibly emotional process. It's easy to turn off and give up when something causes us pain. Tonight the other students told me it takes time and that it was hard for them too. I don't fully believe them, but it's comforting. That's something our students need from us: the awareness that getting to the skill level they want to be at will take time, and the assurance that eventually they can do it.

tl;dr

We're all in such a hurry these days. Myself included. 

We skim our newsfeeds and social media. If a video is over 10 minutes, we seldom open it, and even a short video is abandoned if it doesn't engage us in the first 15 seconds. We depend on abstracts and summaries. 

This impatience extends to other areas of our lives. For instance, I've been ordering groceries online because it's faster. I can sit in my car, reading Facebook, while a clerk loads the trunk. I'm usually in and out within 10 minutes. 

As a teacher, the length of an assignment is something I have to give special consideration to. Will this engage the students? Will they watch/read the whole thing? Will they stop and think about it? Or will their response be "tl; dr" (too long; didn't read)? I'm beginning to prepare some videos for an online course I'm teaching in the summer, and the current recommendation is to keep videos under 5 minutes. Five! 

The benefits of slowing down are obvious. It takes time to consider multiple sides of an argument, to fact-check, to consider our logic, to formulate a response. Inspiration takes time. Art takes time. 

A recent book by Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber, The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy, advises faculty to reject the corporate culture of speed and train our students to slow down. But that's not what I'm arguing for today. 

What I would like to suggest is that people have always been in a hurry. Always. Humans feel the pressure of mortality and passing time. Think of Keats' "When I have fears that I may cease to be," or Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress." Before television and mass transit, a family sat in their drawing room, sewing or playing games or reading, and wondering whether their lives were worthwhile. Now we're in a hurry faster, but Time's bending sickle is headed for us all. 

Urging people to slow down isn't the answer. Instead, we should focus on consciously choosing what we spend time on. As teachers, we can train future generations to use their limited time well, to consider what is best summarized and what is best read in depth, or what are the best sources for recaps. Accepting a natural, human impulse is a much better use of faculty time than complaining about students who are in a hurry. 

Skateboarding is not a crime.

This phrase was taught to me when I was in teacher training at the University of Iowa. The workshop leader meant that if students want to skateboard through college, that's their right. I've held on to that idea ever since, and it prevents me from getting too frustrated over students who aren't reading, aren't studying, and are writing their papers at the last minute.

Nick Robson catches some air

If this is how someone wants to spend their college years, I think that's their choice. A poor choice and a wasted opportunity, but a choice. 

But what I've been wondering lately is whether I should be less accepting of this attitude. What if students "skateboard" because they feel their success doesn't matter to anyone, and I could be the person it matters to? What if they just need some encouragement?

Flipping the Library

It isn't uncommon to change a course schedule to adapt to student needs. But sometimes it leads to surprising results.

Composition II at my institution focuses on research skills. When I'm teaching the unit on secondary sources, I usually don't take time to introduce the library--the library is supposed to be covered in Composition I.  The preparation level of our students has changed in recent years, however, leading to more first-semester students who already have credit for Composition I from elsewhere and hence have no library experience. I realized on the first day of the unit, as I was demonstrating the library databases, that they needed help finding books and navigating the library. So, I added a library day. 

Students began by completing a "pre-search" worksheet asking for basic information about their proposed topic for the research paper, some contextual information, keywords that could be used in a search, and the call number and title of a possible source. All the students had to do for that Wednesday was find me on the library's first floor, show me the completed worksheet, find the book, and then show me the book. 

Somehow I expected I would have a lot of time to myself, that they would find the book and be done with it, and that the day was really about them having more time to gather research. It turned out differently. I only had brief periods to myself. Some students needed help understanding the overall paper assignment. Some didn't have their worksheet completed. Others were prepared but needed help understanding call numbers, figuring out where the books were shelved, or locating the circulation desk. 

Simple as it was, the day was very useful and revealed areas where students had misunderstandings. In retrospect, I realize that this was a flipped class. Walking through the library and finding books are usually out-of-class tasks. Having them complete the activity during class time ensured, first, that they did it and, second, provided them with valuable guidance. 

Information Design in the Course Syllabus

Information design refers to visual and organizational aspects of a document that facilitate communication. It includes font face and size, colors, layout, headers, and images. Information design is most effective when it conforms to the needs of a specific audience. It helps them break information into chunks and see the relation among ideas. Attention to information design also builds credibility by demonstrating a concern for audience needs.

On the course syllabus, appropriate information design can convey that the course is strategically organized. It also enables readers to locate information quickly. “Headers, graphics, and layout strategies can make syllabi more attractive and user-friendly.”[1]  On the practical side, more information will fit on the page if formatted well. Columns, for instance, permit smaller font sizes because each line is shorter. Compare:

• Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi sit amet velit vitae massa. 
• Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur
  adipiscing elit. Morbi sit amet velit vitae massa. 

The second example would be easier to read, though the text is otherwise the same.

Information design is especially important in lower-level classes where students may easily become overwhelmed. Imagine a first-year student faced with this dense sheet of information (please don't try to read it--the words don't matter):

If this page had been broken into two columns and given larger subheadings, the sections would be easier to parse. I sometimes use a newsletter template from MS Word to create columns and sections, but you don't have to go that fancy, as the next example illustrates:

The comparison is a little unfair because the first example was the syllabus's first page and this one is the second. Nevertheless, it shows how white space and underlining can assist in organizing information.


[1] Slattery, J.M., and J.F. Carlson. (2005). Preparing an effective syllabus: Current best practices. College Teaching 53,4, 159-164. p. 163. DOI: 10.3200/CTCH.53.4.159-164.

The Importance of Tone in the Course Syllabus

The course syllabus has been receiving greater scrutiny in recent years. For administration, the syllabus is considered to have legal weight, a contract between instructor and student. For external reviewers, it provides criteria to judge the education students receive. For instructors and students, it structures the course. Among some of the things the document is supposed to contain are:

• Complete course information and description
• Information about the instructor and any assistants 
• A list of reading and any other required materials 
• Student learning outcomes (reviewers are big on these)
• All graded course requirements and a breakdown of grading scale 
• Criteria for evaluation of assignments (this is never on my syllabus.)
• Policy on late work and extra credit. 
• Other, non-graded course expectations 
• Attendance and tardiness 
• Late or missed papers and exams 
• Policy on academic dishonesty 
• ADA statement 
• Classroom decorum and academic discourse 
• Campus support services (what a long list!)
• Study or assignment aids 
• Schedule 
• Legal disclaimer that policies and schedule are subject to change “by mutual agreement and/or to ensure better student learning” [1] 

With all these demands placed on it, instructors may forget that this document also helps create our first impression. The syllabus establishes the attitude of the instructor and provides a sense of how the course will be run. What kind of impression do you want to make?

Previously, I had been advised to make my language as impersonal as possible and to remove "you" from the document so that it sounds less domineering. "You will complete three papers. You will take two tests. You will bow to my every command." Okay, not that last, but you get the idea. 

Here is an example of the type of change I made. My former late-work policy read, "Unless I have authorized an extension at least 36 hours before the due date, I will not accept late work except for verifiably excellent reasons such as hospital stays or accidents." The new policy was phrased in a way to motivate students while being less domineering: "Because timely progress is essential in this course, work is due at the time specified and no later. Unless the instructor has authorized an extension at least 36 hours before the deadline, late work will receive a grade of zero." 

According to D.L. Baecker, however, such language is morally suspect because it masks the power dynamics of the classroom. It sidesteps responsibility, "the instructor" instead of "I." Rhetorical distancing is something many instructors do by instinct, especially since students have become more aggressive about grades: if we can turn to the course or department policy, we can pretend we don't have a choice. Baecker's argument certainly gives food for thought. I've started including "I" and "me" in some documents, and it feels much less stilted, which is an advantage.

The language I added about the cause for the policy, though, I feel was a good move and fits with research about best practices in syllabus construction. Research has shown that a warm tone increases retention of syllabus content, and that teachers and lecturers are perceived as more effective when described as “warm.” [2]

This was hard for me to hear. I'm not a particularly "warm" person toward strangers. I'm an introvert, and I like to keep people at a distance. I confess, though, that it matches my experience and it makes sense. Students like and appreciate me, but it's rare that students love me. If I could be more warm towards them, perhaps that would change. More importantly, a welcoming and encouraging tone can motivate students by fostering their confidence. [3] And creating a successful learning environment is really what it's all about.

In my next post, I'll address the importance of information design to establishing a welcoming tone for the course.

I'm prickly but cute.

[1] Nilson, Linda Burzotta. Teaching at Its Best: A Research-based Resource for College Instructors. 3rd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010. 35-37.
[2] Slattery, Jeanne M., and Janet F. Carlson. “Preparing An Effective Syllabus: Current Best Practices.” College Teaching 53:4 (2005): 159-164. DOI: 10.3200/CTCH.53.4. 
Harnish, Richard J., and K. Robert Bridges. “Effect of syllabus tone: students’ perceptions of instructor and course.” Social Psychology of Education (2011) 14:319–330. DOI 10.1007/s11218-011-9152-4
[3] Thompson, Blair. “The Syllabus as a Communication Document: Constructing and Presenting the Syllabus.” Communication Education 56.1 (2007): 54-71. p. 59. DOI: 10.1080/03634520601011575

Grading Rituals

Where do you grade? Do you have grading "rituals"?

The effect of environmental factors was the focus of a recent study conducted by UT graduate students Stephanie Derochers and Stacy Sivinski. They wondered, "Are there any potential correlations between the environmental and emotional conditions in which teachers decide to grade and specific grading practices? I participated in the research by completing a 22-question anonymous survey, so I was especially curious about the results. Stephanie and Stacy also conducted six interviews.

Some of their findings were that coffee-shop graders were less likely to feel rushed and tended to leave fewer marginal comments. The former is true for me, while the latter isn't. Of course, I grade everywhere. Yesterday, I marked papers at the public library, Starbucks, and my recliner in the morning, afternoon, and evening. True, this is unusual for me and is only possible because classes are over, but the truth is I don't have one set practice. I'm wondering if I should.

The researchers found that "Those with the most set & detailed grading rituals ALWAYS reported being 'Calm' or 'Amused' while grading whereas participants who reported having no grading rituals ALWAYS stated that they felt 'Rushed' or 'Stressed' during this process."

I must have stated that I have a limited ritual (usually checking Facebook and email first), because my state is variable, from calm to amused to frustrated, depending on the paper. The closest I have is my Starbucks 'ritual'--I'm there three to four evenings a week, and during the semester it's always to grade. If I had a more defined practice, would the process go more smoothly? Would my comments be more thoughtful? Would I be a better teacher?

I have so very many papers to mark that it's hard to imagine having just one regular practice. I wish the researchers had taken that variable into account, since most of their respondents were probably graduate students teaching two sections a term. I am, however, tempted by the idea of having a regular grading schedule, for instance being at the public library every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon for 2 hours. It's something I'm willing to try this fall, when I'll be teaching lots of new material.

Grading and lunch while at a conference in Toronto

To Ban or Not To Ban (Laptops)?

Image Source

Earlier this year, Anne Curzan wrote an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education that shared the speech she gives students each semester about why she prohibits laptop use in her classes. She made several excellent points, which I have anecdotally found to be true:

• It's difficult to resist the lure of the internet.
• The internet will draw you away from the classroom experience. 
• No one actually multi-tasks well. 
• Looking at a computer screen means you aren't making eye contact, so discussion becomes discouraged
• Other students are distracted by one person's computer use, especially if the screen is visible to them.
• It's distracting for the instructor, who is forced into awareness that a student is Not Paying Attention.
• Taking notes by hand is more effective than taking notes on a computer. 

This last point I find especially intriguing. When I first heard it two years ago, it was credited to the physical act of handwriting. A study had shown that muscle memory helps mental memory. Curzan claims it's because students are forced to condense the lecture and decide the important points. They're actively processing the material instead of passively recording.

I found Curzan's argument to be persuasive enough that I started writing a laptop policy for my classroom. And then I stopped. Why? Because I love those moments when someone asks a question I don't know the answer to and someone looks it up. What's a word mean? Look it up. What year was the Charge of the Light Brigade? Look it up. How many siblings did Florence Nightingale have? Look it up. I especially enjoy it when students looks up information on their own.

It's true, I also use laptops for in-class activities. They're useful tools, especially in a writing classroom. But that moment of mystery and discovery is what I really value. So I was glad to read alternate points of view like this one from The Chronicle in September. Nicole Short's argument is that students must learn to discipline themselves, to do what's best because it's best and not because it's what they've been told.

What I've decided to do in my literature class is to assign a Note Book, a journal with notes from class and the reading which will be picked up and checked at different points in the semester. And it has to be hand-written. Students can still use their laptops in class if they like, but they'll have to write out their notes long-hand afterwards. That way I can make sure (1) they're taking some notes and (2) they're taking good notes.

N.B. I can only do this because I have just one lit class in the spring with a cap of 25 students. If I had more, I would probably just check off the notes or not require it at all. So often pedagogy suffers because of too heavy a load …

What's your view on the debate? If you allow laptops and tablets, what's your policy on their use?

The Remembrance of Pedagogies Past

Source: http://www.oprah.com/health/Health-
and-Wellness-Tips-for-Your-40s-Mehmet-Oz

So many great teaching ideas, so little time. Because I don't teach the same courses every semester, I tend to forget strategies I use for particular texts, assignments, and goals. I get a brain fog.

Last week I remembered that after the midterm exam I had meant to hand out a reflection sheet, which I would then return right before the final exam. Its purpose is meta-cognitive, to help students identify studying patterns that do and don't work. But I forgot until far too late.

I know there were other things I forgot, usually in-class activities that I do with a text, or in-class writing to prepare for papers. But I've forgotten those, too. I just have that foggy sense of missed opportunities.

To combat this, I'm going to place a hand-written note on my cubicle wall that lists assignments or activities. So far, here are some that I have collected:

Debates, fishbowl discussion, mind maps, singing (for teaching meter), exit papers with muddiest/clearest points, having students bring questions more often, having students write questions as part of their exam, dioramas, paragraph puzzle, logical fallacies game, Jeopardy, jigsaw, peer teaching, demonstrating in class how to read and take notes, having students volunteer their notes to share, Wiki review, online workshops, the dating game, creative monologues, annotating a scene, drawing a set design, creating hyperlinks for a text, ...

What are some creative activities you like to do? Which of them lead to more sophisticated thinking?

Planning a Composition

I just attended the exhibit, "Marian Greenwood in Tennessee" at the UT Downtown Gallery. The centerpiece is the mural, "History of Tennessee" (1955).

"The History of Tennessee," hanging at the UT Downtown Gallery
Aren't these colors fabulous? Oil on linen. 

The mural itself is an impressive achievement. What really fascinated me, though, was the amount of planning Greenwood put into the painting. The exhibit displayed many of her sketches, some in charcoal, some pencil, some colored, etc. She re-worked the composition and the colors. Some things she knew from the start, like that in the center would be a couple square dancing. At one point she considered having Native Americans at each side (there aren't any in the final version). The center woman's dress might have ended up being much duller, according to one drawing.

I wish this exhibit would stay open during the semester so that writing students could attend and think about the importance of planning and why one might not choose to run with the first idea one has. With painting, little revision is possible and so planning becomes all the more important. But even in writing, the more work we spend planning, the less we have to revise.

Here are some of Greenwood's sketches:

"Why can't students today write?"

This is a question I'm often asked when people find out I teach Composition (right after 'oops, I'd better be careful what I say!'). What's wrong with our students today, they wonder. Why can't they learn basic spelling and grammar? Why can't they write?

I'm not sure exactly what measure people use to judge students' writing. Perhaps they're listening to the news and all the test results. I'm pretty sure they aren't looking at the writing.

 From what I've seen, students' grammar is no worse than the average. The same person who asks me 'why can't students write?' has probably misplaced an apostrophe and used quotation marks for "emphasis." There are errors, but most of my students at a large state school can identify them once they're pointed out. Their proofreading skills aren't well-developed, and it's possible that composing ephemeral messages on a computer screen has contributed to that lack. Proofreading is largely a question of paying attention to detail, which requires caring. If writing comes and goes, why proofread?

 But writing is more than grammar. It's an ability to express ideas in such a way that others can grasp them. First-year college students struggle with this--all of them. That's because their ideas are becoming more sophisticated and they don't yet have the tools to express them. As they try to build more complex sentences and deploy new vocabulary, it's natural that they will fail sometimes. This is utterly normal. 

For evidence, I share with you an article by Rebecca Osborn published in College English. She writes of faculty who wish there weren't any freshmen and sympathetically states, "There is often reason enough for the protest that freshmen are immature, confused, and occasionally downright stupid." She adds, "If our students are not supremely gifted, if their educational background is faulty, if they are not widely read, they are, nevertheless, alert young people who have, for the most part, absorbed as much as they were given to absorb." The year? 1949. Folks, in 1949 teachers thought college freshmen could be immature, confused, stupid, and unprepared.

 I'm reminded of an apocryphal quote attributed to Socrates on "the youth of today." There's also this quote:

"The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress."

That's from a sermon supposedly preached by Peter the Hermit in A.D. 1274. What I am suggesting is that all this talk of students not being able to write is cranky-old-teacher thinking. Let's focus instead on what our students need to take them to the next level.

Quintessentially Cranky.

Learning to Ask Deep Questions

It's hard to exaggerate the importance to education of asking good questions. To interrogate an idea, a dataset, or the basis of theorems, is to become intellectually active.

In the past, I have required students to bring one discussion question on a pre-assigned day. I've also required all students in a course to bring a question on the same day. I've met with limited success. Often the questions they bring are comprehension questions rather than discussion questions. I explain that a discussion question is one without one obviously correct answer, one we can debate. I even give an example of both types of questions. Yet, they don't ask the questions I want, the deep questions.

I read an article last fall that suggested having students ask a question on the exam and explain why that was a good question. I tried it in my British literature class, but the results weren't great. I hadn't prepared them enough, given them enough practice with asking questions.

One thing I must do is to teach students about different kinds of questions. I especially want students to learn to ask questions of interpretation, of assumption, of implication, of point of view, of relevance, of accuracy, of precision, of consistency, and of logic. I want them to use questions to probe and explore. I can do this by having students formulate questions in small groups during class or by preparing them in advance. But probably the most important way to teach asking questions is to model them. 

Modeling is the recommendation of Faculty Focus's "The Art of Asking Questions," by Maryellen Weimar. Specifically, she recommends:

• Prepare questions.
• Play with the questions. 
• Preserve good questions. 
• Ask questions that you don't know the answer to.
• Ask questions you can't answer. 
• Don't ask open-ended questions when you know the answer you're looking for. 

I do prepare questions in advance, but most of them are comprehension. I often ask open-ended questions when I know the answer I'm looking for. It's hard when it's a question without one answer, but I can predict their arguments from years of experience. I preserve questions in my lesson plans, and I often ask questions I don't know the answer to or that I can't answer. 

The area I plan to immediately address is playing with the questions.  Too often, when a question is asked, someone will give a pat answer, the quick answer, without exploring it (always an extravert). To include more members of the class and to encourage thoughtful answers, I can put the questions on the board or PowerPoint and ask them to write them in their notes. It can be a question addressed at the end of the class session or asked over several sessions until the best answer is found. This will also create unity in the course.

What techniques do you use to get students asking meaningful questions? 

Pro-religion or Anti-gay? Rhetorical differences in reporting.

Fellow blogger Bellatricksy alerted me to this, and I'm saving it for the next time I teach rhetoric. I captured these images within minutes of each other (26 Feb 2014) and both are reporting on the same veto of the same Arizona bill.

"Arizona Religious Bill Is Vetoed," The Wall Street Journal

"Brewer vetoes bill denying service to gays," The Washington Post

How can we ever agree in this country if we aren't even arguing about the same things?