International Lilly Conference on Teaching Call for Proposals

There is a call for proposal submissions for the 31st International Lilly Conference on College Teaching, in Oxford, Ohio, on November 17-20, 2011. The conference theme this year is "Teaching for Brain-Based Learning," but contributed paper topics do not have to be connected to this theme. 

You can view the conference website for a listing of the plenary sessions confirmed thus far at:
http://www.muohio.edu/lillycon/

If you have not been to a Lilly Conference you are missing out on one of the most straight up gatherings on teaching and learning in higher education attended by those on top of their game who study teaching and learning for a living.  To submit a contributed paper proposal for the Conference, go to the website and click on "Proposal Submission" at http://www.muohio.edu/lillycon/ .  The due date is July 11, 2011.

Also, visit the Conference website to register for the Conference (register by October 1 and receive the $50 early registration discount): http://www.muohio.edu/lillycon/reg_info.php

If you cannot attend the Lilly Conference this year, please pass this message along to a colleague.  We hope to see you in November!

Regards,
Milt Cox and Gregg Wentzell

Pearson Higher Education Requesting Feedback

Pearson sponsored the Ultimate Teaching Competition.  They are seeking feedback from educators. If you are currently teaching with MyManagementLab, MyMarketingLab, MyIBLab, MyBIZLab, MyBCommLab or MyMISLab, please take a few minutes to complete the following survey to share your experience with Pearson so they can continue to improve their products, service, and support. To access the instructor survey, please copy and paste this URL into a new browser window: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3LQVZZT

Please also pass along the following message to the students you taught this semester with MyManagementLab, MyMarketingLab, MyIBLab, MyBIZLab, MyBCommLab or MyMISLab so they can help Pearson improve the student experience.  To access the student survey, please copy and paste this URL into a new browser window: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3LCD29H

I Always Get Nervous

I just put in the last of my grades.  They were for the sales course which is a totally hands-on class where the students go through a process to ultimately sell a product for real dollars that earns them a seat in a limo and dinner in Indianapolis if their team hits its profit target.  They did $15,000 in glassware sales and generated $6,000 for our student run restaurant -- not bad for 10 sales teams, each with 5-6 members on each team.  I had already entered grades for the HR class, the independent study classes that students take to be an undergraduate TA for me in HR and sales class (that I explained at the last Summit), and my University Honors Program course (which is only open to the best and the brightest at Purdue and a realy joy to teach).

I do not know why, but I always get butterflies when posting grades.  I know that grades are the currency of higher education for students.  And all grades do not mean the same to all students.  Some students will literally come unglued if they do not get an A; you know those kids because they tell you so at the beginning of the semester.  Some kids will take a D, no problem, because they are just filling in their bingo sheet to get the sheepskin (showing my age) and pursue the career that awaits them upon graduation.  There are a million other reasons to be sure and somehow I am sensitive to each one.

Perhaps it is because I was high strung myself and achievement oriented and typically the top student in my class for all the degrees I took as an undergraduate and graduate student.  Of course, those were the days that grades were not posted online like today on Blackboard so students know their grades all along the way.  I used to be on pins and needles for over a week waiting for my grades to arrive in in the mail to see if my final grades matched those I had calculated on my own.  Speaking of seeing grades online, even my son can get daily feedback on his grades in middle school by going online which is insane because there were no computers other than calculators when I was in middle school.  

Maybe I am nervouse because I care.  Maybe I want the students to be like me when I was a student and dedicated to earning an A and disappointed when many fall short of the mark.  Who knows, all I can says is that I am always nervous when posting grades because of what they mean now and will mean later in the life of each and every student.  Anyone else feel the same?

What's the Point?

We are winding down the academic year here at Purdue. Students are busy trying to do their semester long projects in the three days they have before it is due but somehow always get done to the satisfaction of the professor.  By the way, if it is possible for students to complete your semester long project by starting on it three days before it is due your project needs an overhaul and the subjet of a future blog post.


Students are also preparing for finals.  Don't get me wrong, final exams are fine to give to students as long as they are not comprehensive.  What is the point, really?  Every single student who takes a comprehensive final dreads it and those who give it do it so mindlessly because they had to do it when they were a student so we should perpetuate our ignorance of how the brain works when it comes to teaching and learning and give one, too.  Not me, of course.


To be clear, I am talking about the kind of comprehensive exam where the instructor spent 10 to 15 weeks giving presentations to students, having them do independent projects, read dozens of chapters from the required text, and other assigned readings, videos, and forth and then assigned readings from book, and then testing them over the whole thing.  And then giving the kids no clue as to what will be on the test, those smug bastards.

Based on what is known about the brain and the research that has been done on learning there is no good case for a final exam that is comprehensive due to the simple fact that the students cram all the materials into their short term memory to be remembered long enough to take the exam and then dump it the minute they walk out the door.  Largely because the professor has not taught the students on how to remember the wheat from the chaff using techniques found in the recent book Moonwalking with Einstein or Why Student's Don't Like School.  So I ask again, "what is the point?"

Faculty should do their best to chunk their course materials and test regularly throughout the term or semester to increase the probability of students retaining the information so that there is actually no need for a comprehensive final.  There should also be reflections performed by students during the term or semester on what they have learned to increase the probability of them retaining it in long term memory.  The bottom line in my book of teaching based on books on teaching and research is that if you have to give a comprehensive final you are not the high quality teacher that you would like to think yourself to be and should seek higher ground.

I have not given a final comprehensive exam ever here at Purdue.  I have no plans to do so in the future.  I have no intention of repeating the mistakes of stupid professors past.

Blame the Students?!

We have a retired VP who wanted to try her hand at teaching so now an adjunct until the end of this academic year.  She made a comment the other day about the students in her capstone management class based in our student run restaurant.  She said, "the students just don't want to analyze the results of their marketing efforts."  Let me say straight away that she is a horrible teacher.  And like many VP's has no clue how to run a business at the unit level.  I just love it when industry people find out that what they did to plan, direct, organize and control employees in the "real world" does not translate at all in an academic setting.  So, naturally it is the students who are to blame for not responding to them when they are the one's who are clueless on what it takes to be a great teacher.  Afterall, anyone can teach, right?!

Of course, the comment made by our adjunct is made by others who are experienced teachers, too!  They blame their students for just not "getting it."  Like the old adage that a "bad golfer blames the clubs" and a "poor workman blames the tools" we have educators who just love to blame students for their shortcomings. 

Here is a straight up simple fact.  The reason that students do not "get it" is that the teacher has a limited tool kit.  Or put another way, the person sucks as a teacher.  Amazingly there are teachers out there who attend teaching workshops, talk to colleagues about how they have solved problems, read books on teaching, attended teaching conferences and more to learn how to be better teachers.  They then experiment with new techniques to see which ones work and which ones don't and become better teachers.  Indeed they expanded their teaching toolkit and low and behold the students started to "get it" because the teacher was a more enlightened educator.

So do me a favor please.  The next time a colleague says "these kids just don't want to....." suggest to them that perhaps they suck as a teacher.  That will be a great conversation after that indeed!