Fall Faculty Conference t

t Fall
Faculty
Conference
UPCOMING EVENTS
Articles due for Perspective
“Teaching Sensitive Subjects”
Feb 2
Brown Bag
“Creating Significant Learning: An Introduction to
Dee Fink.” Panel Discussion led by Steve Hunsaker
Feb 16
Thomas E Ricks Grant Proposals Due
March 1
Feb 17
Publication
Committee
1:00 - 2:00
Dialogue
MC 380
Committee
11:30 - 12:30
MC 380
Resource
Committee
Brown Bag
“Context for a Conversation on Innovative Grading.”
Richard Grimmett
March 15
March 16
1:00 - 2:00
Dialogue
MC 372A
Committee
11:30 - 12:30
MC 372A
Student Research and Creative Works Conference
Faculty Meeting & Luncheon with Dee Fink
March 29
April 16
2:00 - 9:00
Explorations
Manwaring
Center
Committee
Noon
Academic
Office
MC Grand
Ballroom
Afternoon Workshop “Designing Courses for More
Significant Learning” Dee Fink
3:00 - 4:30
Special
Events Room
Academic
Office
Coming This Summer
The Teaching Professor Conference
Washington, D.C.
June 1 - 3
Travel
Committee
32nd International Conference on
Critical Thinking
Berkley, CA
July 23 - 26
Travel
Committee
Learn more at beta.byui.edu/learning-teaching/calendar
tEDITOR
IN THIS ISSUE OF PERSPECTIVE
We are very pleased to dedicate this issue of Perspective to a selection of talks
delivered at this year’s Faculty Conference. Now in its third year, this conference
has become a highlight among the choice professional development opportunities
available at BYU-Idaho. We are greatly indebted to the members of the Dialogue
Committee for their tremendous work in putting the conference together. We also
acknowledge the presenters’ sacrifice in preparing to share what they have learned
about improving the quality of learning and teaching. We are especially grateful to
those presenters who have worked with us through the process of publishing their
talks in this journal.
M AT T H E W A L B A
E D ITO R
Publications Committee
Teaching and Learning
Council
[email protected]
or [email protected]
One of the great benefits of the Faculty Conference format is the opportunity it
provides for instructors of diverse backgrounds and perspectives to gather and
exchange ideas. The assortment of talks given this year represented the high quality
of thinking and innovation taking place at this university. Topics included thoughtprovoking views on current trends in higher education, a variety of practical teaching
ideas, observations about the nature of the learning process, and information on
available resources for further professional development.
We wish that time and space allowed us to publish more of the talks. We have tried
to make a selection that reflects the diversity of topics and academic departments
represented at the conference. A number of additional conference talks were
recorded and are available to view at http://tinyurl.com/onlconf1*. As with attendance
at the conference, we hope that the talks presented in this issue of Perspective and
in the videos will allow you to become more familiar with colleagues from across
campus, and to learn something from them that will enhance your own learning
and teaching.
* Additional links:
http://tinyurl.com/onlconftp
http://tinyurl.com/onlconfka
http://tinyurl.com/onlconfme
http://tinyurl.com/onlconftw
EDITORS
Contact information for the editors of Perspective magazine.
Matthew Alba
Foreign Language & Literature
[email protected]
467 SMI
496-4306
Ronald Nate
Economics
[email protected]
104 SMI
496-3810
Kevin Galbraith
Home and Family
[email protected]
223K CLK
496-4011
Janell Greenwood
Health, Recreation & Human Performance
[email protected]
250 ROM
496-4708
Matt Moore
Music
[email protected]
282F SNO
496-4969
Daris Howard
Mathematics
[email protected]
232U RKS
496-7537
Contents
1
t WA LT E R G O N G K E Y N O T E A D D R E S S
The Liberal Arts &
Magical Teaching
34
THOMAS PASKETT
ST E P HE N S MIT H
13
The Myths of Teaching
What You Don't Know
Best Practices for Reaching
both Digital Natives and Digital
Immigrants in Online Instruction
41
DARIN ME RRIL L
Why Honest Students
Can Be Impervious to
Instruction
RYA N N IELSON
22
Creating High
Engagement In The
Classroom
48
Reaching the Strategic
Learner: A Case Study
RUTH J. AR N ELL
MARK ORCHARD
29
Drilling Holes and Critical
Thinking: Reflections on Traveling
with the Learning and Teaching
Travel Committee
53
tTHE LIGHTER SIDE
A Power Surge
DAR IS HOWA R D
DANAE ROMRE L L
OUR APOLOGIES
For any newly-formed media outlet, it’s reasonable to expect some “growing pains”. In the second issue
of Perspective, there were several mistakes made during the editing process of Matthew Whoolery’s
article, as well as others. Many of these are caused by the technology, as articles don’t seamlessly
move from our desktops to the print system. We take full responsibility for the errors and apologize to
Brother Whoolery, other writers, and our readers for the mistakes. We resolve to continuously improve
our magazine and our production process—as will be evident in upcoming publications.
t WA LT E R G O N G K E Y N O T E A D D R E S S
The Liberal
Arts & Magical
Teaching
STEPHE N S M ITH
The following is a lightly revised transcript of Stephen Smith’s
address. The editors have made an effort to stay true to the style
with which he delivered it on September 7, 2011
It is an honor to give the Walter Gong memorial address.
I hope he would be pleased by my remarks. It is fitting
to have a faculty conference keynote address named for
someone so dedicated to education. I would like to talk
today about a very specific sort of education that I will call
“liberal arts education”. I am an unabashed fan of liberal
arts education. I was greatly pleased that my son chose to
be an English major here at BYU-Idaho. Along with this
discussion of liberal arts, I also want to talk about satanic
counterfeits, Max Weber’s rationalization and bureaucracy,
and magic.
First, a quick review of the liberal arts, and what I
mean when I say that. I am referring to the concept of
the classical liberal arts of ancient and medieval roots,
education that makes people free: the trivium and the
quadrivium. We still see the echoes of this ancient model
SMITH
in our contemporary system. The trivium (grammar, logic,
and rhetoric, or the language arts) and the quadrivium
(arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, or the number
arts) are still foundational. These key areas still form the
basis of the SAT and ACT, which so many universities
require for admissions. We want to know about students’
foundational aptitude.
The idea of the liberal arts is not just the ability to
read, write, and do arithmetic; the idea is to be able to
think critically and freely in ways that stretch your mind
and awareness. It is the making of worthwhile connections
between bits of information, not just being able to
regurgitate them. It is old-school education, that of being
well-read and having deep thoughts. It is the aligning
of your mind with truth. This is the ancient foundation
of formal education, so ancient that it goes back to the
beginning and starts with questions; an angel asking Adam,
“Why dost thou offer sacrifices unto the Lord?” (Moses
3:9), or how about, “[Adam], where art thou?” (Genesis 3:9).
Liberal arts education is about the ordering of
thoughts and information in meaningful ways—ways that
promote understanding and truth. It is rooted in ancient
religious traditions like temples. It is no wonder that
temples across time and space and cultures involve so much
symbolism and reenactments of creation stories. Creation
stories are the ultimate stories of ordering. Our creation
story is of the elements of the universe being ordered for
a divine purpose. The opposite of order is chaos—the evil
nature of the elements. Yet, I think there is a continuum
of evil with chaos on one extreme and satanic order on the
other. A false ordering can be just as bad as chaos. If Satan
cannot keep the elements of the universe in a chaotic state,
then the next best thing is to impose an unnatural order
to things. To do this he needs a convincing form of order
and a counterfeit purpose for that order. We will get to the
form of order in a minute.
We still see the
echoes of this
ancient model in our
contemporary system.
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1
First, the counterfeit purpose. I posit that his
counterfeit purpose is the “Mahan Principle”, which
Hugh Nibley (1989) explains “is a frank recognition that
the world's economy is based on the exchange of life for
property” (p. 436). Cain’s application of the principle was
the most obvious type: kill Abel and gain his property. I
think there is a more subtle form as well: the exchange of
time and effort for money. Here we have a great satanic
counterfeit for life: the purpose of life is money. A liberal
arts education and its ordering principles stand opposed to
this new plan because such educational efforts lead to truth
and freedom, and the truth is that life is not about money.
Truth, light, and understanding cannot stay hidden
from those sincerely and properly seeking them.
“Therefore, ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be
opened unto you; for he that asketh, receiveth; and unto
him that knocketh, it shall be opened” (3 Nephi 27:29). If
this is a true principle, and you are Satan, then how do you
fight against it? Giving false answers is not an option—
you don’t control truth. You have to get people to not ask
and not knock. However, here you are blocked by another
true principle: The earth was ordered to provide a place
for souls to progress, and learning is an inherent part of
this. As President Clark (2011) has said, you “were born
to learn” (p. 3). So, true to form, Satan does not directly
stop education, but twists it into something attractive but
empty. He promotes a counterfeit educational process. He
is a master of convincing us that the sand we are building
The idea of the liberal arts is not just the ability
to read, write, and do arithmetic; the idea is to
be able to think critically and freely in ways that
stretch your mind and awareness.
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Truth, light, and
understanding cannot
stay hidden from those
sincerely and properly
seeking them.
on is rock, or even better, that we can turn the sand that we
are knowingly building on into rock. It just takes a lot of
money to do so.
Of course, we have the satanic counterfeits of this
educational system in the universities. Hugh Nibley has
done an excellent job of delineating this, and I will refer to
some of his ideas. I want to get into the practical evolution
of what modern education has turned to. As Hugh Nibley
(1994) explained, “Worse still, they have chosen businessoriented, career-minded, degree-seeking programs
in preference to the strenuous, critical, liberal, mindstretching exercises that Brigham Young recommended”
(p. 338). Here again is the idea of a liberal arts education
versus its counterfeit purpose. I won’t spend any more time
on this false purpose because, again, Hugh Nibley has done
an exceptional job of explaining it. I would like to address
the form of false ordering now.
When I was asked to give this address, I was lecturing
on Max Weber and his ideas of the rationalization of
society and bureaucracy. I was struck by how applicable
his ideas were to the misuse of education Nibley speaks
of. First, let me review some of Weber’s ideas. You have
to love a professor like Weber, who was something of a
hot head and would get into duels—and he liked to show
off his dueling scars. I think professors should have some
dueling scars—evidence of life outside the ivory tower.
My children love my bedtime story of how I rescued
their mother from pirates. In the course of the battle a
pirate knocked out one of my teeth. So, my gold tooth
is a result of me chopping off his ear and melting down
his gold earring to make myself a new tooth. The story
seems to reassure them of the strength of our relationship
because you don’t fight pirates for just anyone. The power
of dueling scars. Anyway, Weber argued that religion was a
SMITH
central feature of society, but that it has evolved over time
along the lines of disenchantment. An enchanted world is
one filled with mystery and magic, and disenchantment is
the process of removing these things. An example of this is
the secularization of society. As religion becomes separated
from social institutions and practices, more secular principles
take over. The world becomes a more rational place. It is not
the blessings of God or the gods that provide us with good
crops, but the proper application of fertilizer, planting at the
right time, etc.; things that we have come to by applying the
scientific method.
So, what is this magic that the world is losing?
Magic is the unknown, the unexplainable; something that
you experience as real, but don’t understand. Magic is
fascinating, mind-boggling; it captures our attention and
If you are not arguing,
you are not learning.
|
3
holds our interest. Magic is a very real thing, I believe,
and it is opposed to the modern, scientific world. When I
was in graduate school, there was a large number of fellow
LDS graduate students there, especially in the sciences
and engineering. We used to get into these wonderful
arguments. If you are not arguing, you are not learning.
It is a pretty horrible education if you are only hearing
things that you agree with, or that you already know. So,
my friends and I would argue about God. They would
say that the universe makes rational sense and that God
follows natural laws. I would call this blasphemy and state
that God is omnipotent and subject to no law outside of
Himself. Remember these great times in school arguing
about things you would not be graded on? You see, liberal
arts education is a natural phenomenon. My friends would
argue that the universe could be explained by science, and
for the evolutionary nature of those explanations; that
what we don’t understand yet we will, as evidenced by the
history of rational explanations. They felt that God was
some sort of superior scientist who simply understood
perfectly the laws of nature and so could work so well
within them. I would always disagree and argue for magic.
I would say that if God simply follows natural laws, and
we are always getting a better understanding of them, then
will not the time come that we will discover the laws of
resurrection and atonement? Why do we need Jesus if all
we need is a perfect understanding of natural laws? They
would want my explanation, and I could only offer magic.
I would tell them I did not know how resurrection and the
Atonement work—they’re magic. They’re fascinating, mind
boggling. They’re things that I experience as real, but don’t
understand.
According to Weber, there is a method to this
madness of disenchantment, this removal of magic from
our lives. At first, people relied on magic to provide
meaning and explanation to life. Again, throw a virgin in
the volcano and you get good crops; it’s magic. However,
the social evolution of religion is the change to religious
symbolism and professionalism. Life moved from sole
reliance on nature to our ability to control nature. Hunting
and gathering peoples did not have much control over
the migration of game or the growth of grains, but
Life moved from sole
reliance on nature to our
ability to control nature.
reading new ideas, arguing, and making connections.
It is fascinating and exciting, but we have turned the
maintenance of this process over to a professional class
of priest/teachers. They/we have become the guardians
of the “proper” way to learn with its esoteric methods
and focus on the proper procedures. Education is now
largely concerned with the maintenance of the symbolic
complexities of the process; for example, grades, diplomas,
program requirements, etc. What is needed is the orderly
maintenance of these symbolic complexities, which leads
to rational and objective standards, which takes us right to
Weber’s ideas on bureaucracy. These can be summarized
in the following six points: (1) an explicit division of labor
with delineated lines of authority, (2) the presence of a
power hierarchy, (3) written rules and communication,
(4) accredited training and technical competence, (5)
management by rules that is emotionally neutral, and (6)
the ownership of both the career ladder and position by
the organization, rather than by the individual (Allan,
2006). This is very familiar to us as it describes most large
organizations—even BYU-Idaho to some extent.
The presence of a bureaucracy pretty much guarantees
the absence of magic, and I see this as a sad thing.
Magic has many implications, including the thrill of the
unexplained or the unexpected. This summer one of my
daughters is learning how to drive. I have always found
great joy in driving, and I wish that for her. However,
there is not much joy in her driving right now. She is, and
correctly so, so focused on the rules and safety that she is
not experiencing the thrill of the ride. She is not at the
point where she can just jump in and drive away. She is
constantly monitoring her speed, making sure she stops
completely behind the sign. Driving is more of a systematic
horticultural and pastoral peoples can sort seeds, plant
and irrigate, and raise animals. This led to division of labor
and surpluses, which in turn led to the professional class
of priest/teachers. They became the guardians of esoteric
knowledge and magical methods. As their worlds became
less enchanted, they wanted to maintain control of the
spiritual world, and have job security, so they made the
magic secret and complex. Not just anyone could address
the gods, you had to be properly dressed, say the right
things in the right way, etc. Organized religion came about
as maintenance of these symbolic complexities, according
to Weber.
Education has followed much of this same path.
There is something magical in exploring the world, in
SMITH
There is something
magical in exploring
the world, in reading
new ideas, arguing, and
making connections.
|
5
on the procedures and process of organized education
instead of enjoying the ride of learning. You do not have to
violate the procedures to enjoy the ride; it is just a matter
of what you are paying attention to. Below I would like to
address each of the six points of Weber’s bureaucracy as
they relate to education.
First, an explicit division of labor with delineated
lines of authority. Interestingly enough, this first point
These things in an
educational institution
have the potential of
disenchanting teaching
and learning.
process than a magical experience for her right now. As
the procedures become more second-nature to her, she will
begin to experience the magic of driving.
This is much like a bureaucratic form of education.
Now this is tricky, because I am going to complain a little
about bureaucracies and education, so it will sound a little
like a condemnation of BYU-Idaho, and to some degree,
I suppose it is. But hear me the right way: I am talking
about the potential that bureaucratic forms of government
have for limiting true education. The problem is that to
maintain the orderly accomplishment of goals–especially
as an organization grows–the more developed the
bureaucracy is. Remember the six points of a bureaucracy
outlined above. These things in an educational institution
have the potential of disenchanting teaching and learning.
Much like my young daughter, we can be so concerned
with missing a check point or going one mile over the
speed limit that that becomes our entire focus. We focus
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6
is an area that I think is being very well addressed here.
The foundations program, with its interdisciplinary focus,
helps us to cross these lines and division of labor, at least
across disciplines. C. Wright Mills (1959) says that the
“one great obstacle to unified work in social science is
the one-discipline introductory textbook” (p. 141). One
of the most fulfilling and satisfying opportunities of my
teaching career has been my involvement with the World
Foundations course here on campus. It is such a multidisciplinary course and a great example of liberal arts
education. And, I might add, the association with amazing
teachers from across campus has pushed me further in my
own education.
Second, the presence of a power hierarchy. This
point has a great potential to distract us. When there is
a hierarchy and we are steeped in a competitive culture,
much like our own, then we become very conscience of our
place in the hierarchy and of our means of moving up or
not moving up. This can stifle some of the magic because,
as one of the most magical teachers of them all says, it
limits our ability to “Take chances, make mistakes, get
messy.” This is Ms. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus, a
children’s cartoon (Scholastic Studios, 1994–97). I hope
you are all familiar with it. They understand this idea of
liberal arts education and had no better way of explaining
it than making it a magical experience. The problem
with a hierarchy is not so much that those above us in
the hierarchy take issue with our chances, mistakes, and
messes, but that we avoid them altogether because we fear
that chances, mistakes, and messes will endanger our social
mobility. We know fear is bad, and we know providing
a better experience for students is good. I have heard a
lot about using case studies for learning opportunities.
I am totally unfamiliar with them and frankly a little
afraid to try one. I would be taking a chance, I might
I think there is
something magical
about gathering to the
BYU-Idaho Center for
devotional.
making mistakes, and getting messy can lead to an attitude
of complete independence and even rebellion. I am not
advocating this, for all things should be done in wisdom
and order, but it is much like my daughter driving so
meticulously that she can’t enjoy the trip. The point is to
get beyond the rules in the sense that they become secondnature, and not to let them weigh you down and distract
you from teaching and learning. They can get in your brain
and fester. I have been quite guilty in the past of kicking
against the pricks of bureaucratic communication, which
detracts from what I should be doing. For instance, in
the past I did not enjoy wearing a tie. Several years ago a
memo came around stating that I should. I put on a tie and
guess what! My lecture notes still work, my class activities
are just as useful, and I still enjoy reading.
I have more recently had a very interesting experience
with this. A while ago President Clark invited us to do a
few things: begin class with a prayer, attend devotional, and
dress up for devotional. I took it as a personal challenge
to meet this bureaucratic overture with uncharacteristic
conformity. I remember talking with President Bednar
when I first started here, and he asked if I started class
with prayer. I replied, “No, because it was too ...”, and he
finished with, “Sunday Schoolish.” I agreed, and we moved
on in the conversation. I also liked to listen to devotional
make mistakes, and the whole thing would become a big
mess. What if my colleagues, department chair, or dean
found out that I had a total failure in the classroom? So,
I avoid trying something new. I stick to the old tried
and true methods of lecture and quizzes. Horrible, isn’t
it? Education is no place to be conservative; it should be
progressive. New ideas and new methods should be sought
after. Not everything will work or should be used again
and there is still the proper use and place for the old tried
and true methods. But, we should be looking forward in
a truly progressive state. The point is that fear should not
guide pedagogy, especially fear of not getting to move up
the hierarchy.
Third, written rules and communication. Now
a word of caution: All this talk about taking chances,
SMITH
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7
in my office so I could continue working; sort of serving
two masters at the same time. And, I had already started
wearing ties, for heaven’s sake, what more did these people
want? But, I put on a suit and went to devotional, and
invited students to pray to begin class. You can explain it
how you want, but for me there is something truly magical
about hearing a student call down blessings from heaven
on you and your class. I think there is something magical
about gathering to the BYU-Idaho Center for devotional.
And, I just like wearing the suit. Once you move beyond
the rules to where they are second-nature and not in the
forefront of your mind detracting from more important
work, it can be magical.
We can also become too engrossed in our own written
rules and communication. I alluded earlier to the Socratic
Method of asking questions. I imagine that if Adam had
been a product of our contemporary educational system,
with its focus on written rules and communication, he
would have responded differently to those questions:
“[Adam], where art thou?”
“Hey, you didn’t say there would be pop quizzes.”
“Why dost thou offer sacrifices?”
“What? I’m supposed to be offering sacrifices? Is that in
the syllabus?”
As the focus becomes narrow, so goes the mind.
Fourth, accredited training and technical
competence. This aspect of education is quite important.
You do need to have the appropriate training and
competence, but you need something more as well. You
need the heart and soul of an academic. I remember
a couple of years ago in the first BYU-Idaho Faculty
Conference when John Ivers said something along the
lines that we ought to be outrageous. As educators we
need not be cheerful robots, but animated, passionate,
and inspiring scholars. C. Wright Mills (1959) said that
Once you move beyond the rules to where they
are second-nature and not in the forefront of your
mind detracting from more important work, it can
be magical.
PERSPECTIVE
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8
our foremost job as professors is to reveal to students
how a supposedly self-disciplined mind works. The art
of teaching is in considerable part the art of thinking out
loud, but intelligibly.
So, is there help beyond the bureaucracy? I think we
all know there is. Have you not been in a magical learning
experience some time in your life? I think in a real sense
it comes down to ownership and following Ms. Frizzle’s
advice. If we stop worrying about our position in the
bureaucracy and think more about our stewardship and
objectives, then magic can happen. I offer an example
of a truly magical course: it was a Sunday School class
of seventeen-year-olds. This was one of those classes
were students only came to make trouble; they were
uninterested and prided themselves on scaring away
teachers.
The new teacher was given all the warnings. The first
day with the new teacher all the kids were there to check
out the new victim. He started with the typical lesson
that quickly deteriorated into seventeen-year-old silliness.
So, the teacher turned to Moroni (6:9) and read about
how meetings are to be run by the Spirit, and he asked
the students what they wanted to do or talk about during
their time together. Their answers were pretty typical of
teenagers trying to freak out an adult. The first thing they
said was “Sex”, then “Drugs”, then “Other churches”, etc.
Fifth, management by rules that is emotionally
neutral. I will say very little about management, other
than to refer you to Nibley’s (1983) talk on managers and
leaders. Managers may be emotionally neutral, but leaders
are full of passion and emotion.
Sixth, the ownership of both the career ladder
and position by the organization, rather than by the
individual. Herein lies our greatest advantage. We are
a university faculty, one of the last places left for total
ownership. If we let that go, it is nobody’s fault but our
own. Fear sometimes motivates the relinquishing of
ownership, because with ownership comes responsibility,
and it is easier to do what they say than to figure it out for
ourselves. Besides, we might make a mistake or a mess.
I think historically the artists and poets are the last to
surrender ownership. Why is it that so many artists and
poets are revolutionaries, or so many revolutionaries are
artists and poets?
SMITH
|
1
The teacher wasn’t telling them anything they
didn’t already know, he was just helping them
make connections–helping to align their minds
with truth.
“Fine”, said the teacher, “next week I will come prepared to
talk about sex, not a lesson on the Law of Chastity, but we
will talk about sex.” It was his turn to freak them out, but
they all showed up the next week, of course. He started off
asking, “What is the big deal about sex? Why do they say
we have to wait until marriage?” The next week he started
with, “I really would like to smoke pot, but I don’t. Why
not?” Well, an interesting thing happened. He had stolen
their questions. These were the outrageous questions that
would scare away a teacher, and they could hardly wait to
put them in play. But the teacher led with them, and they
couldn’t think of anything else to do but follow along.
I think there are a couple of important points to
make here for why this worked. First, the teacher started
out from an outrageous position. He hooked them with,
“This is a little crazy; let’s see where it goes.” And second,
these questions were not about dramatic effect, nor
were they facetious questions; these are sincere and real
questions that seventeen-year-olds have. So, they started
talking about them. It began with a lot of complaining
and agreement that nothing made sense, but they kept
coming back to the questions because they wanted the
answers. It seemed the most natural thing in the world
to open the scriptures when the discussion led there. The
fascinating thing was that by the end of the hour they
had a great lesson on the Law of Chastity or the Word of
Wisdom. Only, he never preached or gave a list of what to
do or not do. They ended up talking about sex and how it
fit into the Plan of Salvation, and they made connections
that most of us understand but that we so seldom explain
to the young. They understood the Word of Wisdom
not as a checklist, but as a blessing, and they saw how it
connected bodies and spirits and was just a strand in the
web of the Gospel. Plus, it was a blast—fascinating and
exciting. They could start with some outrageous question,
PERSPECTIVE
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10
such as, “Why are Catholic churches so much cooler than
ours?”, and end up with a great discussion of symbolism,
apostasy, and restoration. After a few weeks, parents would
come up to the teacher and ask what he was doing, because
their children were not only attending Sunday School, but
wanted to go and were discussing the Gospel with them.
He would just tell them that they talk about sex, drugs, and
rock and roll. They would look at him funny and with a
nervous laugh tell him to keep it up.
In this magical class much of the bureaucratic ethos
were violated. The teacher took a chance conducting the
class in such a manner that it had great potential to be a
mistake and make a mess. It probably blew his chances of
climbing the hierarchy; it didn’t follow the written rules,
and he had no specialized training, but was flying by the
seat of his pants not knowing beforehand the things that
he should do (1 Nephi 4:6). Class was not emotionally
neutral; it was full of emotion, tears, and passionate
discussion. The learners took responsibility for the class, for
better or worse. In the end, the teacher wasn’t telling them
anything they didn’t already know, he was just helping them
make connections–helping to align their minds with truth.
These young people in the church are ready to learn;
they yearn for it. All they need is the proper environment,
an enchanted environment. Remember, “they were born
to learn” (Clark, 2011, p. 3). We were born to learn, not
to be preached to, not to be given a list to repeat back
on demand, not to be presented with hoops of symbolic
complexity to jump through; to learn. And, there is
something magical when we learn. Elder Bednar (2006)
explains learning by faith and how the Spirit is the teacher.
But, how does that work? I don’t know—it’s magic.
I suspect it has something to do with asking questions,
and I think the bureaucratic ethos has dampened our
enthusiasm for questions. It is almost like we are afraid
of the answers. I have shared this Sunday School story
before and the most common response is, “Don’t you think
it is a little dangerous to ask those questions? What if it
didn’t turn out well?” My response is always the same: “You
gather a bunch of people that have the gift of the Holy
Ghost, you begin the discussion with a prayer inviting the
Spirit to join you, and you ask a sincere question, no matter
how outrageous it may be. How can that not end any other
way but well? Do you really think that somehow they
would get to, ‘Yep, turns out we can smoke pot’?”
Another way of stimulating magic is to express the
passion and enthusiasm you feel for your subject matter. If
you are teaching and do not feel passion for your subject,
discipline, scholarship, etc., if you have no enthusiasm
for what you do, then why are you here? For the money?
I would like to give you an example of the magic of
enthusiastic teaching. I was talking with a student recently,
and to paraphrase the conversation, he complained about
having to take foundations courses. Again, they don’t
have anything to do with his career or his money-making
potential. Later in the conversation he mentioned how
he had seen his science foundation teacher walking in my
neighborhood. I asked who it was and he replied, “Brother
Kevin Kelly”, and proceeded to tell me how much he liked
him. I pointed out that he was referring to one of the
foundations courses that he had just been disparaging. He
quickly backtracked with, “No, no, his class was awesome.
SMITH
He is a great teacher.” “What makes him great?” I asked.
The reply: “He was kind of nerdy about science, but the
kind of nerdy where he is so passionate about his subject
that you can’t help but to get drawn in and excited about it
as well. I really enjoyed the class.”
Passion, enthusiasm, and really great questions are
the key. And if you are no longer passionate about your
discipline, may I suggest you try becoming a student of it
again. One of the things that Brother Walter Gong gave
the world is the idea that teachers need to be learners and
learners need to be teachers. So, if you have lost that loving
feeling, take advantage of some leave opportunities, reread
the foundational text of your discipline, study some new
aspect of it, and go get into arguments about it. I wonder
if that would be a viable leave option: “I am going to go
argue for the semester.” How cool would that be to have
an argument table in the Crossroads? You get a threecredit leave to go sit at the table for an hour every day and
explore outrageous ideas with people that think differently
If you have no
enthusiasm for what
you do, then why are
you here?
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than you. It could be a good way to pick up some dueling
scars as well. Don’t forget the value of magical stories about
dueling scars. My children know I love their mother; I
fought pirates for her and I have the golden tooth to prove
it. That demonstrates great passion to a 4 year-old. What
demonstrates great passion to a college student?
The problem is that if you ask an outrageous question
and passionately seek answers, you never know where
you might end up. Now we have come full circle. The
professional priest/teacher class made sure that we stayed
away from questions and from allowing the Spirit to
teach because it was too messy and sometimes mistakes
were made. It is much easier to create a lot of ritual and
symbolic complexity to drown out learning. Keep them
busy with more important things than the “strenuous,
critical, liberal, mind-stretching” education that Brigham
Young suggested. And what is more important than
making money? You get the Spirit involved and you never
know where you might end up. It could be outside the
norm; you might become peculiar. You might even end up
a poor but free thinker. I bet that the question, “What kind
of job can you get with that major?” is much more popular
around Thanksgiving dinner tables than, “What kind of
interesting stuff are you learning in that major?”
I want to give the complete quote from Hugh Nibley
(1994) that I have referenced before:
Brigham was right after all. As administrative problems
have accumulated in a growing Church, the authorities
have tended to delegate the business of learning to others,
and those others have been only too glad to settle for the
outward show, the easy and flattering forms, trappings,
and ceremonies of education. Worse still, they have chosen
business-oriented, career-minded, degree-seeking programs
in preference to the strenuous, critical, liberal, mindstretching exercises that Brigham Young recommended.
We have chosen the services of the hired image-maker in
preference to unsparing self-criticism, and the first question
the student is taught to ask today is John Dewey's golden
question: “What is there in it for me?” (p. 338)
So, where does all of this leave us? The reality is that
some degree of large organization is necessary. We need to
have program objectives and assessments, we need some
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admission requirements and gatekeepers, etc. So, how do
we have magical courses, how do we take the focus off of
money, and how do we live in the bureaucracy but not be of
the bureaucracy? I advocate getting on the Magic School
Bus: “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy.” And, I
would add a couple more things: Express your passion for
your topics and ask outrageous questions.
Remember the outrageous questions may not be where
you want to end up, but they get you started. For example,
in Economics: “Why is communism the better system?”
In Biology: “Can we design a better eye than God?” In
Political Science: “How do you get a true Democrat elected
in Rexburg?” In Physics: “How strong was Atlas? And
what was he standing on?” In Theater: “Can we fake the
Mars landings?” In University Studies: “What if the Hokey
Pokey really is what it’s all about?” Again, take chances,
make mistakes, get messy, express your passion for your
topics, and ask outrageous questions. Keep the magic alive.
References
Allan, Kenneth D. The Social Lens: An Invitation to Social and Sociological Theory.
California: Pine Forge Press, 2006.
Bednar, David A. Seek Learning by Faith. Address to CES Religious Educators,
Jordan Institute of Religion, February 3, 2006.
Clark, Kim B. Learning and Teaching: To Know, To Do, and To Become. BYUIdaho Faculty Meeting, September 6, 2011.
Mills, C. Wright. The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford Press, 1959.
Nibley, Hugh. Approaching Zion. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1989.
Nibley, Hugh. Brother Brigham Challenges the Saints. Salt Lake City: Deseret
Book Company, 1994.
Nibley, Hugh. Leaders to Managers: The Fatal Shift. Dialogue Winter 1983: p. 12–21.
Scholastic Studios. The Magic Schoolbus. 1994–97.
The Myths
of Teaching
What You
Don’t Know
DARIN M E R R I LL
Geoffrey Chaucer writes of his Clerk from the Canterbury
Tales (General Prologue, l. 308), “and gladly would he
learn, and gladly teach” (Benson, 1987). This ideal is what
motivates Therese Huston’s Teaching What You Don’t Know
(2009), and what additionally motivates universities like
our own to adopt it for faculty use. Chaucer’s Clerk’s high
ideal is part of what makes ours an admirable profession,
and our willingness to try to make our lives better through
simplification and mutual assistance is one of the most
appealing elements to our collegial and congenial faculty
relationship. With this good faith as the backdrop for this
argument, I hope it will be heard and contemplated in
the height of academic dispassion: reasonable, objective,
and in the context of the best ideals of the scholarly and
disciplined life that we aspire to as faculty at BYU-Idaho.
MERRILL
Despite Ken Bain’s endorsement of Huston’s text,
he states on the dust jacket of his book, What the Best
College Teachers Do (2004), that “whether historians or
physicists, in El Paso or St. Paul, the best teachers know
their subjects inside and out” (italics added). It surprised me,
then, to read his endorsement of Therese Huston’s book
Teaching What You Don’t Know. The possible contradiction
between teaching a subject and a dearth of knowledge
in that subject area piqued my curiosity, and I picked up
a copy of the book. After reading a large portion of it,
minus the part directed at administrators or the sample
tests and class materials, I still see that the idea of teaching
what we don’t know presents us with an insurmountable
contradiction: that one can teach what one does not know.
Having wrestled a bit with this idea, I find that there are
some issues that remain unresolved for me. Simply put,
there are really four myths that must be addressed to
answer Huston’s assertion that there is a mass of faculty
flailing about in water over their heads. First, the title of
the book ought to be “teaching stuff outside your area of
primary emphasis, which you ought to remember from
the residency and coverage requirements of your graduate
study, but probably don’t”. The second myth is that faculty
are finding themselves constantly outside their area of
academic emphasis. The third myth I wish to address is
the one that establishes the narrowest kind of definition
for a scholar: that is, that a scholar is a person with such
narrow interests in, for example, the Apple Snail, that a
discussion of any other snail, mollusk, or member of the
animal kingdom is going to be some kind of mystery to
him or her. The fourth and final myth, without becoming
Whether historians or
physicists, in El Paso
or St. Paul, the best
teachers know their
subjects inside and out.
Ken Bain
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13
an ad hominem attack on Ms. Huston, is the question
about whether she is, in fact, the person who ought to be
explaining to faculties across the continent about their
inabilities, and how they can successfully stay one week
ahead of their students. I would, in the end, like to address
the ethics of presuming to “teach” students something one
does not know, hoping to disabuse us of the notion that
such teaching is, in fact, even an ethical option, let alone an
acceptable commonplace or even “high impact” or “best”
practice, to use popular idiom.
The first myth lies in Huston’s title. In her
introduction, Huston mentions some anecdotes about
teachers who are teaching, not what they don’t know, but
merely outside what are very narrow areas of expertise. She
asserts that her pool of three instructors “all have to stretch
their expertise to teach their classes. Each of them is quick
to admit how much they are learning in the process. Given
a choice, however, they would prefer to be back in classes
The absence of
empirical data ought to
create some skepticism.
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14
where they are confident of their knowledge and can
take students’ questions with ease” (Huston, 2009, p. 3 ).
I would say that there is an important difference between
teaching what you don’t know and teaching the breadth
and depth of one’s chosen field. For example, my training
is in Literature—particularly early British Literature
from the Middle English period—more particularly,
Geoffrey Chaucer’s writings. Even more particularly, his
Canterbury Tales. To narrow further, the lexical practices of
early scribes in transmitting the Canterbury Tales in both
incunabula and early printed form. This course of study
introduced me to the full breadth of Medieval culture,
society, politics, theology, philosophy, and science.
Further, as part of my Ph.D., I had to take classes in
the literature of the enlightenment, of the romantic poets,
the interregnum, and the Renaissance. Along the way, I
studied over one century of culture, society, and art. I would
be glad to teach classes in any of these areas. So, where is
this great panic of unpreparation? Does it really exist? Are
we really talking about teaching what we don’t know? I
do not believe so. We are talking about teaching what our
narrow target of scholarly inquiry isn’t, and in an even more
post-lapsarian vane, we are talking about teaching what
we don’t want to be bothered with learning, re-learning, or
Luckily, at BYU-Idaho we often are given
professional development leaves to work on the
depth of our knowledge for an upcoming class
that has never been offered on campus, and we
are all very grateful for this.
simply remembering. This idea turns the focus of the book
not on to the plight of the modern faculty, but to
the misguided application of efficiency models on
education and the decadence and intellectual hedonism
of some modern faculty, as Huston inadvertently and
unconsciously portrays it.
This first myth is probably sufficient reason to dismiss
the idea of teaching what we don’t know. We aren’t
teaching what we don’t know, by and large. We’re merely
teaching what we don’t know the most about, or teaching
what we would rather not teach. Luckily, at BYU-Idaho
we often are given professional development leaves to
work on the depth of our knowledge for an upcoming class
that has never been offered on campus, and we are all very
grateful for this. But Huston is not talking about a linguist
teaching organic chemistry, she is talking about a linguist
who knows everything about Slavic languages having
some problem teaching about linguistics in some other
branch of the Indo-European language tree. The former is
problematic and unethical, the latter is simply the varying
ability of the scholar to take the verities of his or her field
and apply them somewhere other than where he or she did
in a dissertation. If we are not doing this already, then I
wonder why we are in this field to begin with. The idea of
a scholar allowing his or her mind to lay fallow ought to be
anathema to all of us.
Maybe the problem is just overstated. On page 29 of
Huston’s book, she recounts an episode where a teacher
from a university Theater Department makes an assertion
he attributes to Rousseau. Immediately thereafter, a
student not only concurs, but recites the Rousseau passage
verbatim. “Kevin recalls the moment with horror,” Huston
relates. In this passage, we have Kevin recalling “with
MERRILL
horror” the idea that a 19 year-old knew more than he
did. My own experience is that my students often come
to class with information and skills that surpass my own
(though my ego would tell me this is the exception, not the
rule), and that this information is a resource for facilitating
in-class discussion, not evidence that I am a failure in the
classroom. Perhaps, then, there is an ego problem among
faculty that Huston has discovered and that makes some
faculty recoil at the idea that someone out there will
think that we don’t know everything. The simple answer
is to teach what we know, and to be sure our information
is accurate, which is simply academic preparation—the
ethical and proper preparation with information, strategies,
and good will toward men and women in our classes in
place before we jump into a course. To allow ourselves the
self-pandering notion of our omniscience is the very height
of academic hubris.
The second myth is that anecdotal evidence evinces
a sweeping problem. The absence of empirical data ought
to create some skepticism. Without hard evidence, the
argument that she makes becomes little more than a case
of an overwhelmed colleague stopping by another’s office
to complain about having too much to do since he or
she was called as Cubmaster in the ward. Nonetheless,
Huston deserves a fair shake. From her introduction,
she explains that her book is based on “roughly thirtyfive college and university instructors [whom she asked
whether they had] ever taught outside their expertise”
(p. 7). She explains that a handful of instructors were
puzzled and answered that they had not, and that some
big names wouldn’t participate, but the rest jumped at the
opportunity to talk about it. If we generously allow that
an extrapolation of this anecdotal experience indicates the
|
15
potential discomfiture of many faculty members, we might
have something to study. However, before we exercise
such generosity, we ought to look at the size of the sample.
Huston spoke to 35 working faculty. According to the
2008-2018 National Employment Matrix from the Bureau
of Labor Statistics and the Occupational Outlook Handbook
for 2010-2011 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2010) there
are almost 1.7 million postsecondary teachers in the
U.S. Crunching these numbers, Huston has surveyed a
sample that is .00002 percent of the national population,
or two hundred-thousandths of one percent of the total
postsecondary teachers in the US. The underwhelmingly
minute number ought not to have us tearing out what is
left of our hair, and probably merits no more attention
than the few pages I’ve devoted to it today. Scholarly
objectivity ought to have us allowing that an issue may
exist, but disallowing that such a small sample could
accurately indicate the need for some panicked attempt to
address a problem that likely doesn’t exist, but if it does,
could very well exist on a radically different scale than
what Huston asserts.
The third myth is largely addressed in my catalogue
from the first, but requires more focused attention. The
myth is that we are, in fact, teaching what we don’t
know. We are, rather, teaching what we ought not not to
My students in the hard
sciences complain that
writing is rarely objective,
and that learning what
the teacher wants is as
important as learning
what good writing is.
know, or what we shouldn’t not know. If we are experts
in one aspect of our academic field, why can we not
teach anywhere in our broad academic area? I admit
that, as a humanist, I find my critical thinking skills,
such as they are, easily transferrable from one discipline
or literary period to another within the humanities. My
own inexperience forces me to admit that I don’t know
whether such a thing can be done with Apple Snails,
quarks, kinesiology, or asymptotes. How much general
chemistry must an organic chemist know? Is an electrical
engineer knowledgeable enough in engineering to teach
general engineering classes—if such things exist? Ought
a behavioral psychologist to be able to discuss and teach
general or introductory psychology, or even a different
branch of psychology? If the answer to either of the latter
questions is “no”, then this myth might only exist in the
humanities. In the so-called hard sciences, perhaps there is
no such transferability.
Where in the humanities we recognize the
overarching ideas, organized in the trivium and
quadrivium, properly prioritizing the liberal and servile
arts in their places, perhaps the sciences do not enjoy
such a framework or such latitude. I will assume, since
they are all based on principles, that there is, by and large,
a general set of ideas that all chemists must know, that
all engineers have in common, that all auto mechanics
apply, and so forth. If this assertion is accurate, what don’t
we know to teach in our selected fields? And if we are
so underprepared, how do we look ourselves squarely in
the face every morning and feel like we are not living a
horrible intellectual lie that besmirches everything we do
and say in the context of our professional and personal
lives? We cannot assume that we are prepared if we,
ourselves, lack the fundamental framework that underpins
our own profession or discipline, and it is therefore an
absolute sham to imagine that we can ask our students to
do anything like this in our majors.
The fourth myth relates directly to Huston’s
credentials as an assessor of higher education. From her
CV, Huston holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from Carnegie
Mellon. She is currently the director of the Center for
Excellence in Teaching and Learning and an adjunct
professor in the Department of Psychology at Seattle
University. She was an Assistant Professor at Pacific
University in Oregon until 2001. She has 11 published
articles and one book, all on the topic of teaching
and student perceptions of teachers. While her list of
publications is relatively long, one wonders if she has
the breadth and depth in higher education to take the
temperature of the entire profession. This final myth raises
a warning flag, and ought to remind us to be cautious
before we swallow hook, line, and sinker what she asserts
about higher education and the attendant panic in the
hearts of this imagined mass of underprepared professors.
To her credit, she accurately discusses a growing
problem on this campus and elsewhere: teaching as more
than content delivery. The scholarship of learning and
teaching ought to quickly demonstrate to us that teaching
is more than the belching hell-mouth of a mass of facts
and professorial opining on a subject. Lessons require
planning, crafting, and (most of all) flexibility, since the
classroom needs to be an organic experience to provide
the maximum opportunity for students. In her section, “A
Different Model of Teaching and Learning”, she describes
her perception of the problem by stating:
This points to a serious problem in higher education: many
of us do, in fact, view ourselves as knowledge dispensers
[insert comical image of yourself as information Pez]. The
epitome of a “good” teacher is one who “dominates the
Lessons require planning, crafting, and (most of
all) flexibility, since the classroom needs to be
an organic experience to provide the maximum
opportunity for students.
MERRILL
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classroom and its elements. She…disseminates information
clearly and effectively so that students may learn it quickly,
remember it well, and reproduce it on demand.” We might
not like to think that teaching can be boiled down to these
course elements, but for man professors, I’ve just described
a good day in the classroom (p. 41).
My own experience bears this idea out. In one example,
a colleague was overheard to say, “Anyone with a loaf of
bread between his ears can teach English.” Despite this
masterful assessment of English teaching, It requires
more than a loaf of bread to teach English, if teaching is
more than content delivery. If a teacher merely regurgitates
information, and then that teacher assesses learning based
on similar regurgitation by his or her students, then, yes,
a loaf of bread would do. Perhaps some professions are of
a certain character where the sum of knowledge is a fact
set that must be committed to memory, but no discipline
in the Humanities conforms to this model. Part of the
frustration that some have with the Humanities is the
fact that the “deliverables” are often intangible, barely
brandable and certainly not vendible. My students in the
hard sciences complain that writing is rarely objective,
and that learning what the teacher wants is as important
as learning what good writing is. Similarly, textual
interpretation is expertly summarized by one Engineering
student as “a mass of worthless opinion”. This is certainly
true if teaching is merely content delivery. It, however,
cannot and must not be merely that. Huston has accurately
noted that this misperception is a key element of the
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problem. Our own Foundations program is a Petri dish
for this comparison. In order to teach Humanities, I had
to shadow some of the Humanities professors, learn the
background and character of the material, and then apply
it in the classroom. Potential error exists when such a class
boils down to “know these works and artists”, or “name
the elements of design”, with no application, with no
discussion of implications, or with no recognition of the
intense complexity of most great works of art, whether the
student remembers artist and work or not. These students
are not served by content delivery, and the faculty member
who believes that mastery of content is the first and only
step in teaching outside a field of expertise is bound to be
overmastered by content and eventually fail in its delivery.
Perhaps this narrow slice of the faculty pie is the group so
exorcised about teaching what they do not know, since all
they do is regurgitate information, bereft of independent
application or critical acumen. Thus, teaching outside their
narrow discipline completely robs them of the ability to
regurgitate information, their system of teaching.
Beyond these myths, the book addresses some very
practical matters about fears and academic models,
providing us with a shoulder to cry on as we consider
our inadequacies and insecurities in the classroom. I have
repented of my earliest and most negative assessment of
the book. Even so, we must return to the title, “Teaching
What [We] Don’t Know”. This idea must not be applied
without understanding her very narrow meaning of it. Dr.
Bain heaps superlatives on the text and then points out
that Huston “makes a strong case that teaching outside
your area of expertise is a serious and extensive problem”
(back cover). I am questioning whether it is, in fact, a
serious and extensive problem in the way that it might
be perceived by readers. “If we are prepared, we shall
not fear” (D&C 28:30) is a scripture we love to apply
to our teaching, and is one that is immediately germane
to this issue. Many of us might view teaching as a scary,
confrontational experience. In order to avoid falling into a
paranoid trap, we as faculty must be prepared. The secret to
teaching what you don’t know is simply to know enough
not to have to teach what you don’t know, and that requires
academic preparation. The danger of taking Huston’s
book at face value is to think she provides an antidote to
being unprepared. She does not, and if we go into a class
and fake it, we are being dishonest to ourselves and our
students, and we are violating the ethics of our profession.
As Ken Bain states in his own book, “without exception,
outstanding teachers know their subjects extremely well”
(2004, p. 15, italics added). He doesn’t say that knowing
the subject extremely well will make a person an excellent
teacher, but he does say that without knowing the subject
well, a person cannot be a great teacher. There are two
remedies for this: first, lots of lead time to prepare. I
had two semesters to prepare for teaching Foundations
Humanities. The professional development three-credit
leaves for two semesters made my experience as positive
and productive as possible. We are, generally, hard working
and good people who want to do our best in the classroom.
If given time for preparation, we can achieve this. The
second remedy is simply not to throw unready faculty into
classes outside their academic preparation. I know much
more about the Humanities in general than I did, but I
would be lying to my classes, myself, and my colleagues
if I didn’t admit that my class has a definite literary/
critical thinking bias. I don’t achieve the coverage that my
fellow FDHUM 101 teachers do, and I talk a lot more
about textual art in my class. Personally, I am constantly
casting about for connections to my own areas of expertise,
using those connections both as spring-boards to further
understanding and as mnemonic structures for in-class
discussions. In the absence of faculty perspicacity, time to
prepare, and restraint on the part of administration, things
do not go well when faculty members from one discipline
are asked to teach in another. To quote an esteemed
colleague in the English Department, “I worry that if we
teach students what we don’t know, that they’ll actually
learn what we don’t know.”
In the end, we cannot teach what we don’t know,
and if that is true, it is possible that the more we know
the better we teach, potentially. Any willingness to
diminish academic preparation is a blow to the quality of
education in general. Certainly exigencies exist that create
challenging moments for any teacher, but to make that an
acceptable rule by disseminating hints about how to handle
it is just one more step toward the reduction of skill and
the obsolescence of professors who care about students,
MERRILL
who can provide insights into the material, and who
actually improve the world by helping to create smarter,
wiser, and better people.
References
Bain, Ken. What the Best College Teachers Do. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard UP, 2004.
Benson, Larry D, ed. The Riverside Chaucer. New York: Houghton, 1987.
Huston, Therese. Teaching What You Don’t Know. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard UP, 2009.
The epitome of a
“good” teacher is
one who “dominates
the classroom
and its elements.
She…disseminates
information clearly
and effectively so that
students may learn it
quickly, remember it
well, and reproduce it
on demand.”
Therese Huston
|
19
“One of the great benefits of the Faculty
Conference format is the opportunity
it provides for instructors of diverse
backgrounds and perspectives to gather
and exchange ideas.”
Matthew Alba, Editor
MERRILL
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21
Creating High
Engagement
In The
Classroom
MA R K O RC HA RD
Evaluating student engagement is perhaps one of the
most critical skills a teacher can perform in the classroom.
Recognizing when a student is or is not engaged serves as
the North Star and the principle compass I use for class
instruction.
From my experience, there are several levels of student
engagement. These levels of engagement range from
students feeling isolated and detached from the teacher
and peers, with little concern for the course material, to
a mutual relationship where students contribute new
knowledge and understanding to both the instructor
and fellow peers. At this highest level the Holy Ghost is
engaged, so that “he that preacheth and he that receiveth,
understand one another, and both are edified and rejoice
together” (D&C 50:22). Moreover, I know deep learning
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occurs when the bulk of the class discussion is occupied
with inspired questions.
The turning point in my class instruction came
unexpectedly. I had worked diligently to enhance
participation in the class and prepared what I considered
to be an elaborate lesson plan with insightful questions
and opportunities for students to participate. I proposed
methods of preparation for students to study and even
created a rubric to award participation points for student
contributions. Yet, I still felt student engagement was
stagnated with resistance to real dialogue. The underlying
message was, “If I don’t comment in class, my grade goes
down.” To a degree, this method may have increased
student engagement; however, real commitment to
learning seemed like a young athlete on the sideline
wanting to receive playing time on the field, but never
given a chance. I knew something was missing, but I didn’t
know what. It seemed that the esprit de corps was based
on compliance rather than commitment.
Following one of these lower-engaged classes, I was
sitting in my office when an impression came to me: r
ather than blaming the student for low engagement, I
Rather than blaming
the student for low
engagement, I needed
to look inward.
needed to look inward. I remembered my mission when
the late Elder Robert E. Sackley shared a powerful
principle. He said, “Don’t blame the investigator if the
spirit isn’t present.” Much of my time was spent on what
the students needed to do to become engaged, rather than
what I needed to create. The environment I had set up in
my classes hadn’t encouraged participation as I thought,
but rather, weakened it. Though initially unaware to me,
my classroom structure was violating the principle of
agency by compelling students to participate rather than
giving them an option. “Whenever there is force, there is
always resistance.” It was the environment of compulsion
that was creating low spontaneity and rehearsed student
answers. This insight on my part, though subtle, was
significant in crafting a new approach for deep engagement
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in the classroom. Once I took responsibility for disengaged
students, I started looking for ways to create natural
opportunities, environments if you will, where all students
could participate without compulsion.
Safety in the Classroom
In an online article titled “How Can Research on the
Brain Inform Education: Emotions and the Mind”, the
Southwest Educational Development Laboratory
(SEDL, 2000) states:
A person's physical and emotional well-being are closely
linked to the ability to think and to learn effectively.
Emotionally stressful home or school environments are
counterproductive to students' attempts to learn. While
schools cannot control all the influences that impinge on a
young person's sense of safety and well-being, classrooms
and schools that build an atmosphere of trust and intellectual
safety will enhance learning.
When students feel singled out, disrespected, or
undervalued, they shut down into an almost resentful state
of mind. When a feeling of safety is violated, the learning
process ceases and students go into emotional survival.
Being aware of safety violations, even if subtle, is key to
establishing student participation and therefore higher
student engagement. I try never to ignore a prompting that
something is amiss with a student and that their feeling of
emotional safety is threatened.
There are two primary ways I work toward establishing
safety in the classroom. First, I assure students that the
classroom is literally a safe environment and that everyone
is a valuable contributor. I consciously model this in the
smallest details of class instruction. I try to be sensitive
and respond with deep interest to student questions or
comments. It is my experience that a student simply wants
to feel that they are heard and recognized. Safety is the
foundation and cornerstone of the learning environment
and must be protected fervently against anything that
would threaten otherwise. Students must feel safe, valued,
and loved for learning to occur. To have high student
engagement, nothing can supersede this principle.
A second way I work to establish safety is through the
principle of transparency. Covey (1989) quotes Emerson:
“What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I can’t hear
what you say” (p. 22). Students are sensitive to a professor’s
level of sincerity. If we say one thing but act out another,
trust becomes vulnerable. If learning really is a desirable
attribute of our students, then we as well have to model
learning along with our students. Being transparent means
to walk the path we invite others to walk. I am conscious
to never put myself above the students, but to see myself as
an equal partner in the learning process.
based on grammar, spelling, or sentence structure. Instead,
the journal is used as a “net” to capture personal insight
they receive during pre-class preparation and in-class
participation. “Yea, behold, I will tell you in your mind and
in your heart, by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon
you and which shall dwell in your heart. Now, behold, this
is the spirit of revelation; behold, this is the spirit by which
Moses brought the children of Israel through the Red Sea
on dry ground” (D&C 8:2-3). Though free-thinking, the
journal is not without structure. The following example
represents the general structure of the journal:
Preparation
Preparation
Participation
Record:
When students come to class properly prepared, they are
armed with new insight and instilled with a self-assurance
that help them cross over into new, unexplored territory.
Their pre-class preparation material provides the tools
necessary for them to “act and not be acted upon". With
this added confidence they begin to see themselves as
valued contributors rather than idle spectators in the
learning process. This sharing engages students at a higher
level, enhancing deeper, more applied learning.
The Journal
At the beginning of the semester, students are invited
to purchase a composition notebook which is dedicated
specifically for the class. The journal is conceptually
separated into two parts: the “left side” and the “right side".
The left side is used for pre-class preparation and the right
side is used for in-class participation. The principle theme
is to keep the journal simple, low stress, and free thinking.
Though I do have formal papers for my students, the
focus in the journal is different. Students are not graded
Respond:
The students develop their left-side preparation by first
scanning their pre-class assignment and then forming a
series of questions reflecting their interests. These questions
are written down under the journal section, “Record”. The
purposes of the questions are primarily to awaken the brain
and to engage the thinking process. According to Richard
W. Paul and Linda Elder (2000):
Thinking is not driven by answers but by questions. Had no
questions been asked by those who laid the foundation for
a field—for example, Physics or Biology—the field would
never have been developed in the first place. Furthermore,
every field stays alive only to the extent that fresh questions
are generated and taken seriously as the driving force in a
process of thinking. To think through or rethink anything, one
must ask questions that stimulate our thought.
When students come to class properly prepared,
they are armed with new insight and instilled
with a self-assurance that help them cross over
into new, unexplored territory.
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When one’s brain is presented with a question, it
seeks resolution. This activity increases the blood flow to
the thinking part of the brain, thus enhancing the ability
for the brain to assimilate new material and build upon
current knowledge or understanding.
I strongly encourage students to listen to their
own promptings and not worry too much about my
expectations. Giving the students autonomy in their
preparation creates ownership in course material and leads
to a higher level of engagement. Who is best to identify
their needs other than students themselves? If the students
are allowed and encouraged to build upon previous
knowledge, then new knowledge has a footing, which
enhances deeper learning. Certainly students who expose
their understanding to others have a better chance to test
their paradigm against true principles.
After the students have written down their initial
questions, they read the assigned topic and, under the
“Respond” section of their journals, share thoughts about
the reading in a conversational format. They discuss
the author’s points by asking new questions, making
assumptions, and agreeing or disagreeing with what the
author has written. The focus should be on the students’
interest, rather than what the instructor deems as necessary.
With proper student preparation and class participation,
the environment is conducive for self-discovery to take
place. Those principles needing to be taught by the
instructor seemingly manifest themselves on their own
with far deeper impact than when students are dictated to.
By completing an effective left-side preparation journal
entry, students are now properly equipped with new insights
and information to share with the class. This preparation
lends to greater emotional safety, which contributes to
higher participation and personal engagement.
The right side of the journal is the tool of engagement
and method for capturing powerful insights inside the
classroom. This is an excellent area where an instructor can
orchestrate their personal teaching traits for their desired
outcomes. Again, my North Star is student engagement.
Level of engagement is easily ascertained by observing the
students. For example, if student engagement drifts, the
instructor can immediately engage in the learning process
by having them write new ideas and insights on the right
side of the journal. Students can be invited to extract
key principles learned in their preparation, respond to
questions the instructor poses, or they can create their own
questions. The power I have discovered in this process is
that all students become engaged at a certain level because
everyone participates through writing. With fresh ideas
now written down on the right side, students are once again
equipped to share their thoughts in pairs, groups, or even
with the class without the fear of being put on the spot.
Class structure
There are several ways I use journals to create structure
where students can teach one another. Two key elements in
class structure are delegation of responsibility and student
accountability. For example, students are put into groups
of four and a responsibility is delegated to each person.
This is done by numbering each student one through four,
with each number assigned a specific role. It is critical
that clear instruction be given to each student regarding
their assigned role. Number one is assigned to be the
leader of the group. The leader’s responsibly is to make
sure everyone has an opportunity to share thoughts and
feel heard. Number two is given the assignment to be the
spokesperson for the group. Number three is the question
maker, a role responsible for creating a question based on
Effort to create a “question, comment,
question, comment” format is highly
desirable for deep engagement as the
students learn to ask questions.
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A peer asking a peer is one of the more powerful
experiences I have witnessed in the classroom
with regard to deep engagement.
the summary of the group discussion. Number four is the
summarizer, the person in the group that summarizes in
30 seconds the theme developed in their discussion group.
Different assignments change from day to day.
For example, the students number themselves from one to
four and then the assignments are made. This helps balance
out the assignments and prevents students from selfselecting specific roles.
Once the structure is in place for using journals and
groups, there is an unlimited number of ways an instructor
could vary how students participate. For example, students
could share thoughts and/or questions from their journals
with the whole class. Students could also fulfill an assigned
role and share personal insights in groups. Moreover,
the instructor could interject with specific questions
for students to discuss in their groups, or they could
pose questions to one another. The instructor could also
structure learning by going back-and-forth between group
discussion and class discussion, with both the students and
the instructor posing questions to the class. In the midst
of all the dialogue, journals could be used at any point in
time to clarify one's own thinking on an issue or to simply
articulate one's own thoughts or questions. These entries
can then become the impetus for further participation.
One simple arrangement I like to use to structure
learning is what I call student presentation. While in their
groups, the students develop a theme that resonates with
the contributions of each individual member. The question
maker, with the help of his team-mates, creates a question
based on the group’s summary of comments. At the
onset of the group presentation, the spokesperson briefly
summarizes the group’s discussion and then asks the class
the established question. By asking a question rather than
making a specific comment, students in the class are more
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engaged, leading to greater insight to the presenting group’s
theme. If the response is sluggish, I have all students answer
the presented question on the right side of their journal,
and if need be, randomly call on a student to respond.
It is desirable to have comments from the entire body
of the class rather than two or three outspoken students.
I have found that when students write down a response, they
are more apt to comment than otherwise. As students learn
to ask questions following comments, engagement moves
to yet a higher level. A peer asking a peer is one of the more
powerful experiences I have witnessed in the classroom with
regard to deep engagement. Effort to create a “question,
comment, question, comment” format is highly desirable for
deep engagement as the students learn to ask questions.
Many colleagues have asked how I grade the journal.
It is easier than one might imagine and I do it in two parts.
The first part is on word count. Students are assigned an
average of 500 words per reading assignment. Each reading
assignment is clearly marked with a heading and journal
entry number. By quickly scanning the reading assignment
from the beginning of each heading, it is easy to assess
appropriate journal length. Secondly, at the end of the
semester I have the students write a reflection paper based
entirely on their journal. The reflection paper is generally
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1,200 to 1,500 words and captures the principles most
meaningful to their learning experience. This assignment
is significant to students because they can revisit areas
where personal, deep learning occurred as recorded in their
journal entries.
Teaching and learning is an art. It has been a dynamic
process to me and evolves every semester with new
insight and deeper ways to create high engagement in the
classroom. I know there are many tools and methods in
which high engagement can be achieved. As an instructor
at this University, I applaud and look forward to better
ways to enhance student learning. For me, at this time, the
journal has provided that avenue to high engagement with
my students.
References
Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful lessons in
Personal Change. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989.
Paul, Richard. W., & Elder, Linda. The Role of Questions in Teaching, Thinking and
Learning. Critical Thinking: Basic Theory and Instructional Structures Handbook.
Foundation for Critical Thinking, 2000. Retrieved November 11, 2011 from http://
www.criticalthinking.org/pages/the-role-of-questions-in-teaching-thinking-andlearning/524.
Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL). How Can Research
on the Brain Inform Education: Emotions and the Mind. Classroom Compass
3(2). Retrieved November 12, 2011, from http://www.sedl.org/scimath/compass/
v03n02/1.html#programs.
Drilling Holes
and Critical
Thinking:
Reflections on Traveling
with the Learning and
Teaching Travel Committee
DANA E RO M R E LL
The Learning and Teaching Committees provide a
variety of resources and activities that facilitate faculty
efforts at BYU-Idaho. For instance, the Collaboration
Committee coordinates Learning Communities and
oversees the Spori Summit retreats, while the Dialogue
Committee organizes brown bag discussions and the
annual Faculty Conference. All of these provide valuable
opportunities for faculty from all disciplines to come
together and share their current insights and best teaching
practices. For its part, the Travel Committee helps enhance
the quality of learning and teaching at BYU-Idaho by
sending groups of faculty to teaching conferences or
ROMRELL
training workshops that occur off-campus at a variety of
locations around the country. Over the past three years we
have sent 123 faculty members to 22 different conferences
or workshops. All of the conferences have been attended
by interdisciplinary groups of faculty from across campus.
Some of the conferences have included presentations and
talks on a variety of topics relating to the scholarship of
teaching and learning, while others have focused on a
specific topic, such as “Critical Thinking” or “Learning and
the Brain”.
This past July, I was one of five faculty members who
attended the 31st International Conference on Critical
Thinking in Berkeley, California. The other faculty
members attending were from the physics, religion,
communications, and chemistry departments. My
experience attending the conference was beneficial not
only because of what I learned, but also because of the
relationships I forged with other faculty members from
across campus.
While attending the critical thinking conference, I
heard a fabulous story from another conference participant
who teaches in the automotive department at a community
college in Alberta, Canada. During a lunchtime
conversation he shared the story of a student who was
learning to patch a tire. The automotive shop at the college
had tires mounted on rims attached to the wall that were
intended to be used by students to practice patching a tire.
A student would remove a tire from the rim, drill a hole
in it (so that they would have a hole to repair), and then
patch the hole and remount the tire. This particular student
had finished the training, had demonstrated proficiency in
all of the steps, and was very capable of repairing a hole in
a tire. One day, he asked if he could bring in his personal
vehicle and use the shop to repair a leak in his tire. The
teacher agreed. The student brought in the car, raised it on
The Travel Committee
helps enhance the
quality of learning and
teaching at BYU-Idaho.
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the lift, removed the tire, and then proceeded to drill a hole
in his tire. It was clear that the student knew the process
of repairing a tire, but didn’t have any idea why the process
worked.
As a math teacher I think my students often approach
solving a math problem by “drilling a hole in it”. They learn
all the steps to some mathematical process and show they
are able to follow all of the steps. But then in a different
context, they use that technique without making sure they
understand whether the technique is appropriate for that
situation. For example, students learn that 2x/2=x, so they
incorrectly assume that (2x+1)/2=x+1. I want to encourage
my students to think critically about a mathematical
process. I want them to understand why it works. When
they understand why it works they will better understand
when it is appropriate to use that method in other contexts.
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At the critical thinking conference I gained a few
ideas about how to help my students think critically. I have
been working with my students on “critical reading”. Using
techniques I learned at the conference, I am trying to
help them carefully read each sentence of a given passage,
paraphrase it, and elaborate on it before they move on to
the next sentence. I am also encouraging metacognition
skills with my students. Metacognition is defined as the
process of thinking about your thinking process. I hope
that as my students consciously make an effort to think
about the process of their thinking, they will learn to better
recognize when they don’t understand the concept behind
a mathematical process. Recognizing when they don’t
understand a concept helps them avoid “drilling a hole” by
applying the concept incorrectly.
I love attending conferences because they give me the
opportunity to think critically about my teaching. I return
Recognizing when they don’t understand a
concept helps them avoid “drilling a hole” by
applying the concept incorrectly.
excited and encouraged to improve and try something
new. I hope I am never guilty of “drilling a hole” in my
instructional methods. I hope I don’t choose to teach a
particular way just because that is how I have always done
it. I appreciate the opportunity that attending a conference
gives me to step back and examine my teaching from a
new viewpoint.
For more information on the Learning and Teaching
Travel Committee and upcoming conferences, please
contact a member of the committee or visit the Travel
Committee website at http://beta.byui.edu/learningteaching/faculty-committees/travel.
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“ I am convinced the Lord is reaching out to us to lift us to even higher
ground. He has prepared the way for us to become much more
effective and powerful in our learning and in our teaching.”
President Kim B. Clark
Best Practices for Reaching
both Digital Natives and Digital
Immigrants in Online Instruction
THO M AS PAS K ET T
Marc Prensky (2001) coined the term “digital natives”
in his article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. His
premise was that “Today’s students are no longer the
people our educational system was designed to teach”
(p. 1). He argued that today’s students represent the first
generation to grow up with new technology. However,
the reality I would like to propose is that today’s students
are not too different from the students who grew up with
the Iron Horse, the addition of the telephone to every
home, the electric light, the 8-track tape player, or even
the automobile. Each time technology advances, education
adapts to meet the needs of the student.
Digital natives are defined as students who “have
spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers,
videogames, digital music, … cell phones, and all the
other … tools of the digital age” (Prensky, 2011, p. 1).
These students have never used a rotary phone or cassette
recorder. Their games have always been electronic: Wii,
PlayStation, or Xbox. Most have never thought of life
without a cell phone. Even their music is digital; they
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purchase one song at a time from iTunes. Written
communication is in the form of texting and, to a lesser
extent, email.
Digital immigrants, on the other hand, are those who
merely use the technology, rather than have technology
as a focus in their lives. Digital immigrants use the
internet to find information. They prefer face-to-face
communication and print off emails to keep a hard copy.
Digital immigrants remember receiving a handwritten
letter and their games were purchased from Mattel or
Milton Bradley.
The online adjunct faculty of BYU-Idaho are what
I call “digital pioneers”. Every day we learn new ways to
connect with students, and meet the multiple intelligences
that are in our courses: “…the Lord said unto me These
two facts do exist, that there are two spirits, one being
more intelligent than the other; there shall be another
more intelligent than they; I am the Lord thy God, I am
more intelligent than they all” (Abraham 3:19). We are
fortunate that we are guided daily by the Spirit as we seek
the best methods to deliver the content of online learning.
I believe that whether our students are digital natives
or digital immigrants, our task as digital pioneers is to
discover the best ways to reach all of them.
Judith V. Boettcher (2011) offered Ten Best Practices
for Teaching Online. Below is a summary of each practice,
with my thoughts on what online instructors at BYUIdaho are doing to apply them in our courses. These
practices align with the three steps of the BYU-Idaho
Learning Model (Prepare, Teach One Another, and Ponder
and Prove), and as with any course at BYU-Idaho, for
these ten practices to be most effective, online instructors
must also help learners to exercise faith, learn by the Holy
Ghost, lay hold on the Word of God, act for themselves,
and love, serve and teach one another.
Best Practice 1: Be Present at the Course Site
Students expect that their instructors will be present in an
online course multiple times a week, and at best, daily. An
online instructor should develop three types of presence:
PASKETT
social presence, teaching presence, and cognitive/content
presence. In most online courses, the dialogue of faculty
to the student is provided through (1) mini-lectures in
text or in video or audio podcasts, (2) weekly coaching
and reminder announcements, and (3) explanations or
interactions with the students. Online instructors at
BYU-Idaho are expected to engage their classes daily
during the workweek and hold virtual office hours weekly.
Instructors should establish clear expectations as to
when they will be present or not at the beginning of a
course. “Being present” in a course can be accomplished
in a variety of ways: commenting on discussion posts,
sending announcements, replying to email, or calling the
disengaged student. BYU-Idaho expects its online faculty
to have grades posted within one week of the assignment
deadline and email responded to within 24 hours.
Students who feel abandoned or alone may post
questions or comments such as, “Is anybody there?” or “I
am not sure if this is where I am supposed to post this…”
When instructors see these, they need to react and reaffirm
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class expectations of participation. However, experience
has taught me that expectations may not be enough to
motivate every student. It is important for instructors
to maintain an active presence by engaging in course
activities and assessing student participation. For example,
discussion posts that are not read and graded by the
instructor are less likely to have participants.
Best Practice 2: Create a Supportive Online
Course Community
At BYU-Idaho, we launch each course with personal
introduction postings so that students can get to know one
another, their goals and fears, and past experience with
the subject matter. Online faculty members also include a
profile about their experiences and interests.
Instructors are encouraged to use open-student
forums for students to post and request help and assistance
from each other through various student-to-student tools
such as discussions, help areas, Adobe Connect, Skype,
etc. Discussion boards or course newsletters can be used to
celebrate births, engagements, weddings, mission calls, new
jobs, and other times to cheer collectively as a class. Online
instructors at BYU-Idaho respond to student questions
by communicating clearly and respectfully with them.
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Community building is further enhanced when instructors
actively participate in student discussions and regularly
reach out to those who need additional support, guidance,
and encouragement.
Online courses also need to have group activities
that foster an online community and allow students
to engage their peers. Setting up small groups of three
to five students early in the semester allows them to
assume responsibility for supportive mentoring and for
summarizing key points of a class assignment—they
teach one-another. The use of problem-solving forums or
discussion boards with students or student teams assigned
to monitor, support, or direct questions during a lesson
helps to further foster community development.
Best Practice 3: Share a Set of Clear
Expectations for Your Students and for Yourself
Expectations should be clearly established, stating for
instance how you will communicate, how much time
students should be working on the course each week,
how student groups will be organized, how often student
groups will meet, deadlines for submitting assignments,
and when virtual office hours will be held, etc. The Online
Course Development team at BYU-Idaho has included
a lesson schedule at the beginning of each week, letting
students know what to expect throughout the week and
encouraging them to plan accordingly. For example,
often before a major test or assignment, faculty will hold
special virtual office hours to prepare students and resolve
concerns. Students should be aware of this and know
when their instructors will be available either by chat/live
classroom, email, or phone.
Online instructors model the expectations they have
of their students. They embrace the mission, vision and
standards of BYU-Idaho and hold themselves to high
principles of personal honor. These instructors follow the
principles and steps of the BYU-Idaho Learning Model
that they expect their students to follow. They listen and
respond to the needs of the students, respect their students,
their campus and online colleagues, and most importantly,
they listen to the Spirit.
Best Practice 4: Use a Variety of Large Group,
Small Group, and Individual Work Experiences
Working in teams is particularly effective when working
on complex case studies or scenarios for the first time.
Students will resist being organized into groups. Many
have the idea that an online course is an independent study.
At BYU-Idaho this is not the case. Online courses have
rigor and solid content. Instructors who follow the Spirit
when organizing student groups can expect to receive
student feedback like this:
One thing that has stuck out for me this week was the
opportunity to spend time and talk about the assignments to
my fellow group members. Especially regarding one question
within the homework assignment. The majority of the group
had the same answer while one had a different answer.
Usually when things go down, majority rules. However, when
that individual spoke out and was very adamant about his
conclusion, which made sense, we “swallowed our pride”
and figured out that he was correct and made perfect sense.
Without having groups to talk about what we think we know
and work it out, we would have all been wrong and stayed
wrong until someone would have told us different. It's a great
blessing to have this chance to work in groups and get to
know one another. (Jon N., 2011)
Best Practice 5: Use Both Synchronous and
Asynchronous Activities
The value of an online instructor connecting with the
students in real time is just as important as that of the
instructor in a live course. However, there are times
when students need to reach conclusions on their own.
The variety of activities that are now available online
makes it possible to create many types of effective
learning environments. We now have course management
systems, virtual live classrooms, and audio tools that
make it possible to do almost everything that is done in
a campus classroom. Students can submit presentations,
conduct research, and even present project-based learning
assignments such as drafting, sculptures, and auto repair.
Best Practice 6: Informal Course Feedback
Early in the course (about week 3), instructors should seek
informal feedback from the students on how the course is
going, and ask if they have suggestions for improvement.
Knowing what the students are experiencing early in
the course allows for instructors to make adjustments,
clarifications, and offer additional support. This is a
formative evaluation for the course—the data collected
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are for the use of the instructor to improve the course and
should not be required or graded.
Best Practice 7: Prepare Discussion Posts
that Invite Questions, Discussions, Reflections
and Responses
When using discussion boards, a few simple procedures
help to keep the students engaged:
• Provide an open question and answer forum. Open-
ended questions encourage the learner to explore and
research the subject and concepts being studied. Provide
the student with the choice to respond to one or two
discussion-thread options.
• Encourage critical or creative thinking. Stagger the due
to answer. This gives them a choice in the direction of their
own learning inquiry.
• Achieve social interaction and community building—have
the students get to know each other personally and
intellectually. Provide guidelines and instructions on how
students can and should respond to others.
• Validating experiences can build a student’s confidence.
While we think that online students are all tech savvy, the
reality is that many are just as unsure today as they were
twenty years ago. The online student community consists
of students of all ages and backgrounds, but they all share
one thing in common: They need to know that they matter
and that their opinions have value.
• Support students in their own reflections and inquiries.
dates for posts and responses. This will allow more time for
Let the Spirit influence your responses. As online
reflection and fewer comments that restate the responses
instructors we are a powerful tool for bringing about the
of others. Consider requiring a mid-point summary. When
insight and understanding given by the Holy Ghost, the
replying to student postings, instructors should model good
bearer of all truth.
Socratic-type probing and follow-up questions, such as,
• Remember to log in to your course at least 5 times a
“Why do you think that?” and “What is your reasoning?”
Do not post questions soliciting basic facts, or questions for week–answer email, monitor discussions, post reminders,
and hold online office hours.
which there is an obvious yes/no response.
Reinforce domain or procedural processes. Let the
Best Practice 8: Focus on Content Resources,
students know that responses like “I agree” and “Ditto”
Applications, Links to Current Events, and
are not complete. Require two-part responses to posted
Examples that are Easily Accessed from the
questions. Ask clarifying questions such as, “Why do
Learners’ Computers
you agree?” or “What questions are left unanswered?”
to encourage students to think about what they know or
With the increased cost of textbooks, today’s students are
don’t know. Offer two or more questions for the students
more likely to seek information on the internet than to
purchase a book. While publishers continue to provide
more eBooks, the savings may not meet the students’ need.
Podcasts, web links, YouTube content, and industry web
pages offer current and accurate information that can be
accessed in any time zone and in any country. Try letting
the students help discover current course content and
verify that links are active.
Best Practice 9: Combine Core Concept
Learning with Customized and
Personalized Learning
of increasingly complex and even customized projects
applying these core concepts. Many online students are
off-track and working full-time. Assignments and projects
that support the professional goals of these students
generally result in the student feeling that the learning is
more personal. Online assignments should require students
“…to create, talk, write, explain, analyze, judge, report, and
inquire” Boettcher (2011). A student’s self awareness of
knowledge acquisition increases when learning activities
incorporate these skills.
BYU-Idaho faculty have provided the core concepts to be
learned in each online course, as well as the performance
goals and the assessment tools for the course. The
online instructor then mentors learners through a set
Students seem to be in a heightened state of stress towards
the end of a weekly lesson. Take time to remind the
PASKETT
Best Practice 10: Plan a Good Closing and Wrap
Activity for Each Lesson and for the Course
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students what they have learned. This can be done with
digital games, discussion boards, or weekly reflection posts.
Instructors should post announcements and/or emails that
explain what to expect the next week.
When ending the course, individual and/or group
presentations are a great way for course summaries to be
delivered. Course wikis that allow students to write a letter
of what to expect to the next class is another way that
students can reflect on what they experienced and
learned. This is a time to celebrate the successful
completion of the course.
takes place. Development teams should ask, “How will the
student interpret this?” “How long will it take to complete?”
“What is the desired outcome?” And “What is the best tool
to use for delivery?” As technology continues to advance,
more tools become available to deliver course material.
A guiding rule-of-thumb should be, “just because I can
use this tool, should I?” As instructors sincerely strive to
follow best practices for online teaching, they will be wellequipped to make good decisions that will enable them to
reach all online learners—including the digital natives.
Conclusion
References
In sum, the most important aspect of developing an online
course is to keep the needs of the students as the priority.
It is not about how much content can be loaded into the
course, but rather, the amount of learning engagement that
Prensky, Marc. Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon 9 (5), 2001.
Retrieved January 29, 2011 from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20
-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf
Boettcher, Judith. V. Ten Best Practices for Teaching: Online Quick Guide for New
Online Faculty, 2011. Retrieved July 19, 2011 from http://www.designingforlearning.info/services/writing/ecoach/tenbest.html
Why Honest
Students
Can Be
Impervious to
Instruction
RYAN NI E LS O N
Why is it that honest, interested, hard-working students
can be impervious to instruction? I discovered an answer
to this question by teaching–and thus learning–with the
Light, Sound, and Perception course committee at BYUIdaho. The answer is likely just this: they don’t expect what
we present, and as a result, they may filter out our message
before it is psychologically and/or biologically possible to
even be aware of it. The ability to filter sensory stimuli is
a necessary coping strategy. The volume of information
that our senses take in is overwhelming, and so we are
equipped to filter out all but the important parts. For this
reason, people tend to miss large, significant changes to
NIELSON
their environment which they do not expect. Psychologists
call this “change-blindness” (Goldstein, 2007). I invite you
to experience this phenomenon by finding one of many
“awareness test” videos on YouTube. Several of my favorites
are advertisements sponsored by London Cyclists, who
appear to be fed up with being run over. These clips are
entertaining. The simplest and most compelling is about
two teams under a bridge passing basketballs. You can
access it on YouTube with the oddly inaccurate search
terms “gorilla dancing basketball”.
I used to find it easy to attribute students’ difficulties
with learning what I am teaching to their simply being
inattentive at a critical juncture, or to just not trusting me
to be right. But my in-service with the Light, Sound, and
Perception course has convinced me that students may
inadvertently filter me out because this is inherently a
part of who we are. It appears that we are psychologically
conditioned and physiologically constructed such that it
may be impossible to discern something we do not expect.
To understand how this is true, let’s look at some principles
of both the psychology and the biology of perception that
can lead to our filtering incoming information and can
direct our thinking.
First the psychology.
The psychological Gestalt principles of grouping
(Goldstein, 2007) identify patterns in how we tend to
group things we see for the purpose of making meaning.
It appears that we
are psychologically
conditioned and
physiologically
constructed such that
it may be impossible to
discern something we
do not expect.
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41
They don’t
expect what we
present, and as
a result, they
may filter out
our message
before it is
psychologically
and / or
biologically
possible to even
be aware of it.
Some of these principles include similarity, proximity or
closeness, common fate, good continuation, closure, and
figure-background. These principles are among those
which make art meaningful, or that make it work for
humans, because they represent ways in which we group
things for the purpose of extracting meaning. Some
of them represent grouping things in a way to make
wholeness out of partial information. For example, let’s
examine the principles of good continuation and closure,
since these particularly have an impact on filtering. First,
good continuation is the principle of seeing something as a
single object which continues, even though the colors and
values which make up its appearance are not continuous.
For instance, this allows us to distinguish and perceive
a snake lit by the patchwork of light through leaves as a
single object. The whole snake is visible, but the colors
and shading which make up the image are not continuous.
We apply our expectation, based on prior knowledge, to
make them continuous to us, to give meaning to
this visual information.
Closure is a closely related principle. It allows us to
perceive as continuous things which are behind obstacles.
For example, in the sequence of images shown in
Figure 2, the second and third images represent possible
interpretations of the first image. The principle of closure
suggests that we would likely interpret the first image as a
continuous wall behind a tree (second image), rather than
as two walls behind the tree (last image), even if this last
option were the right one. Again, our expectation and prior
knowledge affect our perceptions.
This principle describes how we readily interpret the
photograph in Figure 3 as containing an entire snake under
the leaves (meaning), rather than requiring the entire snake
be visible in order to recognize it.
I also conclude from this that if I do not expect the
continuous snake or the shape behind the tree, I may
not see them; in other words, I may not give meaning to
the information.
Let’s turn now to some biology.
The exact connections between the psychology and
biology of perception are sometimes hard to find. However,
the ones we do find are often incredibly compelling. We’ll
look at the biology of both visual and auditory processing,
where it appears that we are physiologically constructed
such that it may be impossible to discern something we
do not expect. First, in visual processing, information from
our eye travels to the center of the brain, where it passes
through a switchboard of sorts–called the lateral geniculate
nucleus, or LGN. From here, it goes to the occipital lobe,
where the visual information is assembled into an image.
The occipital lobe is at the back of the brain. Previous to
the occipital lobe the visual information is not organized
in a manner which might be considered an image. Image
information is then sent forward to the temporal lobe just
inside of where our ears are located. Here we can recognize
faces and other objects.
The LGN, or “switchboard”, is where the funny
stuff happens. Here connections are made. Its job is to
modulate the bits of information coming from the eye.
Expected information may be amplified, while unexpected
information may be dampened. Eighty percent of the
connections in the LGN come from the occipital lobe (Bear et
al., 2007). I infer from that that, in effect, in the LGN our
expectations allow us to do a “want this, don’t want that”
triage of new visual information which has not as yet been
formed into an image in the brain. In other words, if we
NIELSON
Do we ever offer our
students information
to the point of being
overwhelming?
don’t expect it, it may be biologically impossible for us to see it!
Similarly, our ear can be incredibly effective at finding
only what we expect to hear. Our physiology mechanically
amplifies the motions of the sensing organ at places
corresponding to just the frequencies we expect to hear.
The sensing organ of the ear, called the basilar membrane,
is coiled up in the snail-shaped cochlea. If we were to unroll
this membrane, we would observe that its stiffness and
density change progressively along its length. Incoming
sound is transmitted along the chamber bounded by this
organ until it reaches the part whose stiffness and density
combination have a frequency which matches the sound.
This part of the membrane is then easily moved by the
sound—it resonates. The motion jambs sensory hair-cells
against a fixed surface, triggering neural responses.
However, the medial geniculate nucleus, or MGN (a
close neighbor to the LGN we met in the visual system),
sends information to another class of hair-cells in the
basilar membrane, which will begin to contract and pump,
moving the basilar membrane at the places corresponding
to the particular frequencies that we want amplified—those
from which we expect to have meaning. So, the MGN
selects the audio information we get to hear, just as the
LGN selected the visual information we got to see. This
means that at some level we are filtering what we can hear.
Here is an example of how this works. The voice
of my wife, Darla, has a particular family of frequencies
which characterize it. My MGN can amplify the motion
of the basilar membrane at those frequencies, emphasizing
them over the rest of the frequencies. Therefore, I can
hear her voice in what would otherwise be a confusion
of sound. In other words, my body is structured so that I
can make meaning from my environment by applying my
expectations to filter the sound. Note, however, that we are
probably filtering out sounds before they reach the part of the
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43
brain that could have recognized them.
Now let’s look at the work of the magician Derren
Brown (2011) as an example of how all of this can work
against us. In his “Person Swap” exercise, he holds up a
map and asks passers-by for directions to a particular
place. While the good Samaritans are working through
the problem, they are interrupted by a big picture carried
between them and the magician. With their visual memory
loaded with images of the path and destination, they are
not paying as much attention to their own visual field.
They expect it to remain the same, and very few notice
that Derren is replaced by someone else. They continue
giving directions to the now different stranger. This lack of
attention happens regardless of the direction- seeker being
replaced by someone of a different race, hair color, or even
gender. If you watch the video, you will see one fellow who
actually does notice a difference, and then immediately
dismisses his own observation to agree with his expectation.
“I could have sworn there was another guy…,” he says, and
then finishes giving his directions.
How many times have our students run into a new
idea, and like this man, mentally dusted themselves
off and continued with their own thinking? Actually,
given the biological filters of our body, not to mention
the psychological ones, this inattention should not be
surprising. In fact, it is not actually inattention. Rather, it is
the only way in which we can deal with the overwhelming
body of detail we can detect. Do we ever offer our students
information to the point of being overwhelming? My point
here is that this characteristic of filtering out the new, the
unfamiliar, and the unexpected is a part of who we are; a
part of being human.
when necessary, gently but firmly help them confront the
fact that their current thinking doesn’t work; that it makes
wrong predictions. Map for them a way to better thinking.
Fourth, listen—really listen. Learn and use listening skills at
every opportunity. Students who are willing to share their
real thinking are giving us a great gift. They are risking a
lot in sharing their thinking. Be aware and respectful of
that risk. And fifth, with regard to presenting information,
do what you can to avoid overwhelming students with the
unexpected. As a student, I was often taught by what I
sometimes call the “surprise method”; that is, my professor
would lecture with no particular stated purpose, starting
with specific conditions, applying certain principles, and
“Surprise! The double angle formula for sines pops out!”
While discovery is a powerful method by which we can
learn, total surprise in lecture is not always effective. I now
try to be very direct in my approach most of the time. I try
to carefully craft my discovery activities to be very complete
and have lots of guidance.
My interdisciplinary experience with the Foundations
of Science course, Light, Sound, and Perception, has
enriched my appreciation of students as children of a
loving Heavenly Father. It has enriched my teaching, and
my life.
So, what can we do about this as instructors?
I have resolved to do the following things. First,
be worthy of the students’ trust—on every level I can.
Changing your thinking is not a small matter. Therefore, we
are asking huge and risky things of students in classes when
we ask them to change their thinking. Second, provide a safe
environment in which they may make mistakes with little
risk or penalty, at least as they are learning.
I have always thought that this safe place in which to
make mistakes in class sounded like the time of “probation”
spoken of in the Book of Mormon (cf. 2 Nephi 2:21). Third,
References
NIELSON
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to my committee members who have
helped me arrive at this understanding, and helped with
images and editing: Todd Lines, Clair Eckersell, Yohan
Delton, and Jon Johnson. Additional thanks to Susan Grover who lent an outside eye to this article.
Goldstein, E. Bruce. Sensation and Perception, 7th ed. Thompson Wadsworth, 2007.
Bear, Mark F., Barry W. Connors and Michael A. Paradiso. Neuroscience: exploring
the brain, edited by Anonymous 3rd ed. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2007.
Brown, Derren. "Derren Brown–Person Swap". November 14, 2011.
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“ Teach ye diligently and my grace shall attend you,
that you may be instructed more perfectly in theory,
in principle, in doctrine, in the law of the gospel, in all
things that pertain unto the kingdom of God, that are
expedient for you to understand.”
D&C 88:78
their first contact with the course, Bain argues that the
syllabus should invite students to be active participants in an
issue of importance to them. The last part of that sentence–
that the material needs to be important to them–is the key
to the promising syllabus.
The Parts of the Promising Syllabus
Reaching
the Strategic
Learner: A
Case Study
RUTH J. A R NE L L
This article is based off of notes that I took while attending a
syllabus workshop presented by Ken Bain in April 2011. As
such, it is a combination of his wording and mine. Any felicitous
phrasing is probably Bain’s.
As faculty at Brigham Young University–Idaho, we
had the opportunity in April 2011 to attend a workshop
on syllabus design with Ken Bain, author of What the Best
College Teachers Do (Bain, 2004). The workshop focused
on what Bain calls “the promising syllabus”. The promising
syllabus is designed to be an invitation to students to engage
in a conversation about what they will be doing over the
course of a semester and about the nature and process of
learning. Rather than having a legal document that deadens
student interest and overwhelms them with regulation as
PERSPECTIVE
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The first step in the promising syllabus comes before
our students see the syllabus at all. The first thing a professor
needs to do is create an environment where the students’
mental model does not work. Bain refers to this as an
“expectation failure”. And then, more importantly, the
professor has to get the student to care that their mental
model does not work. This is typically done through
presenting a core issue in a way that connects the students’
questions about the material with the instructor’s goals for
the class.
How do we do this? Typically, this happens with a story
that poses a question with which students have to grapple.
For example, when teaching a class in Ancient Political
Theory, I can start out with the following example: “A recent
poll found that two-thirds of Americans think we should
reduce the amount of the Federal budget devoted to foreign
aid. When the same group of people was asked what the
appropriate percentage of the budget to devote to foreign
aid should be, the average amount was twelve times what
is currently expended.” Once students stop laughing, I then
pose the simple question, “With that level of understanding
being demonstrated by citizens, why do we think that the
average person should have any say in government?”
Telling a group of red-blooded, red-voting college
students that democracy is a really bad way to run a
government creates an environment in which their mental
It made me be more
focused as a teacher,
and that added
beneficial outcomes for
student learning as well.
More than just a list of outcomes and textbooks,
the syllabus then describes what the student will
know, do, or be at the end of the course if they
participate in this endeavor with the instructor.
models (e.g., democracy = good) are challenged in a
systematic way. That question–why should the average
citizen be involved in politics–then becomes the question
around which the rest of the semester is built. As students
discuss different reasons supporting democratic forms of
government, they begin to do political theory before they
know political theory. It also forces them to bump up against
their own ignorance. The question that is presented in the
initial story then becomes part of the promising syllabus.
The syllabus becomes an invitation to students to continue
that dialog over the course of the semester. More than
just a list of outcomes and textbooks, the syllabus then
describes what the student will know, do, or be at the end
of the course if they participate in this endeavor with the
instructor.
The promise or invitation is just the first part of the
promising syllabus. The second key part is to describe what
students will be doing in the course to achieve the vision of
the deep learner that we have set before them. Bain counsels
that we avoid the language of requirements, which I found
difficult to do. He suggests that rather than tests, we call
them “opportunities to demonstrate learning”. The grading
policy–what Bain calls “the beginning of a conversation
about how you and I will come to understand the nature and
progress of your learning” is the final piece of a promising
syllabus. This is the part that Bain says doesn’t have a
right answer. The decision will be up to individual faculty
members, but the key point is to have a conversation about
what grading means with the students.
How the Promising Syllabus
changed my teaching
While I had already started my classes with a story and
question, this workshop made me rethink how I was using
ARNELL
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49
that question. Previously, I had done it to give students a
way to experience the way that I run a classroom and my
teaching persona. Additionally, it allowed for substance to be
covered in a way that would not meaningfully disadvantage
students who registered late for classes. Now it serves as
a focus point for the entire semester. Students were able
to connect with the core of the class from day one, which
allowed them a new way to access difficult material.
Additionally, it provided a guide for me in choosing
how I would present material in classes. It made me
be more focused as a teacher, and that added beneficial
outcomes for student learning as well. Humans are story
telling creatures, which makes telling stories a natural way
to learn. Having students view the discipline as the natural
unfolding of a story is a natural way for students to learn.
I highly recommend Harvard professor Michael Sandel’s
course, What is Justice?, which is available to watch at
www.justiceharvard.org for further examples of teaching
through storytelling.
Of course, I made direct changes to my syllabus. In
addition to changes that I discussed previously, I took much
of the legalese components of my syllabus (e.g., late policies,
attendance, laptops, etc.) and moved them into footnotes.
It’s been my experience that students don’t really read them
anyway; you just need to be able to point to them in case of
a complaint. For examples of additional promising syllabi,
you can go to www.bestteachersinstitute.org and see actual
used syllabi from a variety of disciplines.
I found the most important thing that I could do was
explicitly give students permission to fail. Many strategic
learners are interested in the health of their GPA for
important reasons. Needing to keep the GPA high can
frequently lead to students playing it safe and not taking
intellectual risks that are necessary for innovative and
interesting work. All of my syllabi now contain a section
that reads very similar to the following:
If, at the end of the semester you are on the boundary
between two grades, I reserve the right to bump you to
a higher grade if you have been awesome throughout the
semester. What do I mean by awesome?
I love baseball. One of the biggest thrills in baseball is hearing
the crack of the bat as a hitter swings with all his might and
connects right on the sweet spot and you watch that ball soar
for the fences. I want you all demonstrating your homerun
swings in here. We’re not aiming for intentional walks, or
safe little pop flies to shallow right. I want your best Babe
Ruth impersonations–point to the fences and swing with your
might. It doesn’t matter to me if you fail spectacularly. I’d
rather you strike out swinging then take a base on balls. Be
bold. Be creative. Be awesome. And it will be good.
It is important for students–especially students who
have come of age in an educational system that stresses
objective test performance–to know that learning is a
creative, messy, involved and complicated process. Giving
students express permission to spectacularly fail created
an environment in my classes where students were more
comfortable with taking bold risks in the projects in a way I
hadn’t seen before.
Changes that I saw in my students
Bain’s promise to those who use the promising syllabus
is that it will help students become deep learners. How
would I know if that had happened? What outcomes would
I use to measure this progress? An easy option would be to
The promising syllabus is designed to elicit that
faith from the professors, and make it explicit to
students. By creating an atmosphere of faith, it
enhances the learning that can take place for both
teacher and student.
PERSPECTIVE
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50
measure changes in grades. However, with the promising
syllabus, the way semester grades were calculated changed,
and so I think there is enough measurement bias to not
allow for a meaningful comparison. Average grades were
slightly higher the semester I changed to the promising
syllabus, but not to a statistically significant degree.
Student engagement is another potential metric.
While the increase in non-graded assignments did allow
some students to safely disengage, it also seemed to free
up students to participate in deeper ways. I saw an increase
in theoretical analysis and student ability to adapt learned
material to new situations. I had a colleague pop his head
into my office to tell me he had just walked past an open
classroom and had seen a group of my students huddled
over their laptops comparing statistical analysis reports
(remember, I teach social science, so most of my majors
chose their major at least in part because they don’t like
math). I had promised them at the beginning of the statistics
unit that they would eventually find stats really cool. He
told me that they were all excited because of the high
adjusted r2 they had obtained in their original research.
Another student, after I explained the logic behind linear
regression, said, “I knew when they taught me algebra in
junior high, that there was something important about it,
ARNELL
but I could never figure out what. Now I know why it’s so
important. This is cool!” Students actually become excited
about the discipline, which increases their own sense of
commitment to it.
Finally, overall student performance increased. Some
students you know will do high quality work, regardless of
the situation you put them in. Those students did not change
under the promising syllabus. Where I saw remarkable
improvement was from your average, back row, goofy
student. One of the aspects of the promising syllabus that I
was most doubtful about was that it would take the strategic
Giving students
express permission to
spectacularly fail created
an environment in my
classes where students
were more comfortable
with taking bold risks.
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learners, especially those who just want a C and to get out of
there, and work some sort of mystical change in them.
I allow students the freedom to choose to form their
own groups or to work alone on the final project. One
particular set of students especially worried me as I saw
them form their group. All of them were middling students
with middling commitment to the class. As a group, they
were extraordinary though. They worked together with
a level of commitment and excitement that I haven’t
frequently seen in students. Giving them the opportunity
to be deep learners, with the expectation from me that they
were all capable of being deep learners, seemed to make a
difference. In all of my classes, students that previously had
been middle-of-the-pack students produced final projects
that were qualitatively equivalent to work done by your
typical A students.
Conclusion
A final caveat about using the promising syllabus is
in order here. Breaking the mental models of students
is emotionally tricky work, both for the instructor and
the students. It is important that the syllabus shows the
students how their mental models will be reconstructed, but
moreover, it is imperative that professors cultivate a teaching
persona that allows for students to have emotional reactions
to the material as well. When learners realize their own
ignorance, this can evoke a range of emotions from them;
I’ve had students get angry in class, tell me how much they
hate the assignments, or just completely shut down and
refuse to engage. I did more emotional work with students
in this semester than I had previously, from just talking to
them after class, to following up on facial expressions or
sending emails to those who seemed to be struggling in
some manner.
Henry B. Eyring quoted C. Rolland Christensen, one of
his professors, as saying:
I believe in the unlimited potential of every student. At
first glance they range, like instructors, from mediocre to
magnificent. But potential is invisible to the superficial gaze.
It takes faith to discern it, but I have witnessed too many
academic miracles to doubt its existence. I now view each
student as ‘material for a work of art.’ If I have faith, deep
PERSPECTIVE
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52
faith, in students’ capacities for creativity and growth, how
very much we can accomplish together. If, on the other hand,
I fail to believe in that potential, my failure sows seeds of
doubt. Students read our negative signals, however carefully
cloaked, and retreat from creative risk to the ‘just possible.’
When this happens, everyone loses (Eyring, 1991).
The promising syllabus is designed to elicit that faith
from the professors, and make it explicit to students. By
creating an atmosphere of faith, it enhances the learning that
can take place for both teacher and student.
References
Bain, Ken. What the Best College Teachers Do. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2004.
Eyring, Henry B. Teaching is a Moral Act. Speeches, BYU Annual University
Conference, August 27, 1991.
t THE LIGHTER SIDE
A Power
Surge
DARIS HOWA R D
As the publication committee, we hope to include a small
section to Perspective that will share some of the humor and
inspiration of teaching and learning. We are calling it “The
Lighter Side”. As such, we request you send us your stories and
anecdotes, both humorous and inspirational. You can send them
to us at [email protected] or [email protected] or to any
member of our committee.
As the newest faculty member in the department, I was
given the responsibility for the computer equipment. This
not only included our student computer lab, but also all of
the computers for our faculty.
Since we had used up all of our office space for our
current faculty, the department decided to remodel our
storage room into an office for our newest hire. The work
on the office was to be done by the university’s central
maintenance group.
The maintenance group did the remodel, and once
the office was ready, I prepared the computer and set it up.
However, I could not find a surge protector, so I did not
turn the computer on. One of my older colleagues told
HOWARD
me that surge protectors were a waste of money. “Why
use a surge protector? There isn’t anything wrong with the
electricity here at the college. Why should we be wasting
money on such useless things?”
He could not change my mind. Granted, surge
protectors seemed to be way overpriced at the time, costing
more than $100, but computers were even more overpriced,
with price tags over $2000. I had seen computers
destroyed by a very small surge in power, and I didn’t want
that to happen to any computer I was responsible for.
I put together an order for a surge protector from the
funds I was allocated. I decided to add a second one to
the order, just so I would have an extra. As the school year
grew closer, and the surge protectors had not yet arrived,
I began to get nervous. I thought that I could just plug
in the computer if I needed to, but that went against my
better judgment. My colleague kept telling me I was
worrying for nothing.
Finally, just a few days before the semester started,
the surge protectors came. As I plugged everything in,
my colleague watched, shaking his head, and telling me
I was wasting department funds on, “frivolous pieces of
hardware.” I ignored him and went about my work. When
everything was ready, I hit the on switch.
There was a loud explosion, and smoke poured out of
the surge protector. My colleague laughed, “You wasted
money on that useless thing, and it’s bad anyway.”
I was chagrined to think that he might be right, but
I was glad that I had had the foresight to purchase two
of them. I unplugged everything from the first surge
protector and plugged it all in to the second, while again
listening to my colleague berate me for wasting money and
suggesting that I should send the unused one back for a
refund. I ignored him and finally had it all ready.
There was a loud
explosion, and smoke
poured out of the
surge protector.
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53
I flipped the switch and once more there was a loud
explosion. Black smoke billowed from the surge protector
into the room. My colleague rocked with laughter, telling
me I should have learned my lesson the first time. But I
was beginning to have my suspicions that something more
was wrong. I went back to my office and found an old,
unused wall fan. I tested the fan and found it worked, so
I carried it down to the new office, careful to avoid my
colleague so I could test it without his criticism. I had no
sooner plugged it in then there was a loud pop, and the fan
smoked, never to work again.
I was now sure I had my proof that something was
wrong with the wiring. And indeed, we would eventually
find out that all of the outlets in the room had been wired
to 220 instead of the normal 110. But not knowing exactly
what was wrong at the time, yet armed with the new
evidence, I called the maintenance office. They argued
that everything had to be right, but finally agreed to send
someone over.
As my colleague stood beside me grinning, nodding
his head, the maintenance person stubbornly argued that
it had to be my equipment, not his wiring. However, he
finally agreed to a test. My colleague said we could use the
big radio/cassette player from his office. I suggested we
As we stood there,
water pouring down
on our heads, the
maintenance man
turned to my colleague
and said, “I suppose
there is the slightest
chance he could be
right about the wiring.”
PERSPECTIVE
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54
Sure enough, there
was a huge explosion
and the radio burst into
flames that jumped
nearly to the ceiling.
Suddenly, a fire alarm
went off and the
sprinklers in the office
kicked on.
use something cheaper than the radio that he loved, but he
insisted, saying he was willing because he knew this was
all a bunch of nonsense. I finally gave in, and he retrieved
his radio. I once more suggested we not use it, but he
just laughed as he reached up and plugged it into the
outlet. Sure enough, there was a huge explosion and the
radio burst into flames that jumped nearly to the ceiling.
Suddenly, a fire alarm went off and the sprinklers in the
office kicked on.
As we stood there, water pouring down on our heads,
the maintenance man turned to my colleague and said,
“I suppose there is the slightest chance he could be right
about the wiring.”
CALL FOR PAPERS: THE EVOLUTION OF ON-LINE LEARNING
The theme for the Spring 2012 volume of Perspective is “The
Evolution of On-Line Learning.”
As faculty at BYU-Idaho, we are engaged in an ongoing effort
to make the special educational experience at this university
available to more people throughout the world. This has put us
at the frontier of exciting innovations in distance learning. What
experiences have you had participating in these efforts (e.g.,
Pathway, on-line courses, hybrid courses, or others)?
We would like to issue a call to faculty to submit short articles
devoted to this theme and would like to have each college
represented. Articles can range in length from 1,600 to 3,000
words (approximately 5–12, double-spaced pages of text). If
willing to submit an article or if you have questions, please
contact one of the editors of Perspective or send an email
message to: [email protected]. For submission format,
please see the Style Guide at http://beta.byui.edu/learningteaching.
Also, we would like to remind readers to submit any stories or
anecdotes, both humorous and inspirational, for The Lighter Side
section of the journal.
“ Innovation by Revelation is a pattern of great
power. It will be critical to our work as we pursue
the steady, upward course in the decade ahead.”
President Kim B. Clark