Dispelling the Fog of Learning through SoTL

John TaggIndiana UniversityOctober 15, 2010

“[T]he general unreliability of all information presents a special problem . . . : all action takes place, so to speak, in a kind of twilight, which, like fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are.”

“[T]he general unreliability of all information presents a special problem in war: all action takes place, so to speak, in a kind of twilight, which, like fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are.”Carl von Clausewitz, On War

Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff, Co-opetition, 1996

“Games in business are played in a fog—not von Cluasewitz’s fog of war, perhaps, but a fog nonetheless. That’s why perceptions are a fundamental element of any game.”

The Fog of Learning

• Lack of Information• Unreliable Information• Distorted Information

Lack of Information

• “The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach . . . accordingly.”– David Ausubel, 1968

Lack of InformationAbout Students

• What do students know? What do they believe?

• What are students’ assumptions and expectations about the learning environment

• What are students’ prior experiences in similar learning environments (e.g., classes)?

• What are students’ goals?

Lack of InformationAbout Faculty

• What do faculty know? What do they believe?

• What are faculty assumptions and expectations about the learning environment?

• What are faculty other than you doing in the classroom?

• What are faculty goals?

Lack of Information About Who’s Doing What

• Pedagogy: How are teachers teaching?• Approaches to learning: How are students

studying?• Outcomes

Unreliable Information

• Chris Argyris and Donald Schön: Theories of Action

• Espoused Theory• Theory-in-Use

Espoused Theory vs. Theory-in-Use

• “Although people [often] do not behave congruently with their espoused theories, . . . they do behave congruently with their theories-in-use, and they are unaware of this fact.” --Chris Argyris, Reasoning, Learning, and Action: Individual and Organizational, 1982.

Is the University a Reliable Source?

“Institutions espouse high-sounding values, of course, in their mission statements, college catalogues, and public pronouncements by institutional leaders. The problem is that the explicitly stated values—which always include a strong commitment to undergraduate education—are often at variance with the actual values that drive our decisions and policies”--Alexander Astin, What Matters in College, 1993

Examples of Unreliable Information(TFDN)

• Accreditation: Faculty don’t believe it.• Student learning outcomes: hard to get

faculty to believe it’s not just a game.• Syllabus: do students read it? Do they believe

it? • Students dubious about what faculty

members say. “Will this be on the test?”

Distorted Information

• Organizational and work structures magnify some things unnaturally

• And shrink or conceal others.

Structures That Distort

• Credit hour• Grades• Requirements—General Education or Major• Classes

Can SoTL Help?

Maybe

Be Aware

• The fog simplifies; visibility introduces complexity and complications.

• Reality comes in layers; we need to make our way carefully.

How can SoTL Disperse the Fog?

1. Seek to Reveal What Is Hidden

• Look first at students and teachers and the learning environment, not organizational structures.

• Ask new questions, based on ones to which we have reasonably reliable answers.

2. Extend Beyond the Classroom

• “Go meta”— “with an eye not only to improving their own classroom but to advancing practice beyond it.”—Shulman & Hutchings

• Go beyond the discipline—draw on the work of other departments and disciplines for models and lessons.

• Make SoTL the core of Institutional Research.

What Do We Know?

• Enrollments• Grades• Numbers of students engaged in formal

activities and programs.

What Don’t We Know?

• Level of Academic Challenge• Active and Collaborative Learning• Student-Faculty Interactions• Enriching Educational Experiences• Supportive Campus Environments• Who is engaged in what high-impact activities

3. Make the Goal of SoTL Organizational Transformation

• SoTL should be Action Science: • “Action research. . . Involves iterative cycles of

identifying a problem, planning, acting, and evaluating.”—Chris Argyris, Robert Putnam, & Diana McLain Smith, Action Science, 1985

• “The intended change typically involves reeducation, . . . changing patterns of thinking and acting that are presently well established in individuals and groups.”—Argyris, Putnam, & Smith.

Example: Stages of Change

• James Prochaska, Carlo DiClemente, & John Norcross:

• “In Search of How People Change: Applications to Addictive Behaviors,” 1992.

• Changing for Good, 1994.• How do people intentionally change addictive

behaviors? Smoking, Drug Addiction, Obesity.

Stages of Change

1. Precontemplation: No intention to change, some awareness.

2. Contemplation: Thinking about changing, no commitment.

3. Preparation: Intend to take action, but only small changes.

4. Action: Actively modifying behavior or environment.

5. Maintenance: Preserve gains and prevent relapse.

A Transtheoretical Model of Change (TTM)

• Change is cyclical.• “You can’t change until you want to.” But

what makes you want to?• “The amount of progress clients make

following intervention tends to be a function of their pretreatment stage of change.” Prochaska & Norcross, Systems of Psychotherapy.

A Transtheoretical Model of Change (TTM)

• “One of the most powerful findings to emerge from our research is that particular processes of change are more effective during particular stages of change. Twenty-five years of research in behavioral medicine and psychotherapy converge in showing that different processes of change are differentially effective in certain stages of change.”—Prochaska & Norcross, Systems of Psychotherapy

Learning Is Change

• Anton Tolman, Director, Faculty Center for Teaching Excellence, Utah Valley UniversityAnton.Tolman@uvu.edu

• Revised Study Process Questionnaire• TTM Surveys• How to facilitate metacognition

Approaches to LearningFerence Marton and Roger Säljö

• Sought to distinguish qualitatively rather than quantitatively between student approaches to learning.

• “A description of what the students learn is preferable to the description of how much they learn.”

Two approaches to learning:

• Surface approach: focusing on the signs, the words of the essay, the numbers in the physics problem.

• Deep approach: focusing on the meaning, what the signs signify, the ideas the author is presenting, the concepts that the numbers represent

Learning Is Change

• Anton Tolman, Director, Faculty Center for Teaching Excellence, Utah Valley UniversityAnton.Tolman@uvu.edu

• Revised Study Process Questionnaire• TTM Surveys• How to facilitate metacognition

TTM Stage and RSPQ Score

Surf

ace

Appr

oach

M

ean

Classroom Research OR Institutional Research: A Foggy Choice

No Class Is an Island

• Every teacher is engaged in institutional research.

• If we all knew it, we’d all be smarter than we are.

Fog-clearing Questions

• How do faculty approaches to teaching affect student approaches to learning? What is a deep approach to teaching?

• How do student experiences affect student stages of change-readiness?

• How does the sequence and co-incidence of student experiences affect long-term metacognitive change?

• How could the local and global design of learning experiences maximize student development.