E2QUATE

- Portrait of a Young Indian Scholar, Mir Sayyid Ali (1550) Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California, USA (retrieved from: http://www.commons.wikimedia.org)

Autumn 2009

E2QUATE August 2009

The E2QUATE ProjectLiterature and research findings suggest that it is beneficial for faculty to share ideas and stories of the process of incorporating innovative teaching strategies. These stories are vital for assessing the development of new and innovative directions in the scholarship of teaching (Theall, M. & Centra, J. 2001; Weston, C.B. & McAlpine, L. 2001). Participants will be encouraged to write and add to the blog at every stage of the process. All content in this article is published with consent upon review from contributors and participants of the E2QUATE Project.

Active Learning breaks away from traditional passive learning techniques and strategizes diverse methods for renewing student engagement with material(Engestrom, 1996, 2007).

E2QUATE

ContentsPage 2.... Introduction Page 3.... An Interview with Dr. Douglas Reid, Queen’s School of Business, E2QUATE participant. Page 6.... Lucie Pelland turns the traditional case study on its ear with the integration of technology.

E2QUATE August 2009

E2QUATE

Contents

“When I first started out teaching at Queen’s my biggest fear was that I would run out of material, so of course I would overload my 80-minute class.”

August 2009

First and foremost he thinks as a rule, in a business school “course content always needs to change.” As he puts it, “I’m in a fluid field. Business is changing and the content needs to change continuously.” But he was also thinking about how students learn and how students are assessed. He had been teaching the way he had been taught to teach which, he says,“to many extents fulfills a kind of stereotypical model of business schools which really go back to Harvard”. What is this model?

Essentially, “people arraigned in a semi-circle with a professor at the centre orchestrating a discussion, but people not really talking to each other, other than in public.” Some students work really well in this environment, but he was concerned that the students who were doing really well, weren’t really bringing away knowledge, but simply appeared to be knowledgeable because they were quick on their feet and able to perform in that kind of public space. He started to wonder how much teachers are influenced by these types of students – the students who always have an answer and are able to speak very articulately. Were they getting better grades than students who may be quieter and not so quick on their feet? And were these grades deserved?

When asked why he wanted to redesign his course, Douglas Reid had several answers.

“I think for some folks they don’t find that they are able to talk in public with the fluency as others, certainly with rapidity, but it doesn’t mean…they’re not quick. The fact they’re not quick to respond doesn’t mean they’re dumb. And that was when the lights went on for me. I bumped into a number of students in the last couple of years who were very, very good, clearly bright, but when you would ask a question, a case situation, they’d be paralyzed. And far too often, wrongly in my opinion, I would say “well they’re not very bright because they’re just not quick or glib”. And then I realized what those circumstances do is they don’t measure intelligence or understanding they measure quickness and glibne

E2QUATE August 2009

So, in other words, they’re not quick and they’re not glib, but that doesn’t mean they don’t get it. And then I had a small moment of clarity, which said: “I hope I’m not grading people on quickness and glibness…That’s what I think a lot of the product of business schools can be criticized for being, quick and glib, but not substantive or thoughtful”. So, the more I started to read into this, it became clear to me that I had to find ways to redesign not only the content of pedagogy and rethink how I wanted to have them approach learning, away from the model that was comfortable…or what I believed to be correct, and more to a way that delivered an efficacious outcome, because it was really about them, not about me. My job was to enable their learning.” As Douglas started thinking about how to engage and assess different kinds of learners his goal was to rework the power dynamic in the class – taking the focus off him as ‘expert’ and encouraging the expertise of the class. When thinking about course redesign, what resonates with Douglas, is that it is more important to be a facilitator, than a performer in the classroom. His job is not to stand at the front of a class and deliver expert knowledge, but to encourage dialogue so that students can learn from him, and perhaps more importantly, each other. This is a very different way of teaching than he’d first imagined:

E2QUATE August 2009

And I would come in with large numbers of powerpoint slides, all of which were heavily worded - certainly enough for an eighty minute slpeech for me, but no conversation, other than responses to questions. And I realize now, what a horribly sterile environment for students. No wonder they’re on Facebook. No wonder they’re doing almost anything else... The students have to want to be engaged and they can’t be engaged if I’m just talking. I think to myself, is it reasonable for me to sit there and llisten to somebody and be fully engaged? No. I get bored really quick and I think why should I expect them to behave any differently?

E2QUATE August 2009

“When I first started out teaching at Queen’s my biggest fear was that I would run out of material, so of course I would overload my 80-minute class.”

E2QUATE

“What I’d rather do is use a Socratic method, in other words use the question as a way to get conversations going so that people can reveal assumptions about phenomena and then have the group give them some perspective on whether or not those assumptions are good assumptions or whether they’re true in the sense that they stand up to scrutiny.”

August 2009

What Doug wonders is how learners have changed in a world where there is arguably an element of cognitive overload. In order to foster knowledge, which is based in reflection, he wants to get away from lecture-based learning and into one that is more conversational. His hope is that learning this way will leave students with knowledge that won’t slip away, but will be meaningful and lasting.

E2QUATE August 2009

“ I w a n te d th e m to p r a c t ic e m o r e a n d to d e v e lo p s o m e c o n fid e n c e th a t th e y a c tu a l l y k n e w th e m a te r ia l .” She wants to get away from teaching in a manner where students are simply given information that they are then expected to regurgitate back to her. She would rather have them more actively involved (by searching for answers and coming up with a diagnosis) in a way that mirrors more the clinical work they will do on the job.

She’d like to get away from an “expert” and “novice” environment and create a space where students and teachers treat each other more as equals. For this reason, she wants to get away from case-baed learning. “I’m not a big fan of cases because I find they just model expert reasoning. Usually we bring students through cases and then we see if they’re doing it the same way as us. Which assumes that there’s an expert and there’s a novice and that somewhere along the way something’s going to happen for that novice to become the expert. I just want everybody to be on the same, equal footing.” So, she has decided to turn the standard case-study model on its head. Instead of having students work through case studies, she’s having students develop case studies on their own. They are given some structure - the history of the case and the outcome - but it is up to them to build the case.

Lucie Pelland’s goal in redesigning her course is to get students more actively involved in learning, especially when it comes to clinical reasoning.

L u c y l a u g h s when she admits that the change to her teaching and learning strategies have not been “comfortable”, but she is enthusiastic about learning and educating herself as to how different students take in information. With this in mind, Lucy wants to use a media-rich platform so that students have a choice in how they present information. If someone is a visual learner, she wants them to be able to use video and pictures. If someone likes to learn by reading, she wants a platform that also supports text. For this reason, she has chosen to go with the social networking site NING - which offers students a range of visual, audio and textual opportunities.

As well, she hopes students will become adept at using different types of media, because it could help them on the job. These students, when they enter the workforce, will be dealing with children with different abilities and with different ways of learning. “It’s going to serve them as clinicians to be able to manipulate different media, because maybe some of these kids will be more visual learners.” That said, she laughs again when asked about how she feels about incorporating technology into her teaching and answers ~ Stressed! She knows what she wants to do, and feels she is on the right track. However, incorporating technology into this course is time consuming and she thinks there is a need for support for teachers who want to take something like this on. “I don’t have the technology skills to actually pull it off and that’s where it becomes tricky. Because then you have to trust somebody, and I’ve been lucky, but I think that there needs to be some solid support for people...”

E2QUATE August 2009

E2QUATE August 2009