Setting the Tone: Consistency

I once had a Morality teacher in high school that was a dense 6’5, 230 pounds. He looked like a man who would beat morality into you if it didn’t go against the very subject he taught. Perhaps it was this odd dichotomy that allowed him play the role of “good cop/bad cop” so fluidly: he was at once adored by his students as he was the main cause for their gastrointestinal issues. 

Early on in the course, he played a rather unfortunate trick on us. He had recruited a student to show up late to class the next day. When the student showed up—ten minutes into class—the teacher started screaming at him. I think he may have even thrown a chair: he was extremely devoted to his character. While the class watched in silent horror as the student left the room, the teacher surveyed the class, daring anyone to speak up. Of course, no one did. He sat down and took a distinct bite out of his second package of Ho Hos.

Then he started laughing. The student came back inside, took a bow, and we all slowly realized we had been duped. He framed this as a moral predicament, challenging us to consider why we didn’t stand up for our classmate when he was clearly being unfair. While this elicited some pretty good discussion, I couldn’t help but think that wasn’t all that was at stake here. What was really being challenged was our will to fight the environment he had established in the classroom since day one, an environment where he was uncontestably in complete control.

I had never realized how much command, how much presence we allowed this man to have. His bluff wasn’t even a gamble: he had known from the onset that we were going to be paralyzed against his injustice, unwilling to contradict a man who had firmly established his dictatorial authority. He was asking us to oppose him as a teacher, and we cowered as students.

I feel very ambivalent towards him now. I do not know how I feel about his iron grip that he held on the class.  But I still respect his ability to set a tone and maintain it. We knew from the first day what we were to expect from him and he never deviated from it. While his method for maintaining command may have been questionable, his consistency never was: he had a class climate that was a sweltering 90 degrees and terrified six days of the working week. And no student, morality lesson, or weatherman was willing to challenge that.  

Write up by: Jon Pumper

Active Learning Activities - Tom Sulzer, Information Systems

Professor Tom Sulzer, Department of Information Systems, shares his active learning activity focused on simulations:

Setting: Simulation activity utilizing pod groups (8-10 pods with 4 students per pod)

Setup for the activity: To prepare the students for this activity I had to help them install an SAP client piece of software. In addition, we talked about Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions in business and had a reading assignment associated with ERP to better help them understand what it is that ERP is about.

How the activity unfolded in the classroom: Part of the SAP curriculum is a "Distribution Game" which allows students to role play being the managers of a company that distributes water. The simulation typically lasts 3 classes and allows the students to gain experience using a real ERP system.

• The first day, students are allowed to modify their product's price and marketing expenditures to get their products to be purchased by a simulated market. Note the market that the simulation tries to simulate is Retail Stores in Germany which is divided up into 3 regions: North, South and West.
  
• In the second session, students are allowed to replenish their inventory once as well as set their product's price and amount of marketing as they did the first day.
  
• In the third session, students build on what they were able to do in the previous days by having unlimited replenishment capability as well as the ability to forecast and select specific replenishment amounts. Note they still are setting price and marketing expenses as well.

After the activity: After each session, we summarized what occurred and allowed the students to share experiences, good and bad. The intent is to help them appreciate, in a safe setting, some of the real-world types of decisions that managers struggle with. While it is in a contrived scenario, the tools they use and their reactions are very close to reality.

Additional comments from instructor: "I believe that the simulation is able to drive home the use of ERP systems and allows them to get hands on experience with an actual piece of software they will potentially see in a real work environment setting."

Tip provided by: Tom Sulzer

Dr. Allen Keniston on Demonstrating Phenomenon

There is no better way to appreciate the results of research than by participating in the process yourself: Dr. Allen Keniston, Department of Psychology, discusses how he replicates important psychological phenomenon in and with his own classroom:

I always try and find a way to demonstrate the phenomenon we are talking about. For example, if I want to claim that I can influence an individual’s behavior without the individual being aware that I have done so, I like to show the class that I can. This transforms the concept from an abstract idea that is discussed in a reading or lecture into a concrete reality for the students, something that actually happens in their life. You need to demonstrate the claim in order to keep students engaged and to promote understanding.

Interviewed by: Jon Pumper

Active Learning Activities- Ursula Whitcher, Math

While John Conway’s Game of Life (a cellular automaton) appears to be quite different from Milton Bradley’s Game of Life (a rather trite board game), there are a few prevailing similarities. For instance, both represent scenarios where there is a finite number of situations a player can occupy; both involve witnessing the overall evolution of its players; and both can be considered “zero-player” games, in the sense that Conway’s Game of Life requires no players and Milton Bradley’s Game of Life should really never have any players, especially if Klaus Teuber’s Settler’s of Catan is within easy reach. Dr. Ursula Whitcher, Department of Math, focuses less on the comparison of complex mathematical phenomenon to popular board games and more on just the mathematical phenomenon part in her active learning activity featuring John Conway’s Game of Life:

Setting: 20-minute activity implemented in a 100-level course; 6 pods with 5 students per pod

Purpose of the activity: Students explore and discuss Conway's Game of Life using the Google Easter egg, as displayed on pod computers.

Setup for the activity: Googling Conway's Game of Life produces an implementation of the cellular automaton "game."  The game can be paused and restarted.

How the activity unfolded in the classroom: Groups explore different starting configurations, trying to answer three questions:

• Can you make a pattern that stays the same for several seconds?
• Can you make a pattern that oscillates between a couple of states?
• Can you make a pattern that moves across the screen?

This activity leads into a discussion of the formal rules of the "game."

After the activity: Students use the formal rules of Conway's Game of Life on homework and exam problems.  Cellular automata are also a possible example for a final exam essay.

Additional comments from instructor: Other possible prompts to explore with this activity include:

• Can you make a pattern that disappears/dies out?
• Can you guess some of the rules of the game?

Active Learning Activities - Carolyn Otto, Math

Anyone who has struggled to communicate with another person—or even worse, witnessed another person struggling to communicate with another person—has experienced (or witnessed) the linguistic phenomenon that people relate to words in many different ways. Words such as “palette,” “illicit,” or “please go get me a cup of coffee” are constantly confused, little to the fault of any artist, bank robber, or writing intern involved. But there are some words that are so confusing that they can hardly ever be used in conversation without immediately invoking panicked faces, nervous sweating, or frantic wikepedia surfing. “Fractal” is one such word, a “natural phenomenon or a mathematical set that exhibits a repeating pattern that displays at every scale.” ¹ Dr. Caroyln Otto, from the Department of Mathematics, devotes an entire class period to the exploration this confusing topic, and describes the lesson plan in today’s issue of “Active Learning Activities.”

Setting: Activity utilizing pod groups (6 pods with 4-6 students per pod)

Setup for the activity: The activity involved the definition of fractals. The students didn’t have any outside information about the topic beforehand. This was introduced during class.

How the activity unfolded in the classroom: At the beginning of class, each pod was given a list of questions to discuss. These questions included what is the definition of a fractal, how would we use them, and can you give an example of a fractal. After the students turned in a written summary of their thoughts, the class watched a PBS documentary on fractals.

After the activity: After the video, their summaries were returned and the pods were asked to type up a new summary on their Pod computers. I went around to each Pod to discuss their early answers and new answers. Each Pod emailed me a new summary.

Additional comments from the instructor: “The students were engaged at all stages of this activity. There was a lot of communication between the students and myself as well as attention to the film. The students were excited about the subject and many brought that excitement to the next days of class.”

¹ See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal

Tip provided by Carolyn Otto

Framing provided by Jon Pumper

Dr. Leah Olson-McBride on Role-Playing

Role-playing exercises offer a unique way of learning material: they require a high amount of imagination and communicating skills that are useful in any discipline. Dr. Leah Olson-McBride, Department of Social Work, shares how she uses Role-Playing exercises in her class:

One thing I’ve started doing in my Groups and Families class—a class where we teach the students how to be social workers with groups and family units—is a fishbowl activity, where students will actually role-play and act out a scenario. In the middle of the class, after teaching specific techniques regarding the upcoming scenario, I put up a case study on the screen and pull some students from the class to live out the situation. One person will play the social worker, other students will be the family, etc. After the performance, the class will give feedback on what the social worker did well, and what they could improve upon. Students seem to be really anxious about participating, but always give good feedback on it. A common response I’ll get is: “I was really nervous being chosen, but I’m really glad I got to do it.” If it’s really hard content, sometimes I’ll have them show me the worst way to do it first: it takes the pressure off performing perfectly, and, of course, the students think it’s really funny.

Role-playing can actually be applied to nearly every discipline: view creative examples and types of role-playing exercises at Carleton’s teaching website here. 

Interview by: Jon Pumper

Final Reflection - An Intern's Farewell

For those of you who get nervous reading a title such as this, I can assure you that this post will not be a sentimental, cheesy, or vomit-worthy piece of rhetoric: if you are interested in reading something of that sort, feel free to ask Angie about her fifth grade love letters. This is a blog for a professional organization, after all, and as such I will not splatter my own slushy blubbering all over its front page.

This is not me.

Many people believe that CETL stands for Center of Excellence in Teaching and Learning. They would be only partially correct. There is a lesser known interpretation that still floats around among a select group of people who have taken way too much time in thinking up an alternative form of the acronym (me).  That interpretation goes something like this: Caring Entities Teach Life. The “entities” in question are the familiar faces featured below:

The featured faces belong to (from left to right) Angie Stombaugh, Andy Hanson, Cindy Albert, Avonlea Hanson, and April Pierson. While Kelly and I are in the picture, we are not the the Caring Entities I am referring to at this moment (Kelly is actually a rather monstrous person for those who were wondering).

For anyone who is familiar with this blog, you are probably aware that I have a strong propensity to make some pretty outrageous claims, segues, and analogies. The majority of my posts could at the very best be considered “whimsical” and at the very worst “borderline unprofessional.” I have not historically been the type of writer who thrives in the realm of seriousness: as such, I will be breaking from tradition momentarily to unpack the lesser known CETL acronym in a manner that could almost be considered sincere.

I really owe a lot to these individuals. You certainly could not find a more caring, passionate, or easy-going group out there. Beyond the help that they have provided countless of faculty members with this past year, they have also taken some time to directly teach this student a few life lessons along the way. While the list could go on for quite some time, I will limit it to one for each person, as attention spans could probably not handle any more and I’ve got quite a few papers left to write this finals week.

Cindy Albert: Cindy taught me what it means to be a balanced supervisor. She conveys just the right mix of expectation and leniency in order to keep people like me motivated without feeling strangled. If I ever take on a supervisor role in the future, I will be borrowing a lot of techniques from her.

Angie Stombaugh: Angie taught me not to get in a van without windows. Thanks, Angie. J In all seriousness, anyone who knows Angie knows she has a fiery sense of humor. No matter where I end up working, I can only hope I keep people laughing half as well as she did.

April Pierson: April has an extremely low-key demeanor about her. Unless you get her near a stack of crooked books. I didn’t get a chance to know April as much as everyone else—she’s in high demand around these parts—but I always admired the calming presence she would bring whenever she came in. While they say you cannot teach “cool,” I’d like to think I learned a thing or two about being “cool” simply by being around April every now and then.

Avonlea Hanson: Avonlea is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met: thank goodness she married that old crab Andy in order to balance him out a little bit. I learned from Avonlea that a simple smile, friendly hello, and a twinge of a Minnesotan accent can really make a person feel happy to come into the office.

Andy Hanson: Most of you reading probably know Andy, the proverbial face of CETL. Andy is a gem among gems; a diamond in the rough; and many other jewel-based metaphors. Andy has been working diligently on a Master’s degree in history for the time I have been here: I am enormously proud to say that we will be graduating together, as Bachelor and Master. If one ever needs a lesson in persistence and consistency, Andy positively embodies both.

Kelly Hughes: *sigh* I guess I’ll include Kelly. I have had this fake animosity towards her that heralds back from the times in which we would fight for our supervisors’ affections (I may have been the only one fighting now that I reflect on it). I learned from Kelly that not everyone is phased by my tough rhetoric; in addition, I learned that even my “affection competitor” could become an extremely loyal friend.

I’ve worked for CETL for about a year now. As a young professional, that seems like a rather long time. In the grand scheme of things, I will most certainly be occupying jobs that will last for a lot longer, but I doubt many more will have as big of an impact that CETL has had on such a crucial time of my life. It has been a distinct privilege to have worked here, and I will sorely miss it. Fortunately for you, dear reader, you do not have to say goodbye to me just yet: while this is my last post, you all have another summer of hearing my disembodied voice (I worked ahead) so try to enjoy it while it lasts. J

An enormous thank you to Cindy, Angie, April, Andy, Avonlea, and Kelly: I believe I speak for everyone who has ever posted, read, or subscribed to this blog when I say you all do amazing things.

Jon Pumper