WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 music 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:08.000 music 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:12.000 What I'm going to do is I'm going to 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:16.000 play a little game with you. I know we're faculty and we're busy 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:20.000 and you guys are still in term and we don't have time for games. This game has a point, 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:24.000 obviously, so bear with me on it. What I'm going to do is 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:28.000 I'm going to give you a scenario, 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:32.000 and I need you to figure out what's going on in the scenario. 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:36.000 But in order to do that, 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:40.000 all you can do is ask me yes or no questions. Okay? So I'll give you a scenario, 00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:44.000 you ask yes or no questions, and you try to figure out what's going on. 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:48.000 Now, one caveat. If you know right away because you've heard it before 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:52.000 or you've played it before, please just keep it to yourself. Don't ruin it for everybody. 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:56.000 Okay. This is a little bit like a Lutheran church; you all are back there. 00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:60.000 I just noticed that, by the way. First scenario... 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:04.000 a man walks into a bar, goes up to the bar tender, asks for 00:01:04.000 --> 00:01:08.000 a glass of water. The bartender looks at him, reaches 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:12.000 under the bar, pulls out a gun, points it at the man, 00:01:12.000 --> 00:01:16.000 the man says 'thank you,' then turns around and walks out. What happened? 00:01:16.000 --> 00:01:20.000 A man walks into a bar, asks for a glass of water, the bar tender points a gun at him and the man says 'thank you. 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:24.000 What happened? Just yes or no questions, and if you know it, don't ruin it. 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:28.000 Go ahead. -Is the man who asks for water also pointing a gun? 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:36.000 Is the man who asked for a glass of water holding a gun, no. 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:40.000 Yes? 00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:44.000 Yes. Yes. 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:48.000 Was the man asking for water going to rob the bar? 00:01:56.000 --> 00:01:60.000 Alright! 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:04.000 I'll tell you what. It's 9:15 in the morning and I do this a lot; 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:08.000 very seldom do people get it, and they never get it in the morning, so good for you! 00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:12.000 Was espresso or cappuccino? What was it? 00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:16.000 Okay, next scenario. Louise is going home. 00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:20.000 Suddenly in front of her she sees somebody, and she goes back to where she came from. 00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:24.000 Louise is going home, sees someone in front of her suddenly, then turns around and goes back to where she came from. 00:02:24.000 --> 00:02:28.000 What's going on? 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:36.000 house keys or car keys. -Does the person have a 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:40.000 mask on? -Yes. Yes, the person has a mask. 00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:48.000 Meanwhile in a not-so-quiet neighborhood in Charlottesville, Virginia. 00:02:48.000 --> 00:02:52.000 Here's what Charlottesville is like. It's land-locked, 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:56.000 it's got mountains all around it, 00:02:56.000 --> 00:02:60.000 very limited land, 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:04.000 very limited space, very limited housing. Pretty much 00:03:04.000 --> 00:03:08.000 everything is built up. It's a kind of town where a teacher 00:03:08.000 --> 00:03:12.000 can't afford to live in the town. They've got to live in the county, and then come 00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:16.000 into the town. It's just expensive. It's got that university; it's a pretty little town. 00:03:16.000 --> 00:03:20.000 People retire there. Very expensive, very limited land 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:24.000 resources for housing. Except, 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:28.000 in one very underprivileged neighborhood in Charlottesville; there was a 00:03:28.000 --> 00:03:32.000 very big lot right next to the railroad tracks, 00:03:32.000 --> 00:03:36.000 and everybody's looking at this big piece 00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:40.000 of land and going 'oh my god, what we could do with this piece of land. 00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:44.000 So you've got three groups in this conversation trying to determine what 00:03:44.000 --> 00:03:48.000 to do with it. Group number one are contractors, and their idea is to build 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:52.000 traditional streets in there and put traditional housing. 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:56.000 Group number two's idea is to build a big 00:03:56.000 --> 00:03:60.000 condo and have more housing slightly cheaper. 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:04.000 Group number three is actually from the neighborhood, and they're saying that 00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:08.000 it actually would be nice if we had a park for our kids to play in. 00:04:08.000 --> 00:04:12.000 Group one: traditional housing. Group two: condos. 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:16.000 Group three: we want a park. What do they decide? 00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:20.000 Again, yes or no questions. They did not 00:04:20.000 --> 00:04:24.000 have hiccups. Go ahead. -Did they pick one of those three choices? 00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:32.000 Please. -Did they 00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:36.000 take a portion of all three choices. -No they do not take a 00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:40.000 portion of all three choices. 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:52.000 Yes. 00:04:56.000 --> 00:04:60.000 Okay, I'm going to keep it rolling a little bit. This has been interesting, and 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:04.000 I'm going to have some observations about it in just a minute. 00:05:04.000 --> 00:05:08.000 Three games; three questions. What do they all have in common? 00:05:08.000 --> 00:05:12.000 Well, obviously, the obvious logics don't 00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:16.000 work, right? A man walks into a bar 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:20.000 asks for a drink of water, a gun gets pointed at him. That doesn't make sense. 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:24.000 And then the man says 'thank you. That doesn't make sense either. So we're looking at it like 'what the heck is going on 00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:28.000 here?' That's what 00:05:28.000 --> 00:05:32.000 they all have in common. They also have in common that they all require lateral thinking. 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:36.000 Non-traditional thinking. Non-linear thinking. It's not a situation where x easily 00:05:36.000 --> 00:05:40.000 leads to y. You have to find another route around. Here's the 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:44.000 observation I would give you. Most groups don't get 00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:48.000 the first one with the hiccups. And because they 00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:52.000 don't get that one, they don't get number two, and they don't get number three. 00:05:52.000 --> 00:05:56.000 The minute that you got number one, people started thinking 00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:04.000 obvious. So lateral thinking, creative thinking, moving 00:06:04.000 --> 00:06:08.000 outside the box. Changing the way we 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:12.000 think; changing the path we take to draw conclusions. 00:06:12.000 --> 00:06:16.000 For instance, I'll give you 00:06:16.000 --> 00:06:20.000 an explanation in a moment, but what don't they have in common? 00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:24.000 Obviously the first two are riddles. I learned these at camp 00:06:24.000 --> 00:06:28.000 when I was a kid. I use them with my own kids when we're traveling and 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:32.000 dinner is taking too long. I've got a whole bunch of them on my phone, and that's how we keep them occupied. 00:06:32.000 --> 00:06:36.000 The first two are riddles; the third one is real life. 00:06:36.000 --> 00:06:40.000 I could have drawn this one from 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:44.000 really any field. I use it because my good friend Kurt is an architect, and 00:06:44.000 --> 00:06:48.000 he was part of the design plan. What they did, 00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:52.000 not three ideas, but two--they built a condo 00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:56.000 next to the railroad track, and then they put a park 00:06:56.000 --> 00:06:60.000 on the other side of it so that they had the additional housing and they had 00:07:00.000 --> 00:07:04.000 the park, and the kids were separated from the railroad track so they were safer. 00:07:04.000 --> 00:07:08.000 And it was quieter. So it kind of makes sense. 00:07:08.000 --> 00:07:12.000 I could have used an example of my friend Peter who's a doctor, or any number of 00:07:12.000 --> 00:07:16.000 times that a doctor walks into a room and faces these kinds of 00:07:16.000 --> 00:07:20.000 riddles. Anytime an educator 00:07:20.000 --> 00:07:24.000 walks into the room and faces these kinds of riddles. What's going on with a class? 00:07:24.000 --> 00:07:28.000 What's driving that student? What's it going to take to get that student from here to here? 00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:32.000 What's my point? As often as not, these are the kinds of 00:07:32.000 --> 00:07:36.000 problems our students will face in their jobs and in their lives. 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:40.000 Now, all of us obviously have issues we deal with day to day 00:07:40.000 --> 00:07:44.000 where we've seen it before, we know the answer, and we do it. You know, there's an algorithm, almost. 00:07:44.000 --> 00:07:48.000 But very often, 00:07:48.000 --> 00:07:52.000 there are times when we're 00:07:52.000 --> 00:07:56.000 looking at it and going 'what the heck is going on here, and how am I going to solve it?' 00:07:56.000 --> 00:07:60.000 Right now I'm in negotiations with my dean; we're trying to start 00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:04.000 a new center for teaching and learning, and best practices say 00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:08.000 that the person running that needs this amount of time, and the dean is saying 'well, I'm only giving this amount of time. 00:08:08.000 --> 00:08:12.000 I'm thinking, 'okay, how do I get this to work?' 00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:16.000 Either that person has the time and I convince the dean, or do we have to redesign 00:08:16.000 --> 00:08:20.000 the center, or do we have to work smartly? Is there a way to work with it? 00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:24.000 I also want to make this point; oftentimes for us, in our 00:08:24.000 --> 00:08:28.000 jobs, the algorithmic problems are fine. We like them. 00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:32.000 They're part of what draws us to the field, but these trickier problems are 00:08:32.000 --> 00:08:36.000 the ones that we really love. They kind of make our work fun. 00:08:36.000 --> 00:08:40.000 Joyful. Even when we're frustrated. 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:44.000 There are a couple of reasons for this. 00:08:44.000 --> 00:08:48.000 Students are going to face these kinds of problems because they don't always go into the fields that they study. 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:52.000 The statistic we work with is that roughly 43 percent of students 00:08:52.000 --> 00:08:56.000 study x and then go into x. 57 percent right from the start 00:08:56.000 --> 00:08:60.000 like the woman at the B&B this morning studied psychology; 00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:04.000 now she's running a B&B. I guess those two might apply, but it's not a 00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:08.000 direct correspondence. 00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:12.000 They don't always get the jobs they want. 00:09:12.000 --> 00:09:16.000 They really don't often stay in the field that they started in. 00:09:16.000 --> 00:09:20.000 We know that number, that every American will have 5 to 7 careers 00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:24.000 over the course of a lifetime. If you think about it; they're twenty two 00:09:24.000 --> 00:09:28.000 when they leave college. At 22, my life 00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:32.000 plan was to be a rock-star. I'm not making that up. I went over to England 00:09:32.000 --> 00:09:36.000 and I had a band. That was my plan. We don't know 00:09:36.000 --> 00:09:40.000 at that age, always, what we want to do. It evolves over time, and it 00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:44.000 should, because that evolution, that movement away from where we start, 00:09:44.000 --> 00:09:48.000 shows that we're engaged and we're thinking. And we want our students to be engaged 00:09:48.000 --> 00:09:52.000 and thinking, and sort of always checking in and saying 'am I happy here? Is this 00:09:52.000 --> 00:09:56.000 what I want? Is this what I'm good at? Is this my place in the world? 00:09:56.000 --> 00:09:60.000 Is this what I'm meant to do?' We like that. 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:04.000 And even if they do get the job they want and stay in that organization 00:10:04.000 --> 00:10:08.000 that they're hired by, hopefully they're not going to stay in the same position. 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:12.000 If we've done a good job educating them, they're going to move up. 00:10:12.000 --> 00:10:16.000 Using my friend Kurt, he began as an architect. His job was to work with the client, and draw the 00:10:16.000 --> 00:10:20.000 plan, then he moved up into management where he was overseeing a group 00:10:20.000 --> 00:10:24.000 of projects, and then he moved up again into where he was seeing the whole business. Every time you 00:10:24.000 --> 00:10:28.000 move up, or even move diagonally or laterally, 00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:32.000 what's expected of you and needed of you changes. 00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:36.000 Here's where I'm going with this. The workplace is also changing. New technologies, new clientele, 00:10:36.000 --> 00:10:40.000 new reglulations, 00:10:40.000 --> 00:10:44.000 new challenges, new solutions, new tools to solve the problems. 00:10:44.000 --> 00:10:48.000 Again, thinking about education, Virginia Tech which is right down the road from me, 00:10:48.000 --> 00:10:52.000 these Chinese students want to 00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:56.000 come over here and they want to study, and Virginia Tech thought, 'great, we can get 00:10:56.000 --> 00:10:60.000 full tuition, and we'll have these Chinese students. But then they thought 00:11:04.000 --> 00:11:08.000 we have?' And that's tricky. It's a new population, 00:11:08.000 --> 00:11:12.000 it's been like a cash cow for them, but that's not 00:11:12.000 --> 00:11:16.000 always that easy, so you've got to work with it. 00:11:16.000 --> 00:11:20.000 In our lives we're going to face all this information. 00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:24.000 All this data; all this stuff flying at us, right? Think about things like 00:11:24.000 --> 00:11:28.000 the last week. 00:11:28.000 --> 00:11:32.000 laughter 00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:36.000 Every day you're like 'WHAT!?' And I mean literally every day. 00:11:36.000 --> 00:11:40.000 And then you can't figure out whether it matters or not. 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:44.000 A week ago, Trump gave information to the Russians. Bad, bad, 00:11:44.000 --> 00:11:48.000 bad. Then the next day you're like 'well, maybe not bad. It's kind of hard to tell. 00:11:48.000 --> 00:11:52.000 Think about watching the debates. When I was young and I watched the debates, 00:11:52.000 --> 00:11:56.000 then I would go to PBS and I would listen to what they would say so I could help myself 00:11:56.000 --> 00:11:60.000 sort of understand who won, what was good and what was not so good. 00:12:00.000 --> 00:12:04.000 Now, when I'm watching the debate, I can click back and forth between 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:08.000 three or four or five different channels, I've got 00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:12.000 the New York Times, I've got Nathan Silvers 538 over 00:12:12.000 --> 00:12:16.000 here and I'm watching all the commentary and the tweets and everything going on. 00:12:16.000 --> 00:12:20.000 I'm getting all these information from all these different people. So making sense 00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:24.000 out of that is really tricky. We have to find ways to sift through it. 00:12:24.000 --> 00:12:28.000 All of that extends beyond a single lesson. 00:12:28.000 --> 00:12:32.000 In our jobs, in their jobs, in our lives, 00:12:32.000 --> 00:12:36.000 in their lives, we've got these complicated problems. 00:12:36.000 --> 00:12:40.000 I use the term 'wicked problems' here. The term goes 00:12:40.000 --> 00:12:44.000 back to social policy in the 1960s and 1970s, 00:12:44.000 --> 00:12:48.000 and it got picked up by a lot of different fields very quickly. 00:12:48.000 --> 00:12:52.000 I learned it from a gentleman called Edmund Coe. Edmund Coe was 00:12:52.000 --> 00:12:56.000 an engineering professor. He was Stanford trained and then he worked at 00:12:56.000 --> 00:12:60.000 Carnegie-Melon. When I met him he was at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. 00:13:00.000 --> 00:13:04.000 His basic argument was that engineers 00:13:04.000 --> 00:13:08.000 face these complicated problems, 00:13:08.000 --> 00:13:12.000 where the parameters are changing constantly. 00:13:12.000 --> 00:13:16.000 The dynamics are fluid. As a result, an algorithmic 00:13:16.000 --> 00:13:20.000 approach more often than not just doesn't work. 00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:24.000 More often than not, it's a situation where you try and fail, try something else, 00:13:24.000 --> 00:13:28.000 fail, make an adjustment, try something else, get a little progress, try again, 00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:32.000 figure something else out, and then once you've got that figured out, if it's a truly 00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:36.000 wicked problem, the next time it comes up, none of those solutions work anymore. 00:13:36.000 --> 00:13:40.000 So it's this quickly-evolving, constantly-evolving situation. 00:13:40.000 --> 00:13:44.000 There are a bunch of different parameters and fields to use for this. I kind of lay it out 00:13:44.000 --> 00:13:48.000 this way: the dynamics and parameters are constantly changing. Causality is 00:13:48.000 --> 00:13:52.000 difficult to determine. What caused this problem? What caused this situation? 00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:56.000 They resist easy resolution. 00:13:56.000 --> 00:13:60.000 I think about the Gulf Horizon explosion back in 00:14:04.000 --> 00:14:08.000 They had no idea what to do. And you've got the 00:14:08.000 --> 00:14:12.000 tides, you've got the ecosystem, you've got the British with their information; you've got the 00:14:12.000 --> 00:14:16.000 Americans on the ground with their information, and everybody's trying to figure out: we don't quite know what's 00:14:16.000 --> 00:14:20.000 going on down there. We don't know how bad it is. We don't know how much oil is coming out. 00:14:20.000 --> 00:14:24.000 So figuring out where to go with that and what to do is 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:28.000 a little bit trial and error. So the data is incomplete lots of times, or the data is 00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:32.000 contradictory. The problems themselves are sometimes 00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:36.000 difficult to recognize. Are there political scientists in the room? 00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:40.000 No? Okay. I don't know about anybody else, 00:14:40.000 --> 00:14:44.000 maybe some people are more attuned to it; I did not hear the term 00:14:48.000 --> 00:14:52.000 know this thing was out there, and that it was happening. 00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:56.000 It was just information coming in. So sometimes we don't even know 00:14:56.000 --> 00:14:60.000 that we're dealing with a wicked problem. 00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:04.000 Think about the Zika virus. We're living in a wicked world, actually. 00:15:04.000 --> 00:15:08.000 Zika virus has actually been around for 30 years. They saw it, they knew it was there, it was never a problem, and suddenly, 'boom,' 00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:12.000 it's a problem. And we're trying to figure out in the US, okay, this is what's happening down in 00:15:12.000 --> 00:15:16.000 South America. What's going to happen here? What will the effects be? Can a woman who's pregnant catch it 00:15:16.000 --> 00:15:20.000 and what happens then? How is it transmitted? We're not entirely sure; how are we going to solve it? 00:15:20.000 --> 00:15:24.000 This is something that's been around for 30 years. Crime is 00:15:24.000 --> 00:15:28.000 a wicked problem. Gun control is a wicked problem. 00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:32.000 Why does Canada not have the problems we 00:15:32.000 --> 00:15:36.000 have here? They have a lot of guns per capita. Maybe we've got 00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:40.000 more, but still. Education, as I've pointed out, is 00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:44.000 kind of a wicked problem. have you ever had a class at 8 o'clock in the morning and you walk in there and it's amazing, 00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:48.000 and then you teach the same class at 10 o'clock and you're like 'what!?' 00:15:48.000 --> 00:15:52.000 Right? I mean, that shouldn't make any sense, but of course it makes sense 00:15:52.000 --> 00:15:56.000 because you've got different student at a different moment, 00:15:56.000 --> 00:15:60.000 facing different challenges. We've got different student populations coming in. 00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:04.000 We've got more learning disabilities coming in. 00:16:04.000 --> 00:16:08.000 So figuring out what is going to work and what's not going to work. 00:16:08.000 --> 00:16:12.000 You hear a lot of people say things like 'honestly, the students today are 00:16:12.000 --> 00:16:16.000 different than they were just ten years ago. And there's some 00:16:16.000 --> 00:16:20.000 research; I think it's a little to early to tell, but if the brain has actually changed 00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:24.000 is the result of the devices and things like that. ISIS; that's a wicked problem. 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:28.000 We're at 'war,' question mark, with a 'nation state,' 00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:32.000 question mark, that's neither a nation nor a state. And they don't have a 00:16:32.000 --> 00:16:36.000 set base and they don't have a set leadership system, or it's constantly 00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:40.000 changing, so how do you respond to that? How do you approach something like that? And I guess I already mentioned 00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:44.000 fake news. So the question is: we live in a wicked world; 00:16:44.000 --> 00:16:48.000 this all makes sense. I think I've beaten that to death. What does it take to 00:16:48.000 --> 00:16:52.000 live in a wicked world? Well, I'm going to give you a couple 00:16:52.000 --> 00:16:56.000 ways to sort of explore this in terms of my thinking. 00:16:56.000 --> 00:16:60.000 Back in the 14th or 15th century - you can tell I'm not a historian 00:17:00.000 --> 00:17:04.000 or a religion scholar, or a Catholic - but this guy 00:17:04.000 --> 00:17:08.000 came up with the idea that we educate the mind, body, and spirit, 00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:12.000 and we've educated the whole person. I was a talk once 00:17:12.000 --> 00:17:16.000 at which a very earnest Midwestern college president said 00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:24.000 the emotions, and creativity, and I can't remember what the sixth thing was. I really can't. 00:17:24.000 --> 00:17:28.000 And part of me is a little scared to try. 00:17:28.000 --> 00:17:32.000 But once we've educated the whole person, they can go forth 00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:36.000 into the world and they'll be fine. The only problem with that argument 00:17:36.000 --> 00:17:40.000 is that almost every school in some way or form, at least for those 00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:44.000 top three, does that. Maybe we don't require 00:17:44.000 --> 00:17:48.000 a religion class, but a lot of institutions have an ethics class, 00:17:48.000 --> 00:17:52.000 or they recognize spirituality as a dimension, or they'll at least talk about it. 00:17:52.000 --> 00:17:56.000 They'll have something about it in their literature, because they want to let the parents know that they're attending to all 00:17:56.000 --> 00:17:60.000 of the student. My basic point is that if this 00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:04.000 worked, we wouldn't be graduating students who go forth into the world unsure 00:18:04.000 --> 00:18:08.000 who they are and what they want to do and what their place is in the world. 00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:12.000 And the fact of the matter is that we do. A lot of our 00:18:12.000 --> 00:18:16.000 students leave college, and they look at college as 'I've got my degree, 00:18:16.000 --> 00:18:20.000 and now I can earn more money. And that's it. These questions about 00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:24.000 who am I, what's my role... 00:18:24.000 --> 00:18:28.000 Someone I was talking to earlier 00:18:28.000 --> 00:18:32.000 had a great 8-5 job working in a cubicle making a lot of money. 00:18:32.000 --> 00:18:36.000 She's not doing that anymore, because she didn't like that. It was boring, it was 00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:40.000 algorithmic. It didn't feel like who she was. Now she's got a different 00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:44.000 job and she's working in the service industry; more flexible hours, 00:18:44.000 --> 00:18:47.000 but also just more dynamic work, right? 00:18:48.000 --> 00:18:52.000 So countering this and you can think about wholeness. 00:18:52.000 --> 00:18:54.000 I want to kind of put out another model. 00:18:54.000 --> 00:18:57.000 A couple years ago I was at a workshop and there was a professor who stood up 00:18:57.000 --> 00:18:60.000 and said well obviously we don't want our students to be the line workers. 00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:02.000 We want our students to be the line managers. 00:19:02.000 --> 00:19:06.000 And about half the room nodded. Like yeah that makes perfect sense. 00:19:06.000 --> 00:19:10.000 OK they're getting an education we want them to do well. 00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:12.000 But about half the room kind of said whoah, 00:19:12.000 --> 00:19:19.000 and what they proposed is listen, I don't actually want my students to be the line workers or the line managers. 00:19:19.000 --> 00:19:25.000 If they choose to be, fine. What I really want for my students is I want them to walk into a situation 00:19:25.000 --> 00:19:28.000 I want them to walk into that room look at the line workers and look at the line managers 00:19:28.000 --> 00:19:32.000 and go huh, I wonder if there's a better way to do this. 00:19:32.000 --> 00:19:34.000 I wonder if 00:19:34.000 --> 00:19:39.000 we can't do this better. And to be able to think about that. 00:19:39.000 --> 00:19:44.000 To know what question to ask. To be able to think about how to solve that situation. 00:19:44.000 --> 00:19:47.000 And then to be able to do it deliberately and thoughtfully. 00:19:47.000 --> 00:19:50.000 Not from a knee-jerk response, but thoughtfully. 00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:56.000 But also I want my students to be the ones who walk into the social services 00:19:56.000 --> 00:19:60.000 and look at the service and look at the client and go huh, I wonder if there's a better way to do this. 00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:03.000 You know maybe the client shouldn't be called a client, maybe the client should be called a partner. 00:20:03.000 --> 00:20:05.000 How does that change things when we do that? 00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:10.000 What happens if rather than us giving them a plan, we develop a plan together, how does that change the dynamic? 00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:16.000 Or walk into congress and go oh my god there's got to be a better way to do this. 00:20:16.000 --> 00:20:20.000 Or walk into traditional gender dynamics in the home and go huh, really? 00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:22.000 OK there's got to be a better way to do this. 00:20:22.000 --> 00:20:26.000 And I guess I'm basically making the argument that for all of us no matter what field we're in 00:20:26.000 --> 00:20:33.000 I'm gonna feel fairly comfortable saying I don't want my students to just go in there and adapt to what's there. 00:20:33.000 --> 00:20:36.000 I want them to be capable of adding to the field. 00:20:36.000 --> 00:20:42.000 If they're a chemist, yes I want them to know the chemistry that's been done prior 00:20:42.000 --> 00:20:44.000 but I want them to be able to go forward, take the field forward, 00:20:44.000 --> 00:20:49.000 take the thinking forward, take the culture forward, take our country forward, take the world forward. 00:20:49.000 --> 00:20:55.000 OK. So we're not just creating people to move into the world and leave it as it is but to add something to it. 00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:60.000 OK? Sometimes it's a literary scholar just changing the way we read Dickens. 00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.000 Sometimes it's a person going on and becoming a Nobel laureate in economics. 00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:08.000 So another way to think about this is 00:21:08.000 --> 00:21:14.000 if we want them to move forward if we want them to be able to take things a step further 00:21:14.000 --> 00:21:18.000 if we want them to be able to respond to a complicated world, what's it going to take? 00:21:18.000 --> 00:21:22.000 I'm going to put these things out. If we want to create wicked students and I'm going to argue that we do. 00:21:22.000 --> 00:21:24.000 We need people who are open to new challenges. 00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:27.000 We need people who are deliberate and thoughtful. 00:21:27.000 --> 00:21:32.000 Right? Because I'm not interested in a response oh this is a problem I'm going to change it and I haven't thought about it at all. 00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:34.000 We get enough of that today. 00:21:34.000 --> 00:21:36.000 They're going to need to be able to draw from multiple areas. 00:21:36.000 --> 00:21:40.000 Very few of the problems I put up there early on 00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:43.000 can be addressed from a single field. 00:21:43.000 --> 00:21:48.000 Right? If we're dealing with the Zika virus 00:21:48.000 --> 00:21:52.000 there is science in that but there is also sociology in that. 00:21:52.000 --> 00:21:56.000 There is public policy in that. There is education in that. 00:21:56.000 --> 00:21:61.000 There is gender theory in that. There is communication in that. 00:22:01.000 --> 00:22:05.000 So very few of these problems are going to be solved something a person does in a single class. 00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:07.000 They're going to have to draw from different areas. 00:22:07.000 --> 00:22:11.000 They have to be able to adapt ideas and technologies to new settings. 00:22:11.000 --> 00:22:16.000 You know so OK, this worked here, now I'm here. 00:22:16.000 --> 00:22:20.000 I tried it, it doesn't work. How can I tinker with it? How can I play with it? 00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:22.000 How can I adjust it to make it fit this new setting? 00:22:22.000 --> 00:22:27.000 How can I take something that maybe has been applied always to this field and apply it to this field. 00:22:27.000 --> 00:22:33.000 I mean the whole concept of wicked ideas is interesting that way because it began over here in social policy and city planning 00:22:33.000 --> 00:22:35.000 and now it's evolved into education. 00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:38.000 I'm not the only one using this word this phrase. 00:22:38.000 --> 00:22:43.000 They have to be able to ask the right questions. They have to not be afraid to fail and try again. 00:22:43.000 --> 00:22:48.000 And of all of these I'm gonna to say this bottom one is probably the most important one. 00:22:48.000 --> 00:22:52.000 And the point I kind of want to make is 00:22:52.000 --> 00:22:54.000 if that's what it takes to make wicked students 00:22:54.000 --> 00:22:57.000 if they have to be able to see new challenges 00:22:57.000 --> 00:22:64.000 if they have to be deliberate and thoughtful, if they have to draw from multiple areas, if they have to be able to fail, 00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:08.000 figure out why they failed, figure out how to adjust, and figure out how to move forward 00:23:08.000 --> 00:23:11.000 what are we doing in our classes? How do we approach our curriculums? 00:23:11.000 --> 00:23:15.000 How do we approach our programs to achieve those goals? 00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.000 Alright? The traditional answer is we give them content knowledge. 00:23:19.000 --> 00:23:25.000 Well Saint Ignatius is one tradition, the other one is we give them content knowledge and we give them skills and they're good. 00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:31.000 Again I'm gonna argue that these two things are crucial you absolutely must have them. 00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:33.000 But they're not enough. 00:23:33.000 --> 00:23:40.000 Arum and Roksa have a study from 2011 called Academically Adrift where they look at how students approach college. 00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.000 And the vast majority of students look at it as a certification process. 00:23:44.000 --> 00:23:48.000 I will go to college I will show up. 00:23:48.000 --> 00:23:51.000 I will write a paper because you asked me to write a paper. 00:23:51.000 --> 00:23:54.000 I will give an oral presentation because you asked me to give an oral presentation. 00:23:54.000 --> 00:23:56.000 You will grade me because that's what you have to do because you're the professor. 00:23:56.000 --> 00:23:61.000 But this doesn't really mean anything and it doesn't really matter. Now I have my certificate now pay me more money please. 00:24:01.000 --> 00:24:04.000 OK that's crass but it's kind of true. 00:24:04.000 --> 00:24:08.000 And their next book is called Adults Adrift. 00:24:08.000 --> 00:24:12.000 So if those are the students who are in our colleges 00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:14.000 then how are they when they move into the world? 00:24:14.000 --> 00:24:21.000 OK. Here's what I'm going to argue. Yeah, you absolutely need content knowledge and you absolutely need skills. 00:24:21.000 --> 00:24:24.000 You absolutely must have these things and I can't emphasize this enough 00:24:24.000 --> 00:24:25.000 because a lot of times when I come here and I talk about these things 00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:30.000 people are like but the content in my field really matters. Yes. 00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:35.000 If you don't have content, if you don't have skills, if you don't have the knowledge of the field, 00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:41.000 and you're trying to apply that, that's meaningless. That's ignorant that's what that is. And we don't want that. 00:24:41.000 --> 00:24:45.000 These two things matter. But I'm going to argue that in addition to that 00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:50.000 in order to walk in the room and say I wonder if there's a better way to do this, you need something else. 00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.000 You need a bit of an attitude. You need a sense of yourself. 00:24:54.000 --> 00:24:58.000 I'm going to call it a sense of our ability to engage in the meaningful questions of the day. 00:24:58.000 --> 00:24:62.000 And I'm also gonna say not just our ability but our right. 00:25:02.000 --> 00:25:07.000 OK? And this is really important. 00:25:07.000 --> 00:25:11.000 A couple years ago I was asked by my administration 00:25:11.000 --> 00:25:14.000 to make a pitch to a billionaire. 00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:20.000 Some guy who had done everything, traveled all over the world, done all these amazing things, had a billion dollars. 00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:28.000 And he'd inherited some of it but he'd grown it. This sounds familiar doesn't it? 00:25:28.000 --> 00:25:32.000 And I pitched this idea to him. 00:25:32.000 --> 00:25:37.000 I talked about listen, we know content and skills are important but we want to work on students' attitudes. 00:25:37.000 --> 00:25:42.000 We want to work on their sense of their ability to walk in the room and make significant changes. 00:25:42.000 --> 00:25:44.000 And he looked at me. 00:25:44.000 --> 00:25:50.000 And he said no. You either have that or you don't. 00:25:52.000 --> 00:25:56.000 You're shaking your head, what's your field? Behind you. 00:25:57.000 --> 00:25:59.000 Health? Yeah. 00:25:59.000 --> 00:25:66.000 And I'll you what, when I give this talk at community colleges they're like heck no. 00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:12.000 If you are either born with it or you're not, then we're screwed. 00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:16.000 And 95 percent of our students are screwed. 00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:20.000 My sense is that it's really our job to make sure all of our students can move into the world 00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:25.000 with a sense of their ability to make meaningful change and their right to make meaningful change. 00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:28.000 Even their obligation to engage in meaningful change, right? 00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:32.000 So that phrase is not pithy enough for me 00:26:32.000 --> 00:26:35.000 so I actually use the word authority to describe this idea. 00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:39.000 The sense of our ability and right and obligation to engage in the world in meaningful ways. 00:26:39.000 --> 00:26:45.000 Authority is a tricky word and it scares people and I get that. So I want to explain what I mean by it and what I don't mean by it. 00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:49.000 What I don't mean by authority is I don't mean bossiness and domination. 00:26:49.000 --> 00:26:52.000 OK, not interested in that. 00:26:52.000 --> 00:26:54.000 I don't mean confidence. 00:26:54.000 --> 00:26:56.000 I person can be confident. 00:26:56.000 --> 00:26:60.000 I can be confident I'm the most charming person in the room, and guess what I'm wrong. 00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:03.000 OK confidence is different from actually being able to do it. 00:27:03.000 --> 00:27:08.000 It's not arrogance either. Or even efficacy. 00:27:08.000 --> 00:27:13.000 I person can have a sense of their efficacy doing something and again be wrong about it. 00:27:13.000 --> 00:27:18.000 I am interested in something where it's not just I think I can do it 00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:22.000 but I think I can do it based upon what I've learned 00:27:22.000 --> 00:27:26.000 the content and knowledge, I've earned this sense of authority. 00:27:26.000 --> 00:27:31.000 Right? So think about this way the content and knowledge lead to authority. 00:27:31.000 --> 00:27:36.000 The learning that they do within our fields that helps shape their sense of authority. 00:27:36.000 --> 00:27:39.000 And you see this quite a bit with your students. 00:27:39.000 --> 00:27:41.000 They hit that senior year and suddenly they're like oh yeah I get this. 00:27:41.000 --> 00:27:44.000 I've got enough of this content and knowledge now. 00:27:44.000 --> 00:27:50.000 I'm starting to see different ways of playing with these things and putting them together. Not just reiterating what I've been told. 00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:55.000 But also another way to think about this is authority means authority over the content and the skills. 00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:61.000 OK? That they're not now just receiving the firehose of education that we're giving them. 00:28:01.000 --> 00:28:07.000 Here study literature, blam. But they can actually respond to it and control it a little bit. 00:28:07.000 --> 00:28:12.000 I also like the term authority though because it has within it the concept of authorship, 00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:16.000 of creation. of making something new, of looking forward, of shaping things. 00:28:16.000 --> 00:28:23.000 So think about it this way authority draws from content and skills but authority also looks forward. 00:28:23.000 --> 00:28:26.000 It's about authorship. Shaping, writing. 00:28:26.000 --> 00:28:33.000 I teach a lot of writing obviously I also teach a lot of creative writing. 00:28:33.000 --> 00:28:36.000 And you see it a lot there. Students will come into your office. 00:28:36.000 --> 00:28:43.000 And say I've just never been a good writer. 00:28:43.000 --> 00:28:48.000 And actually the funny thing is I'll also have my English students come into my office 00:28:48.000 --> 00:28:51.000 and say well I've got this mathematics class and I've just never been good at mathematics. 00:28:51.000 --> 00:28:57.000 Well that's completely crap. That you can or you can't. Unless there's a brain disability. 00:28:57.000 --> 00:28:60.000 Or a brain issue, damage. 00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:03.000 The brain can do anything and all learning is equal, OK? 00:29:03.000 --> 00:29:10.000 So one thing that I like to do when I'm working with students in just a small little micro-pedagogy 00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:12.000 is when they come into my office for paper conferences 00:29:12.000 --> 00:29:18.000 rather than me having read the paper ahead of time and handing it to them all marked up and saying here's what you need to do 00:29:19.000 --> 00:29:24.000 What I do is I sit there and I actually read the paper while they're in the office I read it very quickly and I have them make lists. 00:29:24.000 --> 00:29:27.000 What are the changes they already know for a fact they're going to do? 00:29:27.000 --> 00:29:30.000 What are the changes that they're thinking about and what are the questions they have for me? 00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:35.000 And what that does is it shifts responsibility for writing that paper from I'm the teacher 00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:38.000 and I'm going to tell you what to do with your paper which means you have no agency 00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:42.000 to you are the writer this is your paper what decisions are you going to make? 00:29:42.000 --> 00:29:46.000 So suddenly literally they are author. 00:29:46.000 --> 00:29:49.000 Politics in general is a wicked problem I mean oh my god. 00:29:49.000 --> 00:29:52.000 I have the benefit of working at a small liberal arts college. 00:29:52.000 --> 00:29:58.000 Where we get no state support which I guess isn't a benefit but we also don't get any state interference which is a benefit. 00:29:58.000 --> 00:29:60.000 There's a couple things to kind of think about here. 00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.000 One way to think about this and I'll talk about this probably throughout my visit here. 00:30:04.000 --> 00:30:08.000 This forces a different kind of efficiency. 00:30:11.000 --> 00:30:17.000 Two stories. One in Hong Kong when I was there I did a Fulbright there working with general education I'll explain that in a minute. 00:30:17.000 --> 00:30:22.000 One of the universities I went to said 00:30:22.000 --> 00:30:27.000 of their graduation requirements 80 percent were within the major. 00:30:27.000 --> 00:30:33.000 OK? For me the implication of that structure the rhetoric of that structure 00:30:33.000 --> 00:30:40.000 is to say to students all you need when you move into the world is the content and skills we're going to give you that's it. 00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:44.000 So when we're focused on content and delivery that's going to take a lot of time. 00:30:44.000 --> 00:30:50.000 Right? But if we recognize that finally content in the world is changing constantly. 00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:54.000 And the books we give our students now, my wife works in publishing, 00:30:54.000 --> 00:30:60.000 the books we give the students on the first day of their freshman year are already four years out of date. 00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:02.000 Because of the conception process 00:31:02.000 --> 00:31:06.000 the proposal process, the review process, the writing process, 00:31:06.000 --> 00:31:13.000 the drafting process, the editing process, the promotional process, the design process. 00:31:13.000 --> 00:31:15.000 Then the book hits it and it's four years out of date. 00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:18.000 And then they graduate four years or five years later. 00:31:18.000 --> 00:31:20.000 So partly what I'm arguing here 00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:25.000 is that if we want to prepare students for this world, if we want to get them through quickly 00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:28.000 we have to recognize that on some level 00:31:28.000 --> 00:31:32.000 content is always going to be a challenge and we have to prepare them not just for content we've given them 00:31:32.000 --> 00:31:35.000 but for the content that they've never seen before. It changes the dynamics. 00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:39.000 Does that make sense? That's one way to respond to it. Here's the other way to respond to it. 00:31:39.000 --> 00:31:41.000 And this is the way that we should be talking to our politicians. 00:31:41.000 --> 00:31:48.000 I went to Hong Kong in 2009 as part of a special Fulbright program in general education curricular revision. 00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:52.000 Here's why Fulbright did a special program in this. 00:31:52.000 --> 00:31:55.000 Hong Kong is 100 percent service industry. 00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:58.000 There is no manufacturing there is no farming. 100 percent service industry. 00:31:58.000 --> 00:31:62.000 The way the old system worked was the British system. 00:32:02.000 --> 00:32:08.000 Everybody studies to the age of 16 they take a test and two thirds of the population is thrown out into the workforce. 00:32:08.000 --> 00:32:13.000 Complete service industry no manufacturing, 16 year olds, OK? 00:32:13.000 --> 00:32:16.000 That's a problem. Here's the other problem. 00:32:16.000 --> 00:32:21.000 The remaining one third go forward for two more years and then they take another big test. 00:32:21.000 --> 00:32:25.000 The top half of that one third, about 18 percent of the overall student population, 00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:29.000 gets a full ride into some of the best universities in the world in Hong Kong. 00:32:29.000 --> 00:32:32.000 There's eight of them. Three of them are on the top 100 internationally. 00:32:32.000 --> 00:32:37.000 OK? Free ride full ride. The bottom half of that top third are done. 00:32:37.000 --> 00:32:41.000 They're not getting any support from the government. 00:32:41.000 --> 00:32:46.000 So what happens is they go to Australia, to New Zealand, to America, to Great Britain, to Canada. 00:32:46.000 --> 00:32:48.000 OK and they get their degrees there. 00:32:51.000 --> 00:32:56.000 In 2000 they did a survey of Hong Kong employers in all these different areas 00:32:56.000 --> 00:32:59.000 and what they found out is that given the choice between the top, top students 00:32:59.000 --> 00:32:62.000 who went to some of the best universities in the world in Hong Kong 00:33:02.000 --> 00:33:06.000 and the bottom half who couldn't make that cut and had to go to other places 00:33:06.000 --> 00:33:09.000 they always hired the bottom half students. 00:33:09.000 --> 00:33:12.000 Because the top half students were great 00:33:12.000 --> 00:33:17.000 at taking tests and dealing with problems that they'd seen before. 00:33:17.000 --> 00:33:22.000 The bottom half students were great at dealing with stuff they'd never seen before. 00:33:22.000 --> 00:33:26.000 Because waking up in a foreign country every morning is a wicked problem. 00:33:26.000 --> 00:33:31.000 And they learned to solve that and learned to adjust and learned to not get freaked out by it. 00:33:31.000 --> 00:33:33.000 OK? Anecdote related to that. 00:33:33.000 --> 00:33:37.000 So they changed their entire system. They now have a four year university system. 00:33:37.000 --> 00:33:44.000 It has liberal arts in it, not American style, they adapted it to the Chinese which is great. 00:33:44.000 --> 00:33:46.000 Another anecdote related that though. 00:33:46.000 --> 00:33:52.000 In 2012 they had the first ever general education conference on liberal education in Hong Kong. 00:33:52.000 --> 00:33:57.000 They anticipated 50 universities coming from Asia. 350 came. 00:33:57.000 --> 00:33:62.000 So here's my reply. While America is saying skim it down 00:34:02.000 --> 00:34:08.000 cut it out, get rid of that extra stuff that they don't have, focus them on career professional development. 00:34:08.000 --> 00:34:13.000 The rest of the world is adopting what we've been so good at forever. 00:34:13.000 --> 00:34:15.000 I want to hit some of how-to stuff here. 00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:21.000 And I'm going to skim over this I've done this as a workshop but I want to leave lots of time for conversation. 00:34:21.000 --> 00:34:24.000 But it might help you to think a little bit as I'm talking through some of these things 00:34:24.000 --> 00:34:29.000 about some of the classes that you teach or a particular class that you teach 00:34:29.000 --> 00:34:32.000 and just think how could I do that in my class? Would I want to do that in my class? 00:34:32.000 --> 00:34:35.000 Or if I did that in my class what would the consequence be? 00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:37.000 How do we create wicked students? Here's what we know. 00:34:37.000 --> 00:34:42.000 George Kuh did a study back in the aughts you know 2007, 2008. 00:34:42.000 --> 00:34:48.000 Where he was looking at about 20,000 university students and figured out what he calls high-impact practices. 00:34:48.000 --> 00:34:50.000 Practices that the more students encounter them 00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:54.000 the more they leave college capable of engaging in the world in meaningful ways. 00:34:54.000 --> 00:34:60.000 And they include first year seminars, study abroad, undergraduate research, collaborative assignments. 00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:04.000 It actually sounds like there's a fair bit of undergrad research going on here is that right? 00:35:04.000 --> 00:35:07.000 Yeah. Internships, capstones, community based learning. 00:35:07.000 --> 00:35:12.000 And you can see how each of these gets a person used to moving out of the classroom 00:35:12.000 --> 00:35:18.000 where the problems are sometimes predictable sometimes what they call tame or static 00:35:18.000 --> 00:35:21.000 into less predictable situations, OK? 00:35:21.000 --> 00:35:25.000 Here's what I'm going to say about this. I love these high-impact practices they're really good. 00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:27.000 But not all of us can engage in them all of the time. 00:35:27.000 --> 00:35:32.000 And I'm really interested in what all of us can do all the time in all of our classes. 00:35:32.000 --> 00:35:36.000 So I take this from Randy Bass he's at Georgetown University. 00:35:36.000 --> 00:35:42.000 He once said that high-impact practices work because they offer students the opportunity to integrate and synthesize. 00:35:42.000 --> 00:35:47.000 So they're not just taking here's the information in one class give that information back to me. 00:35:47.000 --> 00:35:53.000 But take that information from this class, this class, and this class, maybe this field, this field, and this field 00:35:53.000 --> 00:35:58.000 and given this problem right here what are going to draw from? What are the bits and pieces you're going to have, OK? 00:35:58.000 --> 00:35:65.000 Also that idea of making meaning which that idea of looking forward not just here's what I've been told 00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:13.000 but here's what I'm thinking with my education and deliberation this could mean, here's a new way of doing it, OK? 00:36:13.000 --> 00:36:19.000 One of my colleagues who does creative writing likes to have students invent a new poetic form. 00:36:19.000 --> 00:36:25.000 OK? And one of them last year invented a form based upon cell phone numbers. 00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:32.000 Which for that student population is like identity. So interesting. 00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:36.000 Also they ask students to make judgments in the midst of uncertainty. 00:36:36.000 --> 00:36:41.000 Oftentimes in the classroom in the textbooks we use the answers are at the back 00:36:41.000 --> 00:36:47.000 or if they're not at the back then the answers are in the chapter and you can simply find it. We're asking for static tame information. 00:36:47.000 --> 00:36:52.000 What do we do when we give students a problem and there isn't a clear answer, OK? 00:36:52.000 --> 00:36:55.000 So whatever we're going to be talking about, whatever we're going to be doing in our classes 00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:58.000 here's what I'm king of encouraging us to think about. And I will point this out. 00:36:58.000 --> 00:36:63.000 I've done these talks enough that I know I'm not saying anything that's radically new here. 00:37:03.000 --> 00:37:07.000 I know that a lot of you are probably sitting there thinking I already do this in my class. Great. 00:37:07.000 --> 00:37:09.000 OK. So let's talk about that a little bit more. 00:37:09.000 --> 00:37:15.000 Because if we can talk about it a little bit more then more and more we can understand that what we're doing is effective. 00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:20.000 And that it's OK to do it because it runs contrary to the testing culture that we live in. 00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:23.000 So we want to integrate, we want them to synthesize, we want them to make meaning, we want them to draw conclusions 00:37:23.000 --> 00:37:27.000 we want them to draw conclusions, particularly in contexts of uncertainty. 00:37:27.000 --> 00:37:29.000 Let me give you examples in three areas. 00:37:29.000 --> 00:37:34.000 Projects and papers, exams, and day to day pedagogies. 00:37:34.000 --> 00:37:37.000 The things we do in the class on a daily basis. 00:37:37.000 --> 00:37:39.000 Projects and papers. 00:37:39.000 --> 00:37:44.000 Aristotle will tell you that there's basically three components to every rhetorical act. 00:37:44.000 --> 00:37:46.000 Spoken, written, doesn't matter. 00:37:46.000 --> 00:37:52.000 You've got the person writing, you've got the topic that's being written about, and you've got the audience. 00:37:52.000 --> 00:37:58.000 OK? In the academic context the person writing is a student with limited expertise. 00:37:58.000 --> 00:37:61.000 They've been in this class, you guys have quarters so 10 weeks? 00:38:01.000 --> 00:38:06.000 They've been in this class for nine weeks and suddenly they're going to write a paper for you. 00:38:06.000 --> 00:38:11.000 About a topic that's been discussed for years and years and years oftentimes. 00:38:11.000 --> 00:38:13.000 For a professor who has a PhD. 00:38:13.000 --> 00:38:22.000 My friend Nancy Welch makes the point that really this graph should look like this. 00:38:22.000 --> 00:38:29.000 OK? The students down here. There's the topic that they just met nine weeks ago. 00:38:29.000 --> 00:38:32.000 They've had three girlfriends in that time. 00:38:32.000 --> 00:38:34.000 laughter 00:38:34.000 --> 00:38:39.000 And there's the professor looking at them with a grade-book going don't worry just do your best. 00:38:39.000 --> 00:38:44.000 And she says she might as well put a handle on it it looks that much like a dagger right? 00:38:44.000 --> 00:38:50.000 So point being these things are not static and they can be adjusted. 00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:55.000 We can play with them a little bit. And we're all used to playing rhetorically. 00:38:55.000 --> 00:38:61.000 When I talk to my dean 00:39:01.000 --> 00:39:04.000 it's a different conversation than when I'm talking to a colleague 00:39:04.000 --> 00:39:08.000 and when I'm talking to a student and when I'm talking to my spouse. 00:39:08.000 --> 00:39:14.000 OK? We change ourselves we change how we construct ourselves all the time and our students get that. 00:39:14.000 --> 00:39:20.000 They write an email to grandma, it's a very different email than the email they write to their friends. 00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:24.000 OK? Point being we can play with these things to effect. 00:39:24.000 --> 00:39:26.000 Why not think about something like this? 00:39:26.000 --> 00:39:33.000 It's the same student it's the same subject but they're writing to a less informed audience. 00:39:33.000 --> 00:39:40.000 Here's why. When you have this think about all the things students do to accommodate this. 00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:45.000 OK? Have you ever received a paper that it's very clear all the student did 00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:49.000 was find like 10 sources or exactly the number of sources you told them to 00:39:49.000 --> 00:39:53.000 skimmed those sources for good quotes and then dump as many quotes in your paper as possible? 00:39:53.000 --> 00:39:56.000 Right? Yeah it's called a data dump. 00:39:56.000 --> 00:39:60.000 And for them it's a safe bet because I'm not wrong, I've got research. 00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:04.000 But all of the authority all of the responsibility is on that outside source. 00:40:04.000 --> 00:40:09.000 Or have you ever had a situation like this where in paper a student cites your lecture as one of their sources? 00:40:09.000 --> 00:40:15.000 Yeah that's them saying look this is stupid, you and I know it's stupid, you're the professor 00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:18.000 so I'm just gonna, you know. 00:40:18.000 --> 00:40:23.000 And of course what happens when they do that is they don't really own that idea. 00:40:23.000 --> 00:40:28.000 They're just saying it's yours I'm just telling you what I'm pretty sure you want to hear. 00:40:28.000 --> 00:40:36.000 Have you had a student ever write paper that you think at first it's grammar problems and then you realize it's academic gibberish? 00:40:36.000 --> 00:40:41.000 They're trying to adopt academic jargon to convince you that they're really smart, right? 00:40:41.000 --> 00:40:45.000 So again that's appealing to the professor. Have you ever had a student plagiarize a paper? 00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:48.000 Yeah. So these are the things they do faced with this. 00:40:48.000 --> 00:40:52.000 Think about what we can do if we put them in a position of responsibility. 00:40:52.000 --> 00:40:55.000 My friend Gail Steehler says it like this. 00:40:55.000 --> 00:40:61.000 She's a chemistry professor and she says to her students write the paper as though you're writing it to an English professor. 00:41:01.000 --> 00:41:04.000 OK? Because that changes the dynamic completely. 00:41:04.000 --> 00:41:07.000 When you're writing to the English professor or to the less informed audience 00:41:07.000 --> 00:41:12.000 all of a sudden you have to own the ideas. 00:41:12.000 --> 00:41:20.000 You have to own the things from the lecture you need to know these concepts not just repeating the words but really understanding them. 00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:23.000 you have to own the outside sources so that you can explain it. 00:41:23.000 --> 00:41:27.000 You have to own the language. 00:41:27.000 --> 00:41:31.000 In this one it's difficult but there's not a lot of authority. 00:41:31.000 --> 00:41:35.000 In this one it might be somewhat easier but there's a lot more responsibility. 00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:38.000 We're putting the students in a place where they have to own that responsibility. 00:41:38.000 --> 00:41:41.000 I'll give you an example from a biology class. 00:41:41.000 --> 00:41:47.000 It asks students to create an informational pamphlet. It's a class on emerging infectious diseases. 00:41:47.000 --> 00:41:53.000 Create a pamphlet on an emerging infectious disease pitched to parent teacher organization parents. 00:41:53.000 --> 00:41:59.000 Include causative agent, vector, threat to local population, and possible measures to reduce risk. 00:41:59.000 --> 00:41:61.000 OK? Now I want to make a couple points about this. 00:42:01.000 --> 00:42:11.000 This is not low ball education or lowered standards. They still need to know how to do the real science of the field. 00:42:12.000 --> 00:42:17.000 OK but what they also have to do because they're pitching it to someone who hasn't been in that classroom 00:42:17.000 --> 00:42:20.000 doesn't know the jargon doesn't have the background information 00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:25.000 they have to figure out a way to explain that very quickly very brieflly. 00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:28.000 Alright? Another example. Marine Biology. 00:42:28.000 --> 00:42:32.000 I like scientists. This one's from Hong Kong. 00:42:32.000 --> 00:42:36.000 You're on an environmental policy board looking at the issue of land reclamation. 00:42:36.000 --> 00:42:44.000 Which is basically refilling in the harbor. The Hong Kong harbor used to be 40 percent bigger than it is they keep building on it. 00:42:44.000 --> 00:42:51.000 So on that board you're gonna have policy people, you're gonna have business people, you're gonna have tourism people. 00:42:51.000 --> 00:42:55.000 You the student are the sole marine biologist. 00:42:55.000 --> 00:42:60.000 You're the only one who understands the effects on the ecosystem. 00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:03.000 So your job is to explain to the rest of the board 00:43:03.000 --> 00:43:06.000 highly educated people but not particularly informed about this subject 00:43:06.000 --> 00:43:09.000 what the consequences are. 00:43:09.000 --> 00:43:13.000 Get them to think about it. Again this is a research paper. 00:43:13.000 --> 00:43:16.000 But they can't research and say well I'm just dumping quotes. 00:43:16.000 --> 00:43:21.000 They've got to pick and choose and think with this audience what's going to work what's going to be persuasive. 00:43:21.000 --> 00:43:25.000 I'll give you another one here. 00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:32.000 From a literature class where they teach us poetry. I like this one for a weird reason. This is for a gen ed course. 00:43:32.000 --> 00:43:37.000 I teach a gen ed course artistic and literary responses to science and technology. 00:43:37.000 --> 00:43:39.000 I specifically designed it for scientists and mathematicians. 00:43:39.000 --> 00:43:45.000 Because I like working with them. And a lot of them think god I hate poetry and I'm never going to find anything in poetry that matters to me. 00:43:45.000 --> 00:43:48.000 OK? And I like dissuading them of that idea. 00:43:48.000 --> 00:43:53.000 But I basically say to them OK you're a math major 00:43:53.000 --> 00:43:57.000 and you're major is going to redesign its curriculum. 00:43:57.000 --> 00:43:64.000 I want you to go in that major and persuade them that the curriculum must have a poetry course in it. 00:44:04.000 --> 00:44:07.000 Students must study poetry. 00:44:07.000 --> 00:44:10.000 OK? A couple things I want to say about this. 00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:15.000 One, they're still analyzing the poetry it's no different than any other literature class. 00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:18.000 They're doing the basic skills of the field. 00:44:18.000 --> 00:44:22.000 Two, that's pretty impossible really. 00:44:22.000 --> 00:44:25.000 I don't know. Are there mathematicians in here? 00:44:25.000 --> 00:44:27.000 Anybody? Yeah a couple. 00:44:27.000 --> 00:44:32.000 Actually I suppose you could make an argument when you start thinking about 00:44:32.000 --> 00:44:38.000 numerology, numbers and systems, and logics, 00:44:38.000 --> 00:44:44.000 and efficiency of language versus like efficiency of computation and stuff like that. 00:44:44.000 --> 00:44:46.000 So there might be an argument to make for it. 00:44:46.000 --> 00:44:53.000 But the point is I really almost don't care if they persuade the professor 00:44:53.000 --> 00:44:56.000 as much as I want to see them struggle to persuade the professor. 00:44:56.000 --> 00:44:60.000 Because that's what they're going to have to do when they get out of class and they get in the real world. 00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:04.000 They're gonna have tasks that aren't easy that don't have clear solutions. 00:45:04.000 --> 00:45:07.000 And I want to see a good final product 00:45:07.000 --> 00:45:12.000 but I really want to see how their brains are working and put them in a situation where they have to use their brains. 00:45:12.000 --> 00:45:16.000 The thing I like about this one is you can do this for any class. 00:45:16.000 --> 00:45:20.000 My poetry person is in your mathematics class. 00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:25.000 And you say to them explain to the literature professors why they should study mathematics. 00:45:25.000 --> 00:45:27.000 Which I actually think they should, OK? 00:45:27.000 --> 00:45:33.000 You know you're in my biology class explain to sociology why sociology has to study biology because they probably do. 00:45:33.000 --> 00:45:40.000 And I've had people say to me well that's not fair what if they don't like your poetry class? What if they don't like literature? 00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:47.000 My response to that is that's ok because it's not a bad thing for them to have to take on a stance that they've never taken on before. 00:45:47.000 --> 00:45:49.000 And really look at the world in a different way that's a crucial skill too. 00:45:49.000 --> 00:45:53.000 Alright. One thing I like about these three assignments or assignments like this 00:45:53.000 --> 00:45:56.000 is it also creates students who are more rhetorically nimble. 00:45:56.000 --> 00:45:59.000 If we always have them writing to us 00:45:59.000 --> 00:45:63.000 then they go into the world and they don't understand that they're gonna have to on this day write to this person, 00:46:03.000 --> 00:46:07.000 on this day write to this person, on this day write to this person, and that they have to change. 00:46:07.000 --> 00:46:14.000 So OK. I just want to make the point that there's nothing that says this just has to occur in the writing context. 00:46:14.000 --> 00:46:18.000 A couple years ago I was doing a workshop and somebody in the back of the room suddenly went oh my god 00:46:18.000 --> 00:46:21.000 and we all looked at her thinking she was having a heart attack or she had spilled coffee on herself. 00:46:21.000 --> 00:46:23.000 She taught a gender class. 00:46:23.000 --> 00:46:27.000 And she looked at developmental models for men. 00:46:27.000 --> 00:46:32.000 And she says what we've always done for oral presentations is the students have studied a topic 00:46:32.000 --> 00:46:37.000 and they've come into the class and they've done the presentation for everybody in the class who already knows all the information. 00:46:37.000 --> 00:46:43.000 And so it's basically a meaningless task. And these are the kinds of things that for our students they respond to that. 00:46:43.000 --> 00:46:45.000 They recognize that it doesn't have a lot of meaning to it. 00:46:45.000 --> 00:46:49.000 I'm telling people who already know something something they already know. 00:46:49.000 --> 00:46:55.000 She said what if I had them pretend that instead of talking to their classmates 00:46:55.000 --> 00:46:61.000 they're talking to 12 year old boys who are just about to move into the world 00:47:01.000 --> 00:47:04.000 and have to figure out what their gender roles are gonna be. 00:47:04.000 --> 00:47:06.000 And everybody in the room went oh! 00:47:06.000 --> 00:47:10.000 It suddenly becomes a very meaningful task. OK? 00:47:11.000 --> 00:47:17.000 Quantitative projects. I mean one of the things I hear from mathematicians and scientist a lot 00:47:17.000 --> 00:47:19.000 particularly chemists and physicists 00:47:19.000 --> 00:47:22.000 is they get the formula but when I change the dynamics 00:47:22.000 --> 00:47:27.000 and they have to shift it form this form to this form they don't recognize the logic behind it. 00:47:27.000 --> 00:47:33.000 So what if they had to explain that logic not the professor who knows but to somebody who doesn't know, OK? 00:47:33.000 --> 00:47:40.000 Blended assignments, same thing. They can make films do rationales. I'm gonna keep moving here a little bit quickly. 00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:43.000 Exams, because I want to talk about exams. 00:47:43.000 --> 00:47:46.000 It's essential that our exams process content and skill. 00:47:46.000 --> 00:47:50.000 We want to make sure that they can do what we're telling them to do that they know what we need them to know. 00:47:50.000 --> 00:47:54.000 But there's nothing that says that there isn't room for integration and synthesis. 00:47:54.000 --> 00:47:56.000 Nothing that says that there isn't room for uncertainty. 00:47:56.000 --> 00:47:60.000 So let me give you a couple examples. 00:48:00.000 --> 00:48:01.000 These are going to be from literature. 00:48:01.000 --> 00:48:08.000 You say to a student here's a poem that you've never seen before. I want you to analyze it. 00:48:08.000 --> 00:48:13.000 And I want you to look at the style and the content and want you to make an argument about who you think authored this work. 00:48:13.000 --> 00:48:16.000 From the authors we read in this class. 00:48:16.000 --> 00:48:20.000 Now you can see how this could work in pretty much any class that we have. 00:48:20.000 --> 00:48:24.000 Here's a biosystem you haven't seen before. Here's a data set you haven't seen before. 00:48:24.000 --> 00:48:28.000 Draw some conclusions about it. So putting them in a place where they haven't seen the information. 00:48:28.000 --> 00:48:30.000 They're not simply reiterating what we've given them before. 00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:38.000 What I like about this is for that sample I could give them a poem that isn't even from the period. 00:48:38.000 --> 00:48:43.000 And so they're inevitably going to get the answer wrong but I don't care about that. 00:48:43.000 --> 00:48:50.000 What I care about, what I'm grading them on, is how careful their logic is how carefully they're analyzing, OK? 00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:55.000 Here's another example. Ezra Pound and William Wordsworth are in a bar getting drunk and talking about poetry. 00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:60.000 By the end of the night would they A end up arguing with each other to the point of physical violence, the answer's yes, 00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:08.000 or B end up in an eternal bromance? Base your answer on careful analysis both of their writing and their writing about writing. 00:49:08.000 --> 00:49:12.000 OK so not a correct answer. 00:49:12.000 --> 00:49:14.000 Although I will tell you yes they would get in a fight and Pound would win. 00:49:14.000 --> 00:49:20.000 OK? And this is despite the fact that William Wordsworth was over six feet tall but he was just a wimp. 00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:26.000 But again I want to see how they're thinking and how their logic is and how they respond to situations that they haven't seen before. 00:49:26.000 --> 00:49:31.000 And again you can apply this to mathematics you can apply this to philosophy. 00:49:31.000 --> 00:49:35.000 There's room. But it changes the gears a little bit. 00:49:35.000 --> 00:49:41.000 It shifts a little bit. I'm not looking at content memorization, I'm looking at problem solving. 00:49:41.000 --> 00:49:44.000 Alright? Biology course in physiology. Here's another example. 00:49:44.000 --> 00:49:46.000 I got this one from a Virginia professor. 00:49:46.000 --> 00:49:52.000 Are you for or against the feasibility of a pegasus drawing on our work this semester? 00:49:52.000 --> 00:49:56.000 Alright? It doesn't exist. Could it exist though? 00:49:56.000 --> 00:49:60.000 And why and how? Give me the logic behind it. 00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:06.000 I want to put an evolutionary psychology one up there but I'm never quite sure. Do we have psychologists in the room? 00:50:06.000 --> 00:50:10.000 No? Not a single one, wow. 00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:11.000 Something about digital natives. 00:50:11.000 --> 00:50:17.000 At the last workshop I gave I tossed this out and there was one psychologist. I said can you think of one for this? 00:50:17.000 --> 00:50:19.000 Here's what she said. And I haven't quite figured it out but it's interesting. 00:50:19.000 --> 00:50:24.000 She said here's a good question. Why can't men see what's in the middle of the refrigerator? 00:50:24.000 --> 00:50:28.000 laughter 00:50:28.000 --> 00:50:33.000 And at first I thought she was just slamming gender, she'd had a bad morning with her husband or whatever. 00:50:33.000 --> 00:50:37.000 And I said is that a real question? She says that's a real question and there's a real explanation 00:50:37.000 --> 00:50:42.000 in psychology that can explain why men can't see what's in the middle of the refrigerator. 00:50:42.000 --> 00:50:44.000 But students have to figure out how to do it, so OK. 00:50:45.000 --> 00:50:49.000 Alright I want to keep moving. Obvious point here. 00:50:49.000 --> 00:50:53.000 If we're going to do authoritative tasks if we're going to give them authoritative assignments 00:50:53.000 --> 00:50:56.000 papers, projects, oral presentations, posters, 00:50:56.000 --> 00:50:60.000 if we're going to give them authoritative exams, that's different. 00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:04.000 They haven't seen that kind of work. 00:51:04.000 --> 00:51:09.000 Oftentimes they get to college because they're very good at playing the usual game of read chapter five take a test on chapter five. 00:51:09.000 --> 00:51:12.000 Read chapter seven take a test on chapter seven. 00:51:12.000 --> 00:51:14.000 So we're changing the rules on them. 00:51:14.000 --> 00:51:16.000 And the only point I really want to make about the day to day pedagogies 00:51:16.000 --> 00:51:20.000 is if we're going to change the rules on the things we're grading them on 00:51:20.000 --> 00:51:24.000 we have to play fair and prepare them for that, OK? 00:51:24.000 --> 00:51:29.000 So what I'm going to basically argue is if we're going to do wicked problems in our big projects 00:51:29.000 --> 00:51:33.000 we have to prepare them for wicked problems along the way. 00:51:33.000 --> 00:51:35.000 And we have to tell them we're doing it. 00:51:35.000 --> 00:51:39.000 In increasingly complex ways. This is something you're going to hear me say over and over and over again. 00:51:39.000 --> 00:51:41.000 There are very few skills that can be taught in a single shot. 00:51:41.000 --> 00:51:44.000 They've got to be taught over and over and over again. 00:51:44.000 --> 00:51:48.000 So if you're looking and saying you're going to have this math class and you're never going to have problems with math again 00:51:48.000 --> 00:51:51.000 or you're going to have this writing class and you're never going to have problems with writing again, that's not going to work. 00:51:51.000 --> 00:51:54.000 I can just assure you that that's not the way the brain works. 00:51:54.000 --> 00:51:60.000 So we want to do it in increasingly complex ways in ungraded, minimally graded, or proportionally graded contexts. 00:52:00.000 --> 00:52:02.000 And here's what I mean by that. 00:52:02.000 --> 00:52:06.000 Ungraded means they come to class I give them some sort of exercise they do it in the class 00:52:06.000 --> 00:52:08.000 they give some feedback we have a conversation about it. 00:52:08.000 --> 00:52:12.000 Maybe I collect what they wrote about but there's no grade consequence. 00:52:12.000 --> 00:52:16.000 But they have a chance to engage in material play with the problems. 00:52:16.000 --> 00:52:20.000 Minimally graded. 00:52:20.000 --> 00:52:24.000 Meaning something like it's only worth five percent of the grade. 00:52:24.000 --> 00:52:29.000 Or I have something where they do reading responses for me. 00:52:29.000 --> 00:52:33.000 I take them in. If they're good you know they did it 00:52:33.000 --> 00:52:36.000 they were thoughtful, they weren't just mailing it in, I give them a check. 00:52:36.000 --> 00:52:40.000 If they get checks 90 percent of the time they get an A, 00:52:40.000 --> 00:52:44.000 if they get checks 80 percent of the time they get a B if they get checks 70 percent of the time they get a C 00:52:44.000 --> 00:52:49.000 they get below that they get an F in the class because you're not doing two thirds of the work in my class. 00:52:49.000 --> 00:52:52.000 I call that white wine grading. 00:52:52.000 --> 00:52:58.000 Hopefully I don't have to explain that. We're in the Willamette Valley people. 00:52:58.000 --> 00:52:64.000 And then proportionally graded meaning the first time they do it it's worth five percent second time 10 percent. OK. 00:53:04.000 --> 00:53:09.000 And the point I want to make is the reason it has to have this is this is the point where they need to have room to fail. 00:53:09.000 --> 00:53:14.000 To mess it up, to get it wrong, so true in mathematics right? 00:53:14.000 --> 00:53:17.000 You got to get it wrong and then you got to figure out how to get it right and move forward. 00:53:17.000 --> 00:53:20.000 We need to create those contexts. So let me give you an example from geoscience. 00:53:20.000 --> 00:53:25.000 My friend Chris Connors at Washington and Lee teaches geoscience. 00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:27.000 And he says this is how they handle it. 00:53:27.000 --> 00:53:32.000 Early data sets we're giving you some data you have to decide whether to drill or mine. 00:53:33.000 --> 00:53:39.000 Two maybe one really clear paths. If you've been paying attention you're gonna find them. 00:53:39.000 --> 00:53:44.000 And there's some noise. You know data that doesn't really matter to try this floating around. 00:53:44.000 --> 00:53:47.000 But you don't have to worry about it you can tell pretty quickly. 00:53:47.000 --> 00:53:49.000 Middle data sets. 00:53:49.000 --> 00:53:53.000 There's moderate noise, there's more noise, more to try, there's more stuff that doesn't really matter. 00:53:53.000 --> 00:53:58.000 And there's a couple paths any of which are sort of reasonable but you've got to find them it's going to take a little bit of work. 00:53:58.000 --> 00:53:64.000 Later data sets massive noise. No clear path. 00:54:04.000 --> 00:54:09.000 So the student basically has to built the path out. Construct the path him or herself. 00:54:09.000 --> 00:54:12.000 Make if from scratch, OK? And justify that. 00:54:15.000 --> 00:54:22.000 Proportionally graded. First one's five percent, later one's 10 percent, final one's 25 percent. 00:54:22.000 --> 00:54:23.000 Example from a literature course. 00:54:23.000 --> 00:54:27.000 When I was at Ohio state I taught literature classes that had 44 people in them. 00:54:27.000 --> 00:54:32.000 Obviously I knew that if I had them write just one paper in literature the papers weren't gonna be that good. 00:54:32.000 --> 00:54:35.000 That they needed to write multiple papers to get a sense of what I was looking for. 00:54:35.000 --> 00:54:40.000 And to develop their skills. But I couldn't do that with 44 students. 00:54:40.000 --> 00:54:43.000 So what I did is I had them do four mini essays. 00:54:43.000 --> 00:54:46.000 They would come to class on these four days. 00:54:46.000 --> 00:54:48.000 They'd be in a group it'd be the same group every time. 00:54:48.000 --> 00:54:50.000 They would all have questions written about the literature. 00:54:50.000 --> 00:54:55.000 They would pick in the group the best question and they would write a one to two page essay 00:54:55.000 --> 00:54:57.000 that was worth five percent of the grade and they'd write it as a group. 00:54:57.000 --> 00:54:61.000 And they'd do that four times writing in the same group so they got feedback from me four times. 00:55:01.000 --> 00:55:06.000 About what I was looking for, about what was good thinking, about what was good methodology in my field. 00:55:06.000 --> 00:55:10.000 And they at the end of the semester they turned in each of them an individual paper worth 25 percent of the grade. 00:55:10.000 --> 00:55:13.000 But they'd had practice at it. 00:55:13.000 --> 00:55:16.000 OK? So I didn't feel bad about requiring it for 25 percent of the grade. 00:55:16.000 --> 00:55:19.000 So that's minimally graded. Those five percent pieces obviously. 00:55:19.000 --> 00:55:23.000 So here's what my colleague Stacy Vargas does. They write 10 lab reports. 00:55:23.000 --> 00:55:27.000 On each of those lab reports the science is graded hard and fast. 00:55:27.000 --> 00:55:31.000 You get an A on it you get a B on it. You get it. It's right or it's wrong. That's all there is to it. 00:55:31.000 --> 00:55:36.000 She doesn't though grade the writing of the lab report. All she does is give feedback. 00:55:36.000 --> 00:55:38.000 Then what she has them do 00:55:38.000 --> 00:55:44.000 at midterm they take their five lab reports that they've gotten and they rewrite them. 00:55:44.000 --> 00:55:48.000 The science stays the same. The science stays ungraded. But they rewrite two of them. 00:55:48.000 --> 00:55:53.000 They pick two and they respond to her feedback. 00:55:53.000 --> 00:55:57.000 They respond to what they've been talking about in class. They turn them in. 00:55:57.000 --> 00:55:61.000 Along with a rationale. Here's what I did, here's why I did, here's what I figured out from doing it. 00:56:01.000 --> 00:56:04.000 And then she has them do exactly the same thing for the second half of the semester. 00:56:04.000 --> 00:56:07.000 Five lab reports science is graded. 00:56:07.000 --> 00:56:13.000 The writing gets feedback and then they revise two them and they explain why. 00:56:13.000 --> 00:56:17.000 And what this does is it gives them practice. 00:56:17.000 --> 00:56:21.000 I call it ungraded. Because the science is graded but the writing is not graded. 00:56:21.000 --> 00:56:22.000 It gives them practice. 00:56:22.000 --> 00:56:27.000 And it allows them to write a really bad lab report, to get her feedback, and then to revise it. 00:56:27.000 --> 00:56:30.000 I mean one of the things we know about writing 00:56:30.000 --> 00:56:33.000 is that only the best students when they write a paper turn it in 00:56:33.000 --> 00:56:38.000 only the best students will read the comments 00:56:38.000 --> 00:56:41.000 and then carry the comments into the next paper. 00:56:41.000 --> 00:56:47.000 OK? Most of the students even if they read the comments just don't carry it forward. 00:56:47.000 --> 00:56:49.000 So if we force them to carry it forward they're going to improve. 00:56:49.000 --> 00:56:51.000 Thanks a lot. 00:56:51.000 --> 00:56:56.000 applause