Comments on Demand and Supply

• Posted by Em on September 2, 2009 at 6:45am EDT

• Your next-to-last paragraph hits on it. Many, many years ago someone told me that higher education is the one commodity where the consumer wants the least for his or her money. So many of today's students are in college simply for the credential, not for a love of learning. So our challenge is to instill that passion in them, using the strategies that we've learned through research promote better learning.

• Active Learning is Difficult for Students
• Posted by Bob Holley , Professor, School of Library & Information Science at Wayne State University on September 2, 2009 at 7:45am EDT

• I do my best to incude as many active learning components as possible in the classes that I teach to graduate level students in library & information science. Some students like the ability to think for themselves, but others don't. I once had a student tell me openly in class that I was the expert on the topic and that my role was to spend the three hour class period sharing my knowledge while the class took notes. As the column notes, active learning requires more effort from students. I have the perception, in fact, that students value my courses more after they've been in the field for a few years than when they are taking them.

  To be fair, I'm not sure that all faculty would be happy with being faced with active learning models in their professional lives since we are used to being treated as experts. Active learning should be an unsettling experience at any level of expertise.

• Consumerism and Role Differentiation
• Posted by Beth E. Koch , Assistant Professor of Design at University of Minnesota Duluth on September 2, 2009 at 8:30am EDT

• In the language of information theory, the students receive our teaching and we send the instruction. Learning is what happens if and when our instruction is received, processed, and remembered. There are cross-purposes here at work. Its our job as teachers to understand and utilize learning theory, subject matter, and human psychological understanding. A huge fallacy (in my humble opinion) is approaching students as consumers. Students don't care about the methods used to deliver a course, nor should they need to understand that--its our job as teachers to know about learning styles and ways of knowing, to maintain motivation and interest and the rest. How we do that is our area of expertise as teachers.

• Learning is difficult
• Posted by Karen on September 2, 2009 at 8:30am EDT

• Learning can be exhausting no matter how it is delivered. College students are engaged in topics and ideas they've never heard of before. If every instructor they encountered required that all their learning was active, they would be exhausted. A balance of passive and active learning seems more doable. Consider your own life. Sometimes you just sit in front of the TV or movie screen to learn something new. Sometimes you attend a lecture. Sometimes you go to a conference and don't present. We all need opportunities for passive learning. But we all need opportunities to be active as well...if we are to put to work all we are learning.

• Posted by Greg on September 2, 2009 at 12:15pm EDT

• Slick commercial from a Slick college about a Slick way of life! The other one is not a surprise either. The first thing I would ask the students at KS is how many of them are in the college of the undeclared? My guess is that less than 30% are in a major. Kids all go to school for all the wrong reasons, technology is not one of them, either is learning styles. But obviously entertainment is. All this shows me is that these kids have the selective income to afford to be in school and have all the techie products and have no other vested reason to learn. I also assume that the cars they drive and the technology they own is far superior to those of the teachers. As to the future, at best both movies are alluding to less than 10% of the job market.......

• Making a Paradigm Shift
• Posted by Bruce Kusch , Associate Academic Vice President - Curriculum at Brigham Young University-Idaho on September 3, 2009 at 7:45am EDT

• Over the past year we have implemented a learning model across our campus that is changing learning and teaching for students and faculty. Students are expected to come to class prepared - every day. Faculty are being asked to design significant active learning experiences that are less lecture and more case, project, or problem-based. We are finding students are adapting more easily than some faculty - but it is a challenging transition for everyone. However, we are seeing change for the better and hope to see it continue. I thought the KS video was insightful and informative.

• Who is our customer?
• Posted by Van Martz , Instructor at Wallace Community College on September 3, 2009 at 5:00pm EDT

• The largest problem we have to overcome, as educators who wish to improve the quality of our product, is our understanding of who our real customer is. We tend to focus upon the student as our customer, because we have the student in front of us, paying us for our classes. We overlook the ultimate customer, the organizations that ultimately hire our graduates. It is true that the student wants credentials and that the student would prefer easily obtained credentials. Yet, an easy curriculum will ultimately destroy a school's status among the employers who hire that school's graduates.

  So, the truth is that the satisfaction rating which an employer gives to graduates of a given school has more to do with the school's quality of output than any student satisfaction survey can provide.

  Many schools make the mistake of pandering to the wishes of students for an easier curriculum, in order to increase enrollment. The school gets a temporary boost in enrollment, but begins shortly to put out less than satisfactory graduates. It does not take many poor graduates in the workplace before a certain school's reputation is ruined, and that poor reputation can haunt the school for years to come. In the meantime, you can be certain that a nearby school with a tougher curriculum and a better reputation will begin to steal students away.

  So, the real question any school with a quality initiative must answer is "how satisfied are the employers?". Answering this question, first, is a must. This answer lets administration know if the current curriculum is creating a "desirable graduate". If the current graduates are highly desirable, a baseline for curriculum can be set and adhered to. The next step is to see if changes in instruction can improve student outcomes, without affecting the bottom line, employer satisfaction.

  In the end, enrollment increases and continues to stay high. Publishing employer satisfaction data is a sure way to attract students. If the population knows that a given school is viewed as
  desirable by employers, that is the school they will strive to attend. Colleges who conduct improvement in this manner, will be able to select the cream of today's students, and will be successful for years to come.

• Driven by Assessment?
• Posted by Cameron , eLearning and Educational Design Manager at Monash Universtity on September 6, 2009 at 10:15pm EDT

• A message I hear constantly is, students are only interested in passing the exam so why should we put extra time and effort into teaching. In fact one academic commented that for many students, the lecturer is seen as the barrier between them and the degree which will get them a job with a big salary.

  There seems to be a fundamental disconnect (in both students and academic staff) between teaching and assessment. (As an aside I have also noticed that in Higher Ed academics often talk about assessments and exams as two different things).

  If teaching to the exam doesn't drive students to learn what is required in the subject, then perhaps the problem is the content and structure of the exam.

  Perhaps we need to be placing more emphasis on models for industry focused, Problem Based Assessment (incl Exams) then introducing contructivist / PBL approaches as a means to support the assessment.