Tag Archives: higher education

Your life is not a scantron sheet

4 Replies

Last week I listened in on the online seminar by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, the writers of Academically Adrift and Aspiring Adults Adrift. After reading Excellent sheep by William Deresiewicz, these books are a breath of sensibility. While Excellent Sheep is entertaining, it lacks the data driven conclusions Arum and Roksa are able to use. It was encouraging to hear, that academic rigor pays off in critical thinking, reading, and writing skills that are carried out to work life. But the lack of rigor in undergraduate education largely makes it a privilege of few. Educators are at the key positions to make academic rigor everyone’s right. The university as an institution should wholeheartedly support this.

From politicalcartoons.com

From politicalcartoons.com

Changes in assessment are one aspect we can change along with connecting education to life again. I don’t know how Scranton based systems would support this kind of rigor. I first encountered these mysterious coloring sheets as an exchange student and again when preparing to take the GRE. I did not learn anything from those exams unlike essay based exams I was used to.

Filling ones life like a Scantron sheet with shades of gray within strict lines is not an option anymore. Information is available to almost everyone with an internet connection. Possessing that same data inside ones head in pretty packages is nothing special or even useful. It is the creative application and the potential for going beyond what we already know, which are valuable. Changing the culture of institutions to favor rigor and offer more learners the privilege of understanding and thinking a better future, should be our priority in education.

from uakron.edu

from uakron.edu

Gamers have functioning online communities… Higher education should too!

3 Replies

The gamers’ natural habitat today is online. Games are played online, some games only exist there, and discussion groups are active. No wonder connected learning has taken an interest in gamers. My interest in gamers, online communities, and exposure to Starcraft as a spectator, led me to the report on Connected Learning in Starcraft II Community by Yong Ming Kow, Timothy Young, and Katie Salen Tekinbas published in April of 2014. This is an excellent read outlining the community advantages that I hope the higher education to adopt.

www.watchtheguild.com

The cast of the Guild with Felicia Day in front. www.watchtheguild.com

The culture of making content is strong in the gaming communities. For example Felicia Day’s Web series “The Guild” was created based on her own experiences with World of Warcraft (massively multiplayer online role-playing game), and published on-line. Higher education also should foster this crafting and remixing of content. It is already done especially in engineering (The Ware Lab at Virginia Tech for example). The spirit of making could improve overall experience of online classes and make them an excellent option also for students who have difficulties in staying interested in only reading materials and theoretical topics.

Starcraft II screen capture (joystiq.com)

Starcraft II screen capture (joystiq.com)

Starcraft II community is an excellent example of a great on-line presence. I agree with Timothy Young that it caters to a wide variety of gamers from n00b to professional, and does not leave the spectators cold either. There are subgroups and activities for everyone interested. The inclusive nature of the community makes it an excellent example for online education. The accessibility of internet can break down some of the barriers we still have between teachers or advanced students, and the people just starting their trek on higher education path.

Shaun Clark (Apollo) and Sean Plott (Day[9]) (www.teamliquid.net)

Sean Plott (aka. Day[9]) is a notable member of the North American Starcraft II community, a former pro-gamer, current commentator, game designer, and entrepreneur. His dedication to the community is inspirational for any educator. Producing You Tube videos weekly to dissect the game play of the professionals and offering advice to improve your game play, shows his commitment to the game and the community. And this reminds me always that even online communities consist of people, not computers.

HuskyStarcraft (shop.maker.tv)

HuskyStarcraft (shop.maker.tv)

djWHEAT (www.teamliquid.net)

djWHEAT (www.teamliquid.net)

Other notable people in the community include Marcus Graham (djWHEAT) and Mike Lamond (Husky Starcraft). Their willingness to share their life stories in JP McDaniel’s Real Talk underlines the openness of the whole community. Higher education already has these passionate and dedicated people. I think we just need them to show it more visibly to all students. And what would be a better platform for this than online presence?

Higher education in all fields should already be moving towards the culture of making and creating. Getting the educators to build online communities for learning will make higher education more personal to students of 21st century. We don’t necessarily have a detailed focus point like Starcraft II -game to build upon. Instead we aim to get better at life in general.

 

Finnish higher education system

Leave a reply

The Finnish higher education is divided to two branches. The actual universities offer Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD programs in all fields. Universities of applied sciences offer more practical studies and only Bachelor’s degrees in specified fields like nursing, engineering, arts like dance, and media production.

Flow chart of the Finnish school system. No tuition required at any step.

Flow chart of the Finnish school system. No tuition required at any step.

Students who opted out of high school and went to vocational school can apply to both as long as they meet the requirements. Usually they go to the applied sciences institution first and then apply to university. High school is a faster track to university, but students also go to the applied sciences institutes from there. I really appreciate the flexibility of the system. You are never shut out from higher education.

Students apply directly to the department, to a certain major. Your school grades are taken into account as well as the matriculation exam (high school students), and the main requirement is the entrance exam specific to the major. Each entrance exam can be based on one or more books and contains application of the learned material to answer problems. For applied sciences, entrance exam is based on high school courses, but some fields like nursing might require psychological testing as well as group interaction tests.

Universities in Finland. Modified from http://www.isep.org.

Universities in Finland. Modified from http://www.isep.org.

There are no core courses required in the university. Only compulsory non-major classes are language classes (English and Swedish). All the general knowledge classes are taken at high school level. Minors can be used to widen one’s education. For example marketing, biology, chemistry, and microbiology are popular minors for biochemistry major. In retrospect, maybe having some sort of common core could have been beneficial and allowed introduction to more varied minor choices. Students have the freedom to not show up in most classes as long as they acquire the information on their own, return any homework required, and pass the exams. This is expected to change as teaching methods are developed to more student centered.

All higher education in Finland is tuition free at the moment. Administrative fees (includes student health care and dental fee) are low, around 90 euros ($125) per year in my old university. For citizens of Finland there is an automatic stipend to cover living expenses and support for renting an apartment as we have no dorms. Most students avoid loans like they are the plaque. The meals on campus have student discount pricing and consist of quite healthy home cooked style fare (side salad, bread, warm main, milk or water). Students take care of buying their books when needed, but libraries commonly carry enough books for most students to use during the semester. I bought around 6 books during undergrad.

Student housing (www.psoas.fi) and student life at University of Oulu

Student housing (www.psoas.fi) and student life at University of Oulu

Recently we have started several master’s programs completely taught in English. For example at the University of Oulu master’s degrees offered in English are from Business and economic, Education, Engineering and architecture, Health sciences, and Natural sciences. These have attracted students from Europe, Africa, and Asia.

The higher education system is flexible in Finland and students financed well by the government. It is not a perfect system by any means and faces many of the same problems as other higher education systems in Europe and US. Keeping the higher education available for all qualified students is still a priority and is seen as a way to enhance equality. As Finland is a small country with limited natural resources, our economy depends on highly skilled people.

Student organizations in Finland – the system of guilds

3 Replies

As part of positive psychology on campuses Frank Shushok Jr. and Eileen Hulme bring up positive organizations for students to belong to. According to their paper “What’s right with you: Helping students find and use their personal strengths” in About Campus, they describe these organizations as communities where students can use their strengths and feel empowered.

In higher education in USA this can be clubs connected to hobbies, sororities and fraternities, service groups for the community, or special interest clubs like the Dairy Club. Some of these communities require application or being chosen to be part of it. What if you are not accepted as part of the group? What if the application and initiation processes are too daunting for some people to even try?

www.histoni.fi

www.histoni.fi

In Finland this is solved by having “guilds” based on your major. And you are automatically accepted to the guild as you get your acceptance letter to the university to study the major. These are student run communities designed to serve the students. For example during my undergraduate days the biochemistry “guild” arranged parties for undergraduates, master’s students, PhD students and post graduates together. We got to know basically everyone in the department and could get peer support for every single class we had from the older students. Sports events were very casual. You did not even need to know the rules to come and play football, floorball, volleyball, or anything else.

This kind of environment offered a safe space for discussions on the topic of our major –biochemistry- as well as general thoughts about higher education and even politics surrounding it. The community would lend a helping hand also outside of academic life readily. It is not uncommon to have the guild help with moving for example.

http://www.biochem.oulu.fi/hakuinfo/histoni.html

http://www.biochem.oulu.fi/hakuinfo/histoni.html

What would be a better way to build an active community than the all-inclusive relaxed guild? One drawback of this system however is the exclusion of other majors. Some parties were arranged with other guilds and friends from other guilds are always welcome to join in on the activities, but it was rare for people with no personal ties to the guild to join in with sports or other activities.

I would be interested to know, if these kinds of systems work or could work in the US. Or is the exclusive nature of clubs an advantage in the higher education generally, and in building up your CV?

 

Resilience and loss of confidence

Leave a reply

One of the myths in education outlined by Langer in “Mindful learning” is that gratification needs to be delayed. I took it to refer to the small prizes like good grades, general praise or award. Based on these aspects delaying gratification could indeed be a harmful myth. In case of grading and praise, the continuous assessment is much preferred instead of just one final grade to determine everything. Even a small praise could boost students to achieve more during the semester. However the praise and grading should be fair and realistic.

As shown by Brummelman et al. 2014 in Psychological Science, an inflated praise can be harmful for children with low self-esteem. This could also play into situations in high school, where students who do well feel they did not deserve the good grade (also mentioned by Langer). Especially in a class where the gap between high and low performers on tests is large, the teacher might feel the need to encourage low performers to look up to a high performer’s excellent work. This leads to social problems within the class: low performers might start resenting the high performers, and high performers might feel extremely uncomfortable for being drawn to the spotlight. I would like to think this is rare in higher education

Higher education has a different set of gratification producing events, like making the Dean’s list or belonging to a club. In fields of study that require research and publishing papers, the gratification comes from a job well done and accepted by the larger scientific community.  In the field of science, one has to be able to withstand failure. This is a situation where delayed gratification in form of successful experiments can be beneficial in the long run. You will learn to trouble shoot and analyze data that makes no perfect sense at first. You learn resilience in the face of failures. Ideally you will learn that not everything is your fault and the nature of science requires missteps.

But how long does one have to wait for any success? I waited 6 long years. This has made me resilient. But in the process I lost a large part of professional confidence even before entering graduate school. I doubt every single result I get. Any award is viewed as a pity prize. There must be some mistake, or other contestants just did not try. Is this a residual feeling after years of inflated praise? Could this be one of the causes of imposter syndrome in graduate students? Or is this a result of extremely delayed gratification? As usual, a middle ground must be found to prevent this sort of mindset from blossoming. To me standardized testing does nothing to help me think I am worthy of the grade. Anyone can fill circles. Heck, I sometimes guess the correct circle. The only exam I believe I truly earned an A in was an applied exam consisting of real data and on the spot analysis of it. Would we be better off with more applied exams in all fields and class sizes? What else can we do to support students in a healthy way?

impostor