WordPress Project. As much as I want this project to be done, it’s far from it. There are things that we’re missing to fully promote the WordPress service. I’ve tried to reach out for updates on the missing pieces, however I’ve had no luck in getting responses. Those groups that are participating in the pilot are asking for assistance, which I completely expected, however without these missing pieces, I can’t reference support documentation that we’ve written. Essentially, without these missing pieces, my level of involvement and work is extremely high and it doesn’t appear to be ending anytime soon. Needless to say, I’m quite frustrated about this.

Social Media FLC. This week was our first meeting of the spring term and to be honest, it wasn’t my best meeting thus far. One of the serious problems we’ve run into is teaching schedules are different than the fall (which is to be expected), and this is making scheduling our meetings to be more difficult. We have people who need to come late or leave early and because of that, we can’t have a fully engaging meeting. Aside from that problem, this month’s topics were Skype and social bookmarking and our guest speaker was Jason Abbitt. Jason is a faculty member in the Educational Psychology department at Miami University and has experience using social bookmarking in his classes. His presentation including some data that he collected about the use of social bookmarking and what he would change should he implement this learning activity again. Overall, I thought it was great information and I hope the FLC members thought the same. I’m hoping next month’s meeting goes better for me, but only time will tell. Find out more information about the Faculty Learning Community on the Exploration of Social Media in Higher Education.

Course Designs. I’ve been working on 4 course designs since late fall, all of which are currently in full implementation. Overall, my work related to the design/development of the courses is over, however I still feel like I could do more. I received an email from one of the instructors late last week about creating a rubric, and to be honest, I dropped the ball. I was supposed to schedule a meeting with him to work on creating the rubric and I didn’t; I was supposed to prepare a template for said rubric that I could send him, and I didn’t. I’m fairly disappointed in myself about this and I hope things are going well in his course despite my lack of effort.

On top of these projects, I was out for 1.5 days because I’ve been feeling under the weather. I’m so glad today is Friday and I hope next week is better.

• Was I too busy to make time?
• Did I not know what to say?
• Was I afraid of the negative content I might divulge and who would read it?
• Did I not know how to document the reflections (or if it should be documented at all)?

What I ended up realizing was that I just didn’t know how to document reflections. I could easily sit at my desk, zoning into oblivion, “thinking” about what I had done that week. The problem with that is that there is no “accountability.” Granted, I don’t want people judging my work by the weekly reflections, but I want to be able to keep myself accountable when it comes to critically analyzing my progress. Anyways…

That’s where this site comes into play. I’ve been contemplating this site’s future for the last few months and I think I have just solved the mystery! Henceforth, this site will collect my weekly reflections for ongoing projects. Any and all clients that I’m directly with will have their names removed, although I may spill their department affiliation if it’s relevant to the project. I’ve also set a recurring event on my calendar to remind me to write my weekly reflections.

For those of you that are really interested in personal events, check out Katie and I’s blog.

If you want to follow my educational thoughts, I’ll be posting a link to a site in which I am a contributing author later this month.

Cheers!

Maybe this is why I don’t like reading…

Anyway, I have decided that instead of just complaining about lack of programming to fit my needs, I will now contribute back to the community. The website for the podcast is still in it’s development stages, however I’ll soon reveal the name, cohosts, recording schedule, etc.

If you’re interested in following my new adventure, let me know via comment (below). I’ll send you an email once the website and podcast is live!

Learning is hard. No one said it was easy and if anyone told you that when you were a child, then they were merely trying to protect you. It’s a lie. The students of this generation fall within the confines of basic dualism. It’s you versus them, right versus wrong, and so forth. There is no in between or grey area, and there is definitely no critical thinking. This is, more or less, a generalization of college students (primarily first-year, but holds true for students all the way through advanced degrees). The challenge that instructors of higher education face is that focusing on these surface topics and teaching to the test is what’s expected by students. (click here to see my thoughts on this topic) As I learned from today’s seminar, learning is only done when the 4 different parts of one’s brain is being utilized. Lecture and spoonfeeding doesn’t cut it. What needs to be done, from day 1, is to promote and foster an environment of critical thinking. Critical thinking is what forces students to use multiple (if not all) of parts of their brain.

One of the methods in which critical thinking can be taught is to use perspective- (or role-) taking. Having students assume the role of another individual or audience forces them to view a situation from a different perspective. This “other viewpoint” can help students make conclusions about why something is the way that it is. Effective in theatre, chemistry, history, and virtually every other field, perspective taking can interest students and foster critical thinking, at the same time!

There are 2 common questions about fostering critical thinking / perspective-taking that were raised during today’s seminar:

1. How do you get students engaged to begin perspective-taking?
2. How do you assess perspective-taking?

The answers were pretty simple, actually. And if you’ve spent anytime in professional development for higher education, you probably already know the answers…

How do you get students engaged to begin perspective-taking?

The primary answer to this question is to involve a topic that they are already familiar/engaged/invested in. For example: If talking about gravity, begin with an example about skydiving. You have to hook them to begin engagement, and then it’s another task to keep them engaged. Many instructors think that it’s not their job to do this. And no disrespect if you are one of them, but this demographic would be wrong. If you don’t relate the topics to real-life and interesting concepts, students aren’t going to care and therefore won’t remember what you’re trying to teach them. There are studies that prove that students who have authentic learning experiences, learn more. This shouldn’t come as a surprise because this type of learning uses all 4 parts of the brain. Summary: use real-life examples to hook students’ interest.

How do you assess perspective-taking?

Assessment is always a buzzword that has instructors re-evaluating their teaching methods. The short answer is that the assessment should follow the in-class learning activities. If the class discussion has students relating concepts to real-life ideas, tests should do the same. And for God’s sake, stop using multiple-choice tests! By having students write about topics in an authentic way, they have more of an opportunity to show off what they know and there’s less chance for cheating,

Today’s seminar had great information, some of which was new and some not-so-new. But nonetheless, it’s important to understand the difference between surface learning and deep learning. Critical thinking and perspective-taking are examples of deep learning, forcing students to do more than just regurgitate facts. By teaching critical thinking, students move from the realm of dualism to formal operational thinking, having the ability to test different theories to make determinations. Don’t be a surface learning instructor, force your students to be engaged.

My feeling is that, the more critical thinking that’s involved, the better. Students don’t necessarily agree with this, because it poses more work for them. However, in the long run, the ability to think critically is what’s going to stick with them after the semester ends. One of the frequent complaints from educators is that content is not retained after the assignment, reading, or exam. While this is a broad generalization, there is merit to this, the reasons of which I’ll explain in a later post. However, it’s the non-content related skills that are most important, even more-so than remembering what year the Spanish Inquisition began (for example ). This is because it’s the life skills that all students will use, regardless of coursework, career choice, or life experiences.

Students want to be spoon-fed. They want all of the answers handed to them so that they have the answers to the test. Yes, I went there… This is a matter of whether or not to teach to the test. I have always been against this practice and will continue to be until my dying day. Unfortunately, this problem of wanting to be spoon-fed goes to the masses. Today’s students are different than generations past and it’s the responsibility of the educators to ensure that students are learning as much as possible, even if that means altering the expectations of what skills students are taught.

In conclusion – screw the spoon-feeding. Make students use critical thinking to obtain the knowledge. It may require a little prodding to point them in the right direction, but don’t hand out the answer like it’s candy on Halloween. Stick to your guns, educators!

Was this even a coherent post?

What are your thoughts on spoon-feeding today’s students?

Have you ever felt like you aren’t sure why you have a job? I have, quite frequently, in fact. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job (at least most of it) and I enjoy the people that I work with. However, there are many departments on campus that don’t even know I exist. I’m not trying to be world-renowned – in fact, I definitely don‘t want that. But when a department makes a decision to bring in a consultant to tell them exactly what someone from my department can tell them (for free), I want to scream. We (the country) are in the middle of an economical crisis and people think it’s okay to spend money on services that are clearly not necessary. I have spent thousands of dollars to earn my Masters degree, and I have been hired by my institution to provide services to our “constituents.” With groups of people bringing in “outside” consultants rather than relying on “in-house” consultants for the same assistance, I’m not sure why I have a job. It’s a waste of money on multiple fronts:

1. Departments are wasting money on these outside consultants.
2. The institution is wasting money on paying me to just “sit here.”
3. I wasted money on my Master’s degree.

This problem is encouraging the perpetual cycle of the economic crisis in our country. Changes are needed.

Now for the second meaning…

I am clearly over-extending myself. Here’s the extent of my weekly activities:

• I work 2 jobs (my full-time job and freelance business);
• I teach private music lessons, which is kind of like a 3rd job;
• Volunteer with the Marching Band (5+ days per week);
• Involved with the local community band;
• Record 2 weekly podcasts;

With all that I’m involved with, I don’t feel like I’m spending enough time “relaxing.” I need to make some changes, but I’m not sure where to start. Changes are needed.

Now that I’m engaged and settling down in a Southwest Ohio, Katie and I have decided to start a family blog. Lot’s of families do this to have a centralized location to share life stories with friends and families. We’ve decided on a URL, but the site is still under construction. For those of you interested in seeing the site, you’ll just have to be patient. So we have that new site for our personal/family stories and I also have my consulting site, Mevins Consulting. While the freelance stuff has been keeping me busy and definitely supplementing the income, it hasn’t quite gone the direction that I would like. Not yet, at least. For the foreseeable future, Mevins Consulting will be a location to show off website designs and other freelance projects.

With both of those sites, what is this site going to turn into? I’ve decided, at the suggestion of @cmduke, to keep this site as it is my namesake-how people know and identify me. It’s been a part of my life for a long time and it’d be a waste to throw that away. From now until the next time I decide to make a change, I’ll be featuring articles and narratives on Instructional Design practices and fun technologies. Some content may be re-purposed from my department’s new blog that is starting to take shape (more information on that in a future post). In general, this site will be professional insights from me without the constant self-promotion of my freelance work.

For those of you disappointed with this change, I do apologize. I spread myself very thin at times and I’m working to find a better work-life balance. This process includes my separating the various jobs and interests so that I can be more focused. I hope that you’ll at least stick with me for a while longer because while this site will include pedagogy, I’ll also be talking about iPhone/iPad apps, and other fun technologies that you may enjoy!

Until next time, make it a great day!