Lizabeth Schlemer

Taxonomy of faculty assumptions about students

If you are part of a faculty meeting, a committee, or a learning community of instructors, you will sooner or later hear the same conversation - the conversation that begins with complaints about students. The attributions about lack of engagement, focus on grades, or the entitlement of this generation are common, and though typically unexamined such complaints are not completely ungrounded. This narrative creates a community around a shared “problem.” This camaraderie is natural, but what are the consequences? Beyond whether such statements are “true,” we believe these assumptions about students are affecting student learning. There is a phenomenon in education known as “self-fulfilling prophesy” where what we believe about students becomes manifest in part because instructors behave in ways that bring about what the instructor initially expects. As a first step in exploring these assumptions, 150 participants in a Teaching Professor Conference in May 2014, generated a list of assumptions they held about students. These assumptions were categorized into four dimensions: Motivation, Behavior, Preparation, and Systems with each dimension having a continuum. This paper describes the taxonomy and references theories to support the organization. The paper will give examples of the assumptions and discuss the next steps to validate the ideas.

Work in progress: Outreach assessment: Measuring engagement: An integrated approach for learning

The Learn By Doing Lab (LBDL) at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo is an on-campus laboratory where 5th through 8th grade students are taught by undergraduates who may be planning a careers in teaching. The two populations -elementary students and undergraduates - are equally important in the process. Since 2008, the lab has seen over 4000 elementary and junior high students and over 100 undergrads have participated. In most outreach assessment the number of individuals participating is an important metric, but this last Spring we experimented with a more in depth measure of effectiveness. As in any learning experience engagement in the process is an essential ingredient. Although there are several methods of measuring engagement, we chose to observe the activity of the participants as a proxy for engagement. Two industrial engineering (IE) undergraduates who themselves have been exposed to the topics of work sampling and observation studies had an opportunity to improve professional skills through this application. This involvement of undergraduates is consistent with the LBDL and Cal Polys motto of “learn by doing.” These two students, who are also coauthors, spent multiple hours coding and randomly sampling the of the elementary and junior high students as well as the undergraduate teachers activities. Not only did the IE students discover important insights for the LDBL they also learned how to apply work sampling in a research setting. This paper discusses the integrated learning environment and the next steps involved in these undertakings.