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An issue that I wrestle with a lot is how to help students transition from rote exercises with canned data to a real world problem in which data comes with minimal organization and the solution is really open ended. It's also related to a similar problem in teaching linguistics which is training students to extract data from a language they may only have minimal familiarity with.

In one of those weird Internet search coincidences, I ran into this blog entry about the pronunciation of certain Chinese consonants. If you go to the site, something will leap out immediately - it is written in Chinese. I should state right now that I know almost zero Chinese characters, and few of my students do either. In fact, it's genuinely frustrating that I can't read the entire entry because I know I'm missing lots of key context. However....I was still able to extract some useful information and showed the students that they could too.

One helpful piece of information is that there were some diagrams showing the pronunciation of certain "letters" in pinyin along with an IPA transcription. For another, there was a bibliography listing at least one key article in English. Sweet!

Believe it or not, many of my students appeared to enjoy this little exercise. Part of it was because a lot are taking Japanese (one student could read some of the characters), but I think part might because it was a real world scenario. However, I think they also appreciated that there was some hand holding (I said that it wasn't a Chinese reading exercise, but a spot the citation/transcription exercise). I was also able to explain why you might need to do this (i.e. you are not a Chinese expert, but need some information).

So my personal teaching lesson is that I have to do a better job of translating what linguists do to a classroom context. Between working on this and talking with other instructors, I am beginning to really appreciate how much content experts "automate" their analytic skills. Unpacking it for learners can be hard (that's why I could probably use an instructional designer for a linguistics course).

However, it's definitely worth the effort. Those times when I see a spark of enlighetnment in a student's eyes are amazing.

Every now and again, our instructional designer community has a discussion about how we define ourselves to world at large who haven't had any courses in INSYS yet. There are a lot of reasons suggested including that we're a relatively new field and that our duties are variable. I think those are both factors, but I also wonder if it's because most people can't imagine what we do.

When you get down to it, our title IS what we do - we design instruction (or learning enviornments)...but in a systematic manner. For most of our collective history, the "design of instruction" has been intuitive and followed a set of cultural norms. One norm is apprenticeship (popular in many crafts) in which a student learns skills and builds towards mastery of an art form. Another norm is to have an instructor/guru/wiseperson lecture or tell a story. We now call this "sage on the stage", but I maintain that it can be effective in certain situations. Other models include case studies (business school), discussion (law school) and others.

There have been many traditions, but, until recently, very little empirical research on what works, and if it did work, WHY it worked. Teaching was not really considered a science, and still isn't outside the College of Education. How else do you explain the fact that prestigious universities charging very high tuition require little to no formal pedagogical training in its faculty? Even in something like crafting (embroidery, cooking, embroidery...), there is very little thought on what would work best - most instructors imitate methods they were taught in or grasp intuitively at strategies which may or may not work. Teaching is really considered more an art than a science.

It's easy to blame non-professionals for their lack of awareness on ignorance, but I do think there's more. Maybe the real problem is that we as humans are so used to learning (or trying to learn) that we don't understand how complicated the process is. That is, we don't realize that instruction should be designed, until an instructional designer points it out. Most of us (especially those of us in a university setting) take learning for granted, like walking or digestion. It just happens (or doesn't...in which case we feel totally stupid). Conversely, a student may know that instruction is poor, but may not be able to articulate WHY it's poor.

I think the problem is similar to my other field - linguistics. Most people do not realize how complex language is...because it's something most of us do without thinking. The only way to realize it's complexity is either to take a linguistics class or...try to program software that uses real language input (I think you programmers can relate).

The idea that you should consider designing instruction systematically may really be counterintuitive...kind of like the idea that walking is controlled falling or that laughter is a "species-specific cry" as one anthropology book described it. I think instructional design requires a certain amount of anthropological/zoological thinking about what humans do when they're not thinking about it. Personally, I find this aspect of instructional design very appealing...but it can be weird and counter-intuitive to the general public.

I found a good resource for language data in the U.S. based on data from the 2000 Census and an update from 2005. It's a good resource, but how can we maximize it's impact on students? By blogging or class discussion of course!

One exercise I really did was to take took the basic U.S. map showing concentrations of non-English speakers (bluer = higher percentage of English speakers) then asked students to guess which language communities were being represented. In some cases (e.g. South Texas) it was clearly Spanish, but for others in Louisiana and northern New England, the answer may not be as obvious to students (Hint for New England: Some grocery stores have trilingual ATMs - English, Spanish and French, for those near the Quebec border).

The most interesting comment to me was one student saying she wished she knew more geography. But maybe this exercise will help her remember some states better in the future.

You can also have students examine data locally and compare with different regions. I find Los Angeles a good case study because I think a lot of people (at least on the East Coast) associate it only with Spanish and maybe East Asian languages, but there are actually many more including relatively affluent Persian and Armenian communities.

Finally, I would recommend asking people look up the third largest spoken languages in different regions. Overall in the U.S., the third largest is Chinese, but in Pennsylvania it's German and Tagalog (Phillipines) in California. Data could be compiled in Google Docs or in a joint blog, and could then form the basis of a discussion about migration patterns or U.S. linguistic history.

I think a lot of instructors are in the practice of handing out links, but it's really great when you can build an exercise around it. It's a habit I'm getting into more though (I hope).

P.S. I should note that today the map is hanging when collecting data, but Internet speeds have been slow in general...hopefully it's a temporary glitch. If the map isn't working, you can retrieve the raw data by clicking Tabular View

At a recent ID meeting, I commented that in high school I had to research information on each and every president in the United States (in batches of 6 throughout the year) Despite the active learning spirit of the exercise (I had to look up the information), I actually felt that I remembered very little (other than my mother commenting that Lincoln was able to enact the Land Grant School system in the middle of the Civil War).

Although I think learning factoids in context is important, this exercise swung too far. We had to bundle dates of administration, names of vice-presidents, list of critical event in the era (even if it was 1836-1840) and a list of presidential highlights. It was worse because I was not in a position to easily access an encyclopedia at 11PM the night before (imagine how Wikipedia impacts this assignment now).

I finally saw a piece on the History Channel, called American Presidents, which added the missing piece - the historical context. Each president got about 10 minutes at the most (except for LIncoln), but the experts were able to spin out a good narrative. I have to say I have a new appreciation the Missouri Compromise and how badly Andrew Jackson messed up our banking infrastructure. You can also see the University of Virginia American President Online Resource which has essays for each president (again why couldn't have I had this in high school?).

So now that I'm an instructional designer, how would I approach learning the presidents? First, I would let the students use something like the UVA Website (or maybe Wikipedia) as a resource. It would make a great study guide.

I think I would keep the research aspect also, but lessen the amount of factoids crammed in. How? I would assign only one president from each era to a student instead of every president. A student would only research maybe five presidents throughout the year, but know each one a little bit more.

And instead of compiling just the facts, I would ask for a review of online and maybe a few print sources. Bibliographies could be shared. And maybe some debates could occur - such as worst president ever (hint: most candidates were from just before the Civil War) or how viewpoints change over time. Maybe students could address why presidents from certain eras seem more "forgettable" than from other eras.

I do think knowing your president's and their impact is important for understanding the social and political history of the U.S. But even I have to admit that facts alone don't convey the history. The purpose of knowing dates and facts isn't to win a trivia contest, but to provide important details to the narrative of our past.

For instance the fact that over 50% of U.S. exports were of cotton in 1840 isn't just a fact, but probably the reason why few Northern politicians were abolitionists.

One of the video vignettes from the Rock Ethics Institute Principles Curriculum is about group ettiquette for student group projects. Although it's "ettiquette" this clip neither shows a loud argument or an initial session to establish operating parameters.

Instead it shows how one of the group members can subtly highjack a project. The specific scenario is that three students - an Anglo male, an Anglo female and an African-American female student are asked to make a joint presentation, but the male student forces through his idea, writes all the slides and categorizes other comments as "stupid" or "I already did that." Not too welcoming.

What's interesting is that the other members realize he's taken over, but aren't sure whether to complain. It's apparent that they feel his work is actually adequate and will earn them a high grade and so wonder what they are really concerned about. Since they are being silent for now, if anything happens later, the dominant student really will wonder what went wrong (it's too bad he's not a body language reader).

And The Problem is....

Actually one student does identify a problem - which is that when one or more students are super dominant in a project, the others do not have the chance to practice the skills they need to learn. Even though the overall product will be fine and not mess up their GPA's, there is a dissatisfaction among the non-dominant members that they did not do more. Not only are they not practicing the research, organization and writing skills they need to learn, they feel almost no ownership in the project. Even if they get an "A", they may just say "Whatever".

I can relate because the same thing happened to me. I was in a group phonetics project (with a romantic couple yet). Even though I volunteered to help, they did all the recruiting, wrote all the test conditions and did most of the digitization. I actually like linguistics, so I actually did want to learn what to do. Fortunately, we had to submit separate results sections, or I might have literally learned nothing for the project. Group projects in linguistics? No thanks.

I think the clip here shows the underlying paradox all team assignments must overcome - how do you gain the benefits of team learning without losing the opportunities for individuals to learn what they need to do?

Solutions?

First, I think it's important to consider WHY team projects are a good idea for a course. I do think a valid learning objective for working on teams is to learn to work on teams (almost all working environments require group skills). Some other ones, like reducing the number of assignments submitted to an instructor, can be more dicey in my opinion. Does it serve the student?

Almost all team learning experts recommend students rate their peers, but is it clear to the non-dominant students that there is a real problem? Suppose the African American student (who is genuinely concerned) makes a comment, but her team member says nothing. The result is that the dominant student may feel that "race" is a factor (Ugh).

I do think that expectations for each person should be drawn up with guidance from the instructor. Many teams assign specific roles to each members, and that can give each person a sense of ownership. A guideline here could be to require roles, maybe an editor, researcher and person to the the jazzy opening/closing. Another might be to require some task from each member (e.g. each person must record one subject so that we all learn how to use the audio equipment).

The Right Learning Space?

We had some ideas about creating appropriate learning spaces for group projects, and here I think the right learning space would be a mini-conference room with a shared screen everyone could see. One problem was that the lounge set up showed the dominant student just working on slides on his laptop and spitting out his comments. Really he was so focused on the slides, he wasn't paying any serious attention to his teammates.

I believe a shared screen would change the dynamics. The whole team could judge the quality of the product. Changes could be shown live. And if another laptop (or iPhone) was in use, someone could even be doing some live research. If you're really brave you can all meet virtually and do it over Adobe Connect (which might be more convenient for everyone). In other words, I think a shared screen would give a sense of shared ownership.

As you can see, I think there are solutions to creating a worthwhile team project. In retrospect, I wish I had been on a good team project. Not only can you make more friends in school, but you CAN learn a lot from your peers if you're in the right state of mind.

Another great resource on plagiarism and academic integrity comes from the Penn Rock Ethics Institute. Like the copyright videos on http://copyright.psu.edu/, the vignettes are video plays which are meant to entertain as well as educate.

A favorite is Plagiarism Vignette is both a warning and an call to research glory - as well as a reminder not to eat chalk when you're excited.

In addition, the site also includes some vignettes on teamwork, another concept students need assistance with. Kudos to the Rock Institute for presenting some realistic team interactions.

This January the ETS team successfully completed a pilot of an online course on symbolic logic and turned it over to Liberal Arts for future maintenance. Now it's time to assess what happened and see if we (or I) learned anything.

We did a survey of the students and it did pull up a few interesting results worth sharing.

• Over half (55.6%) of the students had taken two or more online courses. One had taken up to four. Online learning is becoming a common part of the Penn State experience.
• A question dear to my heart was how often video captions were used. Two thirds (66.7%) of the students reported using the videp captions. They were on by default, but it's interesting to note that students were happy to leave them on (and remembered seeing them). Only 7.4% said they weren't aware of captions.

• The most popular addition to the course? The inclusion of special symbols and templates in the Word homework assignment files. Although the online lecture, videos and quizzes were also appreciated, a simple logistical step can still really help.

We got plenty of other data on communication, course satisfaction and so forth, but it was in line from what I've seen in other online courses.

The course went well, but could use improvements. Like many technical courses there is a balance between presenting enough content to accurately convey the tools of the field but not overloading the students. Many students reported feeling frustrated, but post tests would reveal whether they were just annoyed or really confused.

Fortunately, the students generally reported being satisfied with their interactions with the instructor. That's always a good place to start.

A Harrisburg colleague, Carol McQuiggan pointed out an interesting article on teaching from the New York Times "Geek Lessons" (Sep 21, 2008). One of the interesting points is that the author, Mark Edmundson argues that the role of the instructor is to introduce some surprise into the student's life.

An astronomer has to explain that the Earth is actually the furthest from the sun during summer in North America. A classics professor may explain that the classic Greek drama Oedipus Rex was partly a political response against contemporary Athenian-Spartan politics. And linguists get to explain that people "who ain't speaking right" aren't stupid, just speaking a different dialect.

Edmundson argues that the role of surprise isn't just to "open student eyes" but rather to keep them open and combat that assumption that "you're on top of things and in charge." In other words, Edmunson asks can you question what underlies conventional wisdom - even when conventional wisdom is converging on James Dean. Trickier than this looks.

This reminds me of another secret principle of mine which is that a research method isn't really valid unless the data can surprise you. I've been exposed to lots of valid methods (statistical, ethnographic, traditional lab techniques), but they all share one thing in common - the ability to pull up data you weren't expecting. The examples I cited above are based on research, some of which pulled up counterintuitive data.

I think that is one of the great rewards of learning - finding out new information you weren't expecting, then re-evaluating what you think you learn. Sometimes I do a mini-research project and find an answer I don't like (i.e. one that contradicts my initial assumption.). But it's acknowledging that sometimes what you don't like is probably true that hopefully makes me a better learner/researcher. I may even learn more about how the world really works - if I can "handle the truth."

One of the most challenging questions I ever got in a class wasn't an advanced question, but rather a very elementary one on sentence structure. Almost all linguists assume that in a sentence The queen saw the corgi that you separate the subject from the rest of the sentence (the predicate) instead of grouping the subject and the verb together (see below).

Right: [_S [_NP The Queen] || [_VP fed [_NP the corgi]].
Wrong: [_S [_VP[_NP The Queen] fed] || [_NP the corgi].

Why is this? On the surface, it appears to be an arbitrary division, but there is a reason behind this. After a good 30 second pause, I remembered what it was which is that linguists assume that sentences constituents are meaningful units by themselves (yes we do work with fragments). Thus you can have a exchange like "What did the Queen do?" "Feed the corgi", but an answer "The queen fed" is not as natural. Hence the assumption that verbs and direct objects form a unit apart from the sentence.

The above is interesting, but the point isn't really about linguistics but whether an instructor can remember why their discipline makes the assumptions that it does. To me it makes the difference between teaching your course as a coherent set of related concepts versus a random list of rules and facts. I was both relieved and thrilled that I could answer her question - another student convinced that we knew what we were talking about.

Every now and again a student asks why I torture them with analyzing a set of random words with ridiculous sounds from languages they've never heard of. When I remind them that sometimes this is all data on a language that an archaeologist or anthropologist may ever get, they realize that the homework isn't just a torture device but a way to join a community of active researchers.

I've recently returned to the world of course development and am now working on some more mathematically oriented courses...which is nice because I can contemplate the minor teaching sins I and others commit in teaching "formalisms" (sometimes math, sometimes phonetics).

One I'm noticing is what I will Scrambled Notation Syndrome. Although mathematical formalism is a precise system, let's just say it comes in several dialects. In physics land, the acceleration measurement of "meters per second per second" can be indicated as either m/sec² or m•s^-2...depending on which textbook you're using or which methodology you are working with that day.

In linguistics, you also see variant symbols such as the "y" in yellow being transcribed as /y/ (U.S.) or /j/ (IPA) or even "consonantal i" in historical linguistics (this is i with arc below). There are rational reasons why these variants were selected, and at some point students may encounter them all if they stay in that major. Once you hit "expert" level, it's very easy to switch back and forth (it's almost transparent). Experts know which factor is the most important (the 2 exponent in the case of acceleration) and can ignore some of the rest as noise (or at least interpolate quickly).

The problem for students is that they are still working through the basics (usually with just the first textbook). Considerate instructors try to stick to one notation system, but it's surprisingly easy to slip. It's worse if you happen to be using more than one textbook in the same semester. In an online course, you should be able to circumvent it ahead of time, but I'm noticing that variations are creeping into graphics and video where it's harder to edit the inconsistencies out. Eek.

Speaking for myself I do introduce the common variations for different phonetic symbols. Not only because I know I'm likely to slip up once in the semester, but because it is a fact that students will have to adjust to working with variant symbols sooner or later. Still I have to brace myself for students who ask what that near equivalent is. For them it's still opaque.