ctse_newsletter_spr12

Center for Teaching and Scholarly Excellence CTSE Newsletter

Spring 2012

Vol. 8, No. 2

Less Work, Higher Grades Are college students learning anything?

Today, they spend 27 hours.

Yet when today’s entering freshmen are asked whether they expect to earn a GPA of a “B” or higher in college, 70 percent say yes. Back in 1971, only 27 percent said yes.

More disturbing still: When researchers from the Social Sciences Research Council gave more than 2,300 students at 24 colleges the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) – a test that poses complex questions based on workplacelike scenarios to assess critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills – 36 percent of students showed no statistically significant gains from their freshmen to senior years. “Not even one point on a

scale from zero to one hundred,” says New York University sociology professor Richard Arum, who directed the study.

Dr. Arum presented the latest data from the six-year longitudinal study at a recent CTSE event.

Earlier findings were published in Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, a book Arum co-authored with University of Virginia sociologist Josipa Roksa, which rattled the academic world when released in early 2011.

The research project followed students from two dozen diverse institutions from their freshman year to two years past graduation, measuring their progress through surveys, transcripts, and direct assessment with the CLA. Arum says prior research has exaggerated how much learning takes place at college because it has relied only on self-reports – asking students how much they think they’ve

IN THIS ISSUE Stimulating Simulations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Coaches for Faculty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Students With Disabilities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Scholarship in Teaching. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Where Students Get Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Having a Word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Photo by Rachel Katz

In the early 1960s, college students, when polled, reported spending about 40 hours a week studying or in class, according to research by economists Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks.

Richard Arum, co-author of Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, led a six-year study of learning among 2,300 college students.

learned. “We’re Americans … If you ask, are you a better-than-average driver, 85 percent of us will say yes.”

Arum and his colleagues discovered that, over four years of college, many students show no gains in their ability to write clearly and think critically, at least as measured by the CLA. (For sample questions, see collegiatelearningassessment.org.) By major, CLA gains were highest in the traditional arts and sciences and lowest in communications, business, social work and education.

Differences in student learning were not associated with parent background but were strongly associated with race. “We continued on page 2

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Less Work, Higher Grades

continued from page 1

see this difference in K-12 and we have a big discourse about it,” says Arum. “But we see it in college and we don’t have any discourse.”

Academic institutions are failing large numbers of students, Arum believes, with the effects apparent as students enter adult life.

Student learning was also associated with rigorous course work, high faculty expectations, and hours spent studying.

Yet the study found that half of college sophomores hadn’t taken any courses the previous semester that required 20 pages or more of writing, and almost a third had taken no courses requiring at least 40 pages of reading a week.

Two years after graduation, the research project found, 52 percent of the cohort were employed full time, 11 percent were employed part time, and 31 percent were enrolled full time in graduate school. Five percent were unemployed.

“Large numbers of students are able to navigate college with very little asked of them in terms of reading and writing,” Arum says.

Indeed, he notes, “in freshman interviews, students said they thought college would be harder than high school but it’s not; it’s easier.”

On average, students spent 51 percent of their time pursuing non-employment or non-academic activities, such as socializing, and spend only 7 percent of their time studying. Even that paltry study time was often spent studying in groups, which researchers found was negatively associated with learning. “This doesn’t mean studying in groups is necessarily bad,” says Arum, “but the way we are doing it today is.”

Almost a quarter were still living with their parents. Sixty-six percent of those surveyed had college loans, with a mean loan of $26,000.

College has also failed to prepare many for civic engagement, Arum says. Of those two years out of college, nearly a third reported reading a newspaper in print or online only once a month or never. When asked how often they discussed politics or public affairs with a friend or family member online or in person, more than a third said monthly or never.

“In other words, large numbers are disengaged,” says Arum. “College has a moral imperative to prepare students for life. We don’t talk about that anymore.”

Arum believes change must come from the top. University leadership needs to talk about academic rigor. Schools need to invest in academic programs, not just student services. “We need to align student support services, the fastest

How Students Spend Their Time Attending class/lab Studying Working, volunteering, fraternities/sororities, and student clubs Sleeping (estimated) Socializing, recreating, and other

Percentages based on 168 hours - i.e., full seven-day week.

Adapted from Academically Adrift, with author’s permission

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Many students show no improvement in critical thinking or writing over four years of college, according to Academically Adrift, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2011.

growing sector of staff at colleges and universities today, with promoting student academic performance, not just customer satisfaction,” he says.

Universities should nourish and reward good teaching. Teaching should be assessed through multiple measures, not just course evaluations. “Typical course evaluations are customer satisfaction surveys,” he says.

Too often, says Arum, if a faculty member is rigorous, students drift to other professors’ sections. If a department is rigorous, students go to other majors. But the administration rewards programs by their numbers.

“The organization’s incentives are set up to get precisely what you are getting … a race to the bottom.”

Since student learning varies more within each college than between colleges, Arum says, schools should look within their own walls for pockets of excellence to emulate.

“We need a culture of assessment and improvement in the university," he says.

Classroom Lessons by ANDREA S. LIBRESCO Simulations Stimulate Classroom Lessons highlights examples of excellent teaching by our Hofstra colleagues.

Since beginning this column three years ago, I have seen a variety of pedagogies in my colleagues’ classrooms: lecture, discussion, video, online lecture and discussion, singing and drama. This observation of Dr. Kari Jensen’s first-year seminar, “Child Labor in the World Today,” involved yet another teaching method: the simulation.

Simulations have much to recommend them. They provide a break from the standard lecture or discussion format, which is important for the diverse learners in our classes, especially those who need an affective connection to their learning to activate their cognitive abilities. Simulations change the physical makeup of the classroom and encourage collaborative learning among students, which may, in turn, change the social makeup of the classroom. What’s more, simulations are unpredictable, which may put some students off-balance; yet, to students who thrive on creativity, simulations may be catnip.

Much the same way that laboratory experiments allow students of the physical sciences to observe actual physical processes, simulations offer social science students an opportunity to learn from firsthand experiences. This pedagogy promotes the active engagement of students. In their roles, students need to make defensible decisions and often have to convince others to work with them.

Students also obtain rapid feedback on their decisions as they see the consequences in the responses of the other players. Thus, simulations provide students with opportunities to develop their communication, negotiation, and critical thinking skills, and, in many cases, improve their teamwork skills.

An exercise in international trade Professor Jensen opened the class by organizing her 11 students into three groups – China (five students), United States

(three students) and Tanzania (three students) – and gave each group its own envelope. Professor Jensen gave her students the following instructions: Each group is a team, representing a country. Your aim is to make as much money as possible. You will make paper shapes, which must be made with scissors and can be sold in batches to the trader who will check them for accuracy. Inaccurate shapes will be rejected; cash will be given for accurate ones.

On the board were the specifications for the shapes, as well as the cash amounts to be paid for accurate results: circle 6.5 cm radius = $500; rectangle 13-by-7 cm = $300; triangle equilateral 7 cm = $150.

Before the simulation officially began, students asked, “Do we get scissors?” “Are we allowed to do espionage?” Clearly, students were already involved in the activity, even before it officially began.

As the activity commenced, students became aware that the three groups’ envelopes did not contain identical materials. On the contrary, China had a ruler and 10 sheets of paper; the United States had two pairs of scissors, two rulers, one sheet of paper, a triangleshaped template and a compass; while Tanzania had only four sheets of paper.

Each of the countries also had two pencils and a bit of “money”: China had $400, the United States had $600, and Tanzania had $200. The pencils, rulers, and scissors symbolized different levels of technology, and the paper symbolized natural resources.

Right away, China traded three sheets of paper for a scissor. Tanzania tried to trade one sheet of paper for a ruler, but no dice.

With no ruler, Tanzania did its best to calculate measurements, using what was known about standard paper dimensions – 8.5-by-11 inches. Unfortunately for Tanzania, however, the shapes were in centimeters, not inches. Faced with this impasse, Tanzania again tried to trade with the United States, and this time met with success: one ruler for two sheets of paper.

Andrea S.

Libresco

So Tanzania used its newly acquired ruler to measure and then carefully rip rectangles.

As students in their country groups struggled (some countries more than others, given the unequal distribution of materials and tools) to manufacture the shapes, Professor Jensen periodically broke in with bulletins – some offering the time left for production, others indicating price changes set by the international commodities trader: “The trader has raised prices to $600, $400, $200 for the circle, rectangle and triangle, respectively.”

China and Tanzania went up to Professor Jensen (the international commodities trader) to have their products assessed.

Some of China’s were accepted, and some garnered a reduced price. All of Tanzania’s products were rejected (remember – they had no scissors). Eventually, Tanzania’s most carefully ripped shapes yielded halfprice payments. The United States, meanwhile, was racking up the bucks.

A mysterious sticky note The commodities trader announced the final minutes of manufacturing and lowered the rectangle and triangle prices. Tanzania received a pink sticky note but had no idea of its value. Tanzania, having great difficulty creating acceptable shapes without scissors, creatively sold pre-measured shapes to the other groups for cash.

Toward the end of the activity, Professor Jensen whispered something in secret to the United States, which then attempted to purchase Tanzania’s mysterious pink continued on page 4

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Classroom Lessons continued from page 3

In her final announcements, Professor Jensen accused China of employing child labor, and she refused to buy their shapes (“goods”) for a while. However, China sent a delegation of negotiators who managed to convince the international commodities trader that what she had heard about child labor were false rumors, and trade ensued shortly thereafter.

With 15 minutes left in the class, Professor Jensen stopped the simulation and had the groups calculate their respective assets.

Tanzania finished with $1,600 and the mysterious sticky note; China with $9,750; and the United States with $11,150.

The final portion of a class in which a simulation takes place, is, in many ways, the most important. The discussion or debriefing is where students try to make sense of what just happened, using their knowledge and vocabulary of the subject matter. This is exactly what happened in Professor Jensen’s class.

Professor Jensen asked about the division of labor strategies within the groups, and the students responded with the specific actions they had taken in the simulation.

Tanzania pointed out that, once they identified the best paper-ripper, she was not allowed to do any other job. The size of China’s labor force was discussed, as was its possible use of child labor and what that meant morally, economically and politically.

The technological edge Of course, the distribution of resources came up, and, not surprisingly, the students in the poorest country were quite vocal about the lack of equity. Scissor-less Tanzania became creative in negotiating for tools, obtaining a ruler pretty early in the game, and in its marketing and trading plans, as it successfully sold premeasured shapes to the other countries. Protractorless China, meanwhile, fashioned a protractor out of pencils and rubber bands and was able to make some (barely) serviceable circles. Students decided that

Photo by Kristen Muterelli

sticky note. They offered $300, then $500, then $900. Tanzania cleverly tried to get China interested to start a bidding war but was unsuccessful.

Geography professor Kari Jensen (left) leads a first-year class in a simulation of trade among nations with unequal resources.

the United States, with its abundance of technology but fewer natural resources (it began with only one sheet of paper) ultimately had the advantage.

The conversation about the quality of China’s circles led to discussion of the changes in prices of the different shapes.

Students were able to voice the connection between overstock of the rectangles and triangles and the plunging price of both, versus the rising prices for the hard-toproduce circles. Students had experienced and, thus, were able to recognize the laws of supply and demand. In addition, they could appreciate the role of technology in the fluctuation of prices and the importance of possessing technology to have a shot at competing in today’s economy.

If you’re wondering about the sticky note, Professor Jensen explained that it was supposed to reflect what happened in the late 1800s in Africa, when, for example, Zambia sold the rights to exploit and export copper to British imperialist and business magnate Rhodes for next to nothing. Often, the students representing Tanzania will get suspicious and won’t sell, which is what happened this time.

Although students clearly got a lot out of the simulation, Professor Jensen told me after the class that she wished that she had saved a bit more time at the end of class for the debriefing.

Professor Jensen later told me that her students had been very eager to continue the debriefing in the next class period, and they enthusiastically embraced her idea of discussing ways to make the simulation – originally fashioned for an introductory geography course – more relevant for a 4

course on child labor. The students raised many interesting ideas, such as deciding on guidelines for work standards at the beginning of the simulation and determining sanctions against countries with child labor.

Possibilities for a certification system for fair trade, and whether bribes should be accepted by the international commodities trader, were also discussed. The fact that students had such thoughtful suggestions points out another positive aspect of simulations: those who have been through a process have a personal stake in critiquing and improving it.

Planning a simulation If you decide to plan a simulation in your own class, the considerations are pretty much the same, regardless of the topic: Specify your educational goals; if you’re not sure what the point of the activity is, your students will be in the dark as well.

Decide whether you’ll use (and disguise) a real case or make one up. Plan your groupings in advance, and have contingency plans if students are absent. Detail any constraints you will impose on or rewards you will grant particular groups. Develop announcements that will change the stakes mid-simulation. Leave enough time for debriefing. Resolve to enjoy the experience.

Once you have taken the plunge, you might as well appreciate the swim.

Simulations are used far too sparingly in both college and K-12 classrooms, which is too bad. Students remember simulations.

And I’ll bet you will too.

Andrea Libresco is associate professor of teaching, literacy and leadership in the School of Education, Health and Human Services.

From the Director: Should Faculty Have Coaches? executives have leadership coaches. High school students have college application and interview coaches. If we as university faculty write professionally, we probably have an editor who acts as a kind of coach. But we don’t have coaches for our teaching.

Photo by John McKeith

­Susan Lorde

Martin

Dear Colleagues, An article in The New Yorker by Atul Gawande has me thinking about coaching for faculty. Dr. Gawande is a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. In “Personal Best” (Oct. 3, 2011), he muses that almost all of the most elite athletes in the world have coaches to help them be the best they can be, but doctors don’t. Professional musicians generally don’t have coaches, but professional singers do. Business

The CTSE has “consultants” who will observe classes and provide feedback, but the service is not requested very often. Perhaps it would be a good idea to think of our “consultants” as coaches and to think about creating a culture where “teaching coaches” are the norm. That term is not redundant if you differentiate between teaching and coaching. Dr. Gawande explains that the teaching model assumes that at some point students learn enough to go out on their own, whereas the coaching model assumes that most people will continue to perform better with the outside observation and guidance of a good coach. What we do is teach our students, and perhaps we could all do it a little better if we each had a coach.

In fact, coaching has become popular for teachers of grades K-12 as part of school reform efforts, and there are university programs that teach people how to be good coaches. Research has shown that teachers attending skills workshops implemented the new skills only 10

percent of the time. Even if the teachers had follow-up sessions with practice and feedback, fewer than 20 percent used the new skills. When the workshop follow-up included having coaches observe the teachers in their classrooms and make suggestions, more than 90 percent of the teachers adopted the new skills. Research has also demonstrated that teachers with coaches were more effective and had students who were more successful on exams.

If you are interested in the idea of coaching, there are many resources available online (see box). If you would like to have a coach or be a coach, let me know, and the CTSE will try to facilitate coaching partnerships.

Best wishes for a successful spring semester.

For More Information Resources and articles on coaching can be found at these websites: www.instructionalcoach.org/images/ downloads/research-pubs/Cornett_ Knight_2008.pdf www.temple.edu/lss/pdf/ publications/pubs2003-5.pdf www.acifund.org/collaborativeprograms/aci-center-for-success-inhigh-need-schools/new-teacheralumni-coaching news.smeal.psu.edu/news-releasearchives/2003/dec03/coaches.html www.eurekalert.org/pub_ releases/2010-09/uocp-nsh091310. php piic.pacoaching.org/index.php/piiccoaching

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Focusing on Students With Disabilities by NANCY F. KAPLAN

Have you ever had a student with a disability in your classroom? If you’re teaching at Hofstra, there is a good chance that you have. With the increase in the number of students with disabilities entering Hofstra, it is quite likely that you have or will have students in your classes that will necessitate your making adjustments to your curriculum and/or teaching style.

The goal of this article is to provide you with information so you can be better prepared to teach all students, including those with disabilities.

Some background Fact – People with disabilities are the nation’s largest minority, and the only one that any person can join at any time.

Fact – People with disabilities cross all racial, gender, educational, socioeconomic and organizational lines.

Fact – If you do not currently have a disability, you have about a 20 percent chance of becoming disabled at some point during your work life.

Today, more students with documented disabilities – including physical, sensory, learning, and psychological disabilities – are entering higher education than ever before.

Unfortunately, when we plan curriculum for our courses and programs, the needs of people with disabilities are too often thought of only after the plans are in place. This results in negative experiences for both students and faculty. All students face challenges while attending college, but students with disabilities too often encounter additional challenges simply because we, as faculty, do not have the knowledge or tools to better accommodate them and enhance the learning process.

To help ensure a positive and successful college experience for students with disabilities, faculty must (1) understand the relevant laws, (2) provide the appropriate accommodations, (3) use effective instructional practices, (4) have knowledge of disability characteristics, and (5) use appropriate disability etiquette.

In education, the dominant cultural response to disabilities has been predominantly “ableist,” with many faculty and administrators viewing people with disabilities as childlike, dependent and needy and believing that students with disabilities need to do things the same way as their nondisabled peers.

According to Laura Marshak and the co-authors of the 2009 book The School Counselor’s Guide to Helping Students with Disabilities (John Wiley & Sons), the ableist worldview holds that disability is

Learning Disabilities

Nancy F.

Kaplan

an error, a mistake, or a failing, rather than a simple consequence of human diversity, akin to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender.

This attitude has also been reflected in a resistance to developing curriculum that can work for all students – with varying learning styles and abilities. A flexible approach to learning – referred to as Universal Design for Learning, or UDL – involves creating instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that can be customized and adjusted for individual needs. (For more on UDL, visit cast.org/udl/.)

In 1963 the Hofstra Board of Trustees resolved to make the University architecturally barrier-free for individuals with physical disabilities, stating that all students should have access to higher education. While federal laws later mandated this, Hofstra was recognized as a pioneer in educational disability rights.

But times have changed, as has the educational environment. While some students’ disabilities may be obvious – with their use of a wheelchair, a guide dog or a cane, for example – others may not be so obvious, such as those with chronic illness or learning disabilities.

Hofstra students with disabilities

Chart 1

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As you can see from Chart 1 (at left), the top three types of disabilities found among Hofstra students are learning disabilities (LD), Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and psychiatric disorders, which include

Photo by Brian Ballweg

The following is adapted from a recent presentation at Hofstra University focusing on the role faculty play in the education and college experience of students with disabilities. Participating with Dr. Kaplan were Darra Pace, Ed.D., associate professor of counseling, research, special education and rehabilitation; Julie Yindra, director of Services for Students with Disabilities; and John Guthman, Ph.D., director of Student Counseling Services.

depression, stress, and eating disorders.

The fastest growing disabilities are autism, chronic illness, and psychiatric disorders.

The bar graph below shows the types of psychological disorders that have been seen at Hofstra’s Student Counseling Services (SCS).

As faculty, we are in a unique position to observe behaviors that may need to be brought to the attention of support services. For example, you may observe the following in a student: v Changes in work habits v Poor attendance v Decline in performance v Disorganized or incomplete work v Written or verbal communication that is threatening v Destructive behavior or behavior that violates personal boundaries v Impaired memory v Poor concentration v An inability to synthesize information v Inappropriate responses to social cues Any of these behaviors may be a manifestation of a disabling psychiatric disorder.

Resources for students Hofstra’s Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD), headed by Julie Yindra, provides support for students with physical, sensory, learning and/or psychological

disabilities. This includes the Program for Academic Learning Skills (PALS), a program designed to assist students with learning disabilities and ADD/ADHD. Hofstra also offers Student Counseling Services, headed

by John C. Guthman, Ph.D., which provides psychological, vocational and educational counseling to students who are having difficulty with emotions or behavior, as well as academic, career or adjustment goals.

Once registered with SSD, students can avail themselves of a variety of services.

In addition to arranging academic accommodations, SSD offers a number of programs aimed at helping students develop the skills they need to be effective self-advocates at Hofstra and beyond.

Recent outreach initiatives include (1) the establishment of the Autism Spectrum Taskforce, which brings together representatives from all areas of the University to develop programming designed to meet the needs of one of the fastest growing populations of college students, and (2) a project-based collaboration with The Career Center and the Department of Counseling, Research, Special Education, and Rehabilitation to coordinate services that will increase the employability of students with disabilities upon graduation.

Resources for faculty Services for Students with Disabilities (516-463-7075) and Student Counseling

Types of Disorders Seen at Student Counseling Services 2008-09 academic year

Services (516-463-6791) are excellent resources for faculty as well. When a student with any kind of disability is part of your class, these offices can provide you with individual guidance and support for how to best work with a student.

There are also sources of information available on the Web – here are two: www.hofstra.edu/StudentAffairs/stddis/ stddis_pals_documents.html www.hofstra.edu/about/global/diversity/ diversity_faculty_kaplanlinks.html

Moving forward As we look to the future, we need to create a more welcoming environment for students with disabilities.

This includes taking the time to learn about the various disabilities and being open to new ways of teaching and learning. Some students fear disclosure of their disability will lead to being treated differently or to embarrassment or humiliation. We need to create an environment that encourages students to be open and comfortable.

Accessibility in all its forms is an asset to a college for many reasons. Eliminating all barriers – physical, mental, and technological – allows students with disabilities to become full participating members of the student body and the Hofstra community. It also increases diversity on campus and allows all of us to gain from the perspective of someone with a disability.

It is important that we become aware of the rights of all our students – the need for confidentiality, for example – and our responsibility to provide a nurturing environment for learning.

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Problems not associated with clinical diagnosis

Adjustment disorders

Impulse control disorders

Eating disorders

Anxiety disorders

Mood disorders

Psychotic disorders

Substance-related disorders

Disorders first diagnosed in infancy/childhood/ adolescence

Percentage

It is also important for us to be flexible and open to new ways of teaching and learning. Changing teaching methods will open the door to students with varying learning styles.

And, finally, it is important that we take full advantage of all the resources Hofstra offers so that we can best fulfill our obligation as teachers and our students can get the best education possible.

Nancy Kaplan, Ph.D., is an associate professor of radio, television, film in the School of Communication and a member of the CTSE.

Scholarship in Teaching Recipients of 2010-2011 Special Teaching Leaves describe how they spent their sabbaticals

My special teaching leave has allowed me to keep abreast of pedagogical innovations and “best practices” to a degree that would be otherwise impossible with my regular teaching, performing and service obligations to the University. As the director of choral studies, it is my responsibility to see that we remain at the forefront of current pedagogy in choral methods and conducting, in order to best serve our music education majors, and their future students. Through visits to college choral conducting classrooms along the East Coast, a survey of exemplary new and innovative choral education literature, and a weeklong teaching and conducting exchange with Texas State University, the leave left me inspired and refreshed.

I daily reference many of the moments of this time of self-reflection, collegial conversation, and an exchange of great ideas, and continue to reap the benefits of my “time away.” My teaching and conducting have been noticeably invigorated through the process; I can’t recommend a Teaching Leave highly enough.

–D avid N. Fryling, Associate Professor of Music, Director of Choral Studies

Teaching Critical Thinking Skills to Undergraduate Business Students Critical thinking skills are an important component of higher-level learning.

Students need to be able to analyze complex situations in their professional and personal lives. The ability to exercise critical thinking skills enables individuals to be in the position to render prudent and ethical judgments. The AACSB, the accrediting agency for collegiate schools of business, requires business schools to teach students to develop critical thinking skills as part of the undergraduate curriculum.

During my leave, I developed a methodology to teach specific critical thinking skills based on the substantive material in a required introductory business course. I focused on one aspect of critical thinking: the ability to make inferences.

Students learned to analyze fact patterns using a four-part system: determining facts, finding missing information, identifying ambiguities and drawing conclusions. They did a weekly homework assignment, which we discussed in class, and I created a rubric to assess student work. At the conclusion of the study, it appeared that the teaching technique was somewhat successful in developing critical thinking skills; however, further study is needed.

–M artha Weisel, Associate Professor of Legal Studies in Business

Enhancing Environmental Education My mission for a Special Teaching Leave last year was to explore and enhance environmental education at Hofstra by investigating the viability of an environmental studies program, canvassing experiential learning opportunities, and augmenting graduate curricula in the field.

Coincidentally, during my leave, a new hire to the Department of Global Studies and Geography was tasked with constructing a major in sustainability studies. I took this separate initiative to supersede my own foray, and so I set aside that part of my project.

Experiential learning is a key component of environmental education. I discovered that the Division of Student Affairs has put together a great assortment of opportunities for environmental volunteerism (which can also be utilized for service learning projects). There is also a small bird sanctuary on campus, to

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Photo by Phil Merino

Exploring the Cutting Edge of Choral Pedagogy

David Fryling, director of choral studies at Hofstra, used his teaching leave to visit choral conducting classes at colleges along the East Coast.

which I was able to secure a key for outdoor class meetings.

Perhaps the most satisfying outcome of my leave was the development of a new graduate-level course, Environmental Ethics and Eco-Philosophy, which master's students in the School of Education, Health and Human Services and students in the Urban Ecology program can now take as a an elective.

–R alph Acampora, Associate Professor of Philosophy

How to Apply Each year, Hofstra sets aside several sabbaticals for professors to pursue projects related to teaching, from developing courses to conducting pedagogical research.

Faculty members may apply every five years.

To learn more about Special Teaching Leaves and how to apply, enter “CTSE Special Teaching Leaves” into the search bar of the Hofstra home page.

Alternatives to Lecture by BRUCE TORFF Where do students get their information?

Vive le différence, the French say, encouraging us to celebrate how people differ from one another. In French this sounds a tad salacious, even if your name is not Dominique Strauss-Kahn. In educational circles, the idea may be rated G, but it still has its allures.

We’re talking about differentiated instruction: varying teaching methods so as to give all students a chance to shine, not just the ones who happen to be a good fit with the professor’s preferred instructional style. Differentiated instruction helps to motivate students and prompt them to do their best work.

Now, how do you actually do it? It turns out there are numerous ways to differentiate instruction. Perhaps one or more of them will work for you.

Let’s start with content sources. (In later columns we’ll try other ways.) Disciplinary content has to come from somewhere; for example, any psychology class worth its salt requires students to encounter the theories and research in the field. Typically this is done with lecture and textbooks. OK for starters, but what else is there? Different students take to different content sources in different ways, so it makes sense to diversify the ways in which students get their information.

How about video?

Unbelievable as it sounds, our current undergraduates were born around 1990; they are products of a world with a zillion cable channels, and video is right up their alley. That’s not such a bad thing, despite the many overblown allegations that television ravages youngsters’ defenseless minds. A lot of our brainpower is used for processing visual information – concrete stuff that tends to be retained better than the abstract concepts foisted in lectures.

Which is more memorable, a lecture about Pickett’s Charge, or a History Channel re-enactment of it? How about doing both?

(Personally, I could go for one more video with Shelby Foote. Or, switching content areas, Carl Sagan, David Attenborough or Richard Feynman.) At this point, YouTube includes a colossal repository of video you

can use (not just dog tricks, dreadful singing, and the like), and Hofstra’s Film and Media Library offers a ton more.

Video can be an extraordinarily powerful classroom tool. I once observed a lesson on the Holocaust featuring a YouTube clip of an interview with a survivor from Treblinka. As he told his tale, the room became incredibly quiet. Afterward wideeyed students produced a remarkable flurry of questions and comments, and the professor seized upon this high level of engagement to make an array of points about the Holocaust, offering a great deal of additional disciplinary content to students uncommonly primed to receive it. Much was taught that day, much likely to be remembered. There’s no doubt wellplaced video can transform a college classroom.

Even a short video clip can do wonders to break up a lecture and concretize what’s being discussed. And why not use video more expansively, say, to anchor a written assignment? For example, a professor might have students view a segment from Ken Burns’ documentary Jazz and write about Duke Ellington’s role in the Harlem Renaissance.

Next we come to popular media articles, including articles in newspapers and magazines. These are generally topical and well written, and they provide textbased information in a format at least some students judge to be less tedious.

What say we have education students read a newspaper article describing how the “Race to the Top” initiative has influenced schools in New York state? Or have astrophysics students read a Time magazine piece on the recent discovery of a planet that orbits two stars?

Taming the Internet Finally we come to the big enchilada, the Internet. Of course the Internet is the ultimate double-edged sword, misleading as it edifies. Lacking editors, reviewers, and fact-checkers, the Internet is jammed with bull hockey, and it’s also a first-class plagiarism temptation. Clearly, a wideopen “Web quest” is a bad idea. But if you 9

Bruce

Torff

provide a list of two or three websites you have carefully checked out in advance, students encounter only accurate information, and they are much less likely to crib from sources they know the professor has perused.

With these problems held in check, the astounding power of the Internet opens up. The Internet is nothing if not quick, accessible, and informative. Heck, I’ve used it several times writing this column.

And in the Facebook era we’re in, the Internet is students’ native land. A nontrivial (and probably growing) percentage of students resist reading unless the text they have to read is online.

This shortcoming may be lamentable, but if you want these students to learn, why not pitch the ball in their wheelhouse once in a while?

Taking stock, there are numerous ways in which content can be presented to students – beyond the familiar lecture and textbooks. These different content sources appeal to different groups of students, so if you use them all, everyone’s ship comes in sooner or later.

Next up we’ll apply the same kind of thinking to the different types of activities students can participate in during class.

We’ll talk differentiated assessment, too, eventually. In the end, differentiated instruction more than pays for itself, in student motivation and academic achievement. Vive le différence, indeed.

Bruce Torff is professor of educational psychology, director of the Doctoral Program in Learning and Teaching, and pedagogical research consultant for the CTSE.

Having a Word Shibboleths accent, and vice versa. And while the Canadian accent is virtually indistinguishable from an American accent, there’s always the way Canadians pronounce some words, for instance, about (“aboot”), that gives them away.

Carol

Porr

The Gileadites seized the fords of the Jordan and held them against Ephraim.

When any Ephraimite who had escaped begged leave to cross, the men of Gilead asked him, ‘Are you an Ephraimite?’, and if he said, ‘No’, they would retort, ‘Say Shibboleth.’ He would say ‘Sibboleth’, and because he could not pronounce the word properly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Judges 12.6 I was in a restaurant recently, when the server noticed that I was reading a book entitled You Are What You Speak. She told me that she used the expression “in the cellar,” and her boyfriend, who was from Boston, told her that the expression should be “down cellar.” “Who is right?” she asked. Of course I told her they both were right. She and her boyfriend spoke regional dialects, or idiolects. She thanked me, and I thanked her because she’d given me the topic for my next column.

Shibboleths are ways in which people are identified through language — linguistic passwords, if you will. The original shibboleth was an arbitrary word the Gileadites chose to recognize their enemy.

Today, in a broad sense shibboleths represent any way of communicating that identifies one with a particular group — or separates one from the group. As in the Bible story, the most common shibboleth would be pronunciation, or accent. An American could easily discern a Brit by his/her

Shibboleths don’t just distinguish people by nationalities; they point to regions within a nation as well. My son-in-law is from Cleveland, Ohio, and he pronounces crayons as “crains” and horrible from him sounds like “hurable.” Baltimore is pronounced “Balmer” by many people from that region. The Southern accent is well known. And, of course, we New Yorkers (should I say “Noo Yawkahs”?) take a lot of heat for our colorful pronunciations. To people from other regions of the United States, the New York/New Jersey accent is quite distinguishable from the rest of the nation.

No matter where I go in the country, once I speak, people say to me, “Oh, you’re from New York!” My sister-in-law from Dallas often asks my husband if he would like a “cup ‘a kawfee” in an attempt to imitate his Queens accent.

Fixin’ to and other regionalisms Interestingly enough, my sister-in-law doesn’t sound like a Texan, even though she was born and raised in Dallas. Her parents were from Chicago, and she seems to have retained their Midwest accent. Ah, but when she says, “Y’all have to come over,” the Texas in her comes out. Like my server and her boyfriend, my sister-in-law is using a regionalism, an idiolect, which readily identifies her as Southern. Some years ago, a friend of mine was in church in the South just before Easter, when the preacher began his sermon with, “When the Romans was fixin’ to crucify Christ ...”

Coming from the Northeast, I had to suppress a chuckle when she told me the story.

The image of first-century centurions “fixin’ to” anything struck me as, well, odd (my sister-in-law claims that “fixin’ to” is the state verb of Texas).

10

with CAROL PORR

We have many, many regional variations in the United States, and we can pretty much pinpoint where someone comes from by the terms used for everyday objects and speech. Y’all and fixin’ to are obviously Southern dialects. In parts of Pennsylvania and west, you could very well hear you’uns, y’uns, and youse — all of them expressions for the second person plural.

There are also regional differences in expressions that identify the speaker. Bill Bryson notes that people from Boston and New York call coffee with milk “regular,” yet elsewhere “regular” coffee would be black. Bryson also notes that you can virtually tell where people come from by what they call the long cylindrical sandwich: a hero, a submarine, a hoagie, a torpedo, a poor boy, etc. New Yorkers call a soft drink soda, New Englanders call it tonic, and Midwesterners call it pop. In some regions of the United States, a flying insect is called a dragonfly, and in other regions it’s called a darning needle. In New York we have a stoop; elsewhere, it’s a porch.

Dialect biases Mostly these regional differences are amusing and have very little to do with the shibboleth story from the Old Testament. But consider how people in any nation react to dialects, which are considered to be nonstandard forms of the spoken language. Even Chaucer and Shakespeare poked fun at regional or cultural dialects. Go to Yorkshire in the north of England and you’ll have a difficult time understanding the spoken words.

The same thing goes for Scots, a variety of English spoken in the Lowlands of Scotland. While these two dialects are not considered the Queen’s English, they don’t suffer quite the same prejudice that Cockney does. Bill Bryson notes that dialects are much more a matter of class and status in England than in other countries. He quotes George Bernard

Americans are certainly not free of prejudice when it comes to their attitudes about dialects. Despite the fact that Cajun (spoken in parts of Louisiana), Gullah (a dialect found in regions of Georgia and South Carolina), and Black English Vernacular have been proven to have a fairly stable pronunciation and grammar, their use is looked down upon mightily by speakers of Standard English. And to many Northerners, the Southern dialect is thought to be simpleminded and racist.

We don’t just divulge our social and cultural background when we speak and/ or write. We give away our attitudes, our interests, our professions by the specific language we use. In an article titled “Shibboleths,” John Quiggin notes that the term “birther” is a political shibboleth, used by people who question the validity of the president’s citizenship. We use the terms "right-to-life" and "pro-choice" this same way. Dan Zambioni notes that science fiction fans can identify each other by the use of “sf” rather than the more common term “sci-fi,” which is used by us outsiders. The nomenclature of most professions identifies their practitioners as members of the group.

Most of us know medical terms now because we’ve watched medical dramas over the years. We know police parlance because of Law & Order and its many, many spin-offs. I’m often reminded of my technological inadequacies whenever I call tech support, either at Hofstra or Apple (“The Wi-Fi symbol? Oh, you mean the rainbow!”). I most definitely feel like an outsider whenever I speak with those patient people.

Shibboleths in entertainment I fell in love all over again with the term “shibboleth” by watching The West Wing years ago.

In one episode, titled “Shibboleth,” the president, played by Martin Sheen (who knows a thing or two about cultural prejudice, having been born Ramon Estevez), grants asylum on religious grounds to Chinese dissidents because their leader can name the 12 apostles. Doing so identifies him and his followers as members of a particular group — Christians. And in the movie Inglourious Basterds, a British spy is readily identified in Nazi Germany because he orders three drinks by holding up the middle three fingers. A German would hold up the first three fingers instead.

We either identify ourselves with a group or separate ourselves through accents, gestures, terminology, and dialect.

According to the Bible story, 42,000 Ephraimites were killed as a result of their inability to pronounce the word shibboleth. Conditions today are not quite as dire. But it wasn’t that long ago that the people of Northern Ireland were very attuned to accents. In You Are What You Speak, Robert Lane Greene mentioned that in Ireland the letter h was used as a shibboleth. Irish Catholics pronounce the letter as “haich,” while Protestants pronounce it as “aitch.” He also reports that a 2008 spree of shootings and bombings in Mumbai were attributed to Pakistanis because of spelling mistakes that Indians wouldn’t make in the letter of demands. Pakistanis noted that certain pronunciations marked the terrorists as Indian. In A Book About a Thousand Things, author George Stimpson reports that in the Pacific Theater during World War II, American sentries used the password lollapalooza,

“It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him.”

– George Bernard Shaw 11

Photo ©Tate, London 2011

Shaw, who wrote, “it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him.”

Shibboleth, an installation by Colombian artist Doris Salcedo at the Tate Modern in 2007.

which would be sure to be mispronounced

by Japanese trying to pass themselves off as Filipino.

While regional accents disappear in writing, other shibboleths are evident — the use (or misuse) of grammar. Like it or not, we are judged by how we present ourselves in both the spoken and written word. Prescriptivism is the view that one variety of language is superior to others and should always be the “norm.” The incorrect use of who instead of whom, saying “between you and I” instead of “between you and me,” the use of double negatives as in “I haven’t done nothing wrong” — these are some of the rules that sticklers judge others by (Oops! I just broke another “rule”: Never end a sentence with a preposition). And the beat goes on ...

Carol Porr is adjunct assistant professor of English and assistant director of the English Composition Program. She is also the English editing consultant for the CTSE.

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