IDEAS, IDEAS, IDEAS

If you have read this blog for any length of time, you know that one of my primary recommendations for improved teaching is the “Three E’s.”   Experiment, Evaluate, and Evolve.   I am not sure anyone can become a better teacher if they don’t take this path in some form.   

For that reason, I am always a bit surprised that I don’t have more people coming up to me to tell me about their teaching experiments.  Oh sure, I get a few emails now and then.  But never as many as I would like.  I think all teachers should be bubbling with excitement (my fourth E) over their current attempts to improve teaching.  Every college campus should be an incubator for wonderful new teaching ideas.  Think how education in this world would improve immediately and dramatically if all campuses served as incubators for innovative new teaching ideas.  Does your campus qualify?  If so, let me know.

Why don’t we experiment more?   I could probably list a dozen possible reasons but, I suspect, one underlying cause is a lack of confidence.

--“Oh, this idea won’t really work.”

--“If this idea was actually good, someone else would have already done it.”

--“I’m probably just wasting my time and I don’t have time to waste.”

--“I’ve tried a couple of experiments over the years and they have not improved my teaching.  I’ll stick with what I’ve always done.”  

We are probably all guilty of boxing ourselves in with personal barriers that limit our potential.  As the famous quote (from the comic strip “Pogo”) explains:   “We have met the enemy and he is us.”  We hold ourselves back.  Okay, maybe you don’t, but I sure do.  

Let’s try a test.  The spring semester is about 4-7 weeks old.   How much have you experimented so far this semester?   Don’t give a random answer.  Make a list of specific experiments so you can truly judge.

If your answer to this question is “not much,” then the next question has to be asked:  “why not?”   I might be wrong but I bet many teachers hold a core belief that the results of experiments will not be worth the effort.   Why work so hard if you don’t think you can make your classes better?

How can you get started?  How can you break out of the rut you are in?  How can you start innovating?   I believe it all starts with generating ideas.  If you are going to teach better (heck, if you are going to do anything better), you need to develop the skill of coming up with ideas.

So, today, I want to inspire you with a story from my campus.  Last week, Marc Randolph (who co-founded Netflix with Reed Hastings) was at the Robins School of Business to speak.   You can read all about the speech at

 http://www.richmond.com/business/netflix-co-founder-s-lesson-on-entrepreneurship-if-you-don/article_340f2913-f8ac-53e9-a4db-a9f4a6c5e67e.html

I want to mention three key passages from his speech.  I hope his words will inspire you to come up with some new teaching ideas and then I want you to go into class and try them.  Experiment, evaluate, and evolve must always start with ideas.

First, Randolph clearly agrees with my assertion that lots of ideas are needed before you are likely to spot good ideas.  One experiment alone rarely hits the jackpot.  Developing and trying ideas needs to be a core part of every course.   According to Randolph “It turns out that success is directly proportionate to how many ideas you try, and the number of ideas that you try is directly proportionate to how quickly and how cheaply you can test them.”   Experiment a lot and evaluate as quickly as possible.

Second, don’t wait around for ideas to fall on your head.  The real key to success is to always be looking for those ideas.   According to Randolph, “Ideas do not spring out of thin air at some mythical eureka moment.  You have to look for ideas.  You’ve got to train yourself to see them when they appear.  The idea for Netflix, for example, did not come from some moment of anguish over a late fee on a movie.  We were looking for that idea.  We looked for a long time, and it was buried in a big pile of bad ideas.  We didn’t even find it in a video store.  We actually had the idea for Netflix while we were carpooling.”  If you wait for eureka moments, you will be waiting a long time.  Unless you are Archimedes, they do not happen often.  Examine every aspect of teaching and think about how each might be done differently.  Search for new ways of doing every task.

Third, don’t be discouraged when you encounter doubters.  At first, every great new idea only makes sense to a very few people.  The rest are locked into the old paradigm.   If you believe that an idea will work, don’t get in a hurry to give up on it.   Randolph tells a fabulous story about the starting years of Netflix when they asked the video giant Blockbuster to buy Netflix in order to create a new type of video company.  Blockbuster had 60,000 employees and $6 billion revenue.  Netflix had 100 employees and $5 million revenue.  Blockbuster officials laughed at the idea of needing to buy Netflix.  Ten years later, Netflix dominated the industry and drove Blockbuster into bankruptcy.   The Netflix founders could have been discouraged but they believed in their vision.  Now, they are the giant and Blockbuster has long since faded into oblivion.  According to the newspaper article:  “’I’m not the kind of guy who gloats about driving a big company into bankruptcy,’ Randolph said with a grin.  ‘I actually tell this story for a different reason, because in some ways it’s an inspiring story, about how a handful of people with no experience in the video business and with nothing more than some ideas, and some persistence, could take down a $6 billion market leader.” 

Lessons for today.

--Have lots of ideas.  As a teacher, experiment as often as possible.  Make it a central part of your teaching.  There’s no better way to improve.

--Learn to look for ideas.  If you look for them, great ideas are all around us.  But they won’t knock you on the head, you have to be looking.  I cannot stress enough the importance of always watching for new teaching ideas.

--Plenty of people will tell you that your ideas won’t work.  They take pride in finding flaws.  If you truly believe in your ideas, be persistent.  Don’t give up just because people don’t automatically understand your vision.   Experiment, evaluate, and evolve.   You’ll be amazed by how quickly you become one of the best teachers in your building and at your school.

Get the incubator started. 

STUDENT EVALUATIONS -- MY SUGGESTIONS

Repeat of My Earlier Invitation:   If you are attending the annual meeting of the American Accounting Association this summer in Chicago, I will be participating in two different panel presentations on teaching on Monday, August 10.  One is at 2 p.m. and the other is at 4 p.m.   I would love to have you there as several of us chat about the challenges of becoming a better classroom teacher.  If you are interested, grab me after the panel presentations and we can continue the discussion.  

**

I have written several times over the years about my basic distrust of student evaluations.   Based on the ones that I have seen, here are some of my issues:

(1) – Students are not encouraged to spend enough serious time considering the questions and their responses.   Some students clearly give an appropriate amount of thought and make helpful observations.   Many students appear to dash off their opinions as if they were late for dinner.   “Good guy” doesn’t really provide much helpful feedback.

(2) – It is easy for too much of the evaluation process to be based on mathematical numbers that are hard to interpret.   If I go from 4.28 on a specific question in the fall to a 4.21 in the spring, does that mean I am getting worse or maybe just more demanding?

(3) – A teacher’s popularity has some impact on evaluations.  I am not interested in popularity.   I am interested in how well the person motivates and guides students to learn.  

(4) – Most of the evaluations that I have seen have so many questions that I think the individual questions quickly lose their impact.   I do not think a lot of students have the inclination (and possibly the ability) to draw fine distinctions between various aspects of teaching over a long range of questions.  It always interests me as to how many students give the same numerical grade to a teacher on virtually every question.

(5) – The evaluations that catch people’s attention are the outliers, the ones where the students either love you or hate you.   Those people have strong opinions that can receive too much weight when judging the quality of the education.   It is easy to ignore the feelings of the great mass of students in the middle whose opinions—although just as valid—are often more muted.

(6) – Evaluations really have two purposes and I think that duality causes a problem.   Student evaluations are supposed to help provide feedback to the teacher so that he or she can improve in the future.   That seems reasonable.   In those cases, the teacher should want to hear the bitter truth so that changes and improvements can be made.   However, evaluations are also used by administrators who must make salary, tenure, and promotion decisions.   Then, the professor wants every response to be as positive as possible.  

Okay, it is easy to be critical but how would I do student evaluations differently if I were suddenly made king?   Here are some of my thoughts on the topic.   I believe this is a conversation that we should be having.   My ideas clearly have some practical flaws but, at least, they are a start toward doing something more creative.

I would view student feedback for a teacher as a separate goal distinct from student evaluations used by administrators.   I think you always create a problem when you try to kill those two birds with that one stone.

As I have written in the past (see, for example, my blog posting titled “Congratulations!!” on May 2, 2012), at the end of every semester, I email each student who makes the grade of an A in any of my courses to let them know of their success.   That is a true pleasure.   I pass along appropriate congratulations.   For me, that pat on the back is important—those students did the work and made the grade.   The final grade should not be an anonymous reward.   They deserve a word of praise.   Then, I ask those same students to write a paragraph on how they went about making that grade of A.   I eventually accumulate all those responses and pass them along to the next class to serve as guidance.   I want each new group to understand, right from the beginning, how to succeed in my class.  

Beyond that, those essays provide me with a peek inside the workings of my class.   What do students of mine have to do to earn an A?   How much time must they spend?   Where do they need to invest their energy?   What types of activities and learning strategies proved to be beneficial?   You cannot ask a C student what it takes to make an A because they obviously don’t know (or don’t choose to pursue that goal) but you can ask an A student what it takes to make an A.   I read each of those essays very carefully—often many times.   I try to figure out what I like about the answers and what I don’t like.  

If one of my main teaching goals is for every student to earn an A then I want to know what it takes to reach that achievement.   If one of those students talks about working just 30 minutes per week and still gets an A, I need to consider making the course more demanding.   If a student talks about making an A without ever reading the textbook, I should think about whether that is consistent with my educational goals.  

I want every student to make an A.  I am interested in what it takes to achieve that mark.   That is feedback that I have found very helpful over the years in assisting me in the evolution of my teaching.  Each semester, I read numerous essays that basically say “here is what it takes to be a successful student in Professor Hoyle’s class.”   Am I happy with what I hear or do changes need to be made? 

However, that does not provide adequate information for administrative decisions that must be made.   So, if I were king, I would also have a formal student evaluation process.   I would give every student in every class one assignment at the end of each semester.   I would ask them to turn in those responses directly to the school’s administration.  

The one assignment for the student evaluation would simply be:   “Please discuss this course and this teacher as to how much they have helped to improve your critical thinking skills during this past semester.   Please give as many specific examples as possible.”   Okay, there might be a few exceptions such as a studio arts class or a basic language class but I believe the underlying goal of a vast majority of college courses should be the development of critical thinking skills.   The student evaluation would start with a formal definition of what the school means by critical thinking skills and then make the assignment.   This approach addresses the central issue in the educational process in college. 

If a teacher can help a student develop his or her critical thinking skills, then I believe most everything else will take care of itself.   That is certainly my number one goal in both my financial accounting and intermediate accounting classes.  

Administrators get the information they need for salary decisions and the like by studying these responses.   Read 75 student essays on whether a teacher helps develop critical thinking skills and you (or anyone else) will have a good understanding of the teacher’s success.   It is not about popularity.   It is not about entertainment.   It is not about numbers that have a questionable meaning.   The student is the one who benefits from the class.   When it comes to critical thinking skills, what development did that student experience?   And, of course, they need to give as many specific examples as possible.

Okay, one immediate question is going to be:   How will the administrators be able to use this information?   Here is what I would suggest.    First, I think that at most schools about 20 percent of the teachers are excellent, about 60 percent of the teachers are average, and about 20 percent of the teachers are poor.  That is just my perception based on what I’ve seen over the past 44 years.   You can easily change those percentages if you wish (possibly 25:50:25 or 30:40:30) but, unless you teach in Lake Wobegon, please don’t tell me that all of your teachers are above average.   That is nonsense.   A few teachers are excellent, a few teachers are poor, the vast majority of teachers are average.

The administrator reads all of these essays and judges the faculty member to be Excellent (let’s say 20 percent), Average (60 percent), or Poor (the final 20 percent).  We could argue about this but I imagine 80-90 percent of the faculty will fall into one of those three groups fairly easily. 

After making this judgment, the administrator writes up an evaluation for each faculty member.

For the teachers in the Excellent group, the administrator congratulates the faculty member and describes why this person qualified for the top group.  The administrator also points out any possible improvements that were noted.   “Excellent” is different than “Perfect.”   Improvements are always possible.

For the teachers in the Average group, the administrator describes why that decision was made, pointing up both the good and bad areas that seemed to be mentioned most often by students.   Then, the administrator makes as many suggestions as possible on future efforts that might move the teacher from the Average group to the Excellent group.   That is the one fundamental goal.   That should always be discussed:   How can the teacher move up into the next highest level?

For the teachers in the Poor group, the process is much the same.   First, why was the evaluation made in this way?   Second, what needs to be done to move into the Average group?   The process should always be based on describing (1) what the evaluations indicated and (2) how the teacher can get better.

Two evaluations:

Student feedback to teacher:   How did you make that A?

Student feedback for teacher evaluations:   Please discuss this course and this teacher as to how much they have helped to improve your critical thinking skills this semester.

Would that really work better than the system we have?   I honestly do not know but I do think it is time to have that conversation and start experimenting to see if better evaluations are even possible.   I just think, for the systems I have seen, improvement is needed.

ADVICE FROM KEN BAIN

Now and then, I come across some thoughts on teaching that I think are worth sharing.   That happened yesterday here at the Robins School of Business.   My email to our faculty and staff is below.   No matter what the individual jobs are here at Richmond, we are all in the education business.  This place exists, at least in large part, to maximize the knowledge, wisdom, and understanding of our students.   Passing information like this along to others can help keep teaching (and the thinking about teaching) alive as an important part of our culture.  

You can do the same thing in your building.   Whenever you learn something about teaching that you feel might also help others who face similar challenges, then pass it along.   Don't be timid.   Don't be shy.   

**

Email Note:

A friend of mine here at the University of Richmond passed along the following URL of a recent NPR discussion with Ken Bain.   Everything Dr. Bain says about teaching seems worth a few moments of consideration so I thought I would pass it along to everyone. 

As some of you might remember, Dr. Bain spoke on campus to the Richmond faculty about 8-10 years ago.   Several of us had the great pleasure of taking Dr. Bain and his wife out to dinner that evening (at the old Peking Restaurant) before his talk to the faculty.

As a true southerner, I try to have one story about everything.   Here is my one story about Ken Bain (which I have repeated countless times).   That evening, he spoke to about 50-70 faculty members.   About halfway through his talk, someone in the back asked:   “How can a person become a great teacher?”   Bain stopped immediately and responded:   “Oh, is that what you want to know?   Well, that is an easy question to answer.   I can tell anyone how to become a great teacher in just one sentence.   All you have to do is get your students to care about what you are trying to teach them.”   I continue to believe that is one of the most fabulous pieces of teaching advice that I have ever heard. 

Here is what he had to say recently on NPR:

http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/05/08/404960905/what-the-best-college-teachers-do

 

As is often the case on the Internet, the comments after the article are random, amusing, and—at time—insightful.   

THREE WEEKS DOWN

If you have read this blog for long, you must know that I put considerable stress on communicating with my students, often by email. I believe open and honest communication is a key for all successful relationships. These communications give you a chance to guide your students toward the outcomes that you want. They allow you to motivate the students, to keep pushing them forward (“I know this seems hard but you are smart enough to do these problems with a bit of work”). They provide a chance for positive feedback – “the class was especially good today” is never a bad acknowledgement – one that students often never hear. They enable you to correct actions that you don’t like (“not very many of you had worked problem 5 for today; I’ll expect a better effort at the next class”). Communications help the teacher to prepare the students for upcoming material – “we are really going to stress the computation of interest expense at our next class so make absolutely sure you’ve studied pages 456-458 in the textbook.”

Here is an email that I sent out to my students in one of my classes after the third week of the semester. Notice how many things I was trying to accomplish with this one communication. That’s a good test question for you – how many things am I trying to do here?

“To My Students

“Okay, we have finished our first 3 weeks. Our first test is a bit over 2 weeks away (October 1). Not a bad time to stop and evaluate how things are progressing.

“How are you doing? I’m constantly trying to assess how each class is doing. I think about that in general terms – how is the class as a whole doing? I also think about that in individual terms – how are you (yes, you) doing? I only have 23 students in intermediate accounting this semester so I can do some serious thinking about you individually. (A close friend of mine teaches classes of 400-500 at another school – he has no way to keep personal track of each student. I do.)

“In many ways, I’m really interested in how quickly you catch on to what I’m doing so you can get on board with the process. In any intermediate accounting course, I always have a few students who assume it’s still a high school class and treat it that way. I’m glad to say, though, that most of you are beginning to pick up the system. There are many moments when I'm quite pleased with you especially when we get to a point where we start seeing how things in accounting fit together.

“How do I view this class?

--I expect you to prepare very well on a consistent basis. I do my half of the work every day; I expect you to do your half of the work. You have daily questions from me. You have a huge textbook. You have last spring’s test along with answers. You can easily make use of 60-90 minutes between each class. I often say TIME equals POINTS and I believe that is true. The best thing you can do to do better in this class is put in more time. "How can I make use of more time?" is never a bad question to ask yourself. Too many students ask “how quickly can I get finished?”

--Then, you come to class and I throw bizarre questions at you – often different than the ones I have given you to prepare. What I am trying to do is teach you how to take what you’ve prepared and use it (on the spot) to figure out something else. I am teaching you how to answer questions that you haven’t seen before by a quick analysis and a genuine understanding of what’s gone before.

--Then, you go back to the library or your dorm and spend 30-40 minutes assimilating what you’ve learned so that you can use it in answering future weird questions.

--I think all of that is a skill/talent worth developing. That’s something you can use in the real world regardless of your major.

--The four keys to this process as I see it: (1) preparation and (2) “figure it out” and (3) assimilate for future use and (4) consistency.

“When all of the above goes well, the class should be fun. You should look forward to coming to class and be surprised and disappointed that our 50 minutes together has flown by. I know things are going well when people tell me ‘I wish all my classes were this interesting.’

“How do some students seem to view this class?

--These students believe that preparation is a waste of time because the teacher (me) is going to tell them what they need to know in class. Their preparation is, at best, a half-hearted affair.

--In class, they pray they won’t get called on. They write down what anyone and everyone says with the assumption that they’ll memorize it all the night before the test. All real learning is deferred and replaced by a cram system.

--The problem is that when they get to the test and I throw a bizarre question at them, it doesn’t match up with the memorized material in their head and they haven’t determined how to analyze and figure out a reasonable answer.

--This system only works if the teacher is going to ask you to repeat back what you have been told. I won’t do that.

“In addition, that type of class is just flat boring.

“So far, at least in general, I’m not unhappy. Not at all. Oh, I throw out questions occasionally and feel we should get better answers but that always happens. It’s hard to understand gravel or gift cards until you’ve worked through it for a while. Or, I ask something directly from a previous class and get a “deer in the headlights look” that says “I haven’t thought about this one second since we last discussed it.” But, you are getting better each day and I’m not looking for perfection. We've made 3 weeks of progress in 3 weeks.

"That’s sufficient for me.

“I’m just looking for preparation and the willingness to try to figure things out. (A genuine curiosity is a big help in my class and in life.)

“Come see me if you need help.

“And, remember, a good grade on the first test is nice but it isn’t a guarantee of great things to come. And, a bad grade on the first test is not the end of the world. It’s just a first test, a way to gauge how you are doing in this somewhat unusual class.

“If nothing else, enjoy the process.”