Jiffy Lube has to be one of the greatest ideas in convenient car care ever devised. But disturbingly, many students seem to want a jiffy lube college education experience; pull in without an appointment, and get the full service education poured into you, then pay the bill and drive away.
But what works so well for my certified pre-owned, fully optioned Buick Park Avenue will not serve my students well. For career success, college must be a time of learning and growth, not quick fixes.
Let’s begin Stephen Covey-like with the end in mind. Employers want to hire problem-solvers, people who can study situations, processes, and systems, make recommendations for improving them, then implement those improvements. Employers want employees who are curious, who want to tackle problems and solve them.
When done correctly, a college education prepares the student to do just that. That is my goal for the communication/public relations classes I teach. It is as it has always been — a quest for knowledge.
Marcy P. Driscoll (2000) says knowledge is a matter of competence with respect to valued enterprises, such as singing a tune, discovering scientific facts, fixing machines, writing poetry, etc. Knowing is a matter of participating in the pursuit of such enterprises, that is, of active engagement in the world.
I can’t simply pour the knowledge needed for carer success into my Millennial students’ brains. There is a difference in knowing something and understanding it. David Perkins and Chris Unger wrote in 1999 that understanding a topic is a matter of knowing it well. But, it is clear that knowledge in itself does not guarantee understanding. So, even if I could give my students the knowledge contained in a course, that does not mean that they would understand it and be able to use it effectively.
True, they might pass the course, but it is better to be able to do something with the knowledge later. Duffy and Jonassen, in 1992, asked if knowledge is an identifiable entity with some fixed truth value. Is the goal of instruction to acquire a knowledge base that is prespecified? They stated one of their major goals is to encourage students to develop socially acceptable systems for exploring their ideas and their differences in opinion.
That is the essential issue in education. As Duffey and Jonassen say, knowledge develops through, and is embedded in, the tasks or experiences of the learner. Students say they want knowledge, but to have knowledge, I believe that students’ knowledge must be co-constructed by them with me as mentor, coach, and helper, and by their team mates in class. This requires higher order thinking, and that is precisely what I wish for them.
We call it “constructivist learning”. According to Richard E. Mayer, writing in 1999, it occurs when learners actively create their own knowledge by trying to make sense out of material that is presented to them. David Jonassen said in an interview in 2001 that education has always assumed that knowledge can be transferred and that we can carefully control the process through education. He calls this a grand illusion. He says that knowledge cannot be managed.
Donald J. Cunningham, writing in 1975, says constructivism holds that learning is a process of building up structures of experience. Learners create interpretations of the world based on their past experiences and their interactions in the world.
Cunningham says the role of the educator in constructivist learning is to show students how to construct knowledge, to promote collaboration with others to bring multiple perspectives to the solving of problems, and to help students arrive at a self-chosen position.
That is the highest and best I can do for my students, for their future employers, and for society itself.
Hi Les,
Interesting post above, thanks, I found it thoughtful and informative. As a graduate student in the intructional design arena, currently, we are discussing ‘constructivist’ approach to teaching, among others. Personally, I prefer this way to learn instead of the cognitive approach as it provides a way to immediate ‘apply’ what you’ve learned.
The ‘Jiffy Lube’ reference seems to be the way our expectations of colleges and universities persists, foolishly. I am curious, in order to form that base of knowledge along with the mentoring you mentioned, how important is ‘passion’?
In other words, how important is it for your students to be passionate about the topics covered on your syllabus? Does it matter? Or, as future ‘architects of the trade’, it is their responsiblility to find that ‘passion’ if it does not exist? I relate this to my own experience as it is a heck of a lot easier for me to be successful in my professional life when I possess a passion for that which I pursue.
You discuss how your goal, in part, is to produce ‘problem-solvers’, regardless of the teaching theory, how does a student’s passion play a part?
Tim
Tim:
Thank you for your comments. You raise a good question about passion. I think it is extremely important for both the student and the teacher to be passionate about what we do. Yes, Tim, I think it matters.
Passionate people will be better problem-solvers. They will channel that passion into curiosity. They will probe and dig and get at things.
Thanks again, Tim. I wish you great success in studying instructional design. I love it. In fact, I am sure we share a similar passion for it.
Les
Thank you for your reply to my post Les, I appreciate your feedback. By the way, what a small world we live in, I did my undergrad in Business Administration at Towson U ‘91.
I am just getting started in the program here at Walden U. It is exciting to learn something new just about everyday here between classes and blogs like yours.
It sounds like you are happy there at Towson, I loved my time there. Best wishes for continued success and passion in your career!
Tim
This is the first of Uncle Lester’s entries that I have read, and I admire it greatly, as I do his wonderfully clear and humble set of reasons to be blogging in the first place.
I would like to respond to Tim’s important question about the place of passion in a student’s learning experience. Although there isn’t much a teacher can do about a student’s passion for a subject on entering a class, what they learn will certainly be influenced by the teacher’s own passion for the subject.
At college, there was a legendary art history professor, whose lectures before many hundreds of students in his survey course were delivered with such passion for his subject that, well, he became legendary. Here is a link to an article discussing his retirement after 60 years of teaching.
http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/university-news/2009/08/19/with-apologies-a-legendary-lecturer-steps-down/
It would take a large chunk of money to fund research into the brain wave function of students in different art history lecture settings. With money and time enough, could one create control groups to quantify brain activity in students in different lecture settings? Would research be able to determine that the passion of the one art history teacher correlates positively with greater knowledge and retention on the part of students, even those not predisposed to be fond of art?
Without attaching a single electrode to a single scalp, I will say with brazenly unscientific certainty that yes, students who are taught by passionate teachers will retain more of what they learn. Passion is not always expressed flamboyantly. Uncle Lester’s passion for what he does is more reflective in style, but no less evident to me.
Ted
Ted,
Thank you for your kind words. Yes, I am very passionate about what I do. I love it. I am blessed to be able to teach my students here at Towson. I love every day of the experience.
I agree with you — you don’t need a formal study to know that students will respond better to a passionate instructor. Too bad there is so little passion in so many areas of life today, especially education.
Thank you, Ted, for writing. Please come back any time.
Les
Ted,
Thanks for your comments out here, I just read the story you linked about Professor Scully…Wow! Sounds like an amazing person with a passion for teaching.
Also, it was nice to review your thoughts on how important passion is in just about everything we do.
Best,
Tim
Les, this is an important topic and I hope your students will take the time to read your post and the thoughtful comments that follow.
I would like to add that the quest for knowledge should never end. I remember graduating college and believing I had all the knowledge I needed to be an expert in my chosen field (journalism, at the time). When I entered the corporate communications world, I felt the position I held was enough to make me an expert at that, too. How foolish I was! It wasn’t until I joined IABC and began to hear from the real experts like you that I realized how much I still had to learn. And that learning has never stopped for me, as I know it has not stopped for you.
Students need to use their college years to develop that curiosity, as you called it, and to learn how to be lifelong learners. I have spent the last 20 years learning and I continue to learn with every client project I work on. Having gotten over my cheekiness of 20 years ago, I’m humbled and a bit uncomfortable anytime someone refers to me as an expert on anything or as holding any particular degree of knowledge about the work I do. It is a continuous process of learning and I’m just fortunate to take part in it.
Robert
Robert:
Thank you for jumping in here with your experience and wisdom. Your points about becoming a lifelong learner are commendable. I hope all who read your words take note and emulate you, especially my students.
It is a remarkable journey, isn’t it? We are never done. There is always a new technique to learn or some great new information about any given subject. I love it.
Thank you Robert for your excellent comments.
Les