Category: Engagement

Design, Engagement, Reflection

Lifelong Learning

Missy Alexander

One of the central goals of higher education is to prepare students for lifelong learning. It flows from our commitment to some essential skills and tools. We all want our students to be capable communicators, competent decoders of information in multiple forms (quantitative, qualitative), and sensitive to cultural and historical contexts in which ideas and facts (so far) are developed. These abilities will allow graduates to navigate changing circumstances, make important decisions with appropriate evidence, and cultivate habits of mind that help them evaluate ideas, situations, and actions thoughtfully.

These are goals that flow from the ways in which we try to balance the general education curriculum, the work in the major, and any number of applied learning activities that we promote to our students. This kind of lifelong learning is a core value for all of higher education, and it is an important one. But there is another part of lifelong learning that might benefit from a little more thought. This kind of lifelong learning lives in the co-curricular experiences we build on our campuses.

Universities differ in the kinds of co-curricular experiences they develop, largely as a result of their context. A primarily residential campus in a rural location will need to provide many more activities to occupy the out of classroom hours than a residential campus in a vibrant urban setting. A primarily commuter campus will need to think about ways to weave students together outside of class time in ways that a primarily residential campus does not. On campuses where students are juggling significant external responsibilities (jobs, families), the co-curricular has to be meaningful enough to convince students to stay or return to campus and convenient enough for them to do so. We haven’t even gotten to the question of what might be interesting to students.

There’s a lot to think about here. One of the biggest issues for many campuses right now, including WCSU, is that our students have such divergent needs that designing for all of them seems almost impossible. Nevertheless, we are thinking things through because it is very clear that the co-curricular experiences have the capacity to enhance learning, connect students to each other and to networks of alumni who may support them after graduation, and they provide an opportunity to see the learning in the classroom in the many contexts in which the ideas may apply. It is these connections that will help our students expand their habit of asking questions from the classroom to multiple contexts, exploring divergent ideas, and perhaps pursuing more education.

But even when we develop activities, clubs, etc. that are designed to support students at different points in their education with experiences that are meaningful in that moment, we run into the biggest wall of all – time. Between course schedules that leave no open times for co-curricular engagement and the actual demands of keeping up with five classes per semester, we really signal to students that the things outside of class are a nice, but not an essential part of the educational experience. Add work and family to the mix, and the co-curricular becomes an occasional thing at best. Don’t get me wrong, there are students who figure out the juggle and participate fully, but it is a lot to ask and for many it is just too much.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if these time constraints are undermining our lifelong learning goal. When we don’t make room for discovering connections between the classroom and everything outside of it, are we communicating that curriculum is something separate from life? Are we saying, focus on this, get through it, and then you’re done? I think we might be and this is the opposite of preparing for lifelong learning.

At WCSU we’re having some good conversations about how to better meet the co-curricular needs of our diverse student body. With students just out of high school, residential and non-residential students, students who are returning to education after a brief or long hiatus, students who are changing course and coming back for new degrees, and graduate students working and pursuing that next degree, this is a big puzzle. Still, the conversations are exciting and I hope they grow and lead to some great ideas. At the very least, I hope they help us plan together in productive ways.

But I think that the time constraints are a barrier that needs a deeper dive. For many years I have thought that higher education has trended toward courses that are over built (too many assignments without enough time for reflection) and majors that are over built (too many credits in the major without enough time to explore other disciplines). Add to this the endless financial demands and other responsibilities that so many students face, and it is clear that these conditions are undermining our ability to create holistic educational environments.

But it is the holistic that we need to guard closely if we truly care about lifelong learning. The holistic helps connect the dots, creates the opportunity for synthesis and transformation, and opens up students to experiences that might lead them to new questions in and out of the classroom. So, as my colleagues think about the kinds of activities and experiences we should develop, I am spending more time looking at how we are organizing our time (read schedule grids and learning outcomes), and wondering if we might find something a little more bold to do. Something that makes room for students to develop not just the skills for lifelong learning, but the habit of seeking it out as a way of life.

Dialogue, Engagement

Community Hour

Missy Alexander

Last week I spent the morning with a group of colleagues, mostly from outside of academic affairs. I had reached out to folks in academic advising, student affairs, admissions, athletics, and career services (they’ve just moved to academic affairs) to help me think about how we might weave together some shared goals. There were just a few faculty members and the academic deans for this conversation, mostly because I wanted to expand my thinking and I needed this group’s help with this. The discussion prompts were essentially, 1. How do your areas align with the university learning outcomes, and 2. How might we work together to build an organized plan to achieve those goals with contributions from all areas of the university? The conversation did not disappoint.

Much of this conversation happened without my participation. I left for another meeting and returned to check in after about ninety minutes. I had thought to regroup, but they were still busy discussing the ideas at hand, so I waited for the final report out at the end. There were lots of important observations about how communication occurs with our students and with each other, how we do or do not connect across areas, and, of course, that we should revise those newly approved university learning outcomes. Like emerging observations in our NECHE accreditation report (being overseen by a different group), there was a keen interest in revising our mission. Interestingly, the drivers for why it should be revised were very different. That was a great “aha” for me. Then the folks in the room asked to meet again. For three hours again! And perhaps continuing on a regular basis for the rest of the term.

As the folks in the room continued to talk, I agreed to schedule the next meeting and suggested that I would add a few more representatives from the faculty. This led me to a bigger puzzle, how do I foster these conversations everywhere? I have a meeting with department chairs this week and we will engage a piece of what this group did last week. The Steering Committee for our NECHE report will be meeting in another week and I hope that they will help to facilitate related conversations as we bring our report out for comment. Our University Senate meets next week, and I will provide updates on new programs, our accreditation report, and I will start a conversation about mission. These are the normal steps, moving through governance meetings, divisional meetings, and so on. These practices allow me to start conversations and try to keep folks in the loop, but they don’t always (often) lead to continued action or engagement.

At some point we are likely to decide to have a retreat, which is great for some of this work, but I’m not sure it really gets us to the heart of what we really need. Having run many retreats over the years, in good times and tough times, they don’t seem to foster the intended inclusivity that they are designed to create. No matter how many ways I try to cluster people in smaller and larger groupings, when we get to reporting out, it is clear that not all perspectives make it to the summaries. The process of reporting out stimulates an attempt to find consensus, and as great as that is, dissenting ideas disappear. Or maybe I’m wrong about this, but this is only part of why I am not seeing this approach is an obvious next step for thinking about our university mission and outcomes right now. The real reason is that Friday’s conversation made it clear to me that we are aching for community.

It is always a struggle to engage our colleagues outside of official meetings. The demands of our varied roles are pressing, and we prioritize our efforts there. We have families and things outside of work that we care about, and they, too, are prioritized. We find ourselves coming to work, doing our jobs and going home (often to continue doing our jobs), without much casual interaction. Making time to connect with each other and really learn from and about each other is usually the bottom of the list. Then we start feeling less connected, less respected, less seen, and less happy. It is a lonely experience to say the least.

Since last Friday’s conversation, I’ve really been puzzling through ways to address this. As great and open as that conversation was (and it will continue), I think it is in the less formal but more consistent conversations that we build understanding of our peers, students, and the perspectives that come with each person’s area of expertise and experiences. It is through the routine interactions that we build community and it is there that the opportunity to really have a shared vision can emerge. I think this is what we are all craving.

So, here’s where I’ve landed so far. I’m not looking to establish a common hour because folks will just schedule meetings in those time slots. We need some common hours for activities, but they won’t help solve the community problem. Instead, I am proposing community hours. I am not going to schedule them, but we all need to to do so. These will be time slots that we put on our calendars to have coffee, tea, or whatever with a colleague. I recommend that we block out a couple of hours each week, but starting with one will do. Schedule it now so it doesn’t get absorbed by something else. Then just start sending invitations. Sometimes it might be with someone in your department so you can deepen your understanding of an idea, or just relax together with no pressure to solve anything. But most of the time, we should reach out to people from other areas – students, faculty, staff, administrators – and get to know each other.

This is a small, and maybe silly, thing, but I suspect it will do a world of good for us. Maybe it will help us solve big problems or move new ideas forward. Maybe it will uncover barriers to success or new opportunities to create together. That would be awesome. But most of all, I hope it will help us build a true sense of we. When that happens, the mission will be obvious.

Engagement, Hope, Resilience

Skeptical Optimism

Missy Alexander

It is raining today in Connecticut. The children waiting for the school buses this morning were clad in rain jackets and protective parents held their umbrellas over their impossible to still children. Cars plowed through the puddles creating splashes that made those efforts to stay dry futile anyway. No matter, everyone was smiling. We are grateful for this wonderful replenishing rain.

Long strings of sunny days are a wonderful thing, but we all know that without the rain we perish. The soil needs moisture, and so do we. Sometimes, we even need the break from activity that the rain might postpone. Rain not only nourishes, but it balances us, and makes us question our devotion to blue skies.

I know, I’m going on too long about the rain (I’m just so happy to see it), but it has got me thinking about the kind of balance we try to achieve in all educational settings. We are charged with educating our students about all manner of things – things that are complicated, things that don’t have clear answers, things that are impressive, but not yet done. This is an exciting and daunting responsibility that requires us to be able to celebrate both the sun and the rain.

Consider the work that science faculty must do. Discoveries in science require theories, hypotheses, experiments, results, new hypotheses, and ultimately new theories. All of this is natural for scientists; they see no problem with this cycle. For the uninitiated, though, the certainty of scientific results is shaken by any real understanding of this process. All scientists and students of science must find ways to embrace the temporary nature of our certainty. Each new breakthrough is a miracle that should be celebrated, but also distrusted. For those who find the balance, the path to the next set of questions is the win. They find a way to enjoy the wins (and the knowledge generated by the losses), while maintaining the absolutely necessary skepticism about what they think they know.

Then there are faculty charged with educating our future artists. Learning to be an artist requires a balance of technique, inspiration, and context. Faculty and students in the arts move from the position of the paintbrush, the horn, the toe, to the traditions of the genre, to the reinvention of the rules, often in the same sentence. For the uninitiated, though, art is all opinion and talent, without any of that hard work or precision. In fact, the most successful artists make all of the hard work invisible. The challenge for faculty is not just about convincing students to do the hard work, (counteracting the cultural narrative), it is also about doing so in a way that makes room for the inspiration and yes, talent. The critiques that are central to the creative process must help students find their way to excellence, not make them feel lesser. It is a balance of celebrating success and finding the path forward from the failures.

Ok, I’ve stalled long enough; then there is history. By history, I mean the history of everything-social structures, political structures, art and invention. Oh boy, how we’ve politicized this! Whenever we are charged with guiding students through the past to where we are today, we are going to be stepping into some tricky waters. Our histories are full of awe-inspiring moments. I’m particularly happy about the revolutions that were supported by the invention of the printing press (things like the way we do science, the way we imagine individual and human rights, the way in which governments are formed, come to mind). Understanding the importance of contact between different groups of people, how their ideas about right, wrong, medicine, or art interact with each other is both fascinating and sometimes unsettling. There are exciting tales to tell. But of course, there are no histories or societies without great achievements and great failures.

For those in the humanities and the social sciences, this is obvious. They are adept at examining the complexities of how right, or good, or even success is defined. They are also adept at seeing problems in our assumptions and places where work still needs to be done (and work always needs to be done). It is incredibly important that they have open and honest conversations with their students about the good, the bad, and the ugly that we find in our histories and social structures. They must be fair about the ambiguity in what they see and acknowledge that the meanings ascribed today are likely to change tomorrow as we learn more and expand our thinking. They work to elicit thoughtful critiques and ideas from their students and wrestle with the contradictions those observations may reveal. And, like their colleagues in science and in art, it is important that they help their students find the joy in the good stuff and the path to improvement for the not so great stuff – perhaps with some inspiration and talent.

Eboo Patel describes some of what I’m trying to get at in his essay: Teach Students to Be Builders, not Critics. Patel argues that criticism only goes so far, students need a path to action. I agree with this, although I think more of this is happening in our classrooms than is widely understood. Still, it is a good reminder that as we insist on the fullness of conversations that should happen in all of our disciplines, conversations that must include the failures and the successes, we should always help our students imagine themselves building something better. It is a balance of skepticism and optimism that we hope to strike.

So, I’m back to the rain. Some will curse it as their plans are cancelled, but most of us recognize the essential role it plays in our lives. Those streams we swim in are re-filled, those forests we walk through are lush again, that day of rest from our ballgame is healing our muscles. We can embrace the balance of sun and rain. Let’s also embrace that balance of the great and the awful in our histories and our capacity to grow; the discoveries that cure our ills and and the knowledge gained from those that ended in disaster; the inspirations that brought forth breaktaking new performances and those that resulted in giant ugly messes, from which new inspiration will certainly arise.

Embracing failures, mistakes, and limits are all essential to learning. So is the excitement of being able to see the next question, the place for improvement, the path forward when nothing seems to be working. Dedicated faculty all over the world are starting the fall term, striving to achieve the right balance between those essential pieces of a good education. Balancing them is the complexity and the joy of this profession. It is the sun and the rain.

Engagement, Higher Education, Innovative Pedagogies

From Evolution to Revolution

Missy Alexander

Over the last year a group of dedicated faculty and staff, all members of our standing assessment committee, have been working to define our university outcomes. This effort is meant to help us see the big picture of the goals of WCSU. University outcomes ask us to consider the connections between majors, general education, minors, electives, co-curricular programs, etc., and their collective impact on our students. When established, they will also provide a path to determining if we are achieving them. This has been a somewhat daunting task, but the committee members have worked hard, and we are nearly there.

When we started this conversation two years ago, I supplied the team with records of all of the established learning outcomes in every major at the university. In addition, I suggested that our general education curriculum and the university’s mission, vision, and values were great places to look for clues as to how to begin. Taking that information together, the things we value as a university started to come into focus. After a few rounds of analysis, forays into drafting language that sprang from those sources, and one focused retreat, the committee emerged with a proposal that is a good reflection of who we are. This backward mapping was very effective as a process, and after incorporating the edits suggested by the broader campus community, this list will stand as an excellent start for defining our shared goals. Bravo.

University outcomes encourage us to look at how things weave together. We are often so busy focusing on our specific tasks in majors or academic support programs or athletics that we don’t look at the whole. Establishing shared goals focuses our attention on how all areas interact. They suggest a path to collaboration that is exciting. Having a standing committee with representatives from faculty, staff, and administration has been a great place to move this conversation forward. This is an important step for WCSU, one that I hope will inspire great conversations at our university.

But I must admit that as we approach the finish line (I hope), I am feeling a little restless. You see, even as that very good work has been taking place, I have been immersed in conversations about the ways that we are failing to reach all of our students. Three different groups (committees, leadership teams, program leaders) have just reached out to me about retention. Each one was trying to discern the reasons why students leave and what next steps we might take to reach them. The answers to their questions are both simple and complex; simple in that I know that the greatest predictor of losing our students is actually their high school GPA, complex in that after accounting for that predictor there are many other subtle factors that lead students out the door. We have taken important steps to address the main predictor; there is more work to do on the rest.

At the same time that those earnest and important questions emerged, I ended up in two wonderful conversations about engaging students in the first year. WCSU already as a first-year course, but these conversations led to an observation about the totality of that first-year experience. In one, we were discussing ways to connect students to our community, in another we were talking about learning experiences that first year students should have. These were exciting conversations and the ideas we explored reflect so well on my colleagues. They are feeling the gaps in the experiences our students are having and trying to innovate and respond.

But I worry, because whenever we get into these discussions about better ways to support the students at a high risk of leaving, or about creating learning experiences that might be more engaging for this generation of learners, we always get bogged down in questions of time, effort, and resources. These are important considerations, but they often derail us before we begin. It is clear we are feeling the need to change. I don’t want those good impulses to get derailed. I am just as exhausted by the juggle as my colleagues are, and I am well aware of our limited resources, so it would be easiest to just pause with the university outcomes and wait a minute. But I find myself feeling that there is no time to waste. I default to my usual perspective–let’s focus on productive changes, while we conspire to do less. Ironically, doing less will take an immense effort. I think the effort might be worth it.

This effort is a lot to ask for, I know. But the questions raised by faculty and staff and students on a daily basis, tell me that this is not a moment to tweak what we do; it is time for real change. So, just as we finish this task of establishing our shared goals, I am thinking of next steps. This time we shouldn’t be backward mapping to what we already do. Instead, we should give full reconsideration to the question of how the learning experiences we design (curricular and co-curricular) interact to engage our students. We should be thinking about how those experiences can help students seize control of their lives and empower them to create the world they want to live in. We should draw on the full range of expertise on our campus to create meaningful connections between ideas, instead of separating them by departments and divisions. We should work to undo the biases built into federal and state regulations that privilege the student who can survive five classes a semester and rebuild our programs to outsmart those rules. We should remember to consult the vast body of research on instructional design throughout. And so much more.

So, why am I restless about those university outcomes? Well, I’m not really. They are a great place to start to focus our efforts and examine our decisions in light of a common set of goals. Those goals are not contradictory to the next project I have just outlined. They will help us evolve as a university, connecting people and ideas that we have struggled to connect in the past. I hope these shared goals will foster conversations at every level of our university, so we can make good decisions about what we are investing in and the experiences we are designing to achieve them. They can propel us forward, even as they reflect the past.

But establishing these outcomes is not enough because we don’t just need to evolve, we need a full-scale revolution. No time to pause… ready, set, go.

Engagement, Evaluation

Learning from Students

Missy Alexander

For the last ten years I have been a full-time administrator. In that time, I’ve focused on student learning outcomes and university effectiveness. I’ve obsessed over better pathways through WCSU, hoping to eliminate the unintentional barriers to graduation and policies that are too heavy handed, punishing all students for the poor behavior of the few. I regularly review all the data I can gather about who is succeeding and who is not, trying to address gaps and make things better. Some of those efforts have been effective, improving our overall outcomes; some do not seem to have made a difference. Nevertheless, I forge ahead in that continuous improvement cycle, because it is my job and because I care.

This semester, due to a series of events (read COVID), I am back in the classroom. Adding one course to my insane workload might seem crazy, but it turns out to be the very best part of my week. I am teaching Public Speaking (something I can manage to keep up with, since so much of the feedback is in the classroom), and truly enjoying the interactions with the students. They are as I remember, equal parts interested and ambivalent about their education. Some are always early to class, others often late. Everyone starts the morning looking at their phones. It is my job to get them to look up.

This is a very active class, with a lot of what I call “pop-ups” to help students fight the pervasive fear of public speaking. During most classes, everyone gets up in front of the class to tell us something. You can learn a lot about your students from popups. They reveal attitudes, interests, and experiences that help me see what they are experiencing in the class and in their lives. This is also a First-Year class focused on orientation to college, so a lot of the prepared speeches focus on things at the university. Last Friday the students presented their first informative speeches and I learned a lot about the student experience at WCSU.

Lesson 1: Our study spaces matter. It is not surprising that many students focused their informative speeches on physical spaces. It is a very open-ended assignment – tell us about something at WCSU- so several students identified locations to describe. Those who did emphasized those places where they can sit down and get some work done. I was happy to hear their tales of using our library, computer Labs, quiet lounges and not so quiet spaces to get through the day. Developing these kinds of spaces has been part of our campus master plan and the facilities team has done a great job of finding spaces in every building for students to land. Our library faculty and staff have completely reimagined the library as a campus hub, with academic supports (tutoring, research, writing center) and a bagel shop. This one assignment tells me that our efforts were worth it.

But it isn’t just that they described the spaces, they described their days. They told tales that were familiar to me because I was a commuter student many years ago. With classes spread out throughout the day, and the inefficiency of going home or traveling between our two campuses, our spaces are essential for managing gaps between classes. Having those spaces near help (library) and faculty (science building in particular) was seen as a big bonus. Having access to computers (all over campus) helps them do assignments that are a pain on their mobile devices (even laptops). And being able to find a quiet space to study or a more social space that might help them meet other students was revealed to be essential.

Lesson 2: Our students are interested in co-curricular activities as part of their undergraduate experience. As a majority commuter campus, we sometimes worry about the students who stop in for class and just go home. Yet, this was not what the students in my class focused on. There are athletes (commuter and residential) who described the demands of their practices and games and how they juggle those demands. As first year students, the athletes faced a big transition from high school sports and college. This transition was described as both intimidating and rewarding. Other students talked about being part of our arts programs and hoped to lure some other students to the performances. This group seemed to have a built-in buddy system with their ensembles, exhibitions, and performances. Both of these groups of students appear to be thriving already because they have well-defined communities at WCSU, filled with both curricular and co-curricular activity.

But our offerings are not suiting all of the students’ needs. For several, who are not in those well-defined cohorts, our clubs are falling short. Every campus likes to brag that students can start any club they’d like, and that is sort of true, but it is not something that a first-year student is inclined to do. Finding something of interest is important for these students so that they do connect with others and with the campus experience outside of the classroom. It was clear that our communication about this is falling short. I must admit I flinched as I heard tales of broken links, and missing details about who is involved or when a club might meet. In addition, the meeting times for these student-run organizations absolutely dissuade our commuter students from participation. They would have to return to campus after 8:00 pm, when they have already been to class, hung around between classes, and perhaps even gone to a part-time job. Even young people don’t really want to do that.

So, we have work to do here. One student suggested we survey students about their interests: I think we might need to do this every year. We also need to carve out some time slots during the day with no classes scheduled so that we can invite more to join in these activities. These are details about our campus that I suspected to be true but hearing it from the students directly, really brought it into focus. We need to help them participate if we want them to thrive.

Lesson 3: Given half a chance, the natural inclination of our students is to be supportive. This is particularly true in a class where everyone has to stand up in front of the room and deliver a speech. We all applaud, of course, that’s just good manners, but the supportiveness comes out in other ways. As we summarized the successes and areas for improvement after our first prepared speeches, students observed growth in their peers already. One noted that everyone’s voice was stronger and more controlled than the first pop-up, another observed that the topics were interesting, and the speakers were prepared. Suggestions for improvement focused on degrees, not absolutes–try to look around the room a bit more, make more eye contact, and try not to pace. These were offered as gentle encouragement. No one felt the need to be negative or harsh in those pointers.

This supportiveness is also expressed in their desire not to offend me as they apologize for lateness or absences or messing up a due date on an assignment. Surely they want my forgiveness (no points off), but I feel that there is also a desire not to appear rude or dismissive of the work we are doing together. In this FY class, I want to encourage that behavior; I want them to feel that I am supportive of them, too. I think carefully about my responses, hoping to support each student while encouraging improvement.

Most of what I have learned so far confirms the data that I regularly review, but teaching gives me a great opportunity to move away from my spreadsheets and see things first-hand again. Being in the classroom brings the trend lines to life and in some cases, makes clear some patterns that those lines don’t fully reveal. I am not sure I will be able to teach another course anytime soon, but I am grateful for this opportunity to learn from our students. The lessons they provide are powerful, indeed.