7 Mysteries of Teaching and
Learning Revealed- Confessions of
a Lilly Teaching Fellow
Geoffrey Habron
Fisheries and Wildlife
Bill Taylor
Jan Bokemeier
Sociology
Bailey Scholars
Frank Fear
Deb DeZure Lilly Teaching Fellow 2005-2006
Patty Payette
What in the world is a Lilly Teaching
Fellow?
• MSU Office of Faculty and Organizational
Development
– http://www1.provost.msu.edu/facdev/lillyFellow/about.
asp
• The primary objective of the MSU Lilly Teaching
Fellows Program is to provide a diverse group of
tenure-stream faculty with the opportunity to
enhance their teaching abilities through a series of
activities designed to focus attention on the art and
skills of teaching both generally and in their
particular disciplines.
Features of Lilly Teaching Fellows
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Pre-tenured faculty
Competitive – 7 fellows/year
Mentor
Project
Budget
Meetings/readings
Lilly Teaching seminars
But Geoff, why the need for this topic?
• After all, many of us got into academia
due to our passion for teaching and
impeccable teaching qualifications.
• Let’s take a scene from my job interview.
Many of you may recognize a similar
scenario.
“To Sir With Love” (Columbia Pictures 1966)
11:24
Geoff’s Story: Genesis
• Oregon State
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TA
Senior seminar
Spring Break courses
Oregon Innovator Award
Geoff’s Story: Exodus
• MSU
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Bailey Scholars
Lilly Teaching Seminars
Curriculum committees
Habron, G.B. 2005. Infusing democratic, constructivist
and active learning in fisheries education, Fisheries, 30
(4), 21-26
– Habron, G.B. and S.L. Dann. 2002. Breathing Life into
the Case Study Approach: Active Learning in an
Introductory Natural Resource Management Class,
Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 13 (2), 4158
Geoff’s Story: Revelation
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Surprise…
Geoff knows diddly!
A lot of people know a lot
Teaching as art and gift…
Teaching as science and scholarship
Why the secret?
Pay it forward!
Learning = Instructor + Students
Teaching Philosophy
(Pedagogy)
Outlook on learning
Students
Instructor
Learning styles
Teaching
Strategies
effective
Student Learning
Outcomes
Learning Outcomes
MSU Boldness by Design
• http://strategicpositioning.msu.edu/default.asp
Report of the Working Group on Improving
Undergraduate Education:
Goals for Liberal Learning
1. Integrated Judgment
2. Advanced Communication Skills (both writing
and speaking)
3. Cultural Competence (addressed in
recommendation 2)
4. Analytical Thinking
5. Literacy in Science and Mathematics
6. Effective Citizenship
Enhancing the Undergraduate Experience:
Task Force Recommendations
6. Modify the undergraduate curriculum and related policies so that
our goals for undergraduate liberal learning are met
7. Enhance the physical environment in ways that support learning
for the students, faculty and staff at MSU
8. Continue the review of graduate programs and graduate teaching
and the mentoring of graduate students.
http://strategicpositioning.msu.edu/documents/BbDImperative1_002.pdf
Learning = Instructor + Students
Teaching Philosophy
(Pedagogy)
Outlook on learning
Students
Instructor
Learning styles
Teaching
Strategies
effective
Student Learning
Outcomes
Teacher/Instructor Dimension
Learning Paradigm
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Bailey Scholars
Barr and Tagg 1995
Student-centered vs teacher-centered
Learning vs teaching
Disciplinary Adoption
• With such an approach, the impact on student
learning is the key variable in all course,
department, and institutional decisions. From this
perspective, we must consider, for example,
student variables and diversity, the impact of the
environment on learning, learning styles, and the
scaffolding for learning. Covering the content is
not the important objective in this paradigm;
rather, it is nurturing student learning.
American Sociological Association 2005
Teaching Strategies
One perspective
• Of course we try lots of tried and true
methods and conduct rigorous research
to see what works, and when that fails we
conduct some peer review to utilize the
best available methods.
“To Sir With Love” (Columbia Pictures 1966)
30:40
Ta Dah!!
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Strategies:7 Principles of
Undergraduate Education
Encourage student-faculty contact;
Encourage cooperation among students;
Encourage active learning;
Give prompt feedback;
Emphasize time on task;
Communicate high expectations; and
Respect diverse
talents and ways of
Chickering, A. and Z. Gamson. Seven Principles for Good Practice in
learning. Undergraduate Education.' American Association for Higher Education, 1986.
http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/
7princip.htm
http://www.byu.edu/fc/pages/tchlrnpages/7princip.html
Enhancing the Undergraduate Experience:
Task Force Recommendations
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Enhance the first year experience; assist students in making a strong
academic and social transition, and in creating appropriate
expectations about their undergraduate education
Promote the improvement of and rewards for successful college
teaching
Articulate, target and expand opportunities for undergraduate students
to develop cultural competencies.
Promote and integrate more active and applied learning in
undergraduate education
Modify the undergraduate curriculum and related policies so that our
goals for undergraduate liberal learning are met
Enhance the physical environment in ways that support learning for
the students, faculty and staff at MSU
Continue the review of graduate programs and graduate teaching
and the mentoring of graduate students.
http://strategicpositioning.msu.edu/documents/BbDImperative1_002.pdf
Learning = Instructor + Students
Teaching Philosophy
(Pedagogy)
Outlook on learning
Students
Instructor
Learning styles
Teaching
Strategies
effective
Student Learning
Outcomes
The Learners
The Outlook: Pop Culture View of
College Student Experience
“I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry or see a B-grade movie
He graded my performance, he said he could see through me
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper
And I was free.”
• -Closer to Fine by the Indigo Girls
• http://www.indigogirls.com/lyrics/byalbum/indigo.html
Intellectual development position
1st year undergraduate (Dualism/
Received Knower/
Pre-reflective)
right or wrong answers and seeking ultimate
truth from a limited set of authority figures
4th year undergraduate (Multiplicity/
Subjective knower)
accept the possibility of having several correct
answers and that various sources of possibly
valid knowledge exist other than an expert
authority figure
Graduate (Relativism/
Procedural knower/
Quasi-Reflective Reasoning)
recognition that uncertainty is a part
of the knowing process, the ability to see
knowledge as an abstraction, and the
recognition that knowledge is constructed.
Aware that different approaches or perspectives
on controversial issues rely on different types of
evidence and different rules of evidence, and
that factors like these contribute to different
ways of framing issues.
Professional Development Program (Contextual/
Constructed knower/Reflective Reasoning)
some answers fit various situations as
appropriate, that some questions may not have
certain answers and that asking questions may
provide a basis for further understanding
Lee Knefelkamp. Models of Intellectual and Identity Development
http://www.greaterexpectations.org/briefing_papers/ModelsIntellectualIdentity.html
Learning Styles:
Multiple Intelligences
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Intrapersonal: self smart
Interpersonal: people smart
Visual: image smart
Musical: sound smart
Logical-mathematical: logic smart
Bodily-kinesthetic: body smart
Naturalistic: nature smart
Verbal linguistic: word smart
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David Lazear. Eight Ways of Knowing: Exploring Multiple Intelligences
http://www.davidlazear.com/Multi-Intell/MI_chart.html
Bailey Scholars Program
• Connected learning
– Individual, community, personal, professional,
intellectual, social, emotional, physical, human,
spiritual, and natural worlds
www.bsp.msu.edu
• Once the latest teaching techniques are
pulled from the literature they are
quickly and enthusiastically implemented
systematically.
“To Sir With Love” (Columbia Pictures 1966)
41:35
Learning = Instructor + Students
Student-centered - ASA
?
?
Teaching Philosophy
(Pedagogy)
Intellectual development – William Perry
Outlook on learning
Students
Instructor
Learning styles
Teaching
Strategies
?
effective
?
Multiple intelligences –
Howard Gardner
7 Principles - Chickering and Gamson
Student Learning
Outcomes
Boldness by
Design
So What!?
• How did the Lilly year impact Geoff’s
teaching and learning experiences?
Plugging into Millennial
Learners
Geoffrey Habron’s Lilly Learning
• Oblinger, D. 2003. Boomers,
Gen-Xers, Millennials:
Understanding the new
students. Educause
July/August:37-47
Use of Digital Audio on ANGEL
• FW100 Audio Only Introduction
• (You can listen to these files as well as download
them to an MP3 player)
• Welcome from Dr. Habron
• Oh the Places You'll Go
• Course Outcomes
• Portfolio assignment
• Spartan Safari
• Cover Letter and Resume
• Field Project Part 1
• Field Project Part 2
Online Greeting for Introduction to
Fisheries and Wildlife
Policy, Schmolicy
• What’s the role of public policy?
• Here’s a current take on public policy across
the globe and how people react
– Youth Hostile – The Daily Show with Jon
Stewart (Comedy Central)
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_dail
y_show/videos/headlines/index.jhtml
Other Consequences
• ISS 310 guest presentation in Lilly Fellow John
Norder’s class
• SOC undergraduate retreat and quality learning
presentation May, 2006
• FIPSE grant submission July 10, 2006
• NSF grant submission August 18, 2006
• SOC 490 section 1, fall 2006
• ANR 311 spring 2007
• ISS 310 summer 2007
• FW GSO seminar, September 15, 2006!!
Deciding to Learn, Learning to Decide:
The pedagogy of risk, uncertainty and
decisionmaking
• Our project aims to rigorously research the ability to
improve knowledge, skills, understanding and application
of risk, uncertainty and decisionmaking. The project will:
– 1) assess the effect of intellectual development levels on the ability
to understand and apply principles of risk, uncertainty and
decisionmaking and
– 2) develop and assess various pedagogies and professional
development strategies to better prepare those interested in
teaching others about risk, uncertainty and decisionmaking.
– One hypothesis suggests that those with more developed
intellectual positions can better grasp concepts of risk,
uncertainty and decisionmaking.
– A second hypothesis proposes that certain pedagogies better
facilitate learning about risk, uncertainty and decisionmaking.
Decision, Risk and Management Sciences Program of the National Science Foundation
Natural Resource Management Context
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Addressing issues such as endangered species recovery (Pacific salmon,
Tear et al. 2005), energy extraction (Arctic National Wildlife Reserve,
Flanders et al. 1998; Teel et al. 2006), nuclear waste disposal (Yucca
Mountain, Brown 2005 ), and global climate change (Hurricane Katrina
resettlement, Tompkins and Adger 2004; O’Brien et al 2006) requires
making decisions from a variety of plausible alternatives with uncertain
risks.
Such a risk society (Giddens 1990; Beck, 1992; Fear et al 2006) requires
more diverse approaches to science incorporating more civic and lay input
and participation.
Decisionmaking approaches such as adaptive management are
increasingly seen as crucial. Such decisionmaking requires, “a variety of
tools to share and communicate understanding of resource issues, to
expose key uncertainties, embrace alternatives, develop resource policy
and use their consequences to modify and adapt policies and actions
further” (Gunderson et al. 1995:490).
The Hitch
• “Humans inherently seem to seek certainty in life. For
example, we are trained in school from an early age that
there are right and wrong answers on tests. We memorize
established facts and relate them back when asked, and if
we do that well enough, we progress through the
educational system…and we are angry when these
diagnoses and prognostications are not borne out; the
rained-out picnic can result in some choice words for the
weather forecaster! We become confused when there seems
to be more than one right answer, or no right answer”
(Meffe et al 2002:79)
The Need
• Efforts to improve environmental decisionmaking remain futile if
participants harbor intellectual positions that view science in a dualism
of simply right or wrong or yes or no.
• In order to engage in the analytic-deliberative group processes to
improve decisionmaking (Renn et al. 1995; Webler et al. 2002; Brewer
and Stern 2005), participants must possess the intellectual and
cognitive ability to value the opinions of others and weigh evidence.
Such ability is found more often among those holding relativist or
contextualist intellectual positions.
• As such, understanding and addressing the intellectual positions of
participants involved in considering decisions should aid in improving
the time, effort and legitimacy given to a broad range of deliberative
processes such as those emerging in the literature (National Research
Council 1996; EPA 2001; Brewer and Stern 2005).
An Integrated Approach?
• Therefore there is a need to both understand the cognitive
and intellectual positions of those engaging in decisions
within a context of risk and uncertainty, as well as
understand how to provide strategies to teach the skills
necessary to engage in decisionmaking. After all, though
adaptive management “emphasizes the value of learning
from failure, it requires individuals with a high tolerance
for risk to carry it out” (Lee 1995:230) because social
learning requires the integration of idealistic science and
pragmatic politics (Lee 1995:230).
• And of course the halls and offices are
full of conversations among fellow peers
about the success and strategies
occurring in classrooms right?
“To Sir With Love” (Columbia Pictures 1966)
46:22
Shifting Teaching from Private to
Collective Endeavor
Connected Learning for Environmental
and Social Sustainability
• Michigan State University seeks to develop a holistic approach to
sustainability that establishes a campus-community-stateinternational community of practice network that will impact:
– a) undergraduate and graduate students through development of a
trans-curricular sustainability specialization;
– b) the operations of Michigan State University and the 10 affiliated
institutions in the Michigan Higher Education Partnership for
Sustainability (MiHEPS);
– c) on the ground community engagement in our region, and
– d) academia in general through professional development of faculty,
graduate students, teachers, and operations staff within the MiHEPS
network.
• Outputs will include identification of key sustainability concepts
and ways of learning and applying those concepts across
institutions and scales (academics, operations, community, and
personal).
Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE)
Bailey Scholars Program
• The Bailey Scholars Program seeks to be a
community of scholars dedicated to lifelong
learning. All members of the community work
toward providing a respectful trusting environment
where we acknowledge our interdependence and
encourage personal growth.
• Connected learning
– faculty, staff, graduate students and undergraduates
– Individual, community, personal, professional,
intellectual, social, emotional, physical, human, spiritual,
and natural worlds
www.bsp.msu.edu
Resource
• MSU Office of Faculty and Organizational
Development (grad students too!)
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Deb DeZure, Director
Patty Payette, Coordinator
Lilly Teaching Seminars
Meet Michigan
Mid-term class assessments…
– http://www1.provost.msu.edu/facdev/index.asp
Lilly Teaching Seminars Fall 2006
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Issues in Evaluating Teaching: A Comprehensive Perspective
Using Demonstrations to Promote Conceptual Understanding in
Chemistry: Making Connections on the Macroscopic, Microscopic, and
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Symbolic Levels
Making Classroom Lectures Interactive and Effective: Engaging Students
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in Course Content through Interactive Lecturing
Getting Beyond Covering Content in your Courses: Introduction to the
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Readiness Assurance Process and Team-Based Learning
Designing, Managing and Grading Effective Group Assignments
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Designing Games and Simulations for Learning
• Teaching for Successful Intelligence: Teaching and Assessing
Students with Diverse Learning and Thinking Styles