This study says similar things to what I’ve seen for other studies on faith-based institutions. If people lose their faith, they tend to go down that path in their teens and twenties. They are most likely to lose their faith, however, if they never attend college. Fewer lose their faith if they attend any college, even a secular institution. Even fewer lose their faith if they attend a faith-based institution. What I believe has the Cardinal Newman society upset is not just the loss of faith by some at Catholic colleges but that the type of faith students come out of college with tends to skew more to the political left than it did when students come into those institutions. Again, that’s fairly typical of people in their teens and twenties, but perhaps it’s even more so the case in our contemporary academic culture. (I’m reminded of Churchill’s self-serving quotation that “if you’re young and conservative, you have no heart, but if you’re old and liberal, you have no mind.”)
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/02/01/catholic
And to confirm the point that people who go to college tend to be more liberal (whether there's causation or just correlation here is another question), there's this recent study from ISI, a study which also shows that colleges don't appear to foster much in the way of civics education.
http://chronicle.com/article/College-Makes-Students-More/64040/?sid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en
Monday, February 1, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
Right Brain Rising
This book has been out awhile, but I finally got around to reading Pink's "A Whole New Mind." His basic argument is an age of abundance with automation and outsourcing picking up many of the industrial-age left-brain tasks, right brain concerns (high concept, high touch) are more and more predominant. As a consequence, we need to emphasize things like design, story telling, symphony (connectedness), empathy, play, and meaning. Here's the Wikipedia summary - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Whole_New_Mind.
As a dedicated left-brain type, I found some of the argument overdone, especially as I read arguments on the other end of the spectrum about how understanding number crunching is more and more important in the modern world (see Supercrunchers, for example, www.supercrunchers.com). But there's clearly a lot of interesting material in Pink's book. For anyone doing design, to take one example, you can follow IDEO's "method card" approach (http://www.ideo.com/work/item/method-cards). The chapter on play is obviously dear to my heart, but the chapter on meaning seems particularly relevant to our JBU world. Each chapter has possible ways to improve your right brain skills. The author likes labyrinths, for example, which I've only done half a dozen times, but I'll be more conscious of in the future, as I will in a number of these right-brain areas.
As a dedicated left-brain type, I found some of the argument overdone, especially as I read arguments on the other end of the spectrum about how understanding number crunching is more and more important in the modern world (see Supercrunchers, for example, www.supercrunchers.com). But there's clearly a lot of interesting material in Pink's book. For anyone doing design, to take one example, you can follow IDEO's "method card" approach (http://www.ideo.com/work/item/method-cards). The chapter on play is obviously dear to my heart, but the chapter on meaning seems particularly relevant to our JBU world. Each chapter has possible ways to improve your right brain skills. The author likes labyrinths, for example, which I've only done half a dozen times, but I'll be more conscious of in the future, as I will in a number of these right-brain areas.
Teaching Tips from Teach for America
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201001/good-teaching
One of the better articles I've read about teaching. A few snippets. (And here's the link to the forthcoming book - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0470432861/theatlanticmonthA/ref=nosim/).
"the most stunning finding to come out of education research in the past decade: more than any other variable in education—more than schools or curriculum—teachers matter."
"Parents have always worried about where to send their children to school; but the school, statistically speaking, does not matter as much as which adult stands in front of their children. Teacher quality tends to vary more within schools—even supposedly good schools—than among schools."
"First, great teachers tended to set big goals for their students. They were also perpetually looking for ways to improve their effectiveness."
"Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: they avidly recruited students and their families into the process; they maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning; they planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls."
"one way that great teachers ensure that kids are learning is to frequently check for understanding: Are the kids—all of the kids—following what you are saying? Asking “Does anyone have any questions?” does not work, and it’s a classic rookie mistake"
"In fact, for many highly effective teachers, the measure of a well-executed routine is that it continues in the teacher’s absence.”
"What did predict success, interestingly, was a history of perseverance—not just an attitude, but a track record. . . . Gritty people, the theory goes, work harder and stay committed to their goals longer. (Grit also predicts retention of cadets at West Point, Duckworth has found.)"
"But another trait seemed to matter even more. Teachers who scored high in “life satisfaction”—reporting that they were very content with their lives—were 43 percent more likely to perform well in the classroom than their less satisfied colleagues."
"In general, though, Teach for America’s staffers have discovered that past performance—especially the kind you can measure—is the best predictor of future performance. Recruits who have achieved big, measurable goals in college tend to do so as teachers. And the two best metrics of previous success tend to be grade-point average and “leadership achievement”—a record of running something and showing tangible results. If you not only led a tutoring program but doubled its size, that’s promising."
One of the better articles I've read about teaching. A few snippets. (And here's the link to the forthcoming book - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0470432861/theatlanticmonthA/ref=nosim/).
"the most stunning finding to come out of education research in the past decade: more than any other variable in education—more than schools or curriculum—teachers matter."
"Parents have always worried about where to send their children to school; but the school, statistically speaking, does not matter as much as which adult stands in front of their children. Teacher quality tends to vary more within schools—even supposedly good schools—than among schools."
"First, great teachers tended to set big goals for their students. They were also perpetually looking for ways to improve their effectiveness."
"Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: they avidly recruited students and their families into the process; they maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning; they planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls."
"one way that great teachers ensure that kids are learning is to frequently check for understanding: Are the kids—all of the kids—following what you are saying? Asking “Does anyone have any questions?” does not work, and it’s a classic rookie mistake"
"In fact, for many highly effective teachers, the measure of a well-executed routine is that it continues in the teacher’s absence.”
"What did predict success, interestingly, was a history of perseverance—not just an attitude, but a track record. . . . Gritty people, the theory goes, work harder and stay committed to their goals longer. (Grit also predicts retention of cadets at West Point, Duckworth has found.)"
"But another trait seemed to matter even more. Teachers who scored high in “life satisfaction”—reporting that they were very content with their lives—were 43 percent more likely to perform well in the classroom than their less satisfied colleagues."
"In general, though, Teach for America’s staffers have discovered that past performance—especially the kind you can measure—is the best predictor of future performance. Recruits who have achieved big, measurable goals in college tend to do so as teachers. And the two best metrics of previous success tend to be grade-point average and “leadership achievement”—a record of running something and showing tangible results. If you not only led a tutoring program but doubled its size, that’s promising."
Monday, November 30, 2009
Interdisciplinary hype?
My thoughts exactly.
http://chronicle.com/article/Interdisciplinary-Hype/49191/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
http://chronicle.com/article/Interdisciplinary-Hype/49191/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Waiting to choose a major?
Interesting piece. The basic argument appears to be that the earlier you choose a major, the more likely you are to make a mistake and choose something that doesn't really fit who you are. One conclusion might be that educational institutions should try to delay that choice as long as possible and also help students figure out who they are and what their life goals are as soon as possible.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/11/25/nber
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/11/25/nber
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
The promise of e-book readers?
I now have a Kindle myself, and I have enjoyed some of its features, but as this article explains, it's not for everyone, especially academics, and it's not for every function, such as textbooks.
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/11/03/golub
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/11/03/golub
Monday, October 19, 2009
Motivation in the workplace
Mandy put me on to these TED talks. Here’s one from Dan Pink who has a new book on Motivation coming out this fall.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
Pink wrote a book on creativity (A Whole New Brain), which Rick quoted approvingly in his Gateway text. The argument there is that left brain thinking was more useful for a 19th/20th century industrial age while right brain thinking is more useful for our 21st century knowledge-worker age (not that far off from Drucker’s ideas, by the way). I’m reading that book right now, and I’m only partly persuaded (mostly because it seems to me that it’s still a bunch of left-brain types like the Google guys who are analyzing the quirkiness of our right-brain elements in order to create systems that will accommodate for that quirkiness).
But given that “right brain types rule the world” assumption, Pink argues that our typical organizational model of performance-based evaluations and rewards is problematic. These “extrinsic” motivating techniques typically work only in very narrow contexts in which the goal is clear and the means to that goal are even clearer. Because that method worked so well for our industrial age and for much of our sports world, we’ve come to assume that it will work everywhere. It doesn’t. In fact, the higher the reward offered for any cognitively complex assignment, the lower the performance. Creativity is what is needed, but creativity is dampened when given a clear goal and a clear path to that goal. We get tunnel vision.
Better instead to focus on intrinsic motivation. This sounds familiar to the arguments made by Dan Ariely in Predictably Irrational, which I summarized awhile back. In fact, Pink quotes from Ariely in this TED talk. To heighten our intrinsic motivation, we should emphasize autonomy (allowing for more self motivation and less direct supervision), mastery (our desire to constantly improve), and purpose (our sense of calling to a higher goal). Ariely focused on the third piece (people are more motivated by a “cause” than they are by money). Pink focuses here on the first piece and notes the success of Wikipedia in comparison to Microsoft’s Encarta program.
Pink then suggests as a consequence of this thinking such ideas as Google’s 20% time (do whatever you want related to the company with 20% of your time) or a system called ROWE (results oriented work environment where people have no set work hours only project goals that they can complete how and when they want). I’m not exactly sure how to apply some of these ideas to our academic context, since we already do a lot of this on the faculty side by the very nature of faculty work. In fact, I kept thinking throughout that these arguments are really an inversion of the usual conversation in which business types tell academic types how to run their organizations whereas here we have academic types telling business types that their business models are skewed and that they should look instead more like academic organizations.
But I will say that some of these arguments challenge my very left-brained, competitive convictions. For example, I’m not quite sure what to think about Kent State’s new bonus pay system. It’s certainly too beholden to the faculty union, for one, and it’s not clear they’ve done much study about the correlations involved, but I appreciate that it’s a “group bonus” targeted at institutional goals. That seems more in keeping with the concepts noted above. As someone who’s argued for a long time that we need more “bonus pay” type systems at JBU, I’ll have to give these issues more thought.
http://chronicle.com/article/Kent-State-Says-It-Will-Pay/48768/
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
Pink wrote a book on creativity (A Whole New Brain), which Rick quoted approvingly in his Gateway text. The argument there is that left brain thinking was more useful for a 19th/20th century industrial age while right brain thinking is more useful for our 21st century knowledge-worker age (not that far off from Drucker’s ideas, by the way). I’m reading that book right now, and I’m only partly persuaded (mostly because it seems to me that it’s still a bunch of left-brain types like the Google guys who are analyzing the quirkiness of our right-brain elements in order to create systems that will accommodate for that quirkiness).
But given that “right brain types rule the world” assumption, Pink argues that our typical organizational model of performance-based evaluations and rewards is problematic. These “extrinsic” motivating techniques typically work only in very narrow contexts in which the goal is clear and the means to that goal are even clearer. Because that method worked so well for our industrial age and for much of our sports world, we’ve come to assume that it will work everywhere. It doesn’t. In fact, the higher the reward offered for any cognitively complex assignment, the lower the performance. Creativity is what is needed, but creativity is dampened when given a clear goal and a clear path to that goal. We get tunnel vision.
Better instead to focus on intrinsic motivation. This sounds familiar to the arguments made by Dan Ariely in Predictably Irrational, which I summarized awhile back. In fact, Pink quotes from Ariely in this TED talk. To heighten our intrinsic motivation, we should emphasize autonomy (allowing for more self motivation and less direct supervision), mastery (our desire to constantly improve), and purpose (our sense of calling to a higher goal). Ariely focused on the third piece (people are more motivated by a “cause” than they are by money). Pink focuses here on the first piece and notes the success of Wikipedia in comparison to Microsoft’s Encarta program.
Pink then suggests as a consequence of this thinking such ideas as Google’s 20% time (do whatever you want related to the company with 20% of your time) or a system called ROWE (results oriented work environment where people have no set work hours only project goals that they can complete how and when they want). I’m not exactly sure how to apply some of these ideas to our academic context, since we already do a lot of this on the faculty side by the very nature of faculty work. In fact, I kept thinking throughout that these arguments are really an inversion of the usual conversation in which business types tell academic types how to run their organizations whereas here we have academic types telling business types that their business models are skewed and that they should look instead more like academic organizations.
But I will say that some of these arguments challenge my very left-brained, competitive convictions. For example, I’m not quite sure what to think about Kent State’s new bonus pay system. It’s certainly too beholden to the faculty union, for one, and it’s not clear they’ve done much study about the correlations involved, but I appreciate that it’s a “group bonus” targeted at institutional goals. That seems more in keeping with the concepts noted above. As someone who’s argued for a long time that we need more “bonus pay” type systems at JBU, I’ll have to give these issues more thought.
http://chronicle.com/article/Kent-State-Says-It-Will-Pay/48768/
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