March 18, 2008
One thing leads to another…
Posted by scheney under Professional | Tags: , facultydevelopment, millennial |1 Comment
I love how one thing leads to another…After receiving an e-mail about Course Management Alternatives at universities in the Boston area I looked that the pps that was attached to the e-mail. In the pps, I saw a screenshot of a wiki (which is hosted at Tufts) from the Bureau of Study Council and Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard called Millennial Students: A conversation. There are some great links on this wiki-resources from the PBS and PEW project and EDUCAUSE. One that resource that particularly spoke to me was this video from Michael Wesch and his students at KSU. I wonder if information like this has been presented in this format to my faculty before…I wonder if hearing from students how disconnected their lives are from their education would make a difference to my faculty…
April 24th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
I think it wouldn’t work on most faculty because in some ways it portrays students in a way that can easily be negatively bent and it doesn’t really offer any solutions.
The video makes sense if you already think things need to change but if your viewpoint is that the students aren’t holding up their end then you can certainly pay attention to specific chunks that reinforce that view. Kind of a “bah humbung- I knew they didn’t come to class and all they do is waste time on those Intertubes instead of doing real work!”- kind of mindset.
I think real change has to be driven by different forces. Professors need positive reasons to change that they relate to rather than negatives that are more focused on students.
It’s kind of like heart attack survivors- very few change their lifestyles despite being told by their Dr.s that they’ll die if they don’t- a pretty strong negative consequence. They have had some real success getting people to change by focusing on how living will allow them to do x, y and z that all add to the quality of their life.
My own two cents on change anyway,
Tom