Have you got what they want to hire?

The following long quote was taken from Inside Higher Ed's article The Graduate Education Mismatch. While few of us hit all the notes listed here, it's really useful to know what notes are expected, or at least highly desirable.  You can't be competitive if you don't know the game.  *w*  And to win you have to be ahead of the pack.

Training vs. Hiring Priorities

At first glance, the data would appear to reinforce the views of those who say that undergraduate oriented institutions are the ones these days that care about teaching, and consider teaching issues in hiring. But as the study notes, the researchers also found evidence that undergraduate institutions may be almost as focused on research output — when it comes to faculty hiring — as are graduate institutions.

The chairs were asked if three measures of research quality would make candidates more desirable to hire for faculty jobs.

Preferences for Faculty Hiring

The paper on the study was written by John M. Rothgreb Jr., professor of political science at Miami University; Annemarie Spadafore, a graduate student at Miami; and Betsy Burger, an administrative assistant at Miami.

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Posted by prolurkr at 11:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Fall Teaching

Well it seems that both of my classes - I101 Introduction to Informatics, and I202 Social Informatics - have been canceled because of low enrollment. I101 is required for undergrad Informatics and Health Information Administration students, and while I have taught it twice at IUPUC it has never been a very large class. I202 is required for Informatics students and a "select one of the following three classes" elective for Health Information Administration students and has been offered at IUPUC but as yet has never been taught. We just have to work to grow the program at IUPUC...because we should and because I want to teach. LOL

I'm not sure what I will be doing for cash this fall. I know something will either turn-up on one of the campuses, or I will be folding clothes at the Edinburgh Discount Mall or leading people around the Exit 76 Antique Mall. Campus work is best of course because it pays better with hours that let me write...and some of the jobs might not require that I actually go to campus...which would be nice too, from a time and cost perspective. Time will tell and until then I think I'll just keep writing. *w*

Posted by prolurkr at 02:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Class assignments for the Fall

Got the word today that my Social Informatics class was canceled due to low enrollment.  It's probably a good thing as it gives me more time to work on finishing my quals paper.  Though I'm really sort of bummed, I was looking forward to teaching a class in my general research area.  Oh well...it will come around again.

Posted by prolurkr at 04:08 PM | TrackBack

Assessing students blog posts

I love the synergy of the blogosphere.  Today I was driving around thinking about how I can assess the blog posts I will be asking my students to write.  Of course my first answer is "read them all."  Which might be do-able in a small class but it time consuming no matter what...plus saying "good job" over and over loses some effect.  So what did I find will doing blog reading?  I found Weblogg-ed's link to 2 Cent's Worth's post Blog' What's in Gaston County, which among other things talks about writing and assessment questions for students and for teachers.  This is good stuff to think through, it's not the full answer I'm looking for but it is a start.

So I will be suggesting five questions that will be asked, not by the teacher, but by the student, as a way to assess blogged content.  I call the questions “Blog’Whats?”:

- What did you read in order to write this blog entry?

- What do you think is important about your blog entry?

- What are both sides of your issue?

- What do you want your readers to know, believe, or do?

- What else do you need to say?

These questions assume that blogging is seen as a practice of literacy, accessing, processing, and communicating information.  They also serve to help the writer to focus on the broader aspects of the issues being written about, exploring all sides and perspectives, and even exploring the next phase of the communication.

I think that these same questions, reworded only slightly, can also be used to examine and evaluate the blog writings of others, other classmates, and other blog content being used for learning.  Those questions would be:

- What did the blogger read before writing?

- What was important about the blog entry?

- What were both sides of the issue?

- What do you know, believe, or want to do after reading the blog?

- What else needs to be said?

Posted by prolurkr at 03:51 PM | TrackBack

Time responding to written assignments of all sorts

Bardiac has a post on Responding to written assignments. This is an issue I personnally keep working to improve. Or as a friend of mine reminded me, "Like most things academic. grading will take up exactly the amount of time you allot it." I'm now working with a timer so that at 15 minutes I get a warning to move on to the next paper. Using a timer doesn't make me a slave to the clock, rather it means I am consious of the time I am giving to some papers. It still takes far longer than I would like for me to finish grading written assignments so if you have suggestions I and Bardiac would love to hear them.

I spend a large part of my time responding to written assignments of all sorts in all of my classes. I'm guessing most academics do, no matter what we teach.

What I'm looking for is strategies that will help me respond more usefully overall, while spending less time writing respones. Part of that means targeting my responses at the more engaged students, and spending less time responding in depth to minimally engaged students.

I often feel as if I'm writing responses to justify the low grades essays earn; instead, I want to write responses aimed more fully at helping students do solid revision work and do better on future assignments.

I know from studying composition research that marking up lots of grammar or proofreading problems doesn't help most students, so I generally put a tic in the margin, and a note to come talk to me about this grammar issue. The benefit is that I can usually explain the grammar issue in a few minutes, and the student may actually learn something (if I write an explanation, most students won't really read or work through it) because they've chosen to come to learn, and so are ready at that moment. Then you also have the benefit of one on one communication, which is important both to teaching and my own job happiness.

I've started taking to making bulleted lists on the work of students who are most minimally engaged. Usually the lists start with the need to address the assignment, lack of a thesis, and so forth.

Happily, the vast majority of my students are relatively engaged and interested in their studies, and do try to write a good assignment.

What are the most helpful responding strategies you've found?

What are the most helpful responses you've received for your own writing? Is there a way to transfer that sort of helpfulness to my students' work?

(The single most helpful response I've received from a professor came from a professor who let me turn in a dissertation chapter for a pretty unrelated seminar. It was helpful because she was able to help me visualize the overall structure of the chapter argument and rethink it totally, which made the whole chapter stronger. She may have been genius [well, yes], but I'm guessing it took her a couple hours. Admittedly, the chapter was 30 some pages, and I was a pretty engaged student. So I hope I was worth her effort and repaid it with my own in class.)

Posted by prolurkr at 01:50 PM | TrackBack

Insight into what an award winning instructor does in his classroom

From the Tomorrow's Professor Mailing List:

The posting below give some simple and important suggestions for all of us to keep in mind when giving a class lecture. It is by Professor Rolf E. Hummel at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and is now required reading for all new professors at the University of Florida. The article first appeared in the University of Florida, "Pedagogator," Vol. 3, Issue 13, July/Aug 2005. Available: http://www.ucet.ufl.edu/newsletters/pedagogator.shtml

What I do is simply the following:

1) I prepare at least one hour per period for classes which I have given before and about 5-7 hours for each new class. This preparation allows me to teach without reading from or referring to notes.

2) I arrive in the classroom at the right time, or even a few minutes earlier to have the chance to chat with my students or answer any questions they may have.

3) I start my class with a one or two minute review of the previous lecture.

4) I am a great supporter of the old fashioned blackboard. The larger it is, the better. I write as much as possible on this board, and highlight important parts with colored chalk and/or put a box around important equations. (I do not like so much the new whiteboards because one has to always remember to cap the markers before they dry out. And those markers available in the lecture room often do not work anyway, so you have to bring your own.

5) I start at the upper, left-hand corner of the blackboard. I do not erase anything during the entire hour. At the end of the lecture I have reached the lower, right-hand corner of the blackboard. Admittedly, this takes some advanced planning and practice, but can be eventually accomplished by everybody.

6) I attempt to write large and legibly enough so that my "hieroglyphics" can be read from the last row. After class I often walk to the back of the lecture room to see if I succeeded in doing so.

7) During the last three minutes of the lecture I repeat briefly what was discussed that day by showing with a pointer the relevant graphs or equations on the board and mention how they were arrived at. This lets the students see the larger context in which the individual steps have been developed.

8) I attempt not to block the blackboard with my body so that virtually everybody can see what is written on the board; at least most of the time. This is accomplished by stepping aside after writing.

9) When drawing a graph on the board, I carefully label the axes by saying what they represent and describe a curve while drawing it. If there is more than one curve in a given graph, I distinguish them with different colors and write on each curve what parameters they represent.

10) To each class I bring a bunch of "show-and-tell" items, such as a transformer, a computer chip, a computer hard drive, a laser tube, a silicon crystal, several magnets, a transistor, a shape memory alloy etc., so that students have hands-on experience of the subjects I am talking about. Occasionally, I show movies that depict manufacturing processes of what was explained before in theory.

11) I encourage questions during class and answer them in a respectful manner (even the supposedly 'stupid questions'). If I do not know the answer immediately, I admit so (which makes a student feel good) and promise to answer it next time.

12) I feel that overloading the students with information during class does not serve them properly. Often less information, but that in more depth, is pedagogically better. After all, the students can learn supplemental information from their textbooks.

13) I am a supporter of the Monday/Wednesday/Friday rhythm rather than the two or three hour-long lecture on one day. Students need digestion between lectures and catching up with their homework.

14) I try to speak loud and distinctly so that everybody should be able to hear and understand me. I aim my voice toward the last student row. Foreign students particularly appreciate this.

15) I address my students by looking at them during the lecture, that is, I keep eye contact. This way I can see if some students drift away, requiring me to change the pace.

16) I take a class picture during one of the first lectures and ask the students to write their names next to their image. This gives me the chance to memorize their names and to address them with their names during lectures and in my office. (I admit memorizing names becomes increasingly difficult with age).

17) Student like my "war stories," that is, practical examples in which the subjects just taught have been used (or not been used with negative consequences). This loosens up the flow of information and demonstrates the relevance of the often theoretical-appearing subjects. In other words, a proper balance between theory and practical aspects needs to be maintained.

18) I am not a friend of projected transparencies because they are frequently removed before the students are capable of fully comprehending what they want to teach. Still, occasionally even I use overhead projectors when putting the respective information on the board would require too much time or when the students have the same graph in their textbook and I need to point out certain details on the image. Flashing slides in five second intervals on a screen turns students quickly away from paying attention. In other words, each transparency needs to stay on the screen long enough so that all details they contain can be fully explained and understood. On the same line, I am not a friend of PowerPoint presentations in the classroom. They have their merit in seminars and conferences where a substantial amount of information needs to be transmitted in a relatively short time.

19) Before an exam, I hand out tests from previous years, whose answers we discuss in the class immediately before the upcoming midterm or final.

20) I allow my students to prepare for the test a one-page, hand-written, personal "crib sheet" on which they may write all the equations and graphs they consider to be important. They have to turn-in this sheet along with their tests. This promotes academic honesty and gives those students some confidence who otherwise "draw a complete blank" during tests. Interestingly enough, most students admit that once they have written a crib sheet they don't need it any more during the test since they are now well prepared for the exam and they feel confident that they can turn to their sheet when need arises. Needless to say, my tests do not allow mere regurgitation of crammed information, but usually require some thinking. For this reason, my exams are often labeled as "difficult," ("because asking a student to think is unfair").

21) Most of all, however, I consider my students to be my friends. I am kind to them and am available most of the time for questions and for airing concerns. My door is virtually always open. I teach all classes myself, I write the tests and grade them myself and use teaching assistants only for looking over the homework, which I assign, (because one can only learn by "doing" and not so much by just listening). As a former student once wrote in retrospect: "Dr. Hummel does not only teach class, he adopts it." In summary, I love teaching and showing my enthusiasm about the subject matter. This spark flies over to my students and makes them enthusiastic too.

Posted by prolurkr at 09:01 PM | TrackBack

Remembering names of students and others

I am terrible with names, it was one of my deep dark secrets as an HR person. You see I often remembered lots of details about employees, which department they worked in, who was their supervisor, how many kids they had, and lots of unusual information that ones sees in an HR roll. Now that I am teaching classes of 40+ my problem is a much more apparent. I simply have a terrible time with names, so this Inside Higher Ed article, What's Your Name Again? by Mary McKinney, caught my eye. Here is their advise on remembering student names.

How To Learn Student Names:

1. Make it a priority. Focusing on any goal is the first step towards making it happen.

2. Read the registrar's list before the first class.Pay attention to the names that may be difficult to pronounce.

3. Take roll call on the first day of class. Take your time, pay close attention and repeat each student's name. Make sure that you have the proper pronunciation. If a student's name is unfamiliar be sure to ask explicitly if you've got it right. Students who are shy, or from cultures where greater deference to authority is the norm, may hesitate to correct you unless prompted and yet will still find it grating to be referred to incorrectly the entire semester.

4. Ask the students what they prefer to be called and be sure to write down nicknames on the class roster. You may want to preface your roll call with a request for nicknames: while you are likely to wonder whether Elizabeth whether goes by "Liz" or "Beth", you'll have no idea that Amy Jones goes by "A.J."

5. If you have access to students' photos, use them to familiarize yourself with names as part of your preparation in the first weeks of class. My client Jim had been unaware that he had access to student I.D. photos until he checked with the registrar.

6. If there are no photos available, consider taking your own photographs. In Tools for Teaching, Barbara Gross Davis suggests taking Polaroid shots of students and pasting them on index cards with the students' names and other personal information. Creating class "I.D. cards" is even easier with access to digital cameras.

7. Often it is most difficult to remember foreign students' names, which may be unfamiliar to Western ears. Be sure to write a phonetic version of the name if needed. For example, in one of my classes the name of a Chinese student was transliterated as Xiou -- but pronounced something like "Shaw."

8. A common memory trick is to link the name with something or someone else - thus my student Xiou became the unforgettable George Bernard "Shaw" in my mind.

9. Think of another person you know who has the same first name as the student. Then make a link using a visual image. For example, I imagine my short-haired brunette student Susan with the wild grey mane of my cousin Susan, who hadn't changed the style of her coiffure since the late 1960's. The incongruous image cements the student's name in my cortex.

10. Use humor in your associative links to make a lasting impression. I kept getting confused about whether a student was Egla or Elga until I imagined her with a hard-boiled Egg of a head.

11. Find a rhyme to create mental associations: Is Jim slim? Or an adjective that tips you off about the name's first letter: Is Thomas tall? Can you visualize Sarah in a sarong? Again, humor helps. Thus Slim Jim becomes a life-size stick of dried beef sausage. And Sarah, well, sarongs fall off easily, right? (Need I admonish you that the mnemonic devises should be kept to yourself?)

12. Use your students' names frequently both to call on them to participate and to refer to previous points made in the discussion. Davis points out that this technique can be used in even very large classes: Ask students their name when they make a comment and later refer to it as "Jeff's point" or "Audrey's contribution."

13. When you take roll, consider creating a map of the seating arrangement labeled with student's names. I'm always surprised at how consistently students sit in the same seats, or at least the same quadrant of the room. In my small classes, we sit around a large table and for the first few classes I write down who chooses to sit where as students arrive. Writing the names down also helps commit them to memory. Some professors ask students to sit in the same seats for a few classes, a request that communicates their earnest efforts to learn names. I prefer to keep my mnemonic methods mysterious. Either way works.

14. Using name tags for the first few class sessions can help students learn one another's names at the same time it helps you. I ask my students to write their first names in very large letters so that I can read them from the front of the classroom.

15. When teaching very large classes it is tempting to give up. Resist the temptation. Try learning five names per class and try to use those names.

16. One professor I know uses name cards for her large classes. Students pick up the cards as they file into class and place them at the front of their desks. This United Nations style name card strategy is also useful because the tags that aren't retrieved indicate absent students.

17. With any sized class, look at registrar's list during week and see how many faces you can recall.

18. Make sure you know the names of students who visit you during office hours. Take a few minutes to ask the students about themselves, their major, where they are from, etc. Personal contact is one of the ways you can increase the effectiveness of your teaching.

Becoming an expert at memorizing names is a small but respectful step toward demonstrating personal investment in your students' well-being. Building a mutually respectful relationship with students is as important as having an organized lesson plan, giving a dynamic lecture, or encouraging enthusiastic class participation. Positive student-teacher relationships foster engagement and achievement.

Posted by prolurkr at 02:47 PM | TrackBack

Ancarett’s Abode has the latest Teaching Carnival...

Ancarett's Abode has the latest Teaching Carnival. Number "V" that is.

Posted by prolurkr at 07:39 PM | TrackBack

Teaching your students to be good students

Learning and being a student are trained skills. None of us pop out of the womb with a fully formed skills set in this regard. In fact we have been learning to learn and to be students all our lives. Well the process of learning to learn and learning to be a good student have been of real interest to me over the break as I have thought about my class last semester and looked forward to my classes this semester. One of the things that shocked me last semester was how little students understand the requirements of being a college student. There is lots of blame around for why this is true, but blame isn't the way to fix it. I thought of this again when I read Gentleman's C's post On Kinkos, etc.

I should just take this as a sign that I will never be able to make everyone happy. But I'm very stubborn, so I keep on trying.

This quarter I am teaching two classes, one that has no textbook, and one that has a textbook plus a shitload of supplemental readings from outside sources. The plus-a-shitload class I taught last quarter. In an attempt to be nice, and to circumvent copyright concerns under the "fair use" clause, I scanned in all the readings for my classes (well, okay, my secretary scanned them in) and put them on WebCT.

At the very end of the quarter, one of my students complained that I didn't order a course packet from Kinkos, because it was too hard to "find" all those readings. Apparently this person had never ever logged in to WebCT. Now, first day of the new quarter, another person is complaining that I didn't work with Kinkos, because s/he wants all the readings bound together (and apparently doesn't know how to print a pdf file).

I can't believe that someone would really rather pay those bandits upwards of $100 instead of shelling out $15 for a three-ring binder and a three-hole punch. What the fuck?

Underlying all of this discussion is the issue of what students understand their role to be as well as how they have been trained to perform that role. This semester I am taking the time in my classes to work with my students so they know not only what is expected of them but how they can do the things that are often left unsaid. For example the first night of class we are going to be talking about how you study in this class. Likewise we will be having a fairly basic Word lab so that I am sure students understand that when something is underlined in your document by the system you need to take a long hard look at it to make sure it is correct. I had too many students last semester who clearly did not understand that issue.

I agree with Gentleman's C that you can never make everyone happy, and lord know I don't actually try to do that. However I do try to make sure my students are learning and learning positive things, not just the ones that seem negative like deadlines and computer system issues. I remind myself that I have read there is one big difference between good teachers and bad teachers. Good teachers, and those who strive to be good teachers, tend to focus exclusively on the bad comments even if there are far more good ones. While bad teachers tend to focus on the good comments even if there are far more bad ones. This has certainly held true in my experience. So I remind myself to not fixate on the negative but to have a balanced point of view on comments.

I also remember my days working for a training organization. I used to remind people back then that if the only things they had to complain about were the temperature of the room and the quantity of choices available on the buffet then we had done our jobs. Not all my co-workers got that and several drove themselves nutz trying to make everyone happy all the time...sorry that is a no win scenario.

Posted by prolurkr at 02:44 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Oh dear I HAVE to put this in the syllabus for next semester

Do students cell phones ring while you are giving a lecture? Well it has happened more than a few times in my class and I even begin each PowerPoint presentation with a request that they be shut off for the duration. Well next semester I'm adding this Cell Phone Policy as well as adding a point deduction.

The dedicated readers who have persisted through the horrific recent lack of blogginess on my part, will recall that at the start of the semester, I told my students that if their cell phone rang in class, I would answer it and cause them some slight embarrassment that they may wish to avoid.

Well, Friday, I got the chance to put my money where my mouth was.

Posted by prolurkr at 07:45 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Gonzo teaching at it’s best

I just love this concept...how can I use it next semester? Welcome to Class. Just a snip follows:

On the class wiki I have provided a set of 250 homework problems of varying complexity and difficulty. These are your assignments for the semester. These problems are what you are graded on.

Some of these problems can be answered with a quick and simple Google search and some writing. Some would make good Masters Thesis projects. Some have one right answer; some have no right answer; some have many. Some require explanation, some require programming, some require mathematics, some require historical background, some require number crunching, some require experimentation, some require intuition, some require asking the right person, some require advanced domain skills from outside our department. Some are trick questions; some are so obvious you'll imagine they're trick questions; some are inherently time-consuming; some have hard and easy ways to solve them. Many are ill-posed, and need clarification. Some are problems you should already know how to answer. Some are problems you might not be able to answer by yourself when we arrive at the final exam.

All of them are important. None are throwaway, or filler, or make-work. I want you to answer each and every one of them.

No, not smiling now. Buck up. It's not that bad.

You yourself -- the individual you -- you are not responsible for doing any problem at all. Frankly I don't care if you do no work whatsoever, as long as you show up for class. You do need to come to class.

I will not grade your personal contribution to any answer, ever. Indeed, no matter how the questions get answered, I personally will not care one whit whether you, Jane Q Student, did the lion's share of the work, or looked it up and copied it out of the encyclopedia, or took that week off and went to Florida.

But some of the problems must be answered, on the website. On time. Correctly.

I see there are 30 of you in the class today. There are what? Twelve weeks in the semester? 250 questions, worth I believe a total of 7200 points. And then the final exam.

You see, that's a lot of problems.

Every Thursday at noon I will select the problems that are most important for you to complete in the next week. I'll publish this list on the wiki.

In Friday's class we will spend the entire session negotiating the assignment. I will stand up here and tell you I want all of it done, and why. And then you will sit there and (because you've prepared for the class ahead of time) tell me it's impossible for you to do all that in one week. And you'll ask me questions about what I'm looking for, and you will talk to each other, and you will propose which problems you think can be done by the noon the next Thursday. I may have some problems I really want you to answer that week, and I may try to force them onto your list by cajoling you, or by teaching you cool stuff, or by giving you hints, or by making them worth more points. I may even add new questions to the main list, and delete questions from the main list, now and then.

By the end of class each Friday, we will have finalized what problems need to be done, and how many points they're worth. You will have, collectively, promised that you'll try to get them done.

In order for the problems we choose to be answered correctly, you will have to "cheat". You are not only allowed to search the Internet, you'll have to. You are not "encouraged to work in teams", you'll have to. You will have to ask professors in other classes, and students who took the class before, and go to the library, and talk to each other, and share notes, and make reports, and read things in foreign languages, and write simulations. You will need to do background reading, and express your opinion to one another. You'll need to edit each other's writing, and depend on each other's authority.

These are the things that are prohibited in your other classes. Some of them are even explicitly prohibited by the "honor code", that rag we use to mask our educational laziness and our own unquestioning buy-in of the status quo. If you prefer the other approach, then I suggest you withdraw from this class early on and go back to the status quo, before it makes your head hurt.

One hard and fast rule: your answers cannot include any plagiarized material. In case you do not know what plagiarism is by now, I have provided a handy and very explicit definition on the class wiki. If any answer on any of a week's problem set is plagiarized from an outside source, the score for the entire problem set is zero, and that week's questions will appear on your final exam. You may, however, cite the work of others all you want. You may even quote it, so long as fair credit is given where it's due.

You may (by whatever mechanism you want to work out) decide not to answer some of the questions that week. For each answer, there is a "commit" button, and only when a majority of the class members have pushed that button will the answer count for the week's assignment. Whenever a substantive change is made to the answer, the "commitment" is reset, though the people who pressed it before will get an email alert. All your (committed) answers must be posted in the class wiki in order to be graded. At exactly noon on Thursday, an archive of the Answers section for that week will be saved for grading. The committed answers will be graded; the rest of the problems will return to the pool to be attempted again later.

Some of these questions are very hard, and some are off-topic. Given a cogent argument to that effect, provided as a committed answer, I will consider eliminating such questions from the roster before the final exam comes around. Such arguments to dismiss work will have to be robust and skilled, not petulant or confrontational. That said, even such questions will be considered answered, and your argument will be graded like any answer would, on all five scales. It may appear on the midterms, too.

So. How will you coordinate? How will you divide up the problems? How will you check each other's work? How will you find out who knows what? How will you compose your answers?

Posted by prolurkr at 06:55 PM | TrackBack

Lots of higher ed reading today and a few giggles

One of the links from a post has me laughing - Severus Snape: One teacher's hero. First it's funny because in every other role, ok most every other role, I think Alan Rickman is a hottie, ok an over 50 hottie...but I'd be like Ron and the buggart picturing Snape as the scariest thing I could imagine.

I think this article appeals to me because on some level I know that what makes me a good teacher is the level of humanity and caring I bring to a classroom, though like most educators I wish my heart got broken a lot less. Snape's heart is unbreakable...or at least hermetically sealed. Well I don't really want that but well you know...I know you know...we all know.

Posted by prolurkr at 05:07 PM | TrackBack

A itty bitty shaker on the New Madrid fault

Magnitude 1.6 - SOUTHEASTERN MISSOURI 2005 December 16 07:51:55 UTC. A note to make for next semesters class on Informatics and Disaster.

Posted by prolurkr at 12:46 PM | TrackBack

Teaching Carnival IV

New Kid in the Hallway has hosted the most recent Teaching Carnival. The post is totally worth reading. I have a feeling I will be spending a fair amount of time today clicking on all the links and reading posts.

Posted by prolurkr at 11:26 AM | TrackBack

Handling criticism - some do it well...and some...

Confessions of a Community College Dean has a post that really struck me. After years as a manager I understand how some people can attack improvement after receiving criticism and how some can attack the critic. It makes me wonder if these categories map one-to-one on the teacher/student relationship. As usual the extremes are more obvious and I can certainly picture a student, from a previous teaching assignment, who carried the last category to the extreme - they often said and wrote in reflective work that all their shortcomings were really my shortcomings and if I would just leave them alone (no feedback and no review) than they would have been the best student in the class. If there ever was a collaborative activity in this world it's teaching/learning but do collaborate both parties have to be willing, if one is not than the collaboration is doomed to fail.

I do wonder if the Dean is correct though, is the last category really the most common? I sure hope not because that is massively depressing...it basically means there is no room for improvement. While on a quick read one could argue that the previous statement should be "no room for improvement without trust," I think that the trust issues are actually present in the second statement...they receive the criticism, evaluate it, and decide to ignore it because they trust the critic but simply don't agree with them. Of course this isn't always what we want to happen but it is at least healthy for the receiver and it shows a healthy, or healthyish, relationship. Even in the third category there is trust that no one is following them as "they move on."

No that last category are the people I would be forced to explain to General Mangers, back when I was a Human Resou