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Sharon Elin

Wake Up and Smell the New Epistemology - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher... - 1 views

  • "It is imperative that someone studying this generation realize that we have the world at our fingertips — and the world has been at our fingertips for our entire lives. I think this access to information seriously undermines this generation's view of authority, especially traditional scholastic authority." Today's students know full well that authorities can be found for every position and any knowledge claim, and consequently the students are dubious (privately, that is) about anything we claim to be true or important.
  • Of course, this new epistemology does not imply that our students have become skilled arbiters of information and interpretation. It simply means that they arrive at college with well-established methods of sorting, doubting, or ignoring the same. That, by itself, is not troubling. Many professors encourage students to question authority, and would welcome more who challenged and debated ideas. But this new epistemology carries some heavy baggage — indeed, it is inseparably conjoined with personal economics. Short of fame or a lottery win, today's students recognize that a college degree is the minimum credential they will need to attain their desired standard of living (and hence "happiness"). So this new epistemology produces a rather odd kind of student — one who appears polite and dutiful but who cares little about the course work, the larger questions it raises, or the value of living an examined life. And it produces such students in overwhelming abundance.
  • we must respect students as thinkers, even though their thinking skills may be undeveloped and their knowledge base shallow. Moreover, our respect must be genuine. Students have keen hypocrisy sensors and do not like being patronized.
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  • transparent
  • It is not just residential-college students who live in a bubble — many faculty members do as well.
Sharon Elin

The Future of Reputation - 0 views

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    internet privacy
Sharon Elin

"If We Didn't Have Today's Schools, Would We Create Today's Schools?" - 0 views

    • Sharon Elin
       
      This analogy of equipping sailing vessels with steam engines works well as an illustration of technology being plugged into traditional classrooms.
  • We need to get the teacher into the game. The teacher needs to get in there and be part of the learning process, actively engaged in solving the problem with the students and learning with the students—not teaching but modeling learning with the students by functioning as an expert learner solving problems and constructing new knowledge with the students.
  • modeling the learning process
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  • we will get the same result if we introduce modern learning technologies in our schools but do not prepare teachers to work in this new learning environment.   If we want to take advantage of these new technologies and the billions we are investing in equipment for our schools, we have to prepare teachers very differently than we have in the past. We have to change our own model of teaching and instruction in higher education.
  • Any organization that adopts a new technology without significant organizational change is doomed to failure. You have to change the organization. You cannot just add the technology. You have to actively work on changing the roles of the teachers, the roles of the students, the roles of the parents, and the roles of the administrators, and start to work toward building new relationships and new structures
  • Trying to introduce new technologies into schools without these changes would be similar to efforts in the sailing industry during the 1800s, when steam engines were installed in wooden sailing ships.
  • We will not get out of our wooden ship schools until we use communication technologies for two-way interactivity that allows us to collaboratively construct the learning experience and new knowledge.
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    CITE Journal Article
Sharon Elin

Has Ontario taught its high-school students not to think? | University Affairs - 1 views

  • most of the students I see are not so much disengaged as poorly trained for university expectations. Students' ability to do analysis and synthesis seems to have been replaced by rote memorization and regurgitation in both the sciences and the humanities. This is a complaint that I hear from instructors in senior high-school classes through to professors in the humanities.
  • students do not really understand what they are doing even when they have covered the material in high school.
  • More important is the ability to relate these facts in new ways, to see them in a new light, and to bring quite disparate ideas together to solve new problems or create new forms of art. This ability to analyze and synthesize is what makes good scientists, writers, philosophers and artists. It is the ability needed to drive a knowledge-based economy.
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  • Much of the new curriculum in the junior grades is considered by many experienced teachers to be beyond the mental development of students at that level. This encourages blind memorization rather than understanding.
  • Moreover, the new curriculum significantly reduces time spent on the visual arts, and was so content-heavy that it greatly limited the amount of time available for developing analytical and conceptual-understanding skills from kindergarten on
  • much of the teaching at the elementary level is now directed to passing those tests, as schools are rated publicly on the results
  • our students entering university are a year younger. The teenage brain is still developing its "executive functions" during this time, so students enter university with a year's less ability to analyze and plan ahead.
  • grade inflation is clearly present
    • Sharon Elin
       
      I agree this trend toward video and video games has reduced reading habits and turned the focus off text and onto multimedia delivery of information, but I'm not sure this trend alone has reduced analytical skills. Many video games require deep levels of analytical maneuvering to complete. A great book to read on this is Steven Johnson's book, "Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter"
  • The trend among young people to move away from reading and towards video and video games, means they spend less time developing reading/writing/analytical skills
  • They do not appreciate that, even as students, they will be expected to develop new knowledge, not just regurgitate existing facts.
  • Students continue to demonstrate serious deficiencies in problem solving skills, basic math skills, and hands-on laboratory skills when they arrive at the university level
  • There may be 10 years of students who have been taught not to think, and reversing that effect will be not be easy without a determined effort.
Sharon Elin

Steven C. Hayes, Ph.D.: Are We Too Smart For Our Own Good? - 0 views

  • We are smarter, perhaps. But our emotional and social intelligence seems to be going backwards.
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    interesting commentary on rising intelligence; makes the point that our emotional and social intelligence may be moving backwards
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