Radical Equations

Radical Equations

I just finished Robert Moses' Radical Equations, a fascinating read that connects the civil rights movement, in particular in Mississippi, with the need for better Math education.

In both cases, it is young people who recognized that a certain set of knowledge leads to better opportunities, whether these are political (voter registration, voting rights, voting access) or economic (Algebra as the gatekeeper course in high school for access to education geared towards computing), and through their organization they were able to force the established power structure to change culture (albeit very slowly and hesitantly).

As Math is too often seen as a skill that you either have or you don't, connecting Math learning with relevant cultural and historical experiences has been a successful strategy to get poor, mostly minority students interested in Algebra.  While I think you should read the book yourselves, here are the five steps for the Algebra Project curriculum:
1. Physical Events -- the trip has at least two purposes. It gives students a real experience with a cultural or historical moment, and it gives the physical experience of traveling along a certain set of paths, covering certain distances.
2.  Pictorial Representation/Modeling -- students need to find an individual way of translating the trip experience into something abstract, so after the travel comes the reflection that is based on an image or model
3.  Intuitive Language/"People Talk" -- students continue reflecting on the trip by using their own language.
4.  Structured Language/"Feature Talk" -- the reflection of step 3 is analyzed for mathematical features such as start, finish, direction, distance
5. Symbolic Representation - the final step is turning the findings into symbols that can be understood by the whole group.

Tradeline 2018

With a couple of colleagues, I attended this year's Tradeline conference with its focus on STEM and lab buildings to see if we can gather ideas for our next classroom building that will incorporate teaching lab spaces for a couple of different disciplines.

Clearly, lots of places are building lots of very interesting buildings right now, though sometimes the small tweaks may be the most interesting.  On the first day, we toured Tufts University's new teaching and research lab building, where a couple of features struck me as interesting.

cloth wall

1. walls made out of cloth outside of faculty offices so that notes can easily be pinned to them. 2. integration of art that connects to the science in the building

art in science

translucent office windows

 3. lots of natural light but translucent glass to provide privacy

Power cords from ceiling

4.  Retractable power cords from the ceiling

passthrough window

ladders for storage

5. a pass-through window between a prep and a teaching lab that can be covered up by a white board
6.  Ladders to extend storage up to the ceiling.

Other ideas I gathered over these two days included the reminder that Art programs really could do some amazing things with augmented and virtual reality as the current exhibit of Art in the Age of Internet showed.

Use unusual spaces for unusual projects - Lehigh University was able to take over an old factory and started turning its spaces into creation and experimental spaces

Ask the right kinds of questions - broad, open for innovation, specific and targeted for keeping with the status quo.

Dynamic Lecturing: Tips to Enhance Student Learning, April 6, 2018

Todd Zakrajsek

A couple of weeks ago I made the trip up to Samford University to listen to Dr. Todd Zakrajsek, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. You may have seen him on TedTalks where he discusses "Improve learning by thinking about learning."

This time, his talk focused on Dynamic Lecturing, based on the book he just published, Dynamic Lecturing:  Research-Based Strategies to Enhance Lecture Effectiveness (The Excellent Teacher Series)

His discussion was part lecture, part interaction, and while it took him a while to be more obvious about this distinction, the bottom line of his talk was that the dichotomy between lecture and active learning is a false dichotomy, and that most faculty do a mix of both, and have done so for many years --but we can always improve how we are doing this.  The following is highlighting his ideas and then also listing the different strategies he used throughout his presentation.

His argument is that the human brain is always looking for at least minimal (perceived) value. If a lecture, or a book, or a movie, or any other form of content delivery does not yield this minimal value, then the brain will turn to something that will provide this value -- and people turn to their phones.  (Side note -- a monotonous voice is perceived by the brain as a sound that can be ignored, just like other background noise, so after a while we literally can no longer hear a monotonous lecture)
So, for learning to happen we need
1.  Attention:  Because of the way our brain functions, it is best to lecture in small chunks -- up to 7 minutes is optimal; at that point our brain hits cognitive load saturation.  Change it up with a short group activity that focuses on the lectured content to practice and deepen the content.
2. Understanding:  note taking means we make choices on what to exert energy so we interact with the content and thus learn it.  Typing on laptops allows us to go too fast, so we do not make choices -- so the solution is not to take the laptops away but to give strategies to the typists on how to choose what to type.
3. Value:  Explain to your students how we learn and how something that is difficult for us becomes even more difficult, if not impossible, when we surround ourselves with external stimuli:

Intrinsic load - inherent difficulty of the content

Extraneous load - additional external stimuli -- a good side story can diminish the intrinsic cognitive load, but it can also just be confusing 

Germane load - processing of information, construction and automation of schema, the more you practice the easier it becomes

The myth of multitasking is not entirely a myth -- we can do more than one task at the same time if at least one of the tasks is automatic -- like breathing and walking.  But the second the task becomes more of a cognitive load, like speaking or writing, we can no longer multitask but instead move to task shifting, which takes a lot of energy.

For memory to happen, we just need repetition (btw, tip for passwords:  log in and out 5 times and you will remember your new password)

When a student asks if this is going to be on the test, maybe what the student is really asking is whether this information is worth spending cognitive load on.




Strategy 1:  Let audience know how many responses you are looking for from them before you will move on - and count them while you are collecting them.
Strategy 2:  when asking, how many of you have read, make sure to follow up with how many of you have not read and possibly a third option -- this raises engagement
Strategy 3:  use humor
Strategy 4:  do the unexpected, for example interpret a well-known image differently
Strategy 5:  when you ask your students to watch videos, embed questions -- lots of tools to make this possible.
Strategy 6:  "mute" your projected screen to focus on the discussion at hand or something else that is not on the screen -- CTRL B for black screen, CTRL W for white screen on Windows/Command B and Command W for Mac.
Strategy 7:  at beginning of project  have each person map out when they would be doing the major chunks of work, then have a group discussion at that point for better planning; individual components get written, so individual grades and not everyone gets lumped in.
Strategy 8:  explain to your students why you are doing in class what you are doing

Next Generation Learning Spaces 2018, remainder of conference

I am rather behind on reflecting on the remainder of this conference, so this will be a little less detailed than I like to be, and a rather random collection of thoughts.

Oral Roberts University is doing some amazing things with augmented and virtual reality -- they had multiple representatives there that showcased how their institutional culture and values allowed them to move faster forward on such initiatives. However, they also changed some labels so that instructional designers are now learning producers and other staff members are innovation engineers.

As our spaces reflect our values, we should also be aware of the immediately adjacent spaces to an amazing renovation.

Generations X, Y, Z

Generation Z and what it is (or is not) was one of the big topics, and it does get confusing and contradicting.  Apparently,  Gen X is aiming for work life balance, Gen Y for freedom and stability, and Gen Z for security and stability.  What has not been addressed is if these aims are because of when these people were born in the absolute chronology or because these people are now of a certain age - maybe Gen X can finally aim for work life balance because they are at a point in their career where this is important -- and not because they are born between 1965-1980 (or whatever the magic numbers are )

However, here are some other numbers and info that may be useful:
Gen Z folks get multiple inputs on financial decision making
They will be 40% of the consumer base by 2020, 85% get new product ideas through social media, and many of them want to be entrepreneurs (33% of older students already have their own business, 77% of total want to turn hobby into business)

Immersion into content is also important, especially when it can be done with others, so what the University of Central Florida is doing with virtual reality is quite interesting - they use Embodied Labs to have their social work students experience different visual abilities so that they can learn empathy for certain parts of the population that otherwise may "just" be seen as poor.

Prototyping spaces is important so that you can socialize a concept without spending a lot of money -- and make adjustments based on stakeholder input. I would hope we could use the SPRINT concept, developed by Jake Knapp, even though it may take us a little longer than 5 days.

Data analysis - what kind of data can we get out of our spaces and space usage that would allow us to make smarter decisions building the next set?

Blockchain could be used to make academic credentials truly portable and thus no longer tethered to the university but connected to the individual who earned the credentials.

Start your sentences that may challenge the status quo with "I wonder..."

Next Generation Learning Spaces Conference, Day 1

Pat Boone exhibit

This is my first time at the annual Next Generation Learning Spaces conference, happening this year in Los Angeles.  The first day consisted of three workshops focusing on new ways to think about innovation and entrepreneurship on campus, active learning and faculty development, and change management. In the late afternoon, I was able to visit Pepperdine University's library that just opened after a full-scale renovation of its 1970s space, including a Pat Boone exhibit.

Work with Emerging Technology to Accelerate your Campus Culture

Teggin Sumners, San Francisco State University

The presentation focused on pushing the concept of Makerspaces into its next iteration. Right now, many makerspaces are informal spaces for students to innovate, often not connected to a particular course or curriculum, and thus potentially not giving all students structure to succeed in such spaces.

Focusing on innovation and entrepreneurship, many universities are now taking the next steps to create not only spaces for innovation but processes and structures for students to innovate and then turn that innovation into a successful enterprise, turning the students into entrepreneurs.

Such a shift is happening now out of the realization that our work force needs across the globe will be radically changing in the next 20 years or so, making it necessary for us now to rethink the way we are teaching our students.  Some universities create innovation hubs, connected to particular degrees, others are opting for innovation learning communities.  The key components to consider are 

Strategy

Financial and human resources

Support infrastructure

Entrepreneur education

Start-up support

Evaluation approach

Universally designed

Sustainable

before you can think about what that kind of space needs to look like

Meta-Active Learning Can Help Faculty Engagement and Success

Beverly Bondad-Brown, California State University, Los Angeles

This workshop focused on giving faculty opportunities to think about active learning while experiencing it, so the workshop itself was giving us the same opportunities through multiple activities.

As we are already doing a lot of this at Auburn, the most valuable piece was the set of cards they graciously shared that we will be able to use in our future faculty sessions.

Change Management:  Interdisciplinary collaboration amongst faculty, technology providers and site planners

 Maggie Beers, San Franciso State University

In front of yet another scary statistics highlighting how California will be short 3 million workers by 2025 because not enough students are graduating college even though the number that enters has doubled, we learned about the six academic cultures, how they think and what they value, and how we can use this knowledge to create communication plans to talk to these different audiences to push for innovation.

The discussion is based Engaging the Six Cultures of the Academy by William Bergquist.

In addition, Maggie also shared a card set with different questions for future planning of learning spaces based on the Learning Spaces Rating System created by Educause. These cards allow for better sorting of where one still needs to do work, especially in a group setting.

She also reminded us of the principles of diffusion of innovation: Compatibility, triability, complexity, advantage, observability, and how we need to consider these for large-scale active learning implementations.

ELI 2018, Day 3

The final day of ELI covered Universal Design in Learning (UDL) and what Artificial Intelligence and Robotics may mean for higher education, our profession and the future.

Embracing challenges in UDL

Oakland University brought some excellent points to the discussion on creating an environment for Universal Design in Learning and where it creates some conflict with following recommendations for accessibility.

In particular, you want to remove barriers to learning and increase access, which means phrasing your approach as a social justice issue for all rather than a legal requirement for a few may be more convincing for many faculty.

They have seen evidence of increased student success and retention because of increased access opportunity and have created online videos both to make it easier for faculty to get started and student-created videos to show faculty the barriers students encounter when their course is not UDL structured.

Where the conflict with ADA compliance becomes visible is in the need to close-caption all video content made available to all students - if we want to give out students choices to access the material then we need to make sure this is all captioned, but that takes additional time that we often do not have.

We also need to remember to give our students some guidance -- they do not always know that there are different ways to access and thus learn materials and may not know the best way for them to learn.

CAST is another good resource for all things UDL.

What AI and robotics may mean to our professions and education - Diane Oblinger

The final keynote reminded us how technology, in particular AI and robotics, is changing the job world at amazing speed, and we need to take this into consideration at all levels of education.  Many of the current existing jobs will no longer exist in a few years, including such professions as stock brokers (you can already trade online, so why need people who are proven not to be as expert as they claim).

Elliq

Robots and AI will not be able to replace the critical thinking connected to ethics, but they will be able to provide social comfort for, for example, the single elderly -- see as an example Elliq, an Israeli product that interacts with older people, encouraging them to engage in activities, reminding them of tasks to keep their lives structured.

Other areas where AI is making major impact is: 

• knowledge curation
• online mediation
• online legal advice
• online medical advice and connecting within medical community
• job placement that is more fair

By 2030, many of our current professions will have gone through radical relearning because the technology will have introduced new dimensions that we cannot quite see yet. How nimble is higher education to adjust curricula, degrees, or certifications to account for such changes?  As Oblinger reminded us, what used to be called soft skills will become even more important, the core skills of critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and life long learning.

ELI 2018, Day 2

Day Two of this year's Educause Learning Initiative (ELI) brought interesting discussions on navigation privacy in a data driven world, non-cognitive factors, overcoming obstacles in academic technology leadership, the future of learning spaces as growing experiences, and making makers.  In the middle of all of this, my colleague and I had a productive poster presentation.

Navigating privacy in a data driven world (Jules Polonetsky) reminded us that the Council of Europe is soon (May 2018) coming  out with new regulations on data privacy that will affect also many non-European countries as new technologies. Key changes:

1. A company dealing with EU citizen private data, regardless where the company is located, has to comply with these new GDPR rules
2. Penalties can be up to 4% of annual global turnover or $20,000, whichever is greater
3. Consent language must be clear and precise, with clear indication what happens to protected data
4. Breach notifications need to be issued within 72 hours
5. Users have the right to access their data
6. Users have the right to have their data erased
7. Users have the right to take their data with them
8. Institutions are responsible for having data protection officers rather than negotiating with all the different countries their users hail from

This impacts any higher education institution enrolling students from EU countries.
Add to this innovative new technology that allows for multiple data access points for one person, and you can see how this can get quite interesting for everyone involved. For example, when you talk to your smart devices at home (Alexa, Siri, and all the other strangely named women around your house), do you know what happens to your requests? Are they forgotten or are the stored for some future use (AI development)? How often do we take the time to review the privacy settings of our social media tools, even when they try to force us to review them?
One interesting point about the ethical implications of any of this was to have a philosopher at the table when such discussions become important.


Incorporating Noncognitive Strategies to improve Learning Success discussed McGraw Hill's research on procrastination and learner profiles. While the findings are not surprising, it is good to have numbers associated with our common sense reactions.
Combining different disciplines, like Learning Science, Neuroscience, Behavioral Economics and Econometrics, new models can be developed, like the econometric model of skill formation, eg Eckman and Cunha's Technology of Skill Formation, 

Here some points out of this model:

1. Multiple skills are required for success
2. Cognitive skills only one part
3. Skills evolve over time
4. Skills are complementary build on each other
5. Different skills are malleable over time to different degrees
6. Different skills have different critical and sensitive periods
7. Skill gap emerges very early and persists
8. Non cognitive skills can be more malleable at larger stages

Other factors such as health and economic status also affect our skill formation
In their procrastination research of over 2 million data points from 100,000 students using the McGraw Hill learning platform, the presenters found that up to 50% of students procrastinate to some degree, and that the longer they procrastinate the more likely it is that they will fail their assignment completely. This of course makes sense, but to have the number of 37 times more likely to fail if you always procrastinate could be a good number for faculty to use when working with their students on noncognitive skills.  How to work against this - build in early low-stakes assignment to identify procrastinators and then give them the support to change such habits.
The learner profiles they developed (out of almost 700 students) include average student, gritty, struggler, coaster, plugger.  The gritty students tend to be the most successful ones as they keep sticking with it.Only 12-15% of our students fall into the gritty or coaster (students who just get it) categories, so the question is how we can move more students to the gritty stage (and this is where growth mindset would come in)

Kyle Bowen, Penn State, discussed The future of learning spaces is growing experiences, with such entertaining and useful terms as Cone of Distraction (the cone of viewers forming behind a person using a laptop) increased by the Probability of PowerPoint (use of a boring PPT in class). He reminded us that amazon ships everything in way too large boxes to ensure that one box fits all -- we have the same attitude with our classrooms. He reminded us that lecture has 10 sf per student, in comparison to 3.5 sf on a plane, 10.5 sf on a subway and 22 sf at Starbucks.
The takeaway is that our classrooms need to be designed to grow experiences - which may mean that we take the class out of the room completely.  Let's build spaces for creation; and let's move away from limiting ourselves to writing as creation.

Finally, Making makers   Students at the center of education, technology, and innovation, highlighted Brandeis and Wellesley's maker spaces and what it allows their students to do. The maker mindset includes prototyping and startup, design thinking in practice, a moment when I say I need this thing and it does not exist yet so I make it myself. Makers find gaps, find something that can be used differently, figure out how things work, collaborate and, most importantly, do all of this without any instructions or roadmaps.  Intrinsic motivation is 

Fail faster and fail smarter. Encourage breaking things and then fixing them.

And in the middle of this, Jerisha and I had our fabulous poster session....

Poster session at ELI