PEDABLOGUE

The article is a couple of years old, but it's worth noting: "College, My Way" by Kate Zernike, published in the NY Times in 2006, notes the rising transfer rates among college students is becoming the new normal -- claiming that "about 60 percent of students graduating from college attend more than one institution, a number that has risen steadily over at least the last two decades."

Though this number is higher nationally than it is on my own campus, I still don't find this rate of transfer surprising at all, because I've seen the increase in transferring firsthand. The NY Times article suggests that today's "Millennial" generation approach their curriculum just like they do their iPods, selecting courses like singles that they're loading up into their playlists, making increasingly granular choices regardless of "brand affiliation" (eg. a lack of commitment to one's "alma mater.") Admissions offices call the high churn rate of transfer courses "swirling" -- a term I associate with toilet bowl flushes rather than academics, but it's still an apt term. Swirling is what helicopter wings do and it can leave you dizzy and disoriented.

I often staff the "transfer orientation" that our campus hosts during the summer, when incoming transfer students sign up for their first courses... and I have to tell you, as much as I enjoy transfer students (because they usually bring fresh perspectives into the classroom), it's often a nightmarish webwork of complexity trying to figure out what courses a student still "needs" to graduate, despite the useful and helpful audits of our registrars. The sum (diploma) always means more to these students than the variables (courses) that add up to it, and -- coupled with financial pressures that are only rising over the years -- for too many students a "survivalist" mindset drives their learning: many students just want to cobble together a schedule so they can finish their long-suffering and have a degree. Perhaps the way colleges sell themselves contributes to the problem. If a degree is something that can be acquired if enough "stamps" are earned, then it doesn't matter where you get those stamps.

But it is a bit out of the ordinary to earn a degree from one college -- an institutional endorsement of one's educational status -- while still having a transcript that quilts together several different colleges that made their imprint on the student in some fashion outside of the penumbra of the college giving the degree. Do these students feel attachment to their degree-granting institution as "alums" as much as traditional four year students do? Institutional identity evaporates beneath this to some degree, rending the early colleges that the student transferred out of as functionaries toward the final degree. I can imagine some minor forms of blowback that students wouldn't anticipate (e.g., imagine an employer who is a Yale alum reviewing a student's transcripts during the hiring process: Would they see the transfer out of Yale as troubling? Do they see a high "swirl" rate as a sign that a potential employee lacks commitment?)

There are also ways in which "swirling" renders a college's self-assessment problematic. If a school is surveying student attitudes or performance at various grade levels, comparing and contrasting and looking for statistical growth from freshman to senior year, what do the numbers mean if such a high percentage of those seniors have only been in residence for a year or two? Or that the freshman won't be around very long? How do retention committees and officers understand these numbers and marshal policies based on them? Even within any given academic major, swirling problematizes program review and if upper division courses have prerequisites that are built on assumptions about how those prereqs are taught locally, rather than universally, then most assumptions regarding progressive learning are essentially undermined.

Indeed, although it is nothing new (and often common among Adult and non-traditional learners) swirling requires a reformulation of not only what we mean by "traditional students" but what we mean by "progressive learning" across any given student's career. I think teachers concerned with such issues may find a review of Transformative Learning theory a worthwhile endeavor in this regard.

"Student Outcomes" is a new, ongoing series of interviews with my former students who are now living life after college. Considering how much of our work is based on the assumption that "learning outcomes" will be met, I thought it would be a good way to catch up with them and to see what sort of impact college has had on their lives in the long term. Past students interested in participating should e-mail me. Comments, as always, are appreciated. -- Michael Arnzen

Mike Rubino, Seton Hill U class of 2007

Start with a brief bio that tells us first where you are now, then what your status was in college (e.g. "Creative Writing major, Volleyball player, Tetris fan, whatever.) Let your personality show.

I am currently a graphic designer for a commercial and political strategy firm in Pittsburgh. I graduated from SHU with a B.F.A in graphic design with a minor in creative writing. While at Seton Hill I was a "Renaissance Man," bouncing between graphic design, fine arts, theater, creative writing, and politics with the occasional pause to watch some "MacGyver" on DVD and write some blogs.

Tell us where you thought you'd be now, back when you were a college freshman.

I'm pretty much exactly where I expected to be. I knew when I enrolled that I wanted to work in the world of graphic design, and I discovered during my junior year that I wanted to work for the company that currently employs me. Maybe it's strange that I was able to plan ahead and attain my goals with only minor hiccups; that either means that I'm boring or I'm blessed.

Describe your college experience in one word. Then elaborate in no more than five sentences.

Unique. My field of study, extracurricular activities, and friendships yielded experiences that few others could expect from a small liberal arts school. As a cartoonist and writer for the school paper, as well as a campus blogger, I was able to reach a large number of people on campus without ever actually meeting them. My interest in English and theater allowed me to expand my education into new areas and consequently integrate these ideas into my graphic design degree with the help of independent studies and self-designed courses. I was also able to meet amazing people that I hope to be friends with the rest of my life.

Describe one very specific lesson from the college classroom that you'll never forget. Give us concrete details. Tell us not only what it taught you, but also how and why it worked.

In my freshman drawing course with Phil Rostek (a course that almost all art majors take, and everyone loves), he began the first day of class with the odd exercise of having us draw with the lights off. Students stand by their easel with a raw stick of charcoal in hand and a piece of blank newsprint in front of them. Phil turns out the lights and everyone begins to draw. It was an odd sensation to say the least; however it was also the first indication that I was in a new environment, I was out of high school and in this strange and unnerving place called "college." The exercise was fun and messy, but in the grand scheme of things it served as a reminder of the new sort of learning environment I had entered into.

What do you know now that you wish someone would have taught you in school? How might that lesson best be taught?

Personal finances. Now that I have a full time job, my parents have been working extra hard to teach me about investments, savings, and creating a nest egg for my future. It isn't likely that upcoming generations will have Social Security when they retire, so it's important for students to learn formally how to save money, invest, and budget their income (even if college kids don't actually make enough money to put the knowledge into immediate action).

What teaching method(s) were you subjected to that never made a dent on your learning?

The most ineffective teaching method I have encountered is the "group project." This isn't because I'm anti-social or fear cooperation; rather, I found that group work slowed me down and diluted the learning process. First, students that I knew rarely wanted to be in a group (and if the kids get to choose their groups, then you are faced with the "picked last in dodgeball" scenario). It's like playing on a team that no one wants to be on. Secondly, students who are self-motivated leaders find themselves at odds with other members of the group, and, in my opinion, have to stunt their own advancements in order to keep the "learning field" level. Lastly, group projects, presentations, and discussions rarely felt appropriate when they were instituted in the lesson plan. They weren't present in every course I enrolled in, but oftentimes I found that their inclusion was because people assumed groups were necessary, rather than actually adding to the learning experience.

Of course, the idea behind the group project is noble: that they prepare you for a team-oriented working environment commonly found in the real world; but in my work experience so far, my collaborative efforts (which hinge on seniority and hierarchy) have been very different from the classroom.

What college experience did you find most displeasing at the time, but now recognize as an important contribution to your learning?

Doing fake interviews. In a couple of the core courses, students are asked to sit through a mock interview to go over their resume and test their job-grabbin' skills. At the time, I sort of rolled my eyes at the idea, and wasn't thrilled about going through the motions of an interview. Looking back, however, the practice interview in my core courses, like Senior Seminar, was a huge help. It taught me instinctual skills that I had to actually use at an interview six months after graduating.

I'm sure there are plenty of other exercises and lessons I went through in college that I didn't enjoy but ended up needing... but my advice to students would be to sit through them and try your best to absorb everything, because you never know when it'll come in handy.

What habits -- good and bad -- did you pick up in school, that you still continue to apply?

1. Drinking upwards of 4 cups of coffee a day
2. Listening to Charles Mingus when I really want to get something done
3. Constantly employing the phrase "I could blog that" in my head

You can decide if any or all of those are bad.

What do you miss about the college classroom, if anything?

It was nice having a syllabus to tell me about what I'll be talking about and doing each day. It provided me with a gameplan, a learning track that I could see in its entirety and prepare for. It's a shame the real world isn't like that.

If there was one suggestion you would make to college teachers everywhere, what would it be?

If you're going to make students buy a book that costs over $50, you'd better use every chapter in that thing.

THANK YOU, Mike! You offer some fantastic advice in here for students and teachers alike.

***
Read more "Student Outcomes"!

I sit on the Academic Technologies Committee at SHU, and we often talk about trends on our campus and others, to see how we might better employ computers, software and technological devices in the classroom. Recently, the provost sent us a link to a NY Times article, "Welcome, Freshman. Have an iPod." by Johnathan D. Glater, which talks about how some schools are giving away (not iPods but) iPhones to their students. The motive of these schools, if it isn't obvious, is that gizmos like these are perceived as "cool and a hit with students. Basking in the aura of a cutting-edge product could just help a university foster a cutting-edge reputation."

They also might enhance or catalyze learning. Making decisions about campus technology always means trying to weigh symbolic value against actual use value. We have to predict whether students and faculty will actually use the technology we budget for, and whether it really will benefit the learner or the learning environment. Obviously, we have to be careful how money is spent, but also a little skeptical of whiz-bang pop trends, because they are quickly surmounted by new technologies as it so rapidly evolves. Today's clickers are tomorrow's eight track tapes. And as teachers and administrators age, they try to leap across the generation gap and sometimes land in the wrong place, alienating students despite their good intentions.

In the margins of the NY Times article, a reader opinion from "Paul" is pulled out that cries, "Are we training thinkers in our colleges or gadget users?" I understand the feeling behind this. But I think this false dualism is beyond the point, because our thinkers in the classroom are already gadget users; our gadget users already are thinkers. The challenge of the modern teacher is to synthesize these tools with the way people think (just as we might teach penmanship in early education, so that students can use the technology of the ink pen). These are tools that students use in their everyday lives, and they'll be expected to use them well in the workplace after college.

I received this article as I was revising my syllabi for the term (that begins on Monday), and it caused me to reflect a little bit on how I treat portable electronic devices in the classroom. We're not giving away iPhones at our college, and I'm not changing my classroom into a "gizmo training" place, but the campus is evolving into a more wireless-friendly space. Between classes, I see virtually every student in the hallway working on their cell phones or portable game systems. The culture has shifted, but education and much of the subject matter we teach remains timeless.

It's easy to be reactionary or even live in denial. I'm as guilty as anyone. I have been brash about not allowing these elements to become distractions in my classroom, often demanding students to focus on the class and not their gizmos. In the past, I've order students to turn their cell phones to silent ring mode, and I have almost always told any students I see working with devices to shut them off. I have never really articulated my policies about this, other than orally when I spot an offense (say, a student starts texting during another student's presentation), simply because it seemed like common sense and common courtesy for people not to interrupt or ignore one another during a classroom activity or lecture.

The rules of common courtesy have changed. I've decided that things have changed so much that the time has come to put a policy in writing in my syllabus, so students understand where I'm coming from. My motive is not to punish, but to highlight the propriety of social communication. I want to recognize and support student use of technology as a tool for learning, while also combating the rising problem of blaring ring tones during lectures/discussions, or the distracted student who can't stop playing with his game or web browser during class time.

In some ways, there's no difference between a student texting and a student flipping through a magazine in the back row of a class, but there are times when we use technology to multitask and this is where the issue gets thorny and complex. What if we're discussing Foucault's "Panopticism" in the classroom and a student wants to quickly do some web research on a referenced person in the article, like Jeremy Bentham? I wouldn't want to ban such ambitious impulses to learn more, so long as it pertained to the subject at hand or contributed to the collaborative learning of the class.

What I'm really concerned about is multitasking that puts personal interest above the class interest, and the fetishism of technology that reinforces gizmo play for its own sake. My hope is that I can help students consciously rethink their gizmos as tools for learning and research and communication, and to respect the social space and dynamic of the classroom.

My new policy is an attempt to prevent what is known as "backgrounding" in the classroom while respecting the existence and purpose of these portable devices. I'd be interested to hear what readers of this blog think about this policy statement, whether in the form of editorial suggestions or by mentioning problems I might not foresee.

Policy on Personal Electronic Devices

Our classroom is a haven from the distractions of everyday life, giving us a place to focus attentively, in collaboration, on learning. Listening to each other is imperative and enables focused concentration. "Multitasking" inhibits learning and disrupts communication; unexpected beeps and surprising ring tones distract us all. Thus, while you are permitted to bring personal devices (cell phones, PDAs, laptops, sound recorders, and other electronic devices) to class, they must only serve class needs (e.g., typing on a laptop for an in-class writing assignment; using an iPhone to record lectures). My policy on this matter can be summed up in one phrase: "class in the foreground." If you ever appear to be "backgrounding" the class you will receive an absence for the day, and may be expelled from the room and not permitted to make up missed in-class work. Examples of "backgrounding" the class in a punishable way include: answering or making a cell phone call; texting or IMing; checking or writing e-mail; surfing the web; wearing headphones; logging into MySpace, Facebook, your SHU blog, or other social network; reading an ebook or any printed matter not related to class content (e.g. a magazine); and handheld gaming. Please set your cell phones to "silent" mode before class begins. I reserve the right to ban electronic devices entirely if I feel they are distracting you or your classmates from proper study.

I'll post an update if warranted. If you have comments or want to share your own experiences of such issues, please post.

A profile on my writing and teaching career, called "Horror Writer Does his Best Work Having Fun" was just published in the newsletter of the Textbook & Academic Authors Association. Their web site is for members only but they've kindly shared a .pdf file of the feature story that the public can read.

Here's a short excerpt:

Arnzen also credits his success with taking creative risks. “This is another way of saying I don’t mind embarrassing myself,” he said. “Genres rely on conventions and expectations, so many writers err on the side of repeating what’s been done before.” Arnzen said he’s “always thrown caution to the wind and tried to be as weird and experimental as I can. I try not to censor myself too much.” Horror itself can be taken too seriously at times. Arnzen balances this seriousness with humor. “I don’t hold back the humor. To me, a lot of the appeal of horror is its absurdity,” he said. “I find much of what I’ve read or seen in horror quite laughable.”

Anyone who writes instructional books will find the TAA organization a useful hub of information. Their introductory membership rates are reasonable. Check them out.

Want to know where the US presidential candidates stand on education issues? Compare the education web pages of the current top two front runners:

You can also compare ALL the candidates positions on education (and other key issues) across the board at ontheissues.org.

I just discovered Marc Bousquet's excellent blog based around his eye-raising book, How the University Works (from NYU Press). Two sample chapters are available on his site -- I read the Intoduction (.pdf) -- a sobering examination of the consequences of the corporatization of academia -- and discovered that my pangs of anxiety about this issue were justified and that things are a lot worse than I suspected.

But reading the sample chapter on students and labor, "Students are Already Workers," (.pdf file) really got me thinking about my students, as I plan for the classes in the year ahead:

The reality of the undergraduate workforce is very different from the representation of teen partiers on a perpetual spring break, as popularized by television (Girls Gone Wild), UPS propaganda (“they’re staying up until dawn anyway”), and Time: “Meet the ‘twixters,’ [twenty-somethings] who live off their parents, bounce from job to job and hop from mate to mate. They’re not lazy—they just won’t grow up” (Grossman; for more, see Bartlett).

There are more than 15 million students currently enrolled in higher ed (with an average age of around twenty-six). Tens of millions of persons have recently left higher education, nearly as many without degrees as with them. Like graduate employees, undergraduates now work longer hours in school, spend more years in school, and can take several years to find stable employment after obtaining their degrees. Undergraduates and recent school leavers, whether degree holders or not, now commonly live with their parents well beyond the age of legal adulthood, often into their late twenties. Like graduate employees, undergraduates increasingly find that their period of “study” is, in fact, a period of employment as cheap labor. The production of cheap workers is facilitated by an ever-expanding notion of “youth.” A University of Chicago survey conducted in 2003 found that the majority of Americans now think that adulthood begins around twenty-six, an age not coincidentally identical with the average age of the undergraduate student population (Tom Smith).

The idea that college instructors are teaching students to be "pre-professionals" before they enter the workforce is becoming an anachronism. Students are working more and more...whether in work study or in jobs to support their degree. More and more they come to my office door, asking for extensions or accommodations that can work around their employer's schedules. More and more, I see students in campus offices, doing much of the grunt work. I go out to a local restaurant or a downtown bar, I see my students...but they're not eating or partying; they're taking my orders or pouring my drinks.

So what? one might wonder. What's the harm? Students work, just like everyone else. I have conflicting feelings. For one thing, college can and maybe should be a temporary sanctuary away from the work world. But as someone who also worked in a "real world" job throughout college (and who signed up for the GI Bill and spent a few years in military service just to afford to attend college to begin with), I've always felt that these struggles are beneficial, ultimately, because they can teach a person the ethics required to survive in the workforce, like disciplined time management and the art of delayed gratification (e.g. work now, pay later). We "pay to work" when we go to college, in the interest of not only learning skills and information, but also earning the social capital it takes to raise one's status.

But clearly economic benefits should not be the sole outcome of a college degree. Everyone recognizes -- students most of all -- that there's a bit of exploitation that goes on in the minimum wage labor class, but its treated like a natural form of paying one's dues to raise oneself up economically -- and this is the "script" that parents and culture-at-large often hand students. I hadn't really considered how this script might be a symptom of a larger form of class exploitation, or a symptom of a rising "age of adulthood" that for the most part (as Bousquet argues) serves the interest of corporate employers. As teachers, when we see student workers through the lens of our own similar past work experiences, and treat it as "paying one's dues," then, as Bousquet suggests, we might also be guilty of "reinforc[ing] commitments to inequality" systemically, even as we assume that we might be liberating students via their education.

But even beyond the political economy of all this, the increase in student commitment to working for survival (let alone experience) results in a reprioritization of the role of learning in a life-well-lived. Too often, the classroom is an atomized part of a "workweek" schedule that is understood to be, simply, more work just like everything else that is not overtly part of leisure culture. It's up to teachers to transform that workspace, but it can be difficult.

The problem isn't just that students are overburdened with work and oppressed by the class system -- they also tend to deprioritize learning in order to just survive through the grind of the day. When students arrive in the classroom wearing their work or athletic uniforms, it always signals to me that their outside lives are competing for their time and attention. They are overscheduled. The agenda for the day becomes marching orders, and the mind can only process so much. And some students are not shy at all about reminding everyone in the room that that this class meeting is just a brief pit-stop on the race from point A to point B. It is my job to make that pit-stop a meaningful place that doesn't just fuel them up with knowledge and send them back on the track; instead, the pit-stop needs to be a temporary but FULL stop -- a place where both the track and the rules of the race are better understood -- if not revised altogether. Sometimes school can be a place where maps are discovered that leads one into the more exciting and rewarding territories off-road altogether.

Metaphorical ideals aside, I hope to overtly raise issues of economic class in my courses in the year ahead, if only to heighten student awareness about their cultural identity and to learn how I can better accomodate student needs while remaining committed to a liberal arts mission and not some other economic interest. In creative writing courses, I have assigned the theme of work broadly and have always been amazed with what students have to say about it when given free reign to explore their relationship to the workforce. Perhaps I'll even assign this chapter from Bousquet's book for a discussion or research. For me, one of the main goals as a teacher is consciousness-raising. Bousquet frames the questions at issue in this debate in a way that might lead to some productive discussions:

For me, the basis of solidarity and hope will always be the collective experience of workplace exploitation and the widespread desire to be productive for society rather than for capital. So when we ask, "Why has higher education gotten more expensive?" we need to bypass the technocratic and "necessitarian" account of events, in which all answers at least implicitly bring the concept of necessity beyond human agency to bear ("costs 'had to' rise because..."). Instead, we need to identify the agencies of inequality and ask, "To whom is the arrangement of student debt and student labor most useful?"

The answer to that final question, unsuprisingly, is never "to the student."

Sir Ken Robinson's lecture, "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" (Technology, Education, Design Summit, 2006) is an inspiring 20 minute lecture on the goals of education.

"Kids will take a chance. If they don't know, they'll have a go. They're not afraid of being wrong... If you're not prepared to be wrong you'll never come up with anything original. By the time they are adults, kids have lost that capacity. They have become afraid of being wrong. [But as they grow up in the classroom and the workplace] we stigmatize mistakes. We are now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make...the result is, we are educating people out of their creative capacities. Why is this?"

Here's the video (with apologies for the BMW commercials):

Robinson's home page itself is very creative and includes information about his writing on creativity and the arts in education, including a link to his article, "How Creativity, Education and the Arts Shape the Modern Economy" (pdf).

The look is new, but the content is the same.

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