Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: reis@cdr.stanford.edu (Unverified) Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 17:23:36 -0700 To: tomorrows-professor@lists.Stanford.EDU From: Rick Reis Subject: TP Msg. #233 "STUDENTS ACHIEVING" - A CAMPAIGN TO CHANGE THE WAY STUDENTS LEARN Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by lists.Stanford.EDU id RAA08366 TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR(SM) LISTSERV "desk-top faculty development, one hundred times a year" http://sll.stanford.edu/projects/tomprof/newtomprof/index.shtml Over 10,200 subscribers in 86 countries ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Produced by the Stanford University Learning Laboratory (SLL) http://sll.stanford.edu/ in a shared mission partnership with the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) http://www.aahe.org/ and The National Teaching and Learning Forum (NT&LF) http://www.ntlf.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Folks: The posting below is an excerpt from a forthcoming article, "The Campaign Approach to Change: Targeting the University's Scarcest Resources," that will appear in Change, the journal of the American Association for Higher Education. The article is by Larry Hirschhorn and Linda May, of the Center for Applied Research, Inc. The excerpt is one of a number of mini-case studies appearing in the article that illustrate the use of campaigns as a way of mobilizing resources and personnel for improvement in education. The article is copyrighted ©2000 The Center for Applied Research, Inc., and reprinted with permission. For further information please contact: Jessica J. Geiben Lynn, Associate, Center for Applied Research [jgeibenlynn@mail.cfar.com]. Regards, Rick Reis Reis@stanford.edu UP NEXT: No, UNext Isn't the "Anti-University" Tomorrow's Teaching and Learning ---------------------------- 702 words ----------------------- Mini-Case Study: "STUDENTS ACHIEVING" - A CAMPAIGN TO CHANGE THE WAY STUDENTS LEARN John Strassburger, president of Ursinus College, used the idea of a "campaign" to change the way faculty teach and students learn. The newly appointed president and his team framed a theme of "Students Achieving." This theme focused attention on new ways students can show their mastery of a subject. Higher-education professionals have inherited a method of teaching based on lectures, exams, papers and grades. To demonstrate competence, students must pass exams and write term papers. However, if we reframe mastery as the capacity to perform, to do something, then we need to develop a richer array of methods and venues for students to display their competence. As many educators have suggested, such performances can take the form, for example, of publishing, participating in research conferences, consulting to a social agency, exhibiting art, staging a play, designing a Web page, or developing a database. With these forms of achievement, people other than the professor - journal editors or community leaders, for example - evaluate the student's performance. Faced with the need to perform for a wider audience and thus experience greater risks and stakes, students master more skills. Similarly, faculty, who also feel accountable to these wider audiences, change their practices to ensure good student performance. With this focus on achievement, students will increasingly evaluate one another's work, faculty will coach them on a broader range of skills (such as presentation and project management), and the classroom will take on the quality of charrette or studio where students and faculty together evaluate works in progress. Employers will consider evidence of such performances much more seriously than they would reported grades. The performances begin to speak for themselves. Having settled on the theme of "Students Achieving," Ursinus College deliberately chose not to use the conventional machinery of strategic planning - task forces with balanced representation and formal reports - to advance the concept. These tools, Ursinus' leaders felt, were limited because they require the development of comprehensive plans before people fully understand what it is they hope to accomplish. Moreover, strategic planning draws its legitimacy from traditional participants, often precluding unsung faculty and students who are actually changing their practice and could take up effort to change teaching and learning. Instead, the "Students Achieving" campaign became influential not through exhortation but through activity. The president and his team launched a number of initiatives. They eliminated the summer school and compensated faculty for lost income by increasing their salaries. The goal was to create time for faculty to display their own mastery through publication, research and other venues in the belief that you cannot increase student achievement unless you increase faculty achievement. The college created summer fellowships for students to work one-on-one with faculty, who are paid to supervise the work. About 15 percent of the rising senior class currently receive these stipends to do scholarly work full time for eight weeks in the summer before their senior year. The fellowships have created higher expectations among students and faculty about what is possible for undergraduates to achieve. They have been enormously attractive to prospective students and to donors. The school hosted a student research conference with sister colleges. It gave departments money to start student journals. It launched an occasional paper series to explore the new approaches to teaching and learning. These papers have been immensely popular with alumni and create a context in which the college can seek funds from alumni to support the learning initiatives. In thinking about these initiatives as part of a "campaign," the president and the people who work with him now view all events as opportunities to underline the key theme. Instead of creating new forums or venues, they piggyback on current ones. For example, the college now features student presentations on Homecoming and Parents' Day. The college turned the customary "state-of-the-university" convocation into a summer conference to showcase teaching innovations. After two years of the campaign, the faculty voted overwhelmingly to institute a requirement that all students successfully complete some form of independent learning. The college made student achievement the focus of its reaccreditation, and the visiting team reported that what they found academically was "inspired" and "inspiring." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Note: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to Tomorrows-Professor Listserver by sending the following e-mail message to: subscribe tomorrows-professor To UNSUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor send the following e-mail message to: unsubscribe tomorrows-professor ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Richard M. Reis, Ph.D. Executive Director - Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing at Stanford (AIMS) Director for Academic Partnerships - Stanford Learning Lab. (SLL) Consulting Professor, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering Departments Building 02-530, Room 225, 440 Escondido Mall Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-3036 (650) 725-0919, Fax (650) 723-5034 Interested in an academic career? Check out Tomorrow's Professor Listserv at: http://sll.stanford.edu/projects/tomprof/newtomprof/index.shtml -++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**== This message was posted through the Stanford campus mailing list server. If you wish to unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message body of "unsubscribe tomorrows-professor" to majordomo@lists.stanford.edu