The Reflective Prof

Every once in a while it is good to switch roles by becoming a student.  It makes me a better professor by, not just upgrading my knowledge, but also giving me a better sense of the learning experience of my own students.  Currently, I am taking two online courses on Coursera.

In case you have not heard of Coursera, it is an online provider of Massive Open Online Courses or, better known as, MOOCs.  These courses are created by professors at some of the leading universities throughout the world.  Participating universities include big American names such as Yale, Stanford and Princeton, a few Canadian institutions (McMaster and University of Toronto) and many others in Europe and Asia.  Best of all, it is free and open to anyone!  (By the way, completing a Coursera course will not earn you credit towards any degree or diploma.)

Right now, I am enrolled in:

• Internet Giants: The Law and Economics of Media Platforms by the University of Chicago Law School
• Rethinking International Tax Law by Universiteit Leiden

Courses I have done in the past are:

• Introduction to Sustainable Development by Columbia University
• Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects by University of California, San Diego

I have recommended that last course to many of my students to give them an insight into how their brains work so they can develop their own learning strategies.

“We are all lifelong learners” is an overused but true phrase.  With MOOCs and other online resources, that learning is almost limitless.

Wayland

What do students need and want? As educators, professors grapple with this question for much of our professional lives. 

One way of answering the question is to focus on a list of core competencies such as Tony Wagner’s seven survival skills  which include critical thinking, problem solving, and collaboration.

I have been thinking of more direct ways of answering the question. In other words, what do students need to achieve those core competencies? My answers seem to always lead back to one word – “interaction“. Specifically, three categories of interaction:  interaction with the course subject matter, interaction with the professor and interaction with other students.

Interaction with the course subject matter. Instead of learning just pure theory, most students want to interact with the subject matter of a course by applying it, experiencing it, and/or critiquing  it.  Applying it could be done by working on case problems or analyzing a current issue or event. Experiencing it could be working in a relevant industry for a co-op work term or a clinic such as the Law and Business Clinic at the Ted Rogers School of Management. Critiquing it could be challenging students to question underlying assumptions or widely accepted beliefs in class or online discussions.

Interaction with the professor. Traditional lecturing to students – or better known as the “sage on the stage” (SOTS) – is not interaction in the literal sense. It usually involves one-sided communication by a professor to a group of students in a lecture hall. SOTS worked great for Shakespeare’s Henry V rousing his troops at Agincourt or Steve Jobs introducing the original iPhone.  However, SOTS often does not work well in our reality of multi-hour classes over a full semester covering subject that is not obviously interesting. 

In and outside of the classroom, students want to have mutual interaction with their professors. That interaction could be speaking with students in small groups as they are working on an in-class activity. It could also be providing direct feedback to students either in class or online in a discussion forum.

Interaction with other students. Working collaboratively is widely recognised as a key skill that students need for success. One common way of developing this skill is to have student work in groups for assignments and presentations. Another way is to have students discuss case problems in informal small groups before having a full class discussions. Another thought is to provide students with some guidance on how to work well in a group. I tell my students that work for a group project does not necessarily need to be allocated such that each person’s contribution is the same and equal. The allocation should recognise each person’s strengths and weaknesses.

Interaction. A simple, yet important and complicated word.

Given the growing prevalence of so-called helicopter parents, the meeting of parents and professors has become more common.  Although I have never had the pleasure yet of speaking to a parent of one of my students, I have witnessed such an encounter and have heard anecdotes from colleagues. Such meetings are rarely productive and usually do not end well.

Students are adults, albeit most of them are young adults. They should be left to manage their lives including school. Parents should support them with guidance and encouragement. Unless there is a physical or mental health concern, I do not see any need for a parent to contact their adult child’s professor. 

If you are a concerned parent, please read this New York Times article before contacting a professor.

In a previous post, I talked about trying “research wikis” for an assignment in one of my classes last semester.  I wanted to test the thinking that, since information is now a commodity, what matters is what you are able to do with information. So what happened?

A very good amount of research materials was accumulated in all three wikis – one for each of the three assignment topics.   The materials were contributed by a good number of different students from different groups.  (It was a group assignment, by the way.) That shows that many  of the students put in a good amount of effort researching their topics.  I did not see any indication of “free riders” relying on the research of others, without contributing any research of their own.

Since every group had access to the same research materials, did that even out the quality of the submitted assignments?  Absolutely not.  As with any other assignment, there was a full range of quality.  I marked assignments that were well written, insightful, and demonstrated a clear understanding of the subject matter.  On the other end of the spectrum, there were assignments that required a good stiff drink for me to get through.  Those assignments merely cobbled together a mish mash of various bits of information without any shred of understanding of the subject matter.

What this demonstrates to me is that, in the information age that we are living in, what really matters most is what we are able to do with the wealth of information available at our fingertips.  We need to able to not just access information, but understand it, evaluate it, critique it, extrapolate from it, build on it, etc. These are the skills that we should be developing in our students.

Wayland

I have created YouTube channel with a series of short videos on various legal and tax concepts. These videos are animated PowerPoints with narration (by me). Check it out.

Here is one of the videos:

Everyone says that information is now a commodity and that what matters is what you are able to do with information. Almost any information (but not all) is only a few Google searches away. With that thought in mind, I designed a new assignment for my post-grad international business students.

This assignment requires my students to research and write about one of three current international business law issues. The assignment is up to 5 pages long and can be done either individually or groups of two or three. Nothing out of the ordinary so far.

Here’s the new twist. The research for each of the three topics will be done collaboratively using a “research wiki”. I set up a “research wiki” for each topic which is essentially an online discussion forum. Students are expected to post any thing they find that is a useful research source such as cases, legislation, articles, blogs, books, etc. All student have access to all of the content in the wikis. In preparing their assignments, students may rely only on research materials cited in the wiki for their topic. In other words, if it’s not in the wiki, they can’t use it.

I am very curious to see how this will work out.  Will most students contribute to the wikis?  Or will only some contribute and the rest get a free ride?  Will there be a spirit of collaboration and community? Or will there be resentment and tension?

Wayland