Maria Andersen Transcript

8/9/2019 Maria Andersen Transcript

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Maria Andersen Transcript

[Maria Andersen]: Yeah, well I think it has a lot to do with how muchwork they perceive themselves having to do. It’s certainly a lot easier

to walk into a classroom and plop yourself down in a seat and watchsomebody lecture at you, might not get much out of it but it involves alot less work on your part. And so something like just in time teachingrequires the student actually goes and reads the material prior toclass, answers a few questions about it and then attends class. So thatwould involve a lot more work on the student’s part. And I think wehave an educational system that encourages students to do the leastamount of learning… I don’t want to say work really, but the systemencourages students to do the least amount… to have the leastamount of effort for the most grade they can. So, we’ve lost emphasison the learning part and we’ve…it’s become a system of transactions; I

attend class, you give me a grade. The learning has kind of fallen off of that.

[Chris Finlay]: How are you combating that in your classes, what’sworking for you what isn’t working, can you talk more about that andyour experiences?

[Maria Andersen]: One of the things I have incorporated the last fewyears is an online homework system and although it’s not perfect itdoes mean that students will have to… the problems arealgorithmically generated so the students have to log in and complete

problems but they’re not the same problems as their colleagues. Imean they’re the same structure but not the same numbers whichmeans they can’t just game the system by asking their friends foranswers or getting a solutions manual and copying the answers out,again this goes back to the effort thing, least amount of effort, youknow for the most grade you can get. Which is not to say all studentsare like that, but we do see…you know students who take math classesare not there because they want to take math classes, they’re therebecause they had to take the class as a requirement for the degreeprogram. So it’s not like we have a group of students who are supermotivated to be there and to learn, they just want to get their grade

and get out. And I can’t say I really blame them; I felt the same wayabout classes I was forced to take. So it’s tricky, that’s one of the waysI kind of make sure that they stay on track is to use the onlinehomework system. It’s not ideal because it’s still focusing on answersand not process so much, but it’s what I’ve got at the time. I also havea pretty extensive digital environment for students to play in, so likevideos I record in class go up in that environment and stuff we find onthe internet that’s a good resource goes up in there. It kind of just

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keeps going semester by semester it gets bigger and bigger. So a lotof what I used to worry about covering in class I no longer worry somuch about that if we’re doing something where everybody is learningand we’re not going to get to a topic I will just say it’s on the online

environment you can go watch it there, when you get to thosehomework problems you know make sure you go watch the lesson firstor do a bit of reading and whatnot.

Education is a transaction

[Maria Andersen]: And I think that…I think we really lost that I thinkeducation has become all about transactions I give you my money, Iattend class you give me a grade at the end of this process I get a

piece of paper, but we’ve lost the simple idea that what’s important isthat people be learning something, not that they be completing thetransactions appropriately. One of the things I’m hoping to start doingin the fall is have students do some kind of learning portfolio, whetherit be a blog or a mind map or a paper or a project or a video that theyshould all be, it shouldn’t matter where they started as far as skilllevel, I want to see that by the end of the course they learnedsomething not that they checked off a box in a grade somewhere thatthis was done, they do have to still meet the criteria for what theyneed to learn for the course but I want to see that the best students inthe class learned a lot and the worst students in the class learned a lot,and I want them to realize that’s what , the important thing.

“This idea that everybody teaches, everybody learns. That should bethe motto for education across the board from kindergarten up throughgraduate school, but that’s what’s important.”

On Students Teaching to Learn

[Maria Andersen]: Yea well and you know we keep trying toencourage instructors to use more student focused learning

techniques, and the whole idea behind student focused learningtechniques is that the students can learn from each other…whichmeans the students would be teaching each other. But if we think of instructors and education as their full time job as teaching…I disagreewith that. If they’re not learning anything then what value…I…look athow fast the world moves today, we can’t imagine what the world willlook like five years from now so if all the instructors are doing isteaching then they’re going to be teaching material that is so stale




what’s the point in learning it? Should we be surprised that studentsget frustrated with the system and don’t want to engage in it?

“You can’t be a prophet in your own land”

On Hybrid Classes

[Maria Andersen]: The interesting thing I found, I started outteaching hybrid classes and I just found them to be really frustrating,because about 50% of the students really just wanted a face-to-faceclass and signed up for hybrid by accident. And about 50% reallywanted an online class but they were all full so they got a hybridinstead… and so I found that rather then being the best of both worldsthey kind of the worst of both worlds, because no matter what you didhalf of the class was kind of mad at you for it. So what I started to do

was blend my class was instead, so when I teach an online class I makesure to teach a face-to-face version of the same class; and they sharean online platform together so they do online homework together andthey share the course shell together and they participate in discussionstogether online. Which means I see 50% of the students face-to-faceand 50% of the students participate solely online and I may never seethem face-to-face. But because they all blend together its like onelarge conversation, and I think it increases …it brings diversity backinto the classroom. Because we have a lot of nontraditional studentswho, of course, gravitate to all my courses. Because it means they canstay at home with their families, and work around… changing workschedules and things like that. So those students had kind of beenstripped out of our face to face courses when we began teaching onlinecourses, so putting them back together in a kind of blended platformmeant that you had that mix of ages again, and life experiences… Thestudents really don’t even realize who’s face-to-face and who’s onlineat some point… I mean the face-to-face students or course know whothey see in class, but they don’t know each other’s names… right. Sowhen they’re participating online they don’t really realize if they’reparticipating with someone who is an online student or not. I think itcreates a really valuable interaction, the online students tend to findmore online resources to share with face-to-face and the face-to-facestudents will share experiences from the classroom if they think it willhelp an online student. It also reminds me that if I do something in theclassroom that the students found helpful and are sharing then that’smaybe something I should add to the course shell for future semesters,it helps all of us to do a better job of learning what needs to belearned.




[Maria Andersen]: Like below algebra?

[Chris Finlay]: Yeah like people who come in and aren’t even reallyprepared for any kind of college math. ??

[Maria Andersen]: Yeah um, I don’t have a lot of experienceteaching those classes, what’s interesting that in math, those classesare often taught outside of the math department… They are taught besome kind of developmental studies department or college successdepartment, or something like that.

[Maria Andersen]: I think it’s stagnant. And I think that uh if werenot careful, its going to get shaken up the same way that uh, like thesame way the auto industry is being shaken up and um all the factory jobs have been shaken up. I think we are um I think that the education

system right now is based on the factory model. And as factories gotheir ways, I think education is going to go its way if were not careful, if we don’t start to transform the way we focus education and um, theway we, you know, process students through education I mean, I thinkwe treat it like a factory… I think that the time for that industrial type job has disappeared. I don’t know if you have seen Ted Robinson’s Ted Talks on creativity…

[Alex Troitzch]: Yes, yes we did, there’s one more on YouTube that’sone and a half hours…

[Maria Andersen]: Yeah, yeah, I think he’s right on there when hesays you know, we’re trying to train students for careers, but we don’teven know what the careers are anymore. What we should be doingis, teaching them how to think and how to learn. And you know thereason why we teach them a variety of subjects is because we needthem to have um, brains that can be flexible in what they learn andthink about and um, I don’t know, I think its too large to be kind of broken. And I’m waiting for something to come along and really youknow, shake the foundation. I suspect it’s going to be something likeum, I know that Google just coined Google university for somethingelse, like singularity university. You know I’ve always thought

something like a Google University where they say “alright, you cantake um, your college can become accredited as part of our systemum, to teach these courses, you can choose to align with it or not. Youknow, and at some point if you’re not aligned with it, then anyone whois aligned with it your students can transfer anywhere, and anyonewho’s not aligned with it, well that’s your loss, you may find yourself out of business at some point. So I think that um, the idea that this nochild left behind where the government forces schools to do certain




things is a bad idea, but I think the idea that there can be a voluntarysystem where we all say all right, a lot courses; it doesn’t matter, itshouldn’t matter where you take them from, or the format you tookthem in, or if they are well designed courses if you can prove that you

learned as part of the course, that’s really the thing that matters. Youknow to have some global system where you know, you could put yourlife experiences and your learning experiences and the courses youtake all into that system and keep track of it… you know if we have toretrain for new careers every 5 to 7 years, we cant go back to collegefor 4 years every 5 to 7 years. That’s ridiculous. You know the systemhas to change. Nobody can afford that. Besides which, by the waywhen you finish that 4 years of school your career is now obsoleteagain. Right? So there has to be a system where we continue to learnand document that learning um, without having to start all over again.

[Chris Finlay]: Maria um, I, the tuning system uh, in Bologna and allover in Europe… Where else is this conversation going on in the US?What other interesting pockets of conversation are for you on thistopic?

[Maria Andersen]: Um, I would say is that the crisis where I get thiskind of conversation are folks that really understand the digital world,who are in education. And those aren’t necessarily the educationaltechnologists. They are the educators who are engaged in technology.And I think its only because they realize the power of technology toleverage everything, to change everything and so the more,

educational technology folks are mostly focused on technology and I’mnot sure they understand the whole educational system um, and itscomplexities.

[Maria Andersen]: I think we have lost the focus on learning. Andyou know I think the biggest change we could make is shift the focusback to learning. And I think that something where we have somesimple way of doing that refocusing. You know like what we talkedabout like a motto, you know we get everybody teaches, everybodylearns. You know keep reminding people, that’s what its about, that’swhat its supposed to be about anyways. Its not about transactions, its

about learning. And ya know if, your course is focused aroundtransactions then, not to, and your college is focused aroundtransactions… then, that’s not what education is about. I guess that’swhat I see as the biggest problem. I’m not sure, ya know in my worldfor the professor at a college you know I cant do a lot to fix it otherthan what I’m trying to do by writing about it and um, communicatingwith other people about it. You know, trying to attend conferences andtrying to get the message out, but you know I have a travel budget of




$150 a year.


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Maria Andersen Transcript