Life of the Mind2012 Leader Seminar

“A university is composed of people. Its lifeblood is the interaction of people (administrators, faculty, students and support personnel) over a period of time.”

Faculty Handbook, University of Tennessee 2010, p63

“A university is composed of people. Its lifeblood is the interaction of people (administrators, faculty, students and support personnel) over a period of time.”

Faculty Handbook, University of Tennessee 2010, p63

“It is in this middle or ‘liminal’ state – the ambiguous place of being neither here nor there –that anthropologists see profoundly creative and transformative possibilities. …

Undergraduate culture itself becomes this liminal communal space where students bond with one another, sometimes for life, and, amid rules of suspended normality and often hardship, explore their identities, wrestle with their parents’ world, and wonder about their future.”

Excerpts from Rebekah Nathan’s My Freshman Year: What a Professor learned by becoming a student. London. Cornell UP: 2005

“Introduction to Academics”• Technology (Blackboard, A-Z Index)• Plagiarism / Academic Integrity• Research and Resources for Student Success• Civility & Community

Take-Aways

• Concept of social constructions vis-à-vis categories such as race and identity

• Ability/Opportunity to mold your own identity

Creative Response“This year’s Life of the Mind response invites you to think about and share one or more parts of your identity that are not accidental but intentional, adopted or created by yourself, for yourself. This could be a character trait, behavior, like/dislike, or particular way of thinking or looking at the world that you adopted based on something you read, thought, heard, observed, or experienced.”

From 2012 LOM Reader’s Guide Elizabeth Schonagen (schonagen@utk.edu)

Who are you? Accidental vs. intentional identities

Design by Chelsea Angelo, First-Year Studies

Dr. De Ann Pendry, Senior Lecturer, Anthropology

PBS Series, Matters of Race (2003). Part I: The Divide

Discussion: Part I

Dr. De Ann Pendry, Senior Lecturer, Anthropology

Discussion: Part I

Discussion Goal: To provide an opportunity for first-year students to bond with one another and experience discussion in a college environment.

Fail-Safe Openers –The sticky note approach (thanks, Kitty Cornett!):Write one thought per note. Group similar notes together; representatives talk about main train of thought for each group; outliers discussed, etc.

Which story or moment in the book did you find most memorable?

Write something you learned from The Accidental Asian and/or Eric Liu’s presentation.

What was your main take-away from Eric’s speech?

Model I: Think-Pair-Share

Think: Consider the statement with relation to what you’ve learned from The Accidental Asianand your own experience.

Pair: Share your thoughts with a partner. Identify similarities between your two statements with respect to The Accidental Asian.

Share: Share these findings with the class (discussion flows from there).

Related statements on categories / groups

“We all know we are unique individuals but tend to see each other as representatives of groups. It’s a natural tendency; since we must see the world in patterns in order to make sense of it; we wouldn’t be able to deal with the daily onslaught of people and objects if we couldn’t predict a lot about them and feel that we know who or what they are.”

– Deborah Tannen, Professor of Linguistics, Georgetown University

“The ability to distinguish friend from foe helped early humans survive, and the ability to quickly and automatically categorize people is a fundamental quality of the human mind. Categories give order to life, and every day, we group other people into categories based on social and other characteristics.

This is the foundation of stereotypes, prejudice and, ultimately, discrimination.”

From Tolerance.org

Refresh

MODEL II: Three Stay, One Stray

Step 1: 4-5 students receive an excerpt/question

to discuss.

Step 2: After a few minutes, one person from each

group (“voyagers”) stands and moves to another

group, adding to that group’s conversation.

Step 3: Repeat step 2 (2x), then send all Voyagers home. Step 4: Home group shares with one another, with class discussion progressing from there.

The post-ethnic shift(?)

The Accidental Asian was written around the time you were turning to be a teenager [for students!]. Think back to this time and your experiences growing up.

- Do you think your generation is less pre-occupied with race? What has changed in your lifetime, if anything, and in your experience, is the post-ethnic shift Liu envisioned occurring?

- Has the notion of race outlived its usefulness? If not, where should we go from here?

MODEL II: Three Stay, One Stray

Folder Review• Welcome Week schedule• Discussion Leader schedule• First-Year Student / LOM Data• Prompts for Discussion

MODEL 1: Think-Pair-Share / Quick-Thinks

MODEL 2: Three Stay, One Stray

For more great discussion resources, visit the Tennessee Teaching and Learning Center

tenntlc.utk.edu

More Resources Campus Map App – Now available in iTunes!

“Teaching in Racially Diverse College Classrooms” - from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard University

Room locked? Call Zone Maintenance 974-5346

Need sticky notes? Index cards? See Tisa!

Discussion Q&A Evaluation

Class of 2017: Environmental Sustainability

Suggest a title! Suggest a future theme! Want to be part of the Review Board? Let us

know! Name/Email

Thank you for your feedback!

Refresh

Life of the MindThank you for your support,

and enjoy the discussion!

“What do our first-year students have questions about?”

..

“What might students have

questions about?”

What might students have questions about?

& students’ comfort with the University

Level of nervousness

BeforeDiscussion

AfterDiscussion

% Change

Extremely nervous 14.8% 3.7% - 11.1%

Very nervous 19.5% 10.7% -8.8%Moderately nervous 35.2% 29.4% -5.8%

Not very nervous 24.3% 38.8% + 14.5%

Not at all nervous 9.1% 17.5% +8.4%

Source: Welcome Week Survey, First-Year Studies & Student Activities August 2011 (N=384)

FYS 100-Learning Outcomes

Outcome % Student Agreement

(N=1870)

apply understanding of UT's plagiarism and Academic Integrity Policies

85%

navigate the basic IT tools used by all students, including Blackboard, MyUTK, and the A-Z Index

85%

investigate role in keeping UT's diverse campus community a civil and welcoming learning environment

77%

select and participate in campus and/or service activities based on personal interests

71%

Source: Welcome Week Survey, First-Year Studies & Student Activities August 2011 (N=384)

“Negative Feedback” In the absence of dialogue…

(Duijnhouwer, Prins, & Stokking (2012). “Feedback providing improvement strategies and reflection on feedback use: Effects on students’ writing motivation, process, and performance.” Learning and Instruction, 22, 171-184.

“We suggest that teachers have a feedback dialogue with their students, so that they can fine-tune their strategies to the particular student and if necessary demonstrate strategies… This may prevent that the teacher’s provision of strategies comes across as an indication of the teacher’s underestimation of the student’s capacities.” (182)

Discussion

“We expected that the improvement strategies would communicate that although the task perhaps is difficult, it can be accomplished, and, thus, would enhance students’ self-efficacy beliefs. Contrary, the number of improvement strategies negatively predicted students’ self-efficacy beliefs: the more strategies were provided, the lower their reported self-efficacy was. This negative relation existed especially for students whose self-efficacy beliefs were moderate or low before they received improvement strategies.” (181)

MODEL 1: Quick-Thinks

“As the University’s campaign on spreading civility and community grows, the Life of the Mind program grants a unique opportunity to engage incoming freshmen with a book encapsulating civility and community as literary themes.”

Chancellor’s Task Force on Civility and Community Final Report, August 23, 2010, p4 “Programs and Services

Recommendations”

From Lawrence, J. (2005). Addressing diversity in higher education: Two models for facilitating student engagement and mastery, in Higher education in a changing world, Proceedings of the 28th HERDSA Annual Conference, Sydney, 3-6 July 2005: p243.

Capon, N., and Kuhn, D. (2004). "What's So Good About Problem-Based Learning?" Cognition and Instruction, 22 (1), 61-79.

Dochy, Filip, Segers, Mien, Van den Bossche, Piet, & Gijbels, David (2003). Effects of problem-based learning: a meta-analysis. Learning and Instruction, 13, 533–568.

Eisenstaedt, R. S., Barry, W. E., & Glanz, K. (1990). Problem-based learning: Cognitive retention and cohort traits of randomly selected participants and decliners. Academic Medicine, 65, Suppl.(9), 11–12.

King, A. (1990). Enhancing peer interaction and learning in the classroom through reciprocal learning. American Educational Research Journal, 27(4), 664-687.

Tans, R. W., Schmidt, H. G., Schade-Hoogeveen, B. E., & Gijselaers, W. H. (1986). Sturing van het onderwijsleerproces door middel van problemen: eenveldexperiment/Problem-based learning: A field experiment. Tijdschrift voorOnderwijsresearch, 11(1), 35–46.

Van Blankenstein, F., Dolmans, D., van der Vleuten, C., and Schmidt, H. (2011). Which cognitive processes support learning during small-group discussion? The role of providing explanations and listening to others. Instructional Science, 39, 189-204.

Webb, N. (1989). Peer interaction and learning in small groups. International Journal of Educational research, 13, 21-40.

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